Disclaimer- I don't own flight 29 down or any of its characters
I spent my fourteenth birthday in a waiting room waiting for the inevitable news that my mother was not going to make it. It was a formality really, to wait for the emotionally retarded doctor to come and tell me in a monotone voice about my mothers passing. It was nothing I didn't expect. But yet; I waited in a mind dulling numbness to hear the life shattering news.
He held a clipboard- an attempt to look professional I'm sure. He glanced at it a couple of times when telling me the details of how she died. It seemed silly really, to include the details when all that really mattered was that she was gone, and there was no way of bringing her back. Yet I waited patiently for him to finish.
After expressing his condolences he left. I sat alone for awhile, mulling over what had just taken place. It was all a surreal blur. I wanted so desperately to take back the last couple of hours and try again. It seemed useless to just sit here but my current state of lethargy was making it hard to think clearly much less get up and go somewhere.
Where would I go anyway? I had nowhere. I thought briefly of trying my dad's cell again but decided that was absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. I had a feeling that the hospital had already contacted him and his absence was intentional. I knew I would want to do the same; to be anywhere but here. To be anywhere but this sad, beige, paint chipped waiting room.
I remembered just this morning; leaving for school and seeing my mom on her usually place on the couch. She had had another episode last night and recovered by downing a bottle of vodka. It was her drink of choice. She lay sprawled out on the sofa, wearing the same clothes as yesterday. I leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, whispered goodbye, then departed for school.
I came home to absolute silence as par usual. But something seemed different about this silence; its eerie presence lingered; a salient quality to it. I knew something was terribly wrong. I raced over to the couch where I had last seen my mother only to see a faint outline of where her body has previously lay. My stomach turned. I sprinted up the stairs and burst through the door of the bedroom she shared with my father. There, I say her collapsed on the floor under a blanket of feathers.
The room was in utter disarray, with absolutely everything everywhere. Drawers ripped out and clothes thrown everywhere, picture frames holding precious family memories shattered by impact. By the abundance of feathers floating around it seemed she had gotten around to ripping open the pillows. Then I noted the pills lying next to her.
My whole body turned to Jell-O. It was suddenly such an effort to stand. My knees buckled beneath me and soon enough I hit the ground. This could not be happening. Not to me, not now. I used all the energy I had left to drag my body to where my mother was, and to grave her stony cold hand to check for a pulse. The deafening silence in her veins told me all I needed to know.
The sirens came hours later. Or at least, it seemed they did. I didn't have much of a concept of time anymore. After mustering up enough sanity to dial 911 I choked out a tearful plead for help. It seemed my aid had finally arrived. A squad exploded into the doorway to see a hysteric teenaged girl clinging to her mother's dead body.
It seemed cinematic really; the whole scene. After being coaxed into the ambulance with my mother the emergency medics tried frantically to revive her but I knew it was too late. I watched, detached from reality, as they shocked my mother's body in attempt to fix it. But it was broken. She was broken. She had been long before she decided to end her life.
I sat in the waiting room alone, becoming more numb with every fleeing second. It was on my fourteenth birthday that I knew it was going to be a long time before I was ever truly happy again.