I pull back, groaning. “Hold on—I’ll be right back.”
The living room is freezing compared to Silas’s bed, his body against mine underneath his faux-down comforter. I dig through my purse and pull out my phone.
Call log: Mom. Mom.
St. Mary’s Medical Center.
This sends my pulse into a frenzy. I go to my voicemail and listen.
“Hello, Miss…St. James. This is Dr. Hyland….”
The message goes on and ends. I keep standing there, phone to my ear. I don’t notice when Silas enters the room, until he slips his arms around me.
“Who was it?” he asks softly.
“A hospital.” Finally, I can lower the phone. My heartbeat is so loud in my ears, I can barely hear my own voice. I turn, staring at Silas’s feet. “My mom had a stroke.”
Chapter Seven
“It’s a thrombotic stroke, probably due to her untreated high cholesterol. The plaque formed a blockage in one of her arteries, and the mass was swept to her brain….”
I interrupt Dr. Hyland. “Is she okay?”
The doctor glances at Silas, then tells me, slowly, “She’s in a coma.”
Coma. The word sits on my tongue like hot lead.
“When the brain’s deprived of oxygen for an extended amount of time—”
I interrupt again. “When will she wake up?”
Dr. Hyland sighs, hesitates, and says, “There’s no way to know, really. Every comatose patient is different. It helps that she’s only fifty-three; many of the stroke victims I see who are under sixty years of age recover.” He intensifies his eye contact and speaks a little louder, like I’m stupid. “However, the longer a person is in a coma, the lower the chances they’ll recover.”
Silas squeezes my shoulders. “Can Erin see her now?”
“Certainly. Miss St. James?” Dr. Hyland waits until I look at him to continue. “Extensive research proves many comatose patients can still hear, even though they can’t respond—it might help your mother if you talk to her, offer your support.”
“Okay,” I answer, though truthfully, I can’t think what on earth I’ll say to my mother now, when I barely have anything to say when she’s awake. I know it sounds cruel, but it's true.
The ICU unit seems brighter than the rest of the hospital. I blink my eyes over and over as Silas and Dr. Hyland lead the way to my mother’s room.
“Take all the time you need,” he says. “Let a nurse know if you need anything or have any questions.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Silas answers for me, my translator. I’ve had a hard time with speaking ever since we left his apartment.
I pull back the curtain, and immediately want to close it. If it weren’t for Silas, gently nudging me forward, I’d turn around and run.
My mom looks like she’s sleeping, except for the huge plastic tube taped to her mouth and snaking down her throat. Her skin is grayish and puffy.
“Do you want me to wait outside?” Silas whispers. I shake my head; he’s the only thing keeping me here.
Clearing my throat, I pull a chair up to Mom’s bedside. As usual, there’s at least three feet between us.
“Hi, Mom.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s shaky and strained. “Um…it’s me, Erin. I don’t know if you…if you can hear me or not, but you’re in a coma. But if you wake up soon, things will be okay. So…if you can, please, Mom…wake up.”
The tears are a surprise. Up until now, I’ve felt hollowed-out and numb. Silas puts his hands back on my shoulders. I wish I was in his apartment again, entangled with him under the covers, instead of here.
“I should have answered the phone,” I whisper.
Silas crouches beside my chair. “Don’t do that, Erin. You had no way of knowing.”
“If I’d answered, I could have called the ambulance sooner for her. Maybe they could’ve helped her before she lost consciousness, and she’s wouldn’t be….” I shake my head, suddenly drained. My body slumps over in the chair, and I let myself cry.
“I told her she shouldn’t eat all that shit,” I sob, letting the anger shove its way inside. “Nothing but fast food and take-out. She knew better. Doctors kept telling her to change.” My blame goes rogue, flying around the room. For a minute, I even want to blame Silas, somehow. If I hadn’t met him—
If you hadn’t met him, I think, you still wouldn’t have been home with Mom tonight. Or any other night. You’d be out stealing, just because you were bored. You’d probably be in jail.
