by Anne Leigh
Korbel eyed me and said, “Yes. She’s family.”
Family.
Let me take a deep breath in and hold it there.
If I turned blue, will Doogie — his name tag stated Mike Dews, but I’m allowed to call him whatever name I wanted to call him in my head — help me?
Mike/Doogie proceeded, “Your wife has a hematoma. We’re trying to see if it’s going to get bigger. We’re hoping it will resolve on its own. Right now we’re just watchfully waiting.”
“Will she regain consciousness soon? Was I too late?” The latter question making my heart fall. He couldn’t have predicted that this would have happened. He couldn’t blame himself.
“At this point I don’t know. We’ll continue to watch if the bleed is improving.” Mike-alias-Doogie explained, “In the meantime, I’d advise you to get some rest. We can’t have a lot of visitors in her room because we need to minimize noise and activity around her. I know it’s hard for you right now…” Doogie’s tone was empathetic.
“It’s difficult to see your loved one go through this. But the best that you can do is to try to get some rest so that you’ll have the energy to get through the next couple of hours or days.” Mike deserved his MD title. It didn’t matter if he looked like a teenager discussing the fate and well-being of the wife of the man standing beside me. How he delivered the news meant everything.
“Are you her doctor?” I asked, out of curiosity and filled with respect.
“I’m the attending physician.” Mike reached out his hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself. I’ve had a busy day, but it’s no excuse.”
Xavier’s father took his hand first. “I’m Korbel, Cyrene’s husband. This is Nalee, my son’s girlfriend. My son’s flying now, he’s on his way over.”
“Nice to meet you Korbel and Nalee.” Mike’s smile was broad and gentle. “It’s never a good thing when we meet during these circumstances, but I want to let you know that we’ll be doing everything for her.”
“Please do,” Korbel said, his eyes holding a faraway look. “Can I see my wife now?”
Mike nodded and led the way.
I was going to stay behind. I wasn’t immediate family, so I’d hear more from Xavier’s dad when he returned to the waiting room.
Just as I was about to plant my butt on the chair, Xavier’s dad looked back, confusion on his face, and said, “What’re you doing, Nalee? Aren’t you going with me? You’re family.”
My feet moved.
I was family.
Xavier arrived a little past eleven.
He’d gone straight to the hospital, and by the time he got home, it was four in the morning.
I barely remembered him getting into our room and sleeping beside me.
I’d left the hospital at nine, to the advice of the nurses and the encouragement of Xavier’s dad.
Korbel had hugged me and said, “This means a lot to my family.”
I’d hugged him back. “Your son would do the same for mine.”
Xavier would.
Of that I held no uncertainty.
I’d sat with his father, watching his wife connected to a variety of tubes. Some were white, others blue.
The sounds of the machine ticking and beeping around us.
Xavier’s father didn’t breathe a word, but the love he had for his wife spoke volumes.
Love wasn’t simple.
It was complicated to say the least.
It had ebbs and flows. The waves go up and down, never in a flat line.
You fight, you get mad, you come into blows.
Those are the declines.
The ebbs.
You laugh, you hug, you make up and make love.
Those are the regrowths.
The flows.
If love was a flat line, there would be no room for improvement.
Life with the person you loved could not be stagnant.
It took years, decades for the love between Korbel and Cyrene to grow.
It took their whole lives to get to know each other on the deepest, most intimate level.
It wasn’t easy with Xavier.
We’d dealt with losses, but so came the gains.
He was already up before me, the sunlight breaking into our room, highlighting the exhaustion in his deep green eyes.
“My mom has Parkinson’s.” It was a muted whisper, but I heard it loud and clear.
I turned to his side, leaving my fingers splayed on his bare chest.
“My dad’s barely recovering from his aneurysm. The last time I’d gone with him to his doctor’s appointment, his doctor warned him to watch out for stress,” he breathed, my hand rising with his chest.
“I’m here for you,” I said, his hand reaching to my face, pushing away the hair that covered my eyes.
“I’ll be here to hold your hand through this. Whatever you need from me, I will give you.”
“How do I deal with this, Nales?” A solemn request cloaked in the guise of a question.
“By waking up every day. Dealing with it in the best that you can. Solving problems as they come. Facing them rather than running away. By being there for them when they need you. By leaning on my shoulder when you need me.” The onslaught of emotions were running over my mouth.
“Is that how you dealt with the loss of our baby?” A river of liquid reached my forehead. It broke my heart to feel him cry.
“There were times when I didn’t know how to deal with it.” It seemed so long ago, yet the memories stayed like yesterday’s. “When you left me, I was angry. At you. At me. At the world. I blamed you for everything.”
His shoulders trembled, my vision starting to fill with wavy lines.
“I kept saying, ‘If Xavier was here, this wouldn’t have happened. If Xavier loved me enough, my daughter would still be here.’ If, if, if. I’m not the strongest girl. I can barely hold my own in front of a crowd. I only make jokes with my best friends because I fear that everyone else around me will judge me or make fun of me or just not like me.”
