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Not suffering, with Ros nowhere to be found, her body too weak to hold her strong, bright spirit.
“Ophelia, stop,” Grant growls, clutching me against him.
He wrestles me into the hall until my mother’s creeping death is just a surreal portrait through the window. A still life painted in crisis and pain.
“Ophelia, will you listen? They’re going to fucking save her. Theyare.”
“Clear!” comes from inside the room, followed by a terrible liquid zapping sound.
I can’t bear to watch after the first time my mother’s body jerks like a puppet shaken by some angry child.
The fire goes out of me and common sense comes flooding back.
Oh my God, what have I done?
“Ophelia,” he whispers again, pinning me to his chest.
That embrace becomes my world, overtaking the horror, the fear, the impending loss.
This man truly is a bear, forever bigger and brighter than the great one in the night sky.
He’s certainly holding up my entire world.
This time, I don’t fight Grant when he turns me away, running one big hand down my back.
I bury my face in his chest, smothering my sorrow in his bulk.
“Clear!”
Then more of that hellish zapping.
I can’t really hear it now, but it’s still in my brain, the ugly sound of my mother falling limply against the hospital bed and losing her hold on life.
It’s breaking me in slow motion.
Imaginary noises hollowing me out horribly, but I can’t hold it in.
Can’t escape that hell sound even with Grant’s arms wrapped around me like he can block out every evil and protect me with the soft wordless silence he offers.
His drumming heart is so strong under my cheek, though.
And I know—I just know—if he could only take some of his strength and give it to restart my mother’s heart, he would without hesitation.
Why does tragedy always feel like forever, though?
In reality, I think it’s only a minute.
It can’t be much more than that when there’s so little time between the heart stopping and brain death due to lack of oxygen. They’d quit working before they’d revive her as a vegetable, I know that with the DNR, and yet it still feels like a thousand years condensed into one brutal moment where they charge and clear, charge and clear, all choreographed in perfect sync to my sobs.
Until that flatline tone stops.
Until it becomes a slow, yet consistent beeping.
I turn my head sharply, terrified to hope.
Afraid to think Mom cheated death once again, only to be wrong.
But that green line on the screen doesn’t lie.
