by Terry Lee
Her head felt weighted, her legs wobbly. She needed to pee or throw up; she didn’t know which. Walking the short distance to the restroom, the image of her mother’s chest pried open with surgical clamps filled every inch of her consciousness. Her mind swirled. She pushed her way into the ladies room and flung her head and arms over the sink. Her body covered in a cold sweat, she held her hair back, waiting for what surely would happen next. A minute passed. Nothing. She let go of her hair and gripped the sides of the sink, then looked in the mirror. Small smudges of mascara added to the dark circles already under her eyes.
“It’ll be fine,” she told the mirror. “Just fine.” She splashed water on her face, ran a brush through her hair and wiped clear gloss across her lips. After one last glance in the mirror, she pulled open the door and plowed into something or someone. Her apology started before her eyes rose to see the surgeon.
“Are you here alone?” he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. He still wore hospital scrubs.
The words reverberated through her head. He looked far away, like through the wrong end of binoculars. Her heart pounded in her ears.
“What are you doing out here?” Her voice heightened to a near scream. “You can’t be finished yet, it’s too soon!”
“Do you have family with you?” the surgeon asked, calmly.
She pointed to the waiting area.
The surgeon led her and Adam to the small cubicle across the hall from the waiting area.
Not in here! Grace’s mind screamed. Bad things happen in this room. The door slammed shut behind them, the sound thundering through her body like a sealed vault. The surgeon motioned for them to take a seat. Grace refused.
“I’m afraid it’s not good.”
Grace felt a chair appear beneath her as Adam pushed down on her shoulders. The walls of the tiny cubicle closed in around her, the air smelled stale. Flowers on the table would be nice, or maybe a picture on the wall. Even a damn Glade air-freshener would help, she thought.
“Your mother has a malignant cluster around her heart,” she heard the surgeon say. “I wasn’t able to remove it.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
Her brain broke out of freeze-frame to make eye contact with the surgeon. “What are you talking about?”
“A secondary growth from the spot on her lung grew finger-like tentacles that, unfortunately, have wrapped around her heart.” The surgeon’s words hung in the air, one at a time: growth, spot, lung, unfortunately.
“What spot?” Anger replaced Grace’s initial fear. “Her lung wasn’t the problem.” Surely this guy had her mother confused with someone else; someone with a damn spot on their lung.
“The CT scan showed a tiny spot on the upper quadrangle of her right lung,” the surgeon said. “From the signed release of information, I assumed you were aware of that.”
Grace seethed. She hated the surgeon, her mother, the cubicle. “No, she never told me. I thought the problem was only with her heart.”
“According to the angiogram, all indications pointed to the hardening of the pericardium,” the surgeon said. “However, the CT scan showed a minute spot on the right lung, which appeared unrelated to your mother’s symptoms.”
“The pericardium?” Adam asked.
“The sheath covering the heart. In rare cases, and for whatever reason, the sheath hardens, constricting the natural movement of the heart. In most instances, the pericardium can be peeled away, allowing normal expansion and contraction.”
The doctor’s words droned on like a late-night infomercial she easily tuned out, replaced by one of her mother’s favorite songs. The melody flittered through her head.
Blue skies smiling at me,
Nothing but blue skies do I see.
Bullshit. This is all bullshit. Grace fumbled for her mental mute button when the word prognosis jolted her back. Why was Adam asking so many fucking questions?
“Treatment should start in a couple of weeks, after the incision has had a chance to heal,” the surgeon said. “Radiation, then chemotherapy to help with the symptoms. I’m afraid six months is the most we can hope for at this time. Again, I’m sorry.”
The silence in the room widened. She needed to escape, however Adam’s grip on her shoulders bolted her to the chair. The surgeon slipped out of the small cubicle before Adam removed his hold.
“He said we won’t be able to see her for a while. Let’s get some lunch.”
Six months. The words spread through Grace like an ugly virus. Her brain slid back into freeze-frame.