He stayed mum, the only response I got was the wetness on the top of my head and the rise and fall of his chest.
“After her, I felt like nothing in this world could get me down. I miss her constantly, terribly, so much. I would trade anything for her. But life has to go on. Sometimes I see her in my dreams and I feel her, as if she’s telling me to keep going forward.”
He lowered his head.
His jaw touched my cheek.
And the wetness from his eyes blended into mine.
“You face it, whatever it is, as it comes. I can’t predict what’s gonna happen to us. I can’t know what’s in our future.”
I moved my body on top of his, clamped my legs down over his, and touched my hands with his.
“All I know is that I’m here with you and you’re here with me. I love you. You love me. Anything else we can deal with.”
“I’m not strong enough for you.” The sparkle in his eyes dimmed, defeat threatening to swallow him whole.
“You don’t need to be strong for me.”
“I’m not strong enough for them.” Doubt circling his thoughts, I couldn’t, wouldn’t ever let it get the better of him.
Still holding his hands, I pulled our arms in the space between our chests, and said, “Us. Together. We can be strong enough for them.”
“Don’t worry about me, son.” My mom’s green eyes crinkled, her smile reaching my heart.
I used to be called a momma’s boy in grade school.
I had my mom wait for me to get out to class and walk with me to my second period class.
It went on for over a month and one day, I’d told her that I was okay to walk to class alone.
I didn’t care that my classmates teased me.
I was comfortable having my mother there and when I was confident enough that I could do it,
I walked to class by myself.
I’d just turned twenty seven. In three years, I’d be hitting thirty.
And I’m still not ashamed to let the world know that I needed my mother.
She was the anchor that held my dad and I at bay.
We would be lost without her.
“Did you take your meds today?” I asked, knowing full well that she did. My dad hired a private nurse after she was discharged from the hospital a month ago to the day.
She merely nodded, her eyes landing on the colorful shrubs she’d asked our helper to prune. She liked to do it herself, but her bones were still recovering from the fall.
She couldn’t bend or twist or basically move her body the way she used to before the accident.
Her neurologists had warned us that it would take a while.
A while meaning any time from four months to a year.
“Dad wants to go back to work,” I said. My dad had discussed with me that he wanted to go back, starting on a weekly basis at the end of the month. “He said he’s getting bored. Now that you got a nurse, you only want to spend time with Claudia. He feels like a third wheel.”
My mom’s lilting laughter echoed in the den. She was sitting on her rocking chair, a yellow and blue quilt hung over her arms, and a small flowered cup of tea was on her right side, which she’d been sipping on every now and then.
“You and your father…always jealous of other people,” she said as she shooed the tiny gnat floating around her tea with her hand.
“Is it true, mom?” I grinned, laying back on the comfort of the cushioned seat that Claudia had placed in the room so I could sit by my mom today.
“It is.” A mocking pause, followed by a wave of her hand. “Claudia’s less grumpy than you and your father combined. She likes to listen to me talk about knitting and gardening and Johanna Lindsey’s romance novels for hours.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the business magazine laying on top of the coffee table. “She’s getting paid tons of money to listen to you, mom.”
She chuckled. “You’re so pessimistic. Claudia doesn’t have to listen to my stories. She’s paid to hand me pills, but not to listen to me. I’d like to say that she does it because she likes me.”
I actually agreed with her. We were incredibly lucky to have Claudia from the private nursing agency. She was a semi-retired nurse who was in her mid-fifties and found a lot of things in common with my mom. Claudia loved to talk about her grandkids which I found highly amusing, since whenever Nalee visited my mom would start to tell Claudia, “Just imagine how precious my grandkids will be. Nalee’s a charmer and my son, well, he’s my son.” Whatever that meant.
Nalee would blush and look at me and we’d both smile.
I could tell that it didn’t bother Nales to talk about having children in front of my mom. I thought it would, but when Nales responded with, “I’m pretty sure arrogance is an inherited paternal trait so our kids better come with warning labels. KEEP OUT! DANGER DANGER!”
My mom found it extremely funny. Claudia thought it was hilarious.
I thought it was inventive.
I’d order a baby onesie with those exact words printed on the front.
“What do you think, mom? Should dad go back?” The last thing my father wanted to do was to leave my my mom in the house by herself. Now that we had Claudia, he thought that I could unload some of the heavy lifting onto his shoulders. I wasn’t completely convinced that he wanted to go back to work.
She took her eyes off the scenery outside and leveled her gaze at me. “Your father wants to help you. He thinks you and Nalee should have more time for yourselves.”
She flicked her fingers together, the movement making my heart squeeze, the slight shaking in her hands reminded me that my mom was really sick. “Tick tock, son. Time’s a ticking.”
“Huh?” Removing my hands from the magazine, I stood up and trekked the short distance to my mom.