“Do you want to stay here tonight?” Silas asks. “We can request a cot, or get a hotel room. I can run back to your house and get you some clothes.”
I shake my head to all of it. “I’ll just sit here.”
“All night?” He takes my hand and rubs my knuckles with his thumb. “Erin, you need to sleep. At least a little.”
My eyes can’t move from Mom’s gray face, the subtle twitches of the unconscious. Every flutter gives me a flash of false hope.
“Erin—come on, I’m trying to help. What can I get you? Are you hungry?”
“Coffee,” I tell him. I pull my hand from his and rest it on Mom’s bedrail, the closest thing to physical contact I can manage. “That’s all I want right now.”
I’m in the stables, shoveling gold flakes like piles of cereal. They should be heavier than this, but I don’t question it. Just drive, lift, and throw, over and over.
“Empty your pockets,” Juliet says, appearing in the stable beside mine.
“Why?”
“Empty. Now.”
I set down my shovel and reach into my already empty pockets. When I flip them inside out, though, piles of gold flakes pour forth onto the hay.
“You’re fired,” she bellows. “Get out of here, now.”
“You can’t fire me.” I pick up my shovel and get back to work. “I’m a community servant.”
Juliet snaps her fingers. From the ceiling, a huge cage drops on top of me. I swing my shovel at the bars, but all I get is sparks and a clanging so loud, it hurts my ears.
Seamlessly, the stables have turned into a concrete building. Above me, florescent lights flicker. They grow brighter and brighter. I realize I’m not in jail; the cage is in the corner of a hospital room. My mom, just a pile of gray ashes, is held together with tubes.
“Here’s the key,” Silas says. He’s dressed like a doctor. I take the giant silver key from him and unlock my cell.
“Be careful,” he warns. “The more you open your cell….” He trails, motioning to the other side of the room, where a cord from one of my mother’s machines is plugged in. I realize it's looped around my door’s bars. The further my door opens, the tighter the wire becomes. From here, I can see the plug slipping from the outlet.
I gasp and shut my cell, but it’s too late. The plug teeters just a moment. Then, while I hold my breath, it falls to the floor.
My mother’s skin has gone from gray to white, so cold it’s nearly blue. The machines trill and whine. All around me, monitors show flat lines, each one a stab straight into my chest.
“Erin,” Dr. Silas shouts, “wake up.”
“I am!” I burst from the cage, diving towards the fallen plug. It slithers away like a snake.
“Erin. Wake. Up.”
I open my eyes. The room is filled with nurses and doctors, swarming my mother’s bed. Silas makes me stand and leads me to the corner, out of the way.
A machine is droning, quieter than my dream, but just as frightening. I move towards my mom’s bed. “What’s happening?”
“Step back, please,” a nurse says. When I don’t, she looks at Silas, who leads me from the room.
“Let me go! What’s going on?”
“Erin, stop screaming—”
“Let me go, Silas—now.” I lower my voice, but twist from his grip. “I’m going back in.”
“You can’t, Erin. They’re resuscitating her, we’re not allowed inside.”
My anger is partially at real-life
Silas, making me leave, and half at the version I dreamed of. “Why did you let me fall asleep?” I shout, throwing his hands off my arms again. “I told you I had to stay awake!”
“We can’t do anything, Erin, calm down! Both of us fell asleep. She just crashed, it wouldn’t have mattered—”
From the other side of the curtain, I hear a crash cart’s electric whine. The jolt.
“Again,” someone says. Silas and I wait through the silence, the sounds repeating.
“Miss St. James?” a nurse says, behind me. I barely glance at her, my eyes transfixed on the closed curtain, like if I try hard enough, I can see through it. She touches my shoulder gently, and I jump.
“Miss St. James,” she repeats, “I need to talk with you and…your husband?”
“Uh…boyfriend, I guess,” Silas says. I think about how, in another situation, his sentence would make me smile and blush. Now, though, all it does is glide across me like all the other words I’ve heard tonight.
The nurse leads us into a small room off the waiting area, just outside the ICU. Silas makes me sit in the hard plastic chair, while he stands behind me. The nurse sits, too.
