BEEN A LONG DAY
That familiar hospital smell hit me like a wave and I staggered back a few steps, but I knew I had to keep going, to face whatever waited inside. “Rose,” someone said as the force lessened, and I made myself step into the hall. The voice beckoned again. “Honey, come here.”
“Anna,” I said, turning toward the desk where she stood, her arms out, waiting for me—Anna had been my mother’s nurse. “Hi,” I choked out. She hugged me and the hospital smell disappeared, replaced by the sweet scent of her perfume and the feel of her soft curls against my cheek. During the two months Mom was here, Anna had witnessed everything, the highs and the unbelievable lows, until the very end when my mother’s pulse dropped all the way to zero and stopped forever.
She let me go after a while. “I’m going to put you somewhere private while you wait for the doctor.”
“But my dad. Can’t I? Shouldn’t I go see him? Now. You know?” I stuttered.
The springy rubber soles of Anna’s shoes squeaked as she
pivoted me around until I was facing an office I knew well, the one reserved for discussions the doctors didn’t want to have in front of the other people in the waiting room, the same office where I’d learned the news about Mom.
Anna guided me inside and shut the door behind me.
I slouched into the armchair where I’d sat less than a year ago, tilting my head back against the smooth, cool leather. Memories I’d tried so hard to erase crept back into my consciousness, first in dribs and drabs—the last day I saw my mother truly alive, standing on the front porch, where she waved at me as I left for school and called out that she loved me. The final few minutes of her life when I’d held her hand, how my fingers clasped hers, how I felt their warmth, and took in the sound of her heart on the machine, ever slower, watching her face until I kissed her on the cheek, her skin so thin and tired, my fingers slipping from hers, one by one, never forgetting for a second that I would never touch or see her again. The sadness that I’d mistakenly believed had receded for good was like a tide at the beach, gone out for a few hours, till at the turn of the day it rushed back, reminding me it was still there.
The beginning of the end for my mother came on her favorite kind of day, on a bright, sunny afternoon in April, the kind that gives you spring fever, where you want to throw on a tank
top and skirt and expose as much skin as possible to the warmth and the light. I was down on the track that circled the football field at cheer practice, and in between dances and stunts, basket tosses and plain old cheers, my teammates and I spread out sweatshirts on the springy burnt orange surface so we could lie in the sun. We stretched our arms out, trying to soak up as much vitamin D as our bodies had lost over the dark, wintry months. How happy I felt that day, so much energy pulsing through me, my blood racing, everything inside me rejoicing because the warm weather was here and summer was around the corner.
During one of these breaks my dad called. “Your mother isn’t feeling well,” he said, his voice laced with worry. “I think I’m going to take her to the hospital.”
“Well, what does
she
say?” I asked, unconcerned, peeling off yet another layer, loving the feel of the heat on my body. “Is she even willing to go?” My mother had always called the shots when it came to her cancer and I could just imagine her protests against Dad making a decision on her behalf.
“I’m not sure I care what she wants,” he said. “She’s in pain.”
Even this didn’t faze me much. She had endured all kinds of agony last time around, proving she could handle anything. She’d beaten a type and stage of cancer almost nobody lived through and everybody called her a walking miracle, even her doctors.
“I’m going to take her,” Dad said, desperation creeping into his voice.
Rebecca, our captain at the time, waved me over because practice was going to start again. “Sure,” I said to my father, distracted. “Whatever you want. Just call to let me know what happens.”
“I will,” he said, and I heard the sound of car doors opening and slamming through the phone.
“Tell Mom I love her.”
“Okay,” I heard my father say, and then there was a click.
The cheerleaders were already setting up to run through our most difficult pyramid, three tiers of girls with one at the top—me.
“Rose, are you ready to join us or what?” Rebecca wanted to know.
“I’m coming,” I said, and pushed away thoughts of my parents on the way to the hospital as we practiced the formation again and again. Kecia, Tamika, and Mary were responsible for popping me high in the air so I could land on the second tier of teammates.
“Ready?” they said as usual, on maybe our eighth try that day.
“Ready!” I responded, preparing myself to fly.
“Down-up!” Kecia commanded.
I can hear it now, clear as day.
I remember traveling up, up, up, my muscles tight, my toes pointed, my body straight like a shot, riding the momentum until the very last second, when I started to come back down and landed square on the shoulders of two girls, who grabbed my legs immediately, anchoring me. Once I was steady, I punched my
arm straight toward the hot sun and smiled at the imaginary crowd in the stands. This time when I looked out, my eyes met Jim’s and I laughed with surprise. For almost two years I’d pestered my brother to visit me at practice. “Hey, Jimmy!” I called out, my voice echoing through the empty stadium. I waved but he didn’t smile, and that’s when I knew something was wrong.
“Kecia!” I yelled. “I need to come down. Now.” Anxiety rolled through my already tense muscles. After a few moments of organizing on the ground that stretched on forever, I heard her voice.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” I called back, everything about me becoming unsteady.
“Down-up!” the girls directly under me shouted, and again I felt the momentum of traveling up in the air until my body began its descent, Kecia, Mary, and Tamika cradling my back and legs before I could reach the ground and popping me back onto the track. The second I landed I ran over to Jim.
“Rose,” he croaked, his eyes pooling with tears.
I suddenly felt desperate. “What? What! Tell me.”
“Dad’s been trying to reach you, but you didn’t pick up. It’s Mom. Something happened right after they got to the hospital. We’ve got to go. Now.” Turning on his heel, he hurried away, and I followed, already numb, without a single glance behind me to my teammates. I even left my stuff sitting there. When I got into Jim’s car, I checked the time. Only thirty minutes had
elapsed between Dad’s phone call and now. I hadn’t even asked to talk to Mom on the phone when I’d had the chance.
