Once again, sorry for the incredibly long wait. I prefer to update often but I've been cruel, I guess.
So here is my second installment. Please Review, whether to hate it, love it, like it, loath it.
A/N: The next chapter will probably be a while too. :P
--------
Hours later; Countless mutterings and sobs later; Various soft Spanish words a blur. They finally let me see my mom. I had stopped crying. I was in hiding. Hiding behind the false walls my anger built instinctively.
Traitorous walls didn't stop the pain as it etched itself into my body, soul and mind.
I was finally lost, so when a small nurse brought us to her room, I said nothing. I don't think I could have said anything. What was there to say? I knew she was dying, and I knew I could do nothing but wait, and hope.
That did stop the pain though.
Andy ran in first. However, when I followed behind him, I couldn't step foot in the room.
I saw her from the doorway, but I made no movement to her. I just watched her. Her body was battered, and lay lifeless on the bed. Her face was covered in a scatter of bloody cuts and scrapes. A breathing mask had been strapped to her face. Clearly because she couldn't breathe on her own.
A white cloth bandage had been tightly wrapped around her head, where she had bashed it on the side window, and again on the steering wheel, as the report told us. Whether it was bullshit or not, I didn't know. Tubes had been inserted in her arms and hooked to bags of clear liquids. More cloth bandages covered her arms around the tubes.
She was wearing a pale blue paper dress, the same that all the other patients, I saw, were wearing. Although, those patients were alive and moving. Not lying on their death bed with pools of crusty dried blood underneath their eyes from where the nurse had missed.
She was pale, and frankly, white. There were red messes on areas of her body. Her hair frizzled out behind her head, cluttering the white pillow with a web-like mess.
Several machines, whirring in life, were connected to her un-life like body. All of them shouted 'dying' to me, all the way across the room. Yet no one else heard them, because in reality they were just machines. And machines can't talk, let alone shout, but I heard them.
Moving was not a possibility for me. I just stood there, starring at her, while Andy clutched her hand, for mercy. Her lifeless, still, hand. He was whispering to her. Probably pleas for her to wake up. No one could loose Mom.
Brad pushed me through the door. I landed on one of the walls and slowly slid down to the floor.
All the walls my anger had built for protection had just been ripped down. Snatched from my fragile, weak hands and all that was left was me, grasping for them to come back. I was defenseless. I was alone, and I was a blubbering mess.
In my own stupid mess; I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my face beneath them. My hands snaked around my shins, as my hair covered me with its length. I wanted to hide, I wanted to disappear. I wanted the pain to be gone.
I pushed myself into the wall. Squishing myself with it so I could just hide. Like a camouflaging animal, I wanted to hide from my hunter. Even though I knew, I couldn't. I would always be hunted by the pain.
The tears fell, dripping from my cheeks; my face scrunched in agony, my nose ran with sniffles. I wanted to hide from the pain, hide from her deadness. I just wanted to be free. But I couldn't.
I knew I couldn't. I was stuck, she was stuck, the whole freaking world was stuck. And all I could do was cry. Which, by itself is bad enough, but with this mess, it was hell.
The devil had come to earth to smite me and all my unholy pain. Waggling his fingers in my face, laughing at each tear, slowly killing my mom right before my frightful child eyes. Dragging out the hurt, so for ages he could get his kicks.
This wasn't just a dream that I could scream and wake up from. This was real life. This was real pain. And this was real death that was slowly coming to the person I love so much, that lay before my slinking, huddled body.
My lungs were searching for more than sterile, death-like air, but that's all they found. My tears were searching for more than my pain-stained cheeks, but that's all they found. My throat was searching for more than moans of misery, but that's all they found.
And I, I was searching for more than a dying mom in a death-like hospital bed, but that's all I found.
That's all I found.
----
For six whole days.
Mom didn't move, or speak. So neither did I.
Day in and day out I just sat there, starring at her. Memorizing every single one of her features, just in case, it was the last time I had the chance to see her.
Deeply I feared that.
I had been the only one that never left my mom's side. Andy had work and to look after the boys, the boys couldn't come here anymore—I don't know why, I guess they just don't like looking at Mom, sometimes they'll show up but rarely—and Jesse had work and school.