“Miss St. James,” she says, for the third time, and I hate the way it sounds in her snotty voice, “we’ve attempted CPR and defibrillation on your mother for twenty minutes, now…if you want us to continue, we will.” She takes off her glasses. I take a breath and steel myself. “However, I have to tell you...Dr. Hyland’s prognosis is that, after this long with no response, resuscitation is nearly impossible.”
I keep my expression as flat and still as I can, even with the tears blurring across my eyes. “So she’s dead.”
The nurse clears her throat, shuffling through the chart in her hands. “Well, in simplified terms.... If you wish to cease resuscitation attempts, which Dr. Hyland believes is best now, yes. We'd declare official death.”
Silas looks at me, then stammers, “But people have been resuscitated after twenty minutes, haven’t they?”
Seeming eager to converse with a real human, instead of the robot that is me, the nurse straightens up and looks Silas in the eye. I can tell she thinks he’s handsome. “Well, Mr….”
“Marlowe.”
“…Mr. Marlowe—it’s possible, yes. But the odds decrease greatly after the first ten minutes. By now, I’d say the chance is one in a million.”
Silas puts his hand at the base of my neck, stroking my hair the way he did just hours ago. I’d give anything to be back there, to undo this entire night, and be stuck in that moment in his bed forever.
“That’s still a chance,” he says. “Right, Erin?”
I make myself look at him. His eyes bring a little life back into me.
“Yes,” I say, looking back at the nurse. “Keep trying.”
This wasn’t the answer she expected. I wonder how many people she’s brought into this room, giving them a choice they didn’t really have.
“Very well,” she says, finally, and stands. “I’ll let Dr. Hyland know your wishes. Wait here, please.”
When she’s gone, Silas sinks into the seat beside mine. “Are you…. Well, I know you’re not okay, but…are you kind of okay?”
I look at the clock. “Ask me again in ten minutes.”
Dr. Hyland enters the room like a man leaving a shipwreck. His hair is hanging in front of his eyes, his face drawn downward. “Miss St. James—Mr. Marlowe.” He nods at each of us. We nod back.
“With your permission, Miss St. James,” he says, “we’d like to cease resuscitation efforts.”
“No,” Silas says, right when I say, “Okay.”
They look at me, startled. “Are you sure?” Silas whispers. “Don’t let anyone pressure you, Erin.”
I look at Dr. Hyland, my hands spread on the tabletop like I’m in a business meeting. “If my mother were brought back now—which, like that nurse said, has a chance of one in a million, probably one in a billion or something, now—she’d have brain damage, wouldn’t she?”
“In all likelihood, yes. I’ve never seen a case that didn’t, after twenty minutes, let alone thirty. But it is up to you. Like Mr. Marlowe said, I won’t pressure you. Your mother had no clear wishes established in regards to resuscitation. But as a medical professional, my opinion is that she cannot be resuscitated successfully by now. And if she did, yes, she’d likely suffer brain damage.”
Silas asks, again, “Are you sure, Erin?”
I stand up. This meeting is over.
“Let her go,” I tell them. Strangely, a calm and cold peace washes across me, as I follow Dr. Hyland back into the ICU. What a difference ten minutes can make.
Not once, in my entire life, have I done something my mother could be proud of. At least now I know she’d approve of one of my choices.
“Wait here, please,” I tell Silas, and slip behind the curtain, finally just strong enough to be alone.
I’m not quite sure what to say. My mother’s gone, this body a husk. But maybe she can still hear me, somehow. I pull my chair close to her bed. For the first time since I was a kid, I hold my mom’s hand.
“I love you, Mom,” I say quietly. A weight I didn’t even notice was on my chest, lifts. Breathing comes more easily. “I—I’m sorry, for…all the times I messed up. I promise, I’m trying to do better.” Through the curtain, I see Silas’s feet pacing. “Not sure why it took me so long to figure out how, but…but I feel like I can do it, this time.”
Her hand feels papery and chilled inside mine. I look at her ring finger. There’s still a diamond band on it, half a size too small, pinching her skin.
