Page 19 of Tough Love
Until they don’t.
Tragedy doesn’t discriminate by age. It doesn’t care if you’ve left things unsaid, issues unresolved. It doesn’t give a shit that you’ve been too much of a coward to face the hard facts in order to move past the hurt and heal.
Time becomes irrelevant. A luxury. Something you’ve squandered. And then all of a sudden you’re left sitting in your sister’s dining room, drinking her coffee, realising you’ve left it too late to talk reason into the fallout of something that should never have happened … but did.
“When will we know for sure?” I ask as Mum quietly joins me, slipping onto the seat to my left.
“They want to test her again this morning.”
“Test what?”
When did my mother get so old? I look into her dim gaze, and feel a stab in my chest counting the wrinkles around her eyes.
“Brain activity, Mimi. She didn’t respond last night to any of it: pain, stimulation. Nothing.” Her eyes glass over, and she raises the side of her hand to just beneath her nose, attempting to swallow the tears away.
I reach out and take her hand in mine. The happy sounds of Briar’s program filter into the room, providing a morbid juxtaposition as I simply sit there, looking at Mum and wondering how it could have gone so wrong.
“If we don’t take him to see her,” I say quietly, “he may grow up to resent never being given that final goodbye.” I pause, not wanting to admit the truth. “If it comes to that.”
“I know,” she chokes.
I swallow back my own tears, watching my mother fall apart. “He’ll need to know the truth.”
She nods, and Dad walks in to stand behind her. He places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and it’s the permission she needs to let go. She buries her sobs behind her hands, probably more for Briar’s sake than anyone else’s, and lets the grief flow in.
I meet Dad’s gaze over her head, and sigh.
“How did we get here, sweetheart?” he asks with a sad, tight-lipped smile.
I shrug and focus on my hands before me, fidgeting with my cuticles as the guilt of not being as upset as my parents fills me with white-hot shame. I feel regret, and humiliation at pushing our family problems to the side until now, but as for grief? Maybe it’ll come in time. Who’d know?
“I’ll stay here with Briar while you go back to the hospital and see what the latest news is,” I say as Mum’s sobs even out. “We can take him in once we know for sure what the prognosis is. I’ll see her then.”
Dad nods as I rise, Mum starting into a second round of tears. All my life my parents have been there through thick and thin. When the shit hit the fan between Kath and me seven years ago, they never picked sides, never wavered.
They were our rock.
Now it’s my turn to repay the favour.
SIX
“You haven’t said much since we got to the house yesterday.” Mum pulls me aside as Dad and Briar walk ahead through the hospital’s automatic doors. “Is there something on your mind?”
“What do you expect me to say with him in earshot?” I gesture to my nephew as he looks up at the stippled ceiling in the foyer.
“I guess there’s a few unresolved things to talk about at a better time, right?”
“Yeah, there is,” I mutter under my breath as we catch up. “Like why you never told me about him to begin with.”
“It’s complicated.” Mum frowns, wringing her hands before her.
“No, Mum,” I say. “ I don’t think it is.” I may have distanced myself from my sister, but I’m not that cold-hearted. “Let’s focus on why we’re here though.”
We’re here for Kath. For Briar. For the final moments as a complete family.
Mum and Dad returned to the ward yesterday morning after our discussion and ended up staying until night. Complications meant they were too nervous to leave in case things rapidly declined. Their faces said it all when they finally came back to Kath’s to catch some sleep in a proper bed in the early hours of this morning.
She’s deteriorated. The likelihood of her coming off the machines is slim, and they still haven’t got responses from any of the brain activity tests.