Trigger warning for Cora's cancer/death and mentions of assisted suicide at a hospital. This is almost word-for-word based on a real story. Henry and Hope stand in for me and my sister, and Emma/Regina/Cora stand in for my parents and my grandmother. This is exactly how it happened as I remember it, save for a few minor changes for privacy reasons. They say writing can be therapeutic, that it can help someone work through their emotions, and so I'm putting this difficult moment in my life down on paper, using characters I feel more comfortable writing about rather than real people. To my readers, please don't feel obligated to read, it's not an easy subject matter. I just had to get this piece off my chest. This was my goodbye to my grandmother.
"She looks very different. She won't look like what you remember. Don't be scared, okay?"
Ma is paler than usual, her mouth tightly pursed as the four of them stand in the hallway of the red zone in the hospital. Mom is curled into her side, looking drawn and unsteady, and Henry doesn't think he's ever seen his mothers so anxious before. Next to him, Hope looks disinterested, her go-to defense mechanism when she's upset. The door they stand next to feels ominous, somehow, as if everything will come crashing down the moment they walk through there.
"How different?" Henry questions, wary to step inside the room that holds his grandmother. Cora, who had been the worst of grandparents. Cora, who had made life hell for Mom and Ma, who had nearly ruined their marriage, who had nearly left Henry and Hope in a shattered family. Cora, who he'd once cared for when he was a boy, too naive and innocent to realize how she manipulated and tormented the family, how she pit aunt Zelena and Mom against one another, how she vilified Ma and turned the rest of the family on them like pariahs.
Cora, who treated everyone like pawns on the chessboard that was her life. Like it was all a game of manipulation and lies. Henry is a young man, Hope a teenager, and they're both old enough to know better now. Old enough to resent her for it.
"The cancer was more advanced than they thought," Ma says quietly, Mom silent next to her. "And when she'd fallen and broke her hip... Well, the doctors have her on constant morphine. They say she has a few months left, maybe, but she's in constant pain and has requested an... assisted... passing."
Mom's face crumples but she remains strong, somehow, tears held at bay even as Ma gently rubs her back in comfort. After a moment, Mom takes a breath and offers a wobbly smile, motioning at Henry and Hope to go inside.
"Go say goodbye to your grandmother, okay?"
Henry is the first to walk into the room, but somehow ends up standing furthest from the bed while Hope and their mothers move up to the edge of the bed.
And Ma was right.
He doesn't recognize Cora at all.
She's nearly skeletal, her skin paper thin and sallow, her body having lost all healthy weight in too short a time. Her face is sunken and pale, clammy with sweat. Her hair, hair that he remembered her to always dye stark-black out of vanity, is now solid white, limp and sticking to her forehead, showing her real age. She's drugged on morphine now, eyelids fluttering in her half-asleep state, but when Mom gently touches her shoulder and whispers that the grandchildren are here, Cora blinks blearily up at them with milky eyes.
Henry doesn't know if she recognizes them or not. If she can even see them.
"Regina," Cora mumbles, with barely enough energy to move her lips, her words coming out muffled and hard to understand. She makes little moaning sounds of pain and discomfort, unable to lay still as she constantly tries to shift back and forth on her side, unable to find a comfortable position with her broken hip and the invasive cancer that ravages her body. Regina leans in to carefully help Cora readjust herself regardless, somehow gentle and attentive in her mother's last moments despite having grown up with the woman's abuse. "The children?"
"Yes, Mother. Your grandchildren. Henry and Hope, they're right here. Can you see them?"
Regina makes a big pointing gesture, trying to coax Cora's eyes to follow the movement towards the end of the bed where Henry and Hope stand. It takes a long moment, Cora's milky eyes half-closed and bleary, but she finally looks in their direction and her lips quirk up a little, a muffled sound of agreement leaving her lips, too weak to say their names.
Hope bursts into tears.
Hope, who has always been stubborn and proud, who likes to act like a snobby little queen, who knows what her grandmother has done to torment her family and yet has never been directly treated poorly by Cora, who knew only the doting woman who occasionally gave her sweets.
Hope bursts into messy tears, her entire little body shaking with sobs, and Henry feels wetness drip down his own cheeks.
Not for Cora. Never for Cora. For even seeing her now, a broken shell of the woman she used to be, laying here weak and helpless and waiting for death, he still does not feel anything for her. What love he'd held for her was lost when she betrayed their family so completely. Pity, perhaps, because even a monster like her does not deserve to be in such pain and misery, but nothing else.
