I try to run to her. But the nurse is surprisingly strong.
“You have to wait, Ms. Chase.” Her voice is kind. “They’ll take good care of her.”
“What happened?” My voice is shrill. “She was leaving today! Why did this happen?”
Oh, God, it’s my fault. I pushed too hard. She wasn’t ready to leave. Her body wasn’t up to the stress. And then another thought: I’m too late. If I’d tried to bring her to Lost earlier, if I’d found a way to leave Lost earlier...
The nurse guides me to a chair. Someone presses a cup of coffee into my hands.
“We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the waiting room, I draw sketches of her. Her, in the hospital bed. Her, at home with her plants. Her, at the kitchen table. Her, on the beach. Her and me with our toes in the ocean. In Maine. In California. In the woods. At the movies. The nurses keep feeding me paper, and I don’t look up except when I need the next sheet.
One hour passes, two, three.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a doctor enter the waiting room. William. He crosses to the nurses’ station, speaks to them, and then walks toward me.
I shoot to my feet, and the sketches scatter across the floor. I search his face for a hint. His face is kind, sympathetic, and my hands begin to shake. I clasp them together.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s nothing more we can do. She’s not in any pain right now, but all we can do is keep her comfortable. It won’t be much longer.”
It feels as if the earth has quit spinning. Everything feels hushed, as if it’s holding its breath. Or maybe that’s only me. I can’t breathe. I nod as if what he’s saying makes sense, as if it even sounds like words.
“You had better go in now and say goodbye.”
I am still nodding, as if I’m a marionette and my head is on a string. Bending, I scoop up my drawings and clutch them to my chest, and then I feel my feet walking toward her door. I think William is beside me or behind me, but I don’t look. My eyes are only on her door, partially ajar. It feels both infinitely far and much too close. Like the void. It gapes at me. I reach it and push it open, and I walk inside.
Mom lies on the bed. Her eyes are closed. She has an oxygen mask on her face, and it makes her look shrunken around it. I focus on her chest, and I can’t see the rise and fall, but I hear thebeep-beep-beepof the heart monitor. Each beep seems to wait a painfully long time until the next one. I drag the chair close to her bed, and I take her hand.
Her eyes flutter open. I see her smile under the oxygen mask as she turns her head and sees me. Her fingers curl around mine, but it seems as if that takes all her strength, because she releases and lets her hand simply rest in mine, limp.
“Hi,” I say.
It’s all I can think of to say. Hi.
“I drew you some pictures.” I fumble for the papers. I’ve been clutching them in my hand, and the edges are rumpled. I smooth them out and hold them up one after another so that she can see. She points to the one of her and me by the beach.
“Yeah, that’s my favorite, too,” I say. “Mom...” There are a million things I want to say, but only one of them is important. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Lauren.” Her voice is muffled under the mask, but I can hear it fine. She has tears in her red eyes. I stroke her hand and she stares at me as if drinking me in. Softly, slowly, she then says, “If I had any sense of timing, I would have died after saying that.”
I smile because I know she wants me to. I can’t make myself laugh, even for her. I lean forward so only she will hear me, though we are alone. “I wasn’t taking you home. We were going on one last road trip. You were going to come with me to Lost.”
“That would have been nice. Can’t make it right now. Pressing engagement elsewhere. Can I take a rain check?” Her words are staccato and breathy, so soft and light that they float like bubbles in the air.
This time, I do laugh, but it’s a choked strangled sob-laugh. I can feel the tears pressing against my eyes and heating my face. But if I break down in tears, I can’t talk, and I desperately want to be talking to her. “Can’t take a rain check in Lost. I never saw it rain. But the ocean is amazing. I told you about the dolphin, right?”
“You know it wouldn’t have worked, right?”
“I think it’s real, Mom. I know that sounds crazy, but—”
“I couldn’t have gone.” Mom smiles, the barest upturn of her lips, as if even that movement costs her. “I’m not lost. Even on the day your father left, and everything I’d planned and dreamed of went up in smoke, I was not lost. I had you. Knowing you, loving you...I couldn’t...I can’t...be lost.” Each word is slowly delivered, as if she’s wrapping and packaging them to give to me. “I told him that, too.”
“Who? Dr. Barrett?”
She beckons me closer. I lean in as she says, “You aren’t lost, either.”