“This is all wrong,” she whispered.
Adam pulled her to her feet. The air in the cubicle, sultry and thick like a sauna, did nothing to curb the icy fear creeping through her.
“He said he knew how to fix it,” Grace said. “He lied. He fucking lied!”
“Just breathe.” Adam eased her back down onto the chair.
Grace threw her arms out, breaking free from his grip, and flung open the vault door. She raced to the elevator and was pounding on the down button when Adam caught up with her.
“Grace—”
“I’ve got to get out of here.” Her eyes glazed over like a wounded animal.
She caught sight of the red exit sign to her right and bolted down the single flight of stairs to the ground floor. Reaching the hospital entrance, she paused long enough for the automatic doors to slide open before sprinting across the parking lot. She ran through the rows till she found their SUV. She yanked on the handle. Nothing. She yanked again.
“Damn it!” She beat her fists on the window.
Strong arms wrapped around her from behind.
“Let me go, damn it!”
The arms tightened.
“I can’t do this! Let me go!”
“I will in a minute,” came Adam’s steady voice. “Just breathe, Gracie.”
“Don’t call me that.” He probably only used the word as a term of endearment, but her mother called her Gracie, which always made her feel small and helpless.
Her struggle did nothing to loosen Adam’s grip. Her heart pounded. A loud hum vibrated through her body. She gave up and fell limp. He relaxed a little to give her space but kept her from falling to the ground.
~~~
“It was just exploratory,” she repeated, sitting in the hospital cafeteria, her untouched turkey sandwich in front of her. She opened and closed her fists lying in her lap. They felt strangely numb, as did the rest of her body. “And now, six months?”
Adam stopped eating and stared across the table.
“I was eight when my daddy died,” Grace said. “I rode home in a long black car with my mother and my aunt. Someone had given each of us a red rose. That’s all I remember.” A surreal emotional shoebox housed the remnants of her dad’s death, untouched and deliberately hidden away in her psyche. “What am I going to do?” She raised her eyes to meet Adam’s. “She can’t die.”
“One step at a time, okay?” Adam moved to Grace’s side of the table and touched her arm. “We should be able to see her soon.”
They rode the elevator to the third floor in silence. She felt the hum throughout her body intensify. Adam checked in at the ICU desk.
“Let’s go.” He led Grace a short way down the hall.
“I can’t do this.” Grace froze outside the double doors to the ICU.
“Yes, you can. I’m right beside you.” Adam pushed the round disc mounted on the wall, opening the automated doors.
The quietness of the sterile environment shot chills down Grace’s spine. Her initial instinct shouted “turn and run”, but Adam’s hand on her back inched her forward. She pulled aside the curtain and took a step into the small cubicle.
Kathryn, unconscious, breathed with the aid of a ventilator. Her complexion was pasty gray. A mass of wires and tubes connected her motionless body to machines; IV bags hung from poles like vultures.
Grace moved a chair close to the bed and sat quietly. Tears pushed the back of her eyes. She cradled her mo
ther’s hand in her own, using her finger to gently trace the pattern of pronounced veins.
When did she get so old? Grace studied the once smooth, flawless hand, now spattered with sunspots and wrinkles. Strange.
“I’m here, Mom. I love you.” Her voice cracked. A tear fell, splashing on her mother’s hand. “I’m not ready for her to wake up,” she whispered to Adam, her eyes fixed on her mother. “But I hate seeing her like this.” What a nightmare. How she longed for one of her mother’s irritating Kathryn-isms.
CHAPTER 4
GRACE
Ten days after surgery, Grace’s mother began a regimen of daily radiation treatments/therapy to slow the progression of the malignancy. The treatments left her fatigued and lifeless. Kathryn’s insistence on returning to her condo after leaving the hospital kept Grace spinning in perpetual motion between the two households.
