Echoes of the Heart

by Casey, L. A.

  I looked to Dr O’Rourke, making sure he was okay with what this other doctor was saying. I knew he was a general practitioner and didn’t operate on people but he was a doctor, he knew a hell of a lot more about this kind of thing than I did. I was silent as Dr O’Rourke asked a few questions that I didn’t know the meaning of so I looked back at my mum. Her eyes were on mine.

  “You’re so pretty.” She hummed. “My little.”

  I huffed a laugh. “You’re definitely high, I look like a girly version of Dad.”

  “Exactly,” Mum chirped. “You’re beautiful. My green-eyed angel.”

  I leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I love you, y’know?”

  “I love you too,” she winked. “More than all the water in the sea.”

  We both turned our to attention to the surgeon when he addressed my mother.

  “I’ll see you down in theatre in about thirty or so minutes, Mrs Fulton.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He inclined his head to us both, shook Dr O’Rourke’s hand once more then he left the cubicle. I exhaled a big breath and looked at Dr O’Rourke.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “We were discussin’ the surgery and his plan.”

  “Are you happy with it?”

  “Yes.”

  I relaxed. “Okay then.”

  The next thirty minutes sped by and before I knew it, Mum was changed into a hospital gown, had a shower cap on her head and was being wheeled by a porter down a long hallway towards the surgery rooms. A nurse accompanied us with Mum’s chart, Dr O’Rourke and I trailed behind them but as we neared the door, I suddenly broke into a run to reach Mum’s side. I leaned in and kissed her.

  “I love you.”

  “Love you more, little.”

  The porter stopped moving and allowed Dr O’Rourke to kiss and cuddle my mum too. Then with a smile and a blink, she disappeared behind double doors leaving us to stare after her. A glance around showed the hallway that led to the operating theatre was devoid of chairs. It was an empty, white-walled passageway, but I didn’t care that I had nowhere to sit, I wasn’t leaving until my mother came back through those doors. Dr O’Rourke seemed to sense this too.

  “She won’t want ye out here worryin’ like this, kid.”

  “I’d rather be out here worrying than inside a waiting room feeling trapped and panicked. I need to be close to her and this is as close as I can get right now so I’m staying right here.”

  Dr O’Rourke didn’t argue with me, he simply nodded and leaned against the wall next to me.

  “Aren’t you going to wait in the waiting room?”

  “No,” he answered, glancing down at me. “I need to be close to her too.”

  Something changed between us in that moment. He was still Dr O’Rourke, but he was also my mother’s partner. I wasn’t the only person in the world who loved my mum, Dr O’Rourke did too. He looked at her like she hung the galaxy, never mind just the moon. He was a good man and I was happy Mum had found him, but right then and there, I was really happy that he was the man she picked.

  “You’re a good man, Dr O’Rourke,” I said, offering him a tired smile. “My mum really does love you.”

  “I love her too,” he replied, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he returned my smile. “I think we’re goin’ to get along just fine movin’ forward, what d’ye think?”

  “I think you’re right, we need to be a team to help Mum.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me, little.”

  I looked up at him, surprised he said the nickname only my mum has ever used, but touched that he wanted to forge a bond with me. Without warning, I stepped towards Dr O’Rourke and wrapped my arms around his stocky build. He returned my hug wholeheartedly.

  “Everything will be okay,” I said. “Won’t it?”

  “I bloody well hope so, kid.”

  I stepped away from Dr O’Rourke and leaned back against the wall next to him. I checked my phone for the hundredth time and sent Risk another text. I needed him. I felt constricted with the weight of the situation I had found myself in. My mother was sick . . . really sick. I didn’t know how to cope but I knew that Risk would help me. He always did. I needed him to breathe. I needed him more than ever before.

  “He’ll be here.”

  I looked up at Dr O’Rourke and blinked.

  “Risk.” He clarified. “He’ll come runnin’ once he knows ye need him, Frankie. He always does.”

  “Frankie!”

  I spun around the second I heard his voice and when my eyes landed on him, I began to move in his direction without thought. Risk ran down the entire length of the corridor, only slowing down when he neared me. When he was a couple of metres away, I could see his round, ice-blue eyes clearly. His white-blond hair that was normally perfectly styled was messy and unkempt. His handsome, freckled face was flushed from running and his clothes were an iron’s nightmare. I didn’t think we would ever get the creases out.

  I wrapped my arms around his body the second I got my hands on him. I moved my arms up to his neck when Risk bent at the knee, picked me up and hugged my body to his. He squeezed me so tight that it was almost hard to draw in a breath. After a few seconds, he sat my feet back on the ground. I leaned back and his hands went to either side of my head. His eyes locked on mine.

  “I’m here.” He panted. “I’m here, love.”

  I could feel Risk’s worry and confusion, just like he could feel my pain and fear. Dr O’Rourke was right. He always ran to me when I needed him with no questions asked. In that moment, I didn’t know that this time would be the last time he would do so. That very day turned out to be that start of the worst week of my entire life. I had not only learned that my mother had a progressive, terminal disease that would rob me of the woman I loved so deeply, slowly over time, but I would also push the love of my life away for reasons he couldn’t understand.