Her hair was shorter and her scalp was bald on one side. It had to be shaved so that the hematoma could be drained and also as a preparation for surgery if her condition hadn’t improved. Thank God she woke up on the fourth day and the doctors said that her condition was stable and improving. She didn’t need any surgeries.
“I’m not trying to push you and Nalee into anything.” My mom held her hands close to her heart. “I just don’t know how and when my disease will progress to the next stage.”
My dad had asked for a third consult and a fourth one, and all were conclusive.
At the age of fifty seven she had Parkinson’s.
The same disease that took her mother, my grandmother’s life before she’d turned eighty three.
The doctors diagnosed her to be in stage one. The progression from stage one to five could take years or decades; there were times when a person skipped stages. You could go from stage one to stage five at a faster rate, depending on how the disease affected your body. It was the unpredictability of how the disease advanced that made it difficult to pinpoint just when she was going to lose her motor functions.
I’d learned a lot about the disease.
When your loved one was sick, you pump yourself with all the information that you could get.
I stayed away from WebMD; my friends in the medical field called it a bunch of crap.
I’d talked with Sedona, my nursing genius friend, who now treated me better after she’d seen how Nalee and I were getting along and after I’d had a one-on-one with her and Tanya, the sometimes witch, and apologized to them for how I’d treated Nales. It was important for me that they knew that I was here to stay, in their BFF’s life forever.
“Mom, please don’t say that…” My voice held a plea, but reality sucked, and I knew that one day she might not be able to talk or walk or remember anything from her past and present, she might even become unaware of her surroundings.
“I want you to know that I love you most.” I kneeled down in front of her, letting her voice sweep over me. The words of the woman who has always encouraged me to be the best version of myself. “You’re the gift that this world has given me.” Tears poured out of her eyes. “I hope to see you and Nalee have the same thing that your father and I have been blessed with. I see how much you love her and she loves you back.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be around for. Physically I hope to last as long as my body can. Mentally I’m not sure how long my brain will hold against this disease.” The crack in her voice created a wide fissure in my heart. “Yesterday, I couldn’t even remember what I was doing in the kitchen. If your dad wants to go back to work, let him. It makes him feel good to know that he’s doing something. It’s what he knows best. If you want to let go of the company and do something else, go do it.”
I soaked in her soft, tender words and the love in her eyes that only a great mother like her could bestow.
“I’m doing okay, Mom. The company’s okay.” I raised my head up and one thing I could never do was lie to my mother’s face. “I’ll talk to Dad. Maybe we can hire someone else to run it on a full-time basis. I want to go back to design. I can help out, part-time, be a mentor, but I don’t think I can do it for another year. My heart’s not in it.”
With a wealth of understanding in the eyes that I’d inherited from her, she smiled. “We don’t live forever. We get one chance at this life. I’m asking you for grandkids before I can’t grasp the meaning of grandkids anymore. But your life’s not mine to dictate either. If that’s what you want, you do it. You’re a good son. You gave me tons of mini-strokes in high school when you thought girls and condoms were the greatest things on earth.”
“Please, Mom. Let’s not talk about that. Ever again.” I cringed, my face soured at the memory of my mom finding my used condoms that somehow missed the trash can in my bathroom.
“I’m just saying, after all the crazy antics you’ve pulled and all the one-on-one parent-teacher-principal meetings your dad and I were forced to attend…” Teenage girls were so dramatic and so were their brothers who I’d often gotten into skirmishes with when they saw me hanging out with their
sisters. “You’ve turned out to be a nice man and I’m proud of you.”
I held her cool hands, the ones cradling my head, the same hands who’d smacked me when I tried to steal pogs at the toy store so I could trade with my buddies during my lunch break. It was a special edition X-Men pog that was in demand during SLAMMERS. The same hands that disciplined me were the very same that soothed my tears when I’d ran my bike into a ditch and fractured my elbow.
I stared at her.
My knees on the floor, her hands on my forehead.
I’d been given one life.
And that one life, she’d been the one to give it to me.
It was infinite.
The cycle of life, alpha and omega.
She’d given me my beginning and I’ll be here until the end.
“I love you, ma-ma.” I hadn’t call her that in twenty two years. Her hands shook as I’d said them, and I chose to believe that the shaking wasn’t because of her Parkinson’s.
It was because she could feel just how much she meant to me.
There were people who didn’t celebrate birthdays.
And some who went all out.
My sister belonged to the first group.
I belonged in the second flock.
I loved birthdays.
Especially mine.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed as I signed on the delivery guy’s electronic signature pad.
Since I’d moved to the West Coast and my mom couldn’t make it to my birthdays, she and I had made our own tradition.
She baked me a cake and sent it via UPS or FedEx overnight.
I was carrying the box of goodness to my office when Nelson caught my retreating form.
“What are you hiding there, missy?” Nelson’s brows tipped in intrigue.
I didn’t really want to share it with anyone, but for him I’d make an exception. “It’s a cake from my mom.”
“Oooh la la.” His mouth watered while he stared at the white parcel I was holding onto for dear life. “It’s the cake of all cakes!”