by L. M. Reed
Chapter 4
Dear Diary,
Mom hates me.
CeeCee
Arriving at the hospital a couple of hours before Mark was due, a nurse buzzed me into the ICU. I found Mom sitting by Dad’s bed, holding his hand. Dad was still unconscious. They had him hooked up to all sorts of things, and there was an oxygen mask over his face.
Mom looked up and smiled at me, the same weary but determined smile she had worn every day for…forever.
I walked over to the bed and she got up to hug me.
“How is he?” I whispered.
If I’d thought about it, whispering would have seemed kind of silly. I mean, if we could have done anything to get Dad to open his eyes, we would have, but the whole atmosphere of the place had a general air of solemnity; whispering seemed appropriate. The only sounds in the room were the monitoring machines they had Dad hooked up to, and his labored breathing.
“I…he…”
Never in my life had I seen Mom at a loss for words. Sure, I had seen her struggling in recent years to keep up the vivacious, warm-hearted chattering that had always been second nature to her, but never anything like that. I knew things were as bad as they could get.
“He’s not going to recover from this is he?” I asked tentatively.
“No he’s not.”
I could tell she was having a hard time not breaking down.
“Isn’t there something that they can do? I mean, they have all of this technology and different medicines. There has to be something,” I finished desperately.
As hard as it had been to watch him deteriorate the past few years, never seeing him again was unthinkable.
Watching Mom, I could see she was having some sort of struggle. On her face I could see indecision and misery all mixed in together along with some other things I didn’t recognize.
What was going on?
“Mom…what…?”
My voice was still a whisper, but a more forceful one.
“They…won’t be able to do anything,” she replied with finality in her voice.
“What do you mean ‘won’t be able to’?” I asked carefully.
“Just what I said,” Mom replied, “There is nothing they can do.”
“No,” I contradicted, “You said “won’t” not “can’t”.
“Just let it go, CeeCee,” Mom pleaded.
“No, tell me the truth, there is something they can do isn’t there?” I insisted. “Why won’t they? What’s stopping them?”
Closing her eyes against the pain, Mom replied, “Your father is.”
It took a few minutes for that to sink in. In my defense, I hadn’t been asleep long before hearing the ambulance arriving at the house, having stayed up too long in order to finish the book I was reading, so my brain was a bit fuzzy to begin with.
“Dad is?” I repeated incredulously. “Mom, in case you haven’t noticed, Dad is lying there unconscious.”
“I realize that,” the impatience in Mom’s voice was uncharacteristic to say the least, “nevertheless, it is your Dad preventing them from taking what they call “heroic measures” in order to buy him some time, which is all that they can guarantee at this point.”
She paused and took a deep breath, then continued. “When your dad first starting having…issues, he wanted to make sure I knew what he wanted me to do in case something like this,” her hand gesture encompassed the room, “happened. I think he had an inkling that his problems were more serious than either of us chose to believe and wanted to make sure his wishes would be carried out. He made an appointment with Mr. Forsythe at church, you know, the lawyer, right after we moved here, and signed some papers in front of witnesses while he could still write. Those papers are the reason that the hospital can’t do anymore than what’s being done right now.”
“You are telling me that because Dad signed some papers a couple of years ago, they have to let him die?”
I saw Mom flinch on that last word.
“Yes,” her voice was barely even a whisper.
“You have to do something!” I insisted. “We can’t stand around and do nothing! I just found him again. I can’t lose him like this! I won’t!”
My voice was steadily climbing higher. I had the attention of the nurse sitting at her station outside Dad’s room.
“CeeCee, please…” Mom tried to put her hand on my arm, but I jerked it away.
“How could you?” I practically screeched the question. “You claim to love him, and you’re just going to let him die! Do you want him to die? That’s it, isn’t it, you want him to die. That’s why you won’t do anything. You don’t want to take care of him anymore. I’m helping now, please, I’ll do whatever you want me to. You’re his wife. Just tell them to do something. They have to do something if you tell them to! Tell them…to do…something!”
Ending on a sob, I had no more breath left. I had nothing else left. I saw thru a haze that the nurse had left her station and returned with reinforcements: Security.
