Authors: Kirsten Rees
Finally, a doctor came walking towards us and we were brought to outside her room. “She had internal bleeding which we’ve managed to stop for now. Your Mother is going in to surgery so you can have a few minutes with her now.” he said.
“Why does she need surgery?” “What’s wrong with her?” we all asked as one.
“We can answer your questions later, what’s important now is that we get your Mother in to surgery and save her life.” And with that he ushered us in to the room where she was laid out on a bed.
Joshua took her hand in his while Matthew and I stood by his side. She didn’t open her eyes but we each kissed her and said ‘I love you.’ When they wheeled her away in the bed, we stood shell shocked looking at each other until Matthew suggested should get some food while we wait.
As the clock on the wall moved slowly forward, I wasn’t sure whether it was a good sign or bad. If they were taking so long then the surgery must be progressing and hopefully going well. Joshua was already asleep laid across four three chairs and I could feel my eyes begin to flicker heavily when I recognized the same doctor from earlier walking towards. I kicked Josh in the leg, and he almost fell off his make-shift bed then sat straight up looking completely wide awake.
“Your Mother is out of surgery, it went very well. She’s going to be in a lot of pain and will need time to recover. You can go in but it needs to be a calm environment when she wakes up okay.” said the doctor and it felt like he was looking directly at me.
As I sat in the hospital room, the heart monitor by her side seemed to be moving too slowly or perhaps it was my heart that was going too fast. It felt like even more hours had passed but she was still unconscious. I heard the door behind me open and Joshua came back in with two cups of coffee. Matthew had gone to make some calls for work and get some food for us. I hadn’t moved a single limb in all the time my brothers were out of the room, I had panicked about waking her with only me in the room when I had been the last face she saw before she collapsed.
When Matthew returned too, I took my coffee and went to stretch my legs and get some air outside. We had been there all night and the sun was now high in the sky and I watched as cars drove past on the road nearby. People were going about their lives, going to work and visiting friends and making plans. That’s exactly what my Mother should have been doing today, when instead she was in hospital attached to a drip and it was my fault. I shouldn’t have argued with her, it had only been last year she had been in hospital and they had told her to avoid stress.
All the corridors looked the same and it felt like I was wandering through a labyrinth until I finally recognized the waiting area with the posters that I’d stared at for hours. When I walked in my Mother’s eyes turned to look at me and she smiled a little.
“You’re awake.” said I, captain obvious.
“Yes, I am and the doctor came in to check on me and says I’m doing well.” she said.
“The doctor said they found something.” I asked almost not wanting to know the answer.
“Yes, I had a cyst on my ovaries. When it ruptured there was internal bleeding and I collapsed. The surgery was to remove my ovaries, there really wasn’t much choice but it’s not as if I need them when I already have you three.” She smiled and looked at each of her children in turn. “I’m okay now, the doctors did a good job and I’ll recover in no time.” she said.
“I’m so sorry.” I said
“You will be if I come home to a house that is any other condition than how I left it. Now I want the three of you to get home and get some rest, you all look worse than I do.” she said.
We grumbled about leaving her of course, however, we were all exhausted from the worry and sleepless night that now we knew she was through the worst of it, each of our bodies seemed to be surrendering to the weariness. Joshua yawned first and then me and Matthew stifled his before going to order a strong coffee just so he could drive us home.
The next few days we followed the same routine, getting up and one of us would make breakfast and then we would drive to the hospital. After a few hours visiting, we took the same route home again, had lunch and sat around the house killing time until dinner. Then we would make the same journey to the hospital again to sit with our Mother and ask her how she was feeling all over again.
The room where my Mother was staying was pleasant enough, albeit a bit cramped with the three us sat around her bed. There was a window and so the conversation often turned to the weather and then back to our lives. It was the perfect opportunity for her to ask us anything she wanted and my brothers felt obliged to be open with her. She could have died and that fact gives a person consent to do as they please. We spoke about our Father and even Matthew seemed open to at least having a conversation with him. I did wonder, for all this ‘honesty’ if he was only trying to be kind to her while she lay in her hospital bed and if he would change his mind once she was better.