He wanted to stay with me, he even tried to miss his classes and get time off from work. But I wouldn't let him. Besides, school was important for him and he could be fired from work, even though ever since he started working there, business has been good, especially in the female variety.
I don't blame them. My family, I mean. They have commitments that they have to keep. They don't know Mom as well or as long as I do. I don't think anyone could drag me away from her. I was stuck by her side.
That's the way it always has been. Mom and me and whoever else we chose. I could have stayed with Grams in New York, but I couldn't leave Mom. I wouldn't.
It doesn't mean that they don't love her. I'm sure they really do. Just, there was a time when they didn't even know her. But for me, Mom was the only one I knew for forever.
Everyday, different nurses came in and checked tubes connected to my mom, read the charts, wrote secretive notes in funny symbols on printed pages. They even do the stupid clicking of their tongue for sympathy. I don't need it, nor do I want it.
Mom's condition has been the same though. Six whole days and the most we have is a faint pulse. Each day my faith wears a little more. Withering away, until one day, I know it will just be gone.
"Suze, you really should go home sometime," I lifted my head from the side of the bed. My face had been buried in the sheets beside my mom's hip. It was one of the more regular of the nurses, who took the time to learn my name.
I was just glad she didn't call me Susie.
I nodded, "I know," I said in a croaky voice. It didn't sound much like my own. It was harsh, unused, and unhappy. I smoothed the sheets down with the palm of my hand. Each stroke removing a wrinkle, in the sheet, that I'd left.
If only I could remove pain like that.
One smooth stroke after another. Fading the pain away, until life was perfect or even right again. Just smooth.
"Well, since you are here, there's a doctor that wants to speak to you," her voice was sincere but too chirpy for my liking. She lowered here voice, though, to the soft and gentle tone from before, "about your mom."
"Oh," I said slowly standing up. I pulled my lopsided hair down, and smoothed my clothes. "Okay," I said miserably.
"Okay then. He'll be in soon," briskly she left the room, pushing a cart ahead in front of her.
I waited, kind of just, starring at items around the room, until I focused on a beeping monitor. The green lines flashed by at a steady rate. Mom's heart was pumping at a steady rate, but was it ever slow.
It made me cringe to see the lines move that slow. The nurse said that she was fine today. So why did the doctor need to talk to me? Was it about Mom's slow but steady heart rate?
I want more than anything for him to burst through the door and snap his fingers making Mom wake up.
But this isn't hocus pocus, so that isn't going to happen. But it's great to think like that. At least, until logic comes around and kicks me one in the face.
I turned my attention to the figure in a white lab coat that had walked through the door. His face was elderly, much like his eyes. He was holding a black clip board at his side, and a small pair of bifocals sat on the end of his pink bulb-like nose.
"Um," he said looking down at his clipboard. "Ms. Ackerman, I presume," he said looking back at me. His eyes were huge through his lenses.
"Simon," I said looking back at my mom. Her body hadn't moved since the last time the nurse moved her. They said they had to keep moving her around so the blood circulated properly.
"Ahh, I see," he said from his clipboard, turning his face from confusion to a sad smile. "Well, I have some unfortunate news so I think you should sit down," he said shaking his head gently, in sympathy. I didn't want the sympathy, or the stupid plastic chair.
"I'm fine," I said quickly. He looked at me again, then his clipboard. If I sat down, I knew he would talk to me while standing. I didn't want him to tower me. I needed to stand. Stand and be ready to fight. Always ready to fight, fight against the unseeing. Not to me and a handful of others but to most. Although, this fight was different. I couldn't see the enemy, just its results, just its blows and bruises.
"Your mom is steady on life support. We can keep her there as long as you and your family want. But I am supposed to warn you that the longer she stays comatose and on life support the more chance she has of developing possible brain damage. Although, most cases the damage doesn't start until after the seventh day. That's why I'm warning you now." He looked up from his clip board.
I met his huge pupils, with my glistening tear filled ones. Mom was gonna get worse as time went on.
I guess I kind of knew that fact. But it's always harder when someone comes right out and says it. There is no chance that your mind is playing a trick on you. Making you think worse. Because someone just said, that terrible thing your thinking and feeling, is true.
