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“Yes, she would.” My throat thickens and I force it back. Right now I need to be numb. It’s the only way I’ll get through this, the only way I know how.
“Anyone else?” James asks vaguely, looking around the room as if someone will pop out from behind a chair, and I stare at him, because of course there is someone else.
“Eva,” I say, my voice firm. “She needs to be here.”
James makes all the calls, which I am very grateful for, while I sit by Emily’s bed. I hold her hand and I stroke her hair, part of me incredulous that this might be the last time I do it. I think of how, when she first went into a coma, I used to torment myself with all the last times. When was the last time I’d kissed her goodnight in her own bed? When was the last time she’d smiled at me properly? What was the last word she’d ever said?
I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, because I didn’t realize they were the last times.
But this time I know.
My mother comes an hour later, looking teary-eyed and determined. Her hair isn’t brushed in the back and her cardigan is buttoned wrong. She came by bus because she’s become too nervous to drive, with the tremors and clumsy movement. “Oh, Rachel,” she says, hugging me. “Oh, James.” She hugs him, as well. And then she turns to Emily, and bends over her and kisses her cheek. “My darling girl,” she whispers.
Seeing them together is jarring—youth and age, beginning and end, and yet it is Emily we are saying goodbye to. I still resist the idea. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours. How on earth can that be possible? She’s barely moving, she’s been in this state for months, and yet I still can’t believe it.
Eva comes a little bit later, standing uncertainly in the doorway. I usher her in; she belongs here.
“Rachel…” she says, and that is enough. I nod a greeting, an acceptance of the rightness of her being here, and she sits on a chair one of the nurses has brought in. It almost feels like a party, in a weird, awful way, except no one makes chit chat. No one speaks at all. All we are doing, I realize, is waiting.
And I don’t want to just wait. I don’t want these last minutes and hours—that’s all we have now—to be an empty space of time I won’t be able to remember. And yet I don’t know what else to do, how to be. How can anyone? There are no handbooks, no etiquette guides, no rules. That’s the thing about death. It surprises everyone.
An hour passes, some moments too quickly, others too slow. I feel as if time is moving up and slowing down, coming in fits and starts, like Emily’s breaths. A long silence, a sudden gasp. I can tell everyone finds it jarring, although no one says so.
I can see my mother is tiring, and James offers to accompany her outside to get a taxi, although I know he doesn’t want to miss a moment with Emily. She kisses Emily’s cheek, strokes her hair, tells her she loves her. I gaze on, still strangely numb, while Eva tries not to cry. I want to tell her it’s all right to cry, that this, surely, is a time for crying, and yet I feel so frozen inside I can’t get any words out.
When they leave, for a few minutes, it is just Eva and me… and Emily. She lies between us, like a photograph fading, every moment more diminished. The unit is quiet; no one else seems to be having a day like ours. There are only a few noises—light footsteps, hushed murmurs. Outside the sky is a dazzling blue, and the sun is turning a birch’s yellow leaves to incandescent flame.
I have no idea what time it is; it feels like the middle of the night but obviously it isn’t. I am gazing into space, feeling so shut off from everything, when Eva’s voice breaks the stillness.
“Do you want to… touch her?” she asks softly. I blink her into focus, trying to make meaning of the words. “Talk to her, if you want? I can leave, if you want s
ome privacy…”
“You don’t have to leave.” My voice sounds as strange as I feel, almost guttural, as if I am learning how to speak. I look at Emily, and I realize again that I don’t just want to wait this out. I will miss these last moments with Emily, however many they are, so much. I will wonder, as I have about so many things, why I didn’t savor them more.
And so I scoot my chair closer to the bed, and I look down into my daughter’s face.
“Hello, darling girl,” I whisper. Now more than ever I doubt that she can hear me, but somehow that doesn’t even matter anymore. “I love you so much, Emily. Mama’s right here. You don’t need to be scared.” I take her head, threading her little fingers through mine, savouring the warmth her body still possesses. “I’m with you.” I squeeze her hand, but this time she doesn’t squeeze back, and I know she never will again, and somehow that is the thing that nearly breaks me.
I’ve grieved so many losses over the last few years, but this one small thing? The simple squeeze of her fingers that doctors told me was just a reflex anyway? It seems I must grieve that too.
I bow my head, fighting back tears, not wanting to cry now. I want this to be, if not a happy moment, then a good one. I hear Eva move and then I feel her hand on my shoulder, a solid, comforting weight. Squeezing.
I have no more words but weeping, and I don’t want to do that. So I stop speaking, and instead I hum, a lullaby song James made up for Emily when she was just a baby. We sung it to her every night, and if we forgot, she always asked for it. Sleep song, she called it. Sleep song, Mama.
I hum the tune, and then I make myself sing the words. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep, my dear. I repeat it, and then the second line: I’m right here. I’m right here.
I squeeze her hand again. I wait. Eva’s hand remains on my shoulder and outside the sun starts to set.
I don’t know how much time passes then. It has slowed right down, each moment suspended before it passes onto the next.
James returns, taking his place quietly next to me, finding the rhythm of the moment, even in its silence. I start to sing the lullaby again, and he joins me. On the second time through, Eva, haltingly, sings it with us.
Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep, my dear. I’m right here. I’m right here.
The shadows lengthen. The hospital parking lot is a front row seat to a Technicolor sunset of spectacular crimsons and golds, the world, for a breathless moment, lit up, on fire.
And then it goes very quiet, and I know she’s gone. I’m the first to realize. James and Eva are still sitting quietly, and I look down at my daughter’s face and I feel, to my own surprise, nothing but relief.
