Where the Willows Weep

Bone-Tired

Chapter 14: Bone-Tired

Avery

Ever since the day I found out my mom had cancer I've felt like the ground was dissolving beneath my feet. I became paranoid, constantly waiting for the news that would make me fall through the unsubstantial floor to my death. But then I met Noah and the world seemed to stabilize around me. My mom was looking better and everything was going really good for once. And then suddenly it wasn't. 

The world was crueler than I gave it credit for. It waited until my constant paranoia had abated to hit me with my biggest fear. 

Monday morning I woke up to a strangled sound of pain. The blood drained from my body as I ran to the living room. My mom lay crumpled in a pale heap on her bed, arms and legs moving jerkily. She was seizing.

I knew what I was supposed to do in case this happened. I had read articles and books and talked to doctors about it. And yet now that the information was needed it completely fled my mind. All I could remember was something about people choking on their own vomit while having a seizure. 

I turned my mother's twitching body onto her side all the while trying to fight against my panic. I reached for the phone to dial for an ambulance with shaking fingers. This couldn't be it. I wouldn't let it be. 

The ambulances arrived what felt like hours later. My nerves were so strung out that I almost collapsed upon their arrival. It was hard to step back from my mother's no longer twitching body and let them take over. The only thing assuring me she was alive was the heartbeat I could feel in her chest. The paramedics had to forcibly remove me from her side and every inch they put between us felt like a slow death. 

Now, hours later, I sit in my mother's hospital room. She's okay. The paramedics were able to stabilize her and have assured me multiple times since that she will wake up. However, I know that with good news must come bad. They'll have to test her to see what caused the seizure, if the tumors in her brain are getting worse. I want it to be a fluke, but cancer's a fucking bitch. 

My tired eyes stare at blank walls without seeing. My mother's faded body lies so still in her bed, the beeping monitors the only thing declaring life. Seeing the person I love most in the world slipping from my fingers was the hardest thing I've ever been through. Distantly I wonder if I wouldn't feel like my very soul has been torn from my body and ripped to pieces if I wasn't alone. Maybe if there was someone else to hold the pieces together. Maybe if my brothers or my father were around then I would be able to get some rest for once, knowing that there was someone else to look over her. As it was there was only me. 

Days and nights go by like this. I hardly move from the chair beside my mother's bed. School and the rest of the world mean nothing to me here. My mother wakes up after the first day, but she's so groggy she hardly recognizes me. And then there is test after test the doctor's put her through day after day, all making her more exhausted then the last. Whenever she isn't being tested, she's sleeping. And I'm there watching over her always.

I don't leave for food or to take a shower or for anything other than occasional quick trips to the bathroom. The nurses beg me to leave for just a little while to take care of myself, but I adamantly refuse. I'm afraid if I leave her side for even a single second that she'll disappear forever. They say when someone is close to death their life flashes before their eyes. What they don't tell you is that when you see someone you love close to death their life flashes before your eyes, too. I saw it all. Every moment with my mother until now. And it only made me that much more afraid to lose it all. Eventually the nurses stop arguing and occasionally bring me meals that they know I won't eat.