Sometimes the unknown is better. Sometimes…
"I'm really sorry," he said. But he wasn't. I knew that. He doesn't know Mom, so how could he be sorry if she died. Or if I had to pull the plug on her life support. He was just a doctor that had to give a family fatal news.
That's what he was saying. I understood that. I have to choose in the next couple of days, kill my mom, or chance her waking up with brain damage.
And if I did decide to pull the plug, life would swirl down the drain. Into the vast septic, she would disappear.
Life as I know it just got that much worse. It wasn't that great to begin with, either.
I nodded to the doctor, so that he would leave. He understood and left. I sank down into the chair closest to my mom's bed. The chair that I had resided in for the past six days.
I reached for my mom's hand. It was warm as always, but limp, dying. I couldn't choose. No way could I.
I bowed my head, and let the tears well again. Cursing the driver that forced my mom on this bed of death.
The tears slid on their paths down my cheeks, and I did nothing to stop them. I let them fall like it was needed. Like that's all I had left, were my tears. And in some ways it was.
My whole face singed from the salty water, hissing at each stroke they took. My heart was being shattered, and my walls were being burned. They wouldn't be built again, not if they were just a pile of ashes.
I didn't want her to die. But I guess no one ever wants some one to die.
"Mom," I whispered. Holding my tears I forced my words out, "I need you to wake up. Please," I begged. My hands were squeezing her hand, holding onto whatever life they could find.
"I love you, Mom. More than anything, I do. So, don't you dare leave me. You promised you wouldn't, when we moved to California. You promised that you would stay with me, that we'd be a family. Don't break your promise, Mom. Don't you dare," I was pleading.
I sounded like a mess. I was a mess. And I didn't know if I could get out of it. So I just kept talking.
"If something happens…or doesn't, I want you to know that in every way you're beautiful. In everyway you're perfect. And you're the best mother that any child could ask for. I'm just so…happy that you're my mom. You're so giving with your love, we all know that. Andy, and Jake, and Brad, and David, we all know that. Your love is the easiest to except, but the hardest to live without," I love you mom. Oh god do I love you.
The tears were falling faster than I could stop them. And I didn't want to. The tears were the only thing that connected me to my mom. The last thing that I could hold on to of hers.
They say time heals everything, but time isn't healing this. Time is just going to make it worse. I can't do anything but cry. "All I can do is love you," I whispered, willing her to wake up. "And I do."
I felt a gentle rub on my upper back. Lifting my head from my hand I noticed that Andy and the boys were back. They were starring at me and the mess I was sprawled out over the edge of the bed.
They'd heard. I knew they had. I didn't know how much, but the guilt was so thick in their eyes. Blazing into me I felt like I was to close to the fire. The glow from it was to hot, and the looks were smoldering me.
I sucked back a sniffle and wiped the tears off my cheeks. "The doctor came," I whispered. I couldn't say anything louder.
I wanted to whisper, just in case, I didn't want the guy's in heaven to know that my mom was dying. I didn't want them to take her. And I didn't want to be alone.
"We have to choose, chance possibly brain damaged mom, or dead mom," I whispered. It was harsh but the truth.
I didn't want to hurt my mom, but I didn't want to lose her. Jake twisted his face in pain, and I realized that Brad and David had done the same. Except, David was in tears.
I felt more tears welling. I waited for them to spill. This time I didn't wipe them. I let them sit there. A reminder that my mom was there.
No one said anything. The room was silent, so I put my head back down on the bed, and sobbed.
I felt my body heave, and shudder. The tears spilled and I watched them fall to the white hospital floor. They made tiny little splashes, moving as slow as my mom's heart rate.
Andy placed his hand on my back again. "Don't take her away," I whispered. I begged. I knew I was begging. And it was all I had left. I shook my head vigorously.
"I won't." he whispered back. He promised me.
Promised.
I don't know how, but it was buried deep. Together we would just have to hang on to everything that was left.
God, don't take her away from me.
------------
I was eating left-over curry rice. Andy made it for me. Wanted to make sure I was eating properly.
The food tasted like ash. Everything I ate did. Just like all the colors of the world had become a dull shade of blue-grey. Just like silk or cashmere didn't feel as soft.
Things just weren't vibrant.
