AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That’s probably what I’ll do.
But that’s still hours away, so I half-stand and drag my chair closer to the bed, then I settle in again and rest my arms on the mattress. So I can feel my mother’s heartbeat and ignore the beep-beep-beep from the machines that slowly etch away at my sanity. So I can hear her lungs inhale and ignore the rattling exhale that chips away at my soul. I pull her scent deep into my body, and work to differentiate between what’s the old her and what’s cancer.
What is her natural perfume, and what is the lingering aftereffects of the chemotherapy they’ve pumped into her veins for a year straight.
I don’t turn on the television hung high on the hospital room wall, and I don’t take out my phone to watch Netflix. I don’t scroll social media, and I don’t put a lot of thought into my term paper, though I know it’s due.
I work hard to remain right here in the moment. Savoring every minute I have with a sleeping woman because although it doesn’t seem like a lot, a few weeks from now, when she’s gone, I’ll miss this.
I’ll grieve the chance to rest with her. I’ll look back to my youth and remember how I had my own bed, in my own bedroom. And yet, I can’t remember ever sleeping in it until long into my teen years.
Eleanor Swanson has been my comfort blanket from the moment I could breathe. And soon, she’s leaving me.
When I’m not grieving, and not living in the moment, I find myself falling down a well of bitterness as I overthink the reality of what I stand to lose soon.
We didn’t fight. No one is leaving on purpose. We’re not at odds, and neither of us sought out a best friend in someone else. We chose each other. We choose to love one another to the point of obsession.
But there goes Judy Jinx, taking my most precious thing away.
I don’t know what the Swanson women did back in the day to start this shitty cycle of shitty lives. My mother’s mother’s mother went ahead and married a douchebag. They created a daughter, who repeated the cycle no one wanted to see again. Then another Swanson. Then another. All the way down to me.
Fortunately, my father’s adulterous ways were discovered before my birth certificate was signed. Which means I got my mother’s surname and I would choose that connection to my maternal side time and time again.
Unfortunately, that surname may have come with a curse. Because I’ve already experienced my cheating sack of shit relationship, and as a cherry on top, now I’m losing my mom.
This is the Mondayist Monday I’ve ever known. And I doubt things will get better from here. But a few weeks from now, I’ll miss even this. So I settle in and focus only on Eleanor Swanson’s breath.
For now, that’s enough.
* * *
At six-fifty-eight p.m. Brenda swings by with her purse in the crook of her arm and a playful smile as she pokes her head into our room and finds me in exactly the same position I was at four. But now, I hum a song under my breath. I wile away time and sing a song my mother sang to me when I was a child.
The lyrics mention angel’s wings and butterfly kisses. A mother’s embrace. A baby’s smile. It speaks of forevers, and love, and heartache, and so much more. It’s not a traditional song played in a nursery. But I’m glad this is the one my mom chose to share with me all those years ago.
It’s special. It’s unusual. And it’s all ours.
“It’s time to go, honey. Berta got here early.” Brenda wanders into the shadowed room and takes a fast peek at the monitors recording Mom’s blood pressure. But when she finds nothing out of the ordinary, she stands over me and brushes locks of brown hair off the side of my face. “You didn’t eat your sandwich.”
I draw a deep breath and push up to my elbows, my eyes locking on the small package she set down hours ago. Exhaling again, I release my mom’s hand and reach out for the wilted dinner I forgot I’d requested. “I think I was meditating.” Sleepily, I turn the sandwich box over in my hand so the plastic crackles and the bread inside flops flaccidly to the left. Then, with a soft snigger, I shake my head and cast one last look up to my mom’s sleeping form. “Time went fast.”
“Usually does when you don’t want to leave.” She grabs my stick and sets it on my right, though we both know my left leg is the injured side. “Get up, and I’ll walk out with you, sweet pea.”
“Yeah.” I push up to stand and maneuver my walking stick to the correct side. Then, leaning over the woman in the bed, I press a kiss to her forehead and nod when I find her temperature back down to what I consider appropriate. “I hope she sleeps all night,” I mumble. “She deserves the rest.”
“Do you ever wonder why bad people live forever and the good don’t?” Philosophical, Brenda heads toward the door and waits by the curtain as I make sure I have my things.
I left my bag at the house, and brought only my phone and keys. So I grab my sandwich in one hand and my stick in the other. Then I turn from my mom and start toward the door. “I think about it more often than you’d believe.” I meet the voluptuous woman at the curtain and hand her my sandwich, not so she can dispose of it but so she can help me. “Can you open the packet? I’ll eat while we walk.”
She rolls her eyes skyward, but moves with me into the brightly lit hall and tears the flimsy packaging open. “You need a better diet than curdling cheese sandwiches, baby girl. You need steak. Potatoes. Pasta.” She hands me a triangle and raises a brow as we approach the elevator. “Garlic bread.”
I follow her into the silver cube and take a bite off the corner. “I can buy my own garlic bread, ya know?”
“Youcould.” She smacks the elevator button and starts us down to the ground floor. “But you don’t. You squirrel away every cent you make, and lift food from the trolley every time you walk our halls.”
“So?” I take another bite and scowl. “I pay my taxes. I’ll put my hours in this hospital next year. No one is getting mad about the slice of cheese I pilfer once a day.”
“I’mgetting mad about it.” When the doors open and reveal the emergency room lobby, she steps out again but moves slowly enough that I can keep up. “I’m mad because you deserve better. I’m mad because you’re the sweetest, hardest working, quietest little mouse I’ve ever met. And it bothers me that you’ll spend your life stealing cheese slices and never actually living.”
