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I wrap my arms around both of them, but the tears still don’t come. I’m too scared. Numb with fear. Frozen in place. I just keep holding onto them as if they’re my source of oxygen.
“We’ll wait,” I say with a sardonic chuckle. “We’ll just wait.”
But we don’t have to wait long. The doctor emerges from the room first, wearing the kind of stoic expression I’m sure took her years to master, yet the grim line of her mouth gives her away.
“Passed.”
“...so sorry.”
Jackie folds in on herself, her knees smacking into the floor as she lets out a gut-wrenching cry. Marty starts hyperventilating when the doctor utters the words “likely sepsis.”
My hands somehow remain connected to both of them as they react to the news, my right on Jackie’s shoulder, and my left on Marty’s arm as the hallway takes on a strange fuzzy quality. The doctor is still standing there, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. All I hear is the dull ringing in my ears, and the throbbing pain behind my left eye grows louder by the second.
I don’t know if I say anything, or if I cry, or scream upon learning that my mother is gone. It’s as if I’m trapped in a giant fish tank, suspended in water, my surroundings blurred and muffled.
Minutes stop passing in a linear sense after that, and time itself becomes a collection of fragments, some of note, but most insignificant. Mom’s machines are disconnected. Jackie calls Dan. Marty empties his water bottle and angrily hurls it across the room, the plastic bouncing off the wall and rolling across the floor. Eventually, Mom’s body is wheeled out. A nurse comes in and I hear “arrangements” mentioned to Jackie.
I’m not sure how long the three of us sit there in heavy silence or how long we’re allowed to stay, but no one comes in to kick us out.
At some point, Jackie asks, “How long was she sleepwalking?”
I press the heel of my palm against my left eye, trying to stop the throb. “What?”
“Mom. How long was she sleepwalking?” she asks again. “I didn’t see it in the notebook.”
“That’s because I didn’t write it in the notebook,” I tell her in a flat tone.
Her eyebrows lift as she rolls her eyes. “Of course not,” she mutters under her breath.
“Why would I write it in the notebook when I can just tell you it happened?” I say, not in the mood to discuss the pros and cons of my sister’s many rules. “No one writes in the notebook but you.”
“Well, maybe you should have,” she snaps. “If I had known she was sleepwalking, maybe I could’ve done something.”
I gesture to Marty. “Marty knew about it. I told him days ago.”
Marty’s gaze drops to the floor.
“That notebook was for all of us,” Jackie spits. “It was to help us stay on top of how the disease was affecting her and track the progression. Would it have really been so hard for you guys to jot down your thoughts at the end of the day?” Her eyes are like daggers as they shift between me and Marty. “Or, I don’t know, read anything that I wrote down?”
“I added stuff to the notebook,” Marty notes, sheepishly.
Nope. Not letting him get away with this one. “Your fucking doodles don’t count.”
The vein in Jackie’s neck is starting to show, a clear indication of how close she is to losing her shit. “Maybe if you had read even one word in the notebook, Sam, just one fucking word, then you wouldn’t have let her watchReal Housewives,or let her eat sodium-filled garbage, or, or allowed her to get so dehydrated that she roams around the house in the middle of the night, not knowing where the hell she is.”
“Are you suggesting that dehydration is the reason she fell, and that I’m the cause of her dehydration? Like I was callously withholding water from her?”
She shrugs. “All I’m saying is that dehydration causes confusion, and clearly she was confused when she fell.”
I don’t feel myself rising from my chair until I’m on my feet and looking down at Jackie. “Oh, is that all you’re saying? Really? Why not sprinkle in some subtext for the class, huh? Why not just say what it is you’re obviously thinking?”
She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. “Yeah? And what is it that I’m obviously thinking?”
I spread my arms out wide, ready for her barrage of verbal bullets. “Uh, that I killed Mom.”
“I never said that.”
“I said you were thinking it.”