Just, death-like almost.
Jake was in the room with me. He looked as miserable as I felt. No idea what I looked like. I didn't want to know either.
This kind of thing, was when the unknowing was good.
Whether my mom was going to wake up or not. That was bad. Very bad.
Sick like.
I put the container of rice and chicken down on the bed's table. The white plastic fork stuck out of the uneaten food.
Which was, like the whole thing.
I wasn't hungry. I couldn't eat. Nor could I swallow, sleep, clean-up, live. I could just cry, and hope. And I could only do that right beside my mom's bed.
"You have to eat, Suze," Jake said from across the room. He was leaning against the wall, pain smeared into his eyes. Though he wore a grimace look.
"No I don't," I said shortly, softly. Barely audible.
"Yes you do," he said. Not moving from the wall he narrowed his eyes at me and crossed his arms.
"Leave me alone. I don't need food, or you," I added the end slowly and softer.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?" he asked. I didn't know what he meant. I didn't want to think about it either.
"What are you talking about?" I asked slightly bitter. I was mixed. And constantly I was changing my moods.
Tears one moment to flying fists of anger. Bitter with the world…
"You're pushing everyone out. You haven't come home once, you're not eating, and not once have you let us in. You don't talk to us," he sounded a little angry. I didn't understand why, I don't see why he would care what I did or didn't do. He pushed off the wall and walked to the foot of Mom's bed.
It was all true I knew that. He knew that too I guess. Besides my pleas to them, I hadn't talked to them since Mom was admitted. I had eaten little. But I just wasn't hungry. And home hadn't been home since Jesse left, and it definitely wasn't without Mom.
"What do you want me to say?" I asked. I left my gaze on the floor though. "That I'm scared, that I can't lose her. That I'm pushing everyone away because I don't need them. I can stand on my own, I don't need you, Jake," I looked up at him and choked on my words. His hurt was deep. I felt like I had cracked his heart. I put my gaze back on the floor. "I don't want to eat, because food turns to ash in my mouth, I don't want to sleep because I'm afraid to miss a moment. And I most certainly do not want to talk about it because I know I need help. But I don't want it. I don't want to feel helpless. I don't want a clutch. I don't want sympathy. I don't want to admit the truth, because the truth is, I am scared."
I felt the tears again. I didn't want to. Not now, not in front of Jake.
"I know," he said in a whisper. I saw his foot land on the floor where I was looking, right in front of me.
"How do you know? You couldn't know this?" I said gesturing to the bed behind him. To my mother behind him.
I forced myself to look up at his towering body. His eyes were shadowed, but I saw the wetness. His face was slightly cringed. He glimmered with past memories and the pain they filled him with.
That's when I realized that he did know what I was going through. He had done it once before. I can't believe how stupid I was to forget that. I had helped her move on.
I had to tell David those things. I cried that day. I remember it so clearly. Tad Beaumont, the vampire, the fish smell, the old wedding photo, and Red. His bio-mom had cancer; she was on life support just like this.
I guess, I know now, why they didn't come as often. Jake would know better than any what I was going through.
"Oh, Jake, I'm sorry," I whispered up to his dark towering figure. He just stood there, slightly he shrugged his shoulders. "I just can't lose her," I said still whispering.
"I know," he said again.
I promptly did something I never thought I would ever do. I stood up and quickly threw my arms around his muscular neck.
Startled he took a step back, and then wrapped his arms around my back. Once again, for the billionth time in the past six days I cried.
I sobbed into his shoulder. They were sheepish tears that soaked into the neck of his shirt. But I held onto him for dear life.
I cried for about five minutes. Me clinging to Jake, crying as if I was, gave me the strange feeling of his protectiveness. It felt like his was trying to protect me from the pain.
I pulled away, "Sorry," I said violently wiping the tears away. I ended up smearing the wetness to my ears and down my neck some.
I didn't really know what I was apologizing for. Everything, really. For being so shut-down, cruel. For his loss, for him having to go through it again. For crying like a sniveling baby into his shoulder. For making him feel like a clutch.
"Me too," he whispered. He glanced back at my mom and when I looked at him then, I saw tears that had trailed down his face. "Me too," he whispered again.
--------
Review Please!!