“I, uh…I wish I could say I forgive you for….” I take a breath. It’s been so long since I’ve said his name, but my gag reflex remembers well. I choke back the anger, the physical illness, remembering. “…for him. But I can’t. Not yet.” Gently, I squeeze her hand, and let go as I stand. “I’ll try, though.”
In movies, people usually lean down and kiss their loved one on the forehead, or give them a hug. Something. But when I try, my head won’t lower. Instead, it drifts up, to the ceiling.
“Bye, Mom,” I whisper. Hopefully, no matter how much the universe hates me, no matter how little karma I’ve racked up over the years, it cares just enough to let my message through.
Chapter Eight
I hope for rain during my mom’s funeral. It just seems appropriate. Instead, I wake up to a gorgeous summer morning. The sky is hopelessly blue and the sun is sickeningly bright.
“That bed is comfy,” Silas yawns, handing me a cup of coffee over my shoulder. He stands behind me at the bay window of my mother’s living room. The cup in my hand is monogrammed with her initials. This is her favorite brand of coffee. This whole house is hers, and it feels wrong, suddenly, using her stuff when she’s gone, like I’m a kid again, snooping through her room.
But my bed, I remind myself—that bed is mine. Silas is mine. At least I’ve got that. And maybe it’s enough, for now.
“It’s so hard being here,” I whisper, “but it’s like…I don’t know where else to go. I feel…drawn here, or something.”
Silas nods like this makes sense. “Has your mom paid this place off?”
I burn my mouth on the coffee. It still hurts less than waking up to sunshine. “I don’t know.”
“Well…was she renting, or buying?”
I shrug. “We never talked about money. We…didn’t talk about much of anything, really. I was shocked she even had a lawyer.” The day after Mom died, I got a nasally message on our answering machine from the offices of Meegan and Sons, informing me that my mother left a will, the contents of which would be shared with me following her funeral. I can’t imagine what Mom could’ve possibly put in there. The woman didn't own much.
“Guess we’ll find out today, then,” Silas breathes. His all-business tone makes me relax. For three days, he’s been my tether, calm and practical, pulling me back to earth just when I feel like I’ve lost any sense of gravity.
He hugs me back with a fierce reassurance. “You don’t have to thank me,” he says. “Anyone would do it.”
“Yeah, right. Look at all my neighbors and family, clamoring at the door with casseroles and offers to help.” I motion lamely towards the empty front walk; not a single mourner has stopped by, including my mom’s sister.
Silas pulls me close again. “You’ll see,” he says confidently. “Today at the service, all these people will come out of the woodwork to help. They’ve just been waiting for the right opportunity. Navigating grief is tricky.”
“Maybe,” I offer, but I don’t mean it even a little.
We shower together and dress quickly. I help Silas with his tie and he picks out my shoes. We’re like a real couple, the kind so comfortable with each other we’re almost one person. I wonder how a few weeks with him could do it, while months with past boyfriends yielded commitments no more serious than my own drawer in their dressers, if that.
“You look beautiful,” he says, on our way to the car.
“You look handsome,” I answer. I straighten his tie again and think about how many couples in the world are doing exactly this: dressing up, fixing each other’s clothes or hair, standing in the blinding sun and setting out. I bet most of them are on their ways to weddings, carrying cards and gifts instead of a lawyer’s contact info.
We’re the first to arrive, and for a moment I panic, thinking we’ll be the only mourners at all. Within half an hour, though, as I help the funeral home’s resident pastor get the details of my mother’s life straight, I hear car doors slamming. My aunt’s voice booms from the parking lot.
Aunt Jane was a wonderful mystery to me as a kid, a powerhouse with long legs and red lipstick, always perfectly blotted. Her perfume smelled like jasmine and baby powder. When I was little, she’d let me try on her dresses, expensive brands purchased by her boyfriend du jour; I’d beg for lipstick and perfume, too, and she’d eventually give in, even though every time resulted in anger from my mother.
THIEF: Part 1 Page 4