  I pushed him away until all that was left of him were echoes in the melody.

  CHAPTER ONE

  FRANKIE

  Present day . . .

  Today will be a good day.

  I read somewhere that if a person believed in something so deeply they could positively manifest it into reality. I didn’t know whether I believed that or not, but I didn’t have much in the way of luck, so trying to manifest my wants into reality might not have been the dumbest thing in the world. I mean, what was the worst that could happen, right?

  I tapped my hand against my thigh as ‘Kryptonite’ by 3 Doors Down played through my earphones while I waited for the lift to arrive on the lobby floor of St Elizabeth Hospice. It was Monday, my only day of the week that I had off work. While most people hated Mondays, I loved them because it meant I got to spend all day with my beautiful mum. Nine years ago to the day, when I was eighteen and she was forty-six, we found out the she had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Hearing those words had shattered a piece of my soul. It was hard to believe at first, even harder to accept, but nine years later and Mum’s Alzheimer’s was now as much a part of my life as it was hers.

  It was odd, but I now couldn’t imagine my life without Mum having this illness. My life revolved around her because of this illness; remembering a time before it was too bizarre to comprehend. As much as I hated the disease, and I hated it with every fibre of my being, it shaped me into the woman I had grown into over the past nine years. It taught me patience, understanding and compassion on a much deeper level. It also made me adore my mother that much more. She was my hero. I had never known a woman as strong as her and I doubted I ever would.

  “Oft!”

  I stumbled forward when a small body knocked into mine. I fell to one knee, but before I could faceplant on the ground, a hand wrapped around my upper arm and halted my movements. I was pulled to my feet a moment later. I turned to the dark-skinned teenage boy who was staring at me with big brown eyes. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

  “I’m sorry, missu
s,” the boy spluttered. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  I smiled and waved my hand in the air, catching my earphones because they had fallen out of my ears. “No harm done. Don’t worry about it, hon.”

  The kid visibly relaxed when he realised that he wasn’t about to get into trouble. Both of our attention turned to the right when a ding sounded and the doors to the elevator I was waiting on opened wide. No one was inside, so I glanced at the boy who gestured for me to walk into the lift first so I did with a grateful smile. When I turned, I took in the rest of the boy’s appearance for the first time. It was a school day, but I assumed the boy was visiting a patient of the hospice and got the day off. The second I locked eyes on the black T-shirt that he was wearing, my heart sank.

  Staring back at me was the logo for Blood Oath in bold white.

  My eyes moved to the left hand of the boy and I realised he was holding a smartphone, I squinted and saw he was on YouTube watching a video of some kind. He noticed me watching it so he pulled his earphones from the jack port and said, “It’s a Blood Oath music video, in case you’re wondering. They’re a mint rock band. D’you want to watch it too?”

  I recoiled from the boy like he’d hissed at me.

  “Oh, no, that’s okay, honey.” I fumbled with the wire of my earphones, trying to untangle them. “Thank you, though.”

  I was relieved when I pushed the pods back into my ears and another song from my playlist blocked out everything else. I must have seemed like a crazy woman to the kid because he inched his way closer to the elevator’s doors. He repeatedly tapped on the button of the floor he wanted to get off at and when the doors opened, he bolted through them quicker than a hiccup.

  I leaned my head back against the steel wall and exhaled a deep breath. That was a close encounter. I had had more than a few of them over the years, but I had been so close to hearing his voice this time that I could feel my heart pound away inside of my chest. I wore my earphones everywhere for a reason, so I would never have to hear his voice. Nine years ago my mum got sick, but that wasn’t all that happened that turned my world on its head. My ex-boyfriend and the love of my life, Risk Keller, walked out of my life at my request.

  He had been a musician who, along with his band, got the big break they had been waiting for. The opportunity to sign a record deal with a small-time record label. I knew from the moment that my mum got sick that my life would forever be in Southwold because I was never going to leave her. Never. Risk’s life was never meant to be lived out in one place. He was too great for this small, coastal town. I knew that even if he didn’t.

  Breaking up with him was the only way he could pursue his dream because I knew if I stayed in Southwold while still dating him, that he would eventually give up his career to be with me. That was how much he loved me, that was the kind of person he was. I didn’t want that for him, but that didn’t mean I wanted to break up with him. I wanted to hold on to him forever and never let him go, but that was selfish because his happiness mattered, not only mine.

  Staying in Southwold would have ruined Risk. Leaving Southwold would have killed me.

  The only solution was to break up, so that was what happened between us. The boy I had known my entire life, and dated and loved hard for three years, was suddenly no longer a part of my life. He did achieve his dream of being a successful musician just like I knew he would. A year and half after Risk, Hayes and May, his friends and bandmates, moved to Los Angeles, their debut album reached number one on the Billboard 200 chart. They broke records for the quickest debut album of a rock band to go straight to number one in over fifty countries, as well as having the highest first-week album sales of any rock band in their rookie year with their debut album in the US and UK.

  That was only the beginning for Blood Oath.