Flying through the day with her hair on fire served Grace well as an avoidance technique. Nighttime, however, posed a problem. Her mind refused to shut down and filled her head with thoughts of her mother’s illness, hindering efforts to ignore the obvious. Insomnia, new for Grace, gave her one more thing to hate. She hated a lot of things these days.
“I think you should see a therapist,” Adam said.
“Why?”
“You don’t eat. You don’t sleep,” he said. “And I don’t think your mom—”
“Fine. I’ll see a shrink,” she snapped. “Happy?”
~~~
A week later, she met with a psychiatrist. After an hour, he handed her two prescriptions.
“What’re these for?” she asked.
“This will help you sleep,” the therapist said, pointing to the one on top. “The other should help with your anger.”
“I’m not angry, for God’s sake!” she yelled. “I’m worried.” Damn. Can’t he tell the difference?
Days rolled into months and the calendar turned into yet another enemy. Grace had stopped therapy after her most recent session.
“I can’t help until you accept the fact your mother is going to die,” the doctor had said.
“Excuse me?” Grace had jumped to her feet.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Arrogant bastard, Grace had thought when she stormed out of his office.
~~~
December approached, whether Grace wanted it to or not. She spent as much time with her mother as possible, refusing to allow her mind to speculate on what she’d have to face next Christmas.
One afternoon she sat on a bar stool in the kitchen revising one of the many lists she now lived by. Hannah slipped up from behind and embraced Grace in a warm hug. Every muscle in Grace’s body tensed. Hannah’s simple act of kindness caught her off guard and threatened her single remaining thread of sanity. Emotional distance, her weapon and current coping mechanism, had been challenged. There was no way she could return her daughter’s sweet affection without falling completely apart.
Hannah loosened an arm from her mother’s shoulder. “I love you,” she signed.
Hot tears behind Grace’s eyes pushed forward, her throat clenched. Briefly, her arms rose and clung to her daughter. But the urgent need to regain her stoic resistance and block out emotions snapped back into place. She broke free from the embrace with a force shocking both of them.
Grace swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a tight smile. “I love you too,” she signed and grabbed her purse and keys.
“Where are you going?”
“Grandma’s,” Grace paused. “For…something.” A lie, but she had to get away. “Back before dinner,” she signed. Grace halfway managed her mood swings, but warm tender hugs from her sweet daughter left her entirely too vulnerable, which scared the shit out of her.
Through blurred thoughts and raw emotions Grace pulled in front of her mother’s condo ten minutes later. She tapped on the door before letting herself in. Kathryn sat in her favorite overstuffed chair, the perpetual oxygen nose-clip in place. A book lay open across her lap.
“Just give me a week,” Kathryn had said after her last radiation treatment. “I’ll bounce back in no time.”
But the old Kathryn never returned. The lines of fatigue on her once smooth face deepened. Pounds dropped off her body at an alarming rate, leaving her weak and frail.
“Hi there.” Kathryn managed a weak smile.
Her mother’s smile. Like a kick in the stomach Grace realized she had depended on that smile her whole life. Without warning Grace’s legs buckled, reducing her to a crumbled heap on the floor. Wrenching sobs erupted from the pit of her stomach and moved upward, the emotional pain choking her.
Kathryn, in her weakened condition, moved from her chair to where Grace slumped on the floor. She somehow found the strength to lead Grace to the sofa. “It’s okay Gracie, I’ll figure something out.”
“You can’t fix this!” Grace sobbed, dropping her head to rest in her mother’s lap. She closed her eyes and caught a hint of Obsession, her mother’s perfume.
“No worries, my love.” Kathryn stroked Grace’s hair. “I’ll never leave you.”
Grace desperately wanted to stop the clock. As much faith as she wanted to put in her mother’s words even she knew Kathryn couldn’t defy death. Growing up sucked. She wasn’t anywhere near ready. She had calculated that if her mother lived past Valentine’s she’d be on borrowed time. D Day…Death Day.
~~~
The following week, Grace sat with her mother in the small examination room when the oncologist delivered yet another blow.