“I should’ve taken her sooner,” Dad said when we ran into the waiting room, his head in his hands, looking hunched and broken in a chair. “I shouldn’t have listened to her. She was in so much pain.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Jim said, putting a hand on Dad’s back.
But we hadn’t seen Mom yet so we didn’t know.
The door to the office opened a crack. My head was down, eyes glued to the table in the office. “Rose?” I looked up as Anna peeked her head inside. “Five more minutes and the doctor will be here.”
A heavy sigh burst from my lungs as if I’d been holding my breath. I nodded to let her know that I’d heard. Without thinking, my fingers felt for the crystal heart pendant, but then I remembered it was gone and I wished for it, for anything that might provide comfort. I could hardly believe I’d left something so precious in Will’s jacket pocket, a last gift from my mother, and he might not even know it was there. What if it got lost? My mind wandered back to this morning, when Will and I were in his truck, and it already felt so far away, like it had been another Rose there, another girl he’d been kissing. With
Will I’d slowly worked my way toward the Rose of before, who laughed often, who felt things so deeply, who could move through the world brimming with feeling and emotion. But now she was gone, all over again,
that
Rose. Somewhere deep inside I think I’d known she wouldn’t last for long.
“Don’t assume the worst,” Anna said, opening the door farther, a triangle-shaped sliver of harsh fluorescent light cutting into the room. “It’s not as bad as you think.” The brightness clashed with the soft incandescent bulbs illuminating the office. “If it weren’t true, I wouldn’t say it. You know I’m always honest, even if the truth is not what a family wants to hear.”
“I know,” I managed after a short silence, my voice hoarse. “I remember,” I said, sinking again into my memories of my mother, because they wanted to come back and I didn’t have the strength to force them away anymore.
The worst moments we endured in this hospital were the times when Mom woke up from her coma. On three separate occasions she returned to us, each one more hopeful than the last. The first time we’d expected it. We were certain it marked the beginning of her recovery, that Mom would magically transform from a limp body on a respirator to her vibrant, talkative self once again.
“Your mother’s awake!” my father said, excited, running into
the waiting room where Jim and I had been sitting for weeks, barely leaving even for school. We did all sorts of things to pass the time: playing cards, doing the homework that piled higher each day. When Dad appeared I was painting my toenails a hot pink color, and the bottle nearly tipped as I scrambled to my feet. I raced after my father and brother, down the wide white hallway, the nail polish glistening wet and three of my toes still unpainted. I don’t know what I’d expected, but “awake” turned out to be something altogether different than I’d imagined.
“Mom,” Jim and I said at once, before we’d even had a chance to step into the room and get close enough to see her.
Mom’s eyes were definitely open, but only halfway, her mouth showing two rows of teeth, her jaw slack. The worst were her legs and left arm—they would spasm and skitter across the bed, then fall off the side and dangle there until the nurse would put them back under the blanket, only to have them bounce across and down once more.
“I love you,” we took turns saying in case she could hear us, in case she could understand. The woman who lay there, occasionally blinking her eyes at us, unable to speak and control her limbs, was not the mother I knew. Within hours she was gone again.
A few weeks later, she woke a second time, but in much the same way. There was the initial flurry of excitement from us, the promise, the hope of recovery, the possibility of taking away tubes and unhooking machines, and then the accompanying
shock and disappointment when she slipped away. The only thing that changed was how hard we bottomed out when we lost her.
But the third time she woke was different from before.
“Mom is conscious,” Dad said, pulling Jim and me up from the waiting room chairs. His change in description—from
awake
to
conscious
—was notable, and I wondered if he’d intended the difference, if we would see the real Mom in that room or still the empty-eyed woman whose only resemblance was that they shared the same body. “Ellie,” Dad said as we raced in to see her, his voice full of emotion.
Mom turned her head toward the door.
She didn’t speak, but it was clear she
saw
us, she
recognized
us.
Mom was
alive
.
To us, this meant her recovery was imminent, that she would fight the cancer with courage and hope just like last time and she would
win
again. I knew it, we all did. We were so sure.
“Your kids made you these,” I said to her, pointing out the patch of construction-paper tulips taped across one wall of the room. With Mom watching, Jim and I alternated, taking her on a tour of the cards and homemade decorations and mobiles hanging from the ceiling—who they were from, what grade, which teachers, and when they had arrived. We took turns getting into bed with her, making sure to do so on the side where her legs and arm kept falling off, our bodies there to be close to her as much as to prevent her from noticing she no longer could control her movements. Dad, Jim, and I talked over each other,
filling in the silence that she couldn’t, telling her everything we could think of from the weeks when she’d been asleep, trying to make her laugh, doing our best to occupy her attention, telling her she was going to get better, that we loved her and were so happy to see her. Her hospital room became the site of a family party.
We stayed long past visiting hours that day.
Finally, Anna came in to shoo us out. “Hey there, beautiful,” she said to Mom—she always called her that, even when Mom was unconscious, and I loved that Anna did this. She checked the tubes and monitors measuring Mom’s heart rate, her breathing, and other vital signs, her voice cheerful. “These people need to give you some rest.”
“We’ll be back first thing in the morning,” Dad said quickly.
“The second we’re allowed to be here,” Jim added.
We were so happy, so excited, that we didn’t mind Anna’s directive to go home. Tonight, we were leaving with real hope in our hearts, with the future in mind, with faith in my mother’s recovery.