Tears trickle down his cheeks solely because he does not like to see Hope cry, and he reaches out to pull his little sister into his arms, hugging her tightly as she sobs against his chest and soaks the front of his shirt.
Mom and Ma watch them, their own eyes glistening. Hope pulls away, daring to move next to the bed, next to Cora, and Henry quickly swipes the tears from his own cheek and watches silently from his spot, with nothing but a chasm of emptiness in his chest.
His heart doesn't hurt. It beats normally like it always does, slow and steady. He might have worried that it was broken, if not for the fact that he knows he has feelings. He isn't a monster. He knows how to love, how to feel, how to mourn. He'd cried when his best friend moved out of town. He'd cried holding his childhood dog in his arms as it was put to sleep due to health complications. He'd cried himself sick when Ma got into a car accident years ago and ended up getting emergency surgery for it, and he hadn't left her side for months after that, so very afraid that his mothers weren't as invincible as he'd thought them to be.
He has a heart, but it does not mourn for Cora.
Hope murmurs a few words to their grandmother, subdued and teary eyed, and holds Cora's hand for a few moments as Cora mumbles something nonsensical to her, punctuated by groans of pain as she trembles weakly in bed. Eventually it becomes too much, and Hope whispers a final goodbye, leaning down to kiss Cora's forehead before she flees the room. Ma, with no love lost for her mother in law, whispers something comforting to Mom before following after Hope.
And then Mom is leaning down, whispering softly to Cora as she gently holds onto her hand, saying all the things she's always wanted to say to a mother who had never truly loved her or cared for her the way she should have. Henry remains frozen at the end of the bed, watching in stony silence, wondering how Mom can do it. How she can continue to love Cora, to yearn for Cora's love in return.
Even Ma had taken the easy way out and left to check on Hope.
"Won't you come say goodbye?" Mom asks him suddenly, jolting him back to the present. With a sudden lump in his throat, Henry slowly moves closer, coming up to the side of the bed. Mom has backed away to give him a moment, and he feels numb as he stares down at his grandmother. Cora moans again, clutching to the side railing with a bony hand to try to shift herself into a less uncomfortable position. Her glassy eyes roll up and blink blearily at him, as if trying to bring his face into focus.
"It's Henry," he says, unnecessarily. Cora blinks again, giving a shaky nod of her head.
"Hnn'ry," she mumbles, a weak little croaking sound that sounds nothing like her old voice. They haven't seen or spoken to Cora in a year, after the family had finally decided to do what was best for themselves and cut her out of their lives. They were happy. They are happy, without her toxic influence in their lives. It feels unreal that she is dying now. That she will be permanently gone from their lives soon.
It's not like it changes anything for them. They would have kept Cora out of their lives regardless. But it feels more real, more final when her absence will be because she's dead.
He should feel guilty. He should feel sad. But she has almost destroyed his family one too many times for him to feel anything at all for her anymore.
He's just... empty.
Cora stares at him, a moment of clarity in her eyes, and then suddenly she gives a sad little smile and nods her head at him.
She knows. She realizes the extent of what she's done, she knows he doesn't want to be here and she's nodding in understanding, in acceptance of what she deserves. Maybe, faced with her own mortality, she has finally realized her own cruelty, and does not begrudge him for not wanting to be here. As if she's saying, "It's okay."
At least that's what he'd like to think it means.
Leaning down with a shaky exhale, Henry gently sets his hand on her skinny forearm, grimacing at the coolness of her flesh, as if she's already got one foot out death's door.
"Goodbye," he whispers, not knowing what else to say.
Cora makes a small humming sound in her throat to acknowledge it.
And then he straightens, turns, and leaves the room.
Ma and Hope are standing outside in the hall, their backs against the red-painted wall, somber as they wait on a hospital floor full of people waiting to die.
Henry tucks himself in against Ma's other side, the three of them watching as a nurse quietly heads into the room.
A little while later, Mom exits, her eyes red from crying. Henry and Hope open their opens and gently pull her into their circle, the four of them clinging to each other a moment, silent.
And then they let go, Ma with her arm cradled around Mom's body and Mom with her head resting gently against Ma's shoulder as they lead the way, Henry with Hope tucked under his arm as they trail after their mothers, the hospital doors shutting behind the little family with finality.