“Miss, you need to come with us.”
One of the security guards had a grip on my arm and was non-too-gently, guiding me from the room.
“You will have to leave the unit.”
The guards escorted me through the double doors of the ICU and left me there. Watching the doors close, I tried to pull myself together, to think coherently. As they clicked into place, locking me out, I knew that I wouldn’t see my dad alive again, and I was sure my mother would hate me for all eternity for the things I’d said to her.
I couldn’t blame her. I hated me, too.
After leaving the ICU, I made my way down to the parking lot. I didn’t know what to do, but one thing I knew for sure…driving would not be safe in my condition.
So, I started running.
My normal mode of dress in public usually consisted of t-shirt or blouse, jeans and running shoes, the only type of shoe I was ever comfortable in, so running in my clothes was no big deal. The jeans would get itchy and annoying after I started to sweat, but I almost welcomed the thought of any kind of physical hardship to take my mind off my mental and emotional discomfort.
I had no idea where I was going…I just needed to go.
I didn’t recall finally making it home later that evening, but when I got there so was the car. Good thing Mom carried a set of car keys in her purse at all times.
Since I couldn’t bring myself to go into the house yet, I sat outside on the porch for a while. I wasn’t sure how I would react to actually hearing the words and knowing for sure that Dad was gone.
As long as no one said them aloud, I could live in the land of denial for a little while longer. I should have never tried to leave it. Real life hurt too much.
Sitting on the porch, I turned over in my mind all of the possible ways I had come up with to commit suicide while I had been out running. None of the possibilities appealed to me.
I wondered in a detached way whether I would ever have the courage or cowardice to actually do it. Was it brave to take my own life, or was it just a cop out because I didn’t have the guts to face the hard stuff? I had heard it debated both ways, and before that day I would have said it took courage to commit suicide. However, I was no longer so sure.
Thinking over my life the past three years, I was suddenly certain that it required more courage to keep on living…that suicide was taking the easy way out.
Life was painful and living was hard. Death was easy.
After giving it some serious consideration, I had to admit that even though a lot of people might contemplate suicide, I wouldn’t be able to do it.
Although I wasn’t 100% sure whether heaven and hell did or didn’t exist, I knew that if hell did exist and it was worse than my life at that moment, I certainly didn’t want to go there.
From everything I’d been able to gather from my church attendance, suicide was final,
and it was a sin. Put all of that together and you had ‘The Final Sin’. So, just in case, I decided that suicide was definitely out. That meant I had to figure out a way to deal with the mess I was making of my life.
Groaning, I buried my face in my hands.
Remembering how I had treated Mom at the hospital caused me actual physical pain. Would I ever learn to control myself? I doubted it.
Gathering the little courage I had left, I opened the front door and let myself into the house. Mark was sitting in the darkened living room.
“Decided to join me?” Mark asked.
“You saw me.”
“You owe me cab fare.”
He was surprisingly nonchalant.
“I do?” I asked in confusion. “Why would you take a cab? Where’s your pickup?”
“My pickup is currently parked in the garage. I left Mom’s car in the driveway behind the van so we could use it since it gets better gas mileage. I had to take a cab back to the hospital in order to get both vehicles home,” he finished.
“Mom…” I began.
“Still at the hospital; I didn’t leave the car for her because she shouldn’t be driving right now.”
“Mark…” I had no idea what to say, “I’m sorry about…”
“Mom is the one you should apologize to, according to the nurse. Mom, of course, wouldn’t tell me anything other than you left the hospital running.” Mark interrupted me to say.
“How did she…?” I began in surprise.
“She made it to the main entrance of the hospital just in time to see you take off,” he cut in again. “I called the hospital to let her know you were safe when I saw you on the porch.”
“Thanks, Mark,” I said sheepishly, “I don’t deserve a brother like you. Or parents like…”
I broke off as the sobs I had been trying to suppress all afternoon rose up in my throat threatening to overwhelm me.
Mark took me in his arms and just held me while I cried. He didn’t try to stop me or soothe me, just let me cry myself dry.
Mark knew me better than anyone did. It was good to have him home again even if it was for a stinky, rotten and totally unfair reason.