21| The Night You Left: Part 3

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My mother waited for some time after the first knock pounded heavily against the front door

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My mother waited for some time after the first knock pounded heavily against the front door. I watched as she got up, flattened her hair in the mirror and rehearsed a calm face before she opened the door. This would look terrible if anything went wrong.


"Sheila Taylor?" The young male cop asks with a sombre expression when the door finally opens.


"This is she," Mother answers, tilting her head.


"I'm going to need the two of you to come with me," He replies, looking over her shoulder towards me.


"Is everything okay?" She asks, although she already knew what was going on. This whole pretending thing she was going to spare me wasn't working.


"He's hurt, isn't he?" I ask, the tears welling up in my eyes so fast everything goes blurry. Mother holds her hand out to me and I grab it, I needed something to keep me together.


"He had an accident, they've rushed him to the hospital." The man removes his hat from his head and places it against his chest. There was something he wasn't saying. They only took their hats off like that when people died and they had to come to tell the families. My mother lets out a strange sound, a mix between a wail and a shout. She sways and the young cop reaches out to catch her, "I'm sorry, that's all I can say." His face falls deeper and he leads my mother to the car. Quickly, I rush back inside and grab our jackets from the closet and race back to the car.


🌻🌻🌻


"I'm looking for Dean Taylor," my mother says, knocking on the glass separating the workers and herself. I glance down at the sign that clearly said not to tap the glass and give my mother a tiny nudge. I clear my throat and point to the sign a few inches away from her hand. She steps back and tries again, "I'm looking for my husband." Her voice is still stern but the nurse accepts it.


"Dean Taylor," She says, swivelling in her wheeled chair to look through the recent entries book on the counter by the fax machine. "It looks like he's currently in surgery." She says, lifting her head from the wide book.


I could sense the hostility threatening to let loose from my mother, her eye twitched slightly and she pursed her lips to speak-or yell- at the woman. "What does that mean for us?" I asked instead, saving the woman from the abuse that would have hurtled towards her if I hadn't.


"It means that you're going to have to wait until he's out of surgery to see him," She smiled. It was out of place to see someone smiling when someone I loved was in danger, it was felt like a hot slap in the fist with her left hand. I nodded and pulled my mother towards the thin cushioned waiting room chairs.


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