  Just like I knew they would, they exploded onto a global stage and took the world by storm. Everyone knew who they were, not only for the handsome faces of the band members, but because of their raw talent. They didn’t play anything safe. They didn’t censor themselves, they were the embodiment of rock and roll. They had won multiple Grammys, Brits and even bagged an Oscar for an original song that was featured in a major motion picture. Everything that the lads had ever wanted, they achieved it and beyond. I couldn’t have been happier for them. No one but the guys knew it, but I was the original Sinner.

  The first ever fan of Blood Oath, but even back then I knew I wouldn’t be the last.

  Their achievements were as far as my knowledge about them went and that was only because it was safe information that I could research. I knew Blood Oath were famous and that they were known by many around the world, but I hadn’t heard a single one of their songs in nine years, apart from the instrumental versions. Not that I didn’t want to, but just because I couldn’t cope with it. Risk was the lead vocalist of the band and his voice, his stunning voice, was one of the few things in this world that could shatter me instantly.

  It was coming up on nine years since we broke up, since I last saw him in person, since I last heard his voice, since I last got to experience what it was like to kiss him, and if I heard him sing, even just for one second, I would be thrust back into the pain of losing someone who I had loved so desperately. Risk was once my rock, my coping partner, my favourite sound but now . . . now he was a trigger for pain. A trigger to remind me just how perfect my life once was and what I had with him. A trigger to remind me how I was just barely holding things together now.

  I wore my earphones to protect me from him.

  When I opened my eyes, the doors to the lift were closed so I had to hit the button for the floor I wanted to go to and wait. When I left the elevator and walked the familiar hallway towards my mother’s room, I realised that it had been one full week since my mother had arrived at the hospice. She had previously been in the hospital for weeks with pneumonia that had gotten worse and worse. She had reached a point in her illness where nothing more could medically be done for her. We were recommenced to have her transfer to a local hospice where she could live out the remainder of her life in comfort.

  Nine years ago she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and now she had entered the late stages. Her disease had progressed quickly over the years and now she was speeding towards the end of her life and I couldn’t slow her down.

  The mother who I visited now was only a shell of the lady I once knew, her moments of clarity were now few and far between. She couldn’t do much for herself in terms of mobility and her speech was starting to get worse and worse. It hurt my heart each time she asked me who I was and looked at me like I was a stranger off the street, but I always made sure to keep a smile on my face because while it was difficult for me, I knew that it was absolutely terrifying for her. She was in a constant state of confusion, she was often ill and she never knew what was going on.

  The only other person who experienced what I felt was my stepfather, Michael O’Rourke. He and my mum married three months after her diagnosis and while I called him by his first name now, he was, in many ways, my dad. I bonded with him during a very dark and lonely time in my life and I knew with great certainty that I wouldn’t have been able to get through the past nine years without him by my side.

  “Frankie?”

  I looked up and smiled, the very man I was thinking of called out my name but as I neared him, I saw the look of concern on his face and felt my stomach flip. I removed my earphones, and tucked them and my iPhone into my bag as I approached Michael.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder when I came to a stop before him.

  “Bad day,” was his response.

  My shoulders slumped. So much for manifesting my good day into reality.

  “Crap,” I pushed hair out of my face. “What happened?”

  “She got violent with a nurse earlier. Luckily she didn’t injure the woman.”

  I felt my heart drop to the pit of my stomach.

  “Violent
?” I was astounded. “Mum was violent?”

  “I know, honey. She’s the sweetest lady we know, but ye know how this disease progresses. Things about the person change with time, she’s reactin’ differently the past two days. She’s angrier, more prone to snappin’ and cursin’ at the nurses.”

  I lifted my hand to my neck and rubbed.

  “How is she now?”

  “Sleepin’,” Michael answered. “She was very agitated when I got here at nine, but she’s just fallen asleep not too long ago. She was given a sedative to help her relax.”

  I nodded. “How is her chest?”

  “Still the same, I was hopin’ it would have cleared a little, but nothin’ has changed.”

  We went inside Mum’s room and sat on either side of her bed. She was a heavy sleeper, even more so when she was sedated, so we didn’t have to worry about every little sound waking her up. While Michael went to fill her pitcher up with fresh water, I adjusted her blanket around her body and tucked it back into place. My eyes moved to her face and my heart hurt. She was fifty-five years of age, but she looked like she could have been in her late sixties. Her disease had taken its toll on not only her mind, but her body too.

  I sat down just as Michael re-entered the room.

  We celebrated his sixtieth birthday last week and the week before that we celebrated his partial retirement. He didn’t have his usual lengthy client list at the doctor’s surgery he owned, he filtered those patients to two new doctors he had recently hired. He only went into work on days when things were very busy and, luckily for him, those days were few. This meant he got to spend a great deal of time taking care of my mum, which put my mind at ease for the times when I could not be there.

  “Was she bathed today?” I asked Michael. “It doesn’t look like her hair has been washed.”

  “She was going to be but that’s when the episode happened with the nurses,” he explained. “They’ll try again later, she’s much more mellow in the evenings and lets them take care of her without much of a fuss.”