“The radiation is complete and chemotherapy is the next step. Unfortunately, I feel it would be entirely too hard on your body,” Dr. Kelly explained. “It compromises the immune system and you’re already extremely weak. I don’t recommend it.” She paused. “All things considered, I think hospice is your next move. I can help with a referral.”
Kathryn’s face turned a deep shade of red before telling Dr. Kelly she was full of shit and then proceeded with, “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
Grace helped her mother into the car. “I can’t believe you said that to Dr. Kelly.”
“And I don’t know why you’re upset,” Kathryn said. “I told you I’d figure something out.”
Grace shut the door and shook her head.
A few days later her mother reconsidered her decision on pursuing further treatment. A scene from Gone With The Wind, a classic movie they'd watched together a thousand times, popped into her head.
“Quittin’ time.”
Big Sam says, “Who says it's quittin’ time?”
Other slave says, “I says it's quittin’ time.”
Big Sam retorts, “I's the foreman. I's the one that says when it's quittin’ time at
Tara! Quittin’ time! Quittin’ time!”
Yep, quittin’ time had to be on her mother’s terms. Big surprise. The subject of hospice, however, remained a no-go.
February 14th, Death Day, came and went. Somehow Grace needed to come to terms with her mother’s approaching death. The damn therapist had been right—she couldn’t stop the process.
Fortunately Kathryn resigned herself to selling the condo and moving into the study Grace and Adam had converted to a bedroom. “I’ll do it, if I have to,” Kathryn said. “But the piano should come with me, don’t you think?”
“Sure, Mom,” Grace said, mentally rearranging her over-crowded family room and forcing the irritating “don’t you think” statement aside. She handled the transition of her mom moving in fairly well, with only occasional escapes to her walk-in closet in the master bedroom. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with a towel pressed to her face she could let her guard down. There the tears flowed.
The kids spent time with their grandmother most days after school. Often Grace heard muffled song lyrics filter from the study. Her mother had a thing about music and that thing, bordering on obsession, trickled down the gene pool. With Grace, however, the link to music more closely re
sembled an attachment disorder. She didn’t attach to music…music attached to her. Songs stuck in her head. Never instrumentals…no, that would be too calming. But songs with lyrics played over and over in her head, which Grace referred to as her mental jukebox. Let It Be, today’s selection, unsettled her.
She hated when this happened, especially when she found significance in the words. Banging cabinet doors and rattling silverware, she tried to drown out the song.
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, Let it be.
There will be an answer, Let it be.
She sifted through the laundry list of mother-daughter disagreements over the years. She never won arguments with her mother. She was a first-class wuss. How had that happened? During her teenage years disagreeing with her mother was a constant. But, so what? Who didn’t? All Grace wanted was for her mother to stay out of her business and Kathryn made sure to plop herself smack-dab in the middle of everything. Grace recalled her one and only slumber party, when her mother had stayed up all night with her and the few friends she had, pumping everyone for gossip. M-O-R-T-I-F-Y-I-N-G.
Fast-forwarding several years, she landed on a defining ah-ha moment. After Adam’s proposal, the mere mention of a pending wedding had sent Kathryn into overdrive, bringing a particular lunch into full focus:
Grace studied the menu, ordered iced tea, and debated between Cobb salad and the bacon cheeseburger. Commotion from across the table caused her to lower her menu just below eye level. Pushing silverware and water glass to one side Kathryn assembled a small, but neat and efficient, workspace. Then, from her oversized satchel purse came fabric swatches, a copy of Modern Bride and a legal pad with a list covering the entire first page. Round two from the magical purse produced a small calculator, two pencils and an eraser.
“Ready to start?” Kathryn leaned across the table, her hands clasped.
Grace grabbed a passing waiter. “Excuse me,” she said. “Scratch the iced tea. I need a chardonnay. And stay close. I’m going to more.” She pointed to her mother. “Don’t worry. She tips well.”