So I wrote this today, writing bits in each of my classes. I've only done a quick proofread so there still might be some spelling and/or grammatical errors, but I don't think so. I'm also thinking there's the potential to extend this, so write a bit more. It's staying a short story, but I feel the ending leaves much to be desired.
I get the call in the middle of a math lesson. The teacher waves a lazy hand at me, beckoning me to the front. In my head, it’s nothing bad, nothing bad. But for some reason, there is a thought beholding something heavy and ominous. I think to myself it’s only paranoia.
As I approach the desk, I can see her eyes sag downward, weighed by sadness – or is it sympathy? Her usual smile has disappeared, abandoning all but a thin rose line of coloured lips. I am stubborn, however, and I refuse to think something horrible has happened.
Her mouth moves, articulating words with sharp precision but I cannot hear anything – my ears are in denial. And then there is a terrifying earthquake and the desks are falling, chairs are sliding but everyone is sitting steadily. Nobody tumbles even thought it must be a nine on the Richter scale.
Why am I falling and no one else is?
*
Everyone always said that my mother was insane. That she’s been ‘on holiday’ from reality ever since the thing with my dad. Everyone said that she was odd and needed to be, put lightly, taken care of.
But I know who my mother is really. She’s my hero. She's an artist.
If I ever came home from school distressed, my mother was there. She’d listen quietly and then take my hand and we’d go to the attic and paint.
The attic was – is – my favourite place. It’s always in organized chaos, cluttered with half-complete canvases that my mother got frustrated with. The walls are a giant collage of graffiti words, newspaper and magazine clippings and large, life-size forms of insects from stick bugs to slippery, acrylic earthworms. And from the ceiling hangs a chandelier, crafted by my mother using broken beer bottles and milky-white litre jugs. I remember she had to rob the light bulb from the basement stairs. I’m afraid of its darkness now.
We would paint up there and sometimes draw. I like splattering the paint from afar best, though. There were huge white potato sacks that we wore and then it was like a dance. Twisting and twirling, sidestepping, letting paint fly from these magic wands. (Mother always called paintbrushes ‘magic wands’ because they created.) It was chaotic and exhilarating and still one could see what had transpired on the spotted canvas. Interpretations are personal, Mother said. Nonetheless, colours betrayed emotion and the paint flung only screamed of anger and frustration. Fatigue.
Fatigue.
I wish I’d known. Seen it. But I was too possessed by my own world.
I only wish.
*
It’s a struggle to retain the acid that keeps making its way up my throat. It stings bitter and sour and my eyes are watering.
The smell of the place is vile, managing to invade each sense – somehow. It’s a vomit-inducing stench of disinfectant and a sickening odour of chicken soup. And beneath, the underlying scent of blood.
I loathe hospitals.
And waiting.
I slouch down in the black leather seat that’s far too nice for a hospital waiting room. I want to melt, become the polish on the seat. I want this to be over.
A nurse strides with angry purpose, brows furrowed, tight-lipped like my math teacher. Everything about the nurse is frighteningly fierce and I abruptly pull myself into a proper sitting position when she stops before me. Her hard gaze does not falter and she speaks with predictable harshness: “Amethyst?” I see her look over the name on the paper a second time. Like everyone else who thinks my name’s the equivalent to a hooker’s alias.
“Amy,” I say with equal frigidity. She nods, almost saying alright, understandable, I don’t blame you.
“Well, then, Amy, please follow me.” The nurse turns on her heel, demonstrating expertise in the movement. She tells me no name, only expecting me to trust and follow her. I’m led down a smelly corridor, neutrally painted white. And ‘just to jazz it up a bit’, the baseboards are a disgusting colour of turquoise. I’m sure that it coordinates nicely with the hospital scrubs and gowns.
Eventually, the nurse stops at a room where the door is slightly ajar. I can actually see her name now – Sylvia - an atrocious one I decide. She simply pushes open the door a little wider. Her eyes are large and intimidating. They prompt me to go into the room. A room I’ve never laid eyes on before and I already hate it so much.
But I have no choice. My unwilling feet take a few steps forward and before I can realize it, Sylvia is closing the door behind me. I don’t know why, but a shudder runs through me as I turn my head and really take a look at the room I’m now in.
The lights overhead are dimmed, casting a sepia glow over the small room. Up against a wall there’s a television, but it’s black and I can see a remote placed carefully on the table beneath it. A patient wouldn’t be able to watch television anyway, in that case, then. On the far end of the room, on the outside wall is a large window, twinkling with the city’s electricity from its other side. It plays almost like a one-way mirror, skilfully offering a detailed reflection of everything the hospital room contains.
In the center is the bed. And on the bed is my mother, hooked up to countless machines, all programmed to keep her alive.
My reaction is immediate and unplanned: I slide as quickly as I can to her bedside and I take her hand in both of mine. Hers is chill and clammy and my own warm ones work desperately to transfer heat. I subconsciously run my thumbs down the underside of her wrist, feeling for a pulse. I know she’s alive or else she still would not be hooked up to all the machines, but still my heart plummets to my navel when I feel the pulse at last. It’s so light. Just like the feathering wings of a monarch butterfly, leaving to migrate to the warmer areas of the south.
For some reason, I find my lungs struggling to gather oxygen and so I pull up a chair to the bedside, still breathing like a smoking marathon runner. Gasping for air, I slowly began to regain composure. Nevertheless, I tremble inside. I want to say something meaningful to this shell of a woman – my mother who didn’t seem like my mother anymore – but I have no idea of what.
“Mother.” The single word wavers and I ignore the tears that start to flow silently down my cheeks. I can taste their saltiness as they slip over my lips. I continue now and this time my tone is more assured. “Squeeze my hand. Please.”
There was a fraction of a second where nothing happens and then I feel the cold hand stir. The fingers twitch slightly – I sigh with relief, a smile spreading wide.
However, it disappears as fast as it came. She slips her hand from mine and lets it rest solitary against the hospital blankets.
I am forced to walk away.