Once we were confident she was stable, we all returned to work and then took turns to visit her each day. We took her books and magazines and her favourite food and took her out in to the hospital grounds in a wheelchair for fresh air.
I wish I could say she was better, and yet she looked so fragile and pale I argued with the doctors about keeping her in. But she wanted to be at home for Christmas and even though she had lost most of her strength, she had that look in her eye that said ‘don't try to change my mind’. She was stable and had follow-up appointments booked and so I relented. So she was due to be allowed home by the end of the week. It seemed like a strange kind of serendipity that in the last few days I would be at the hospital I should bump into Adam again after all these years.
I had needed to get out for a little while and a supermarket seemed a safe place not to think. The last thing on my mind was catching eyes with a guy, nevertheless, something drew me to him. My senses were so dulled lately I hadn’t recognised him at first. As I rounded the corner out of his line of vision I realised why my eyes had followed him. Adam. Yes the very same one. Almost four years had passed since I‘d ended things with him. I stood frozen for a moment watching him from a safe distance but grateful he was absorbed in staring at the shelves in front of him. He looked different than I remembered - the youthful plumpness was gone, replaced by stronger, sharper features. A normal girl would have been drawn to him because he was very attractive – even I could appreciate that in my zombie-like state. I made my way along the adjacent aisle hurriedly picking up the few things my Mother had requested. As I walked out of the last row towards the till, Adam was standing there in front of me and I had no way of getting past him. As if sensing my anxiety, he turned back to me and his eyes met mine. He was taller, broader, almost a grown man but I still recognised that same spark in his eye as he smiled and walked towards me.
“Nina.” he said.
It wasn’t a question but I answered anyway. ”Yeah, it’s me. How are you Adam?” I asked.
“Eh yeah good. I just can’t believe you’re here, this is so strange. But good strange, I mean it’s really good, you look….good.”
I wasn’t sure what was worse, his uneasy over-use of ‘good’ or his blatant lie that I could even resemble anything close to it. I was vaguely aware of my make-up free face and the dark circles under my eyes. I couldn’t even recall the last time I had properly ran a brush through my hair since my Mother had been admitted to hospital.
“Do you live around here or something?” he asked.
“No, I was visiting someone in the hospital. I just…wanted to get some real food, you know.” I replied.
His laugh was deeper but still familiar and it would have been so easy to join in but I didn’t have it in me.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like you could do with a cup of coffee. The real kind, not the watered down tar they give you those hospital machines.” he said.
I hesitated, unsure if this was opening a can of worms I really couldn’t cope with but he seemed to read my mind.
“It’s just coffee.” he reassured me.
As the door to the café opened, the warmth and inviting smell were such a welcome change from the clinical wards and my too-quiet home. We ordered large mugs of simple black coffee, which was probably an unusual order in a place that offered so many variations of the drink. We had barely made ourselves comfortable on a large couch – with an obvious gap between us – before he spoke.
“So you wanna talk about it?” he asked.
Straight to the point, just like I remembered. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was meant what I was doing at the hospital or what had happened with us, but I picked the easier one to open up about. Or rather the option that least involved talking about myself.
“It’s my Mother. She was collapsed and they had to take her in for surgery.” I said in to my coffee mug.
“I’m so sorry Nina.” He replied.
“She got through, my Mother’s always been stronger than she looks and the doctors say she’ll make a full recovery after some time to mend.” I said and then stupidly looked up and caught his eyes. They were full of concern and I noticed he had edged a little closer to me. So I continued hurriedly and told him about the doctor’s opinion and how my Mother complained we were fussing over her too much. At some point while I spoke he took my hand in his and I didn’t pull away instantly.
It had been so long since anyone had held my hand in that way that felt like he genuinely cared how I was feeling. When I held my Mother’s hand and every time I hugged Joshua all I felt was an overwhelming guilt for causing the stress that had put her in hospital.
We talked until I noticed it had begun to darken outside and realised I had been away from the hospital for over an hour and my brothers would be heading home soon and wondering where I had gone. I slid my arms into my coat, wrapped my scarf around me and gestured for the bill. A few moments of silence passed and I wasn’t sure what to say – we had discussed my Mother and then every other safe topic in both of our lives, without once mentioning the last time we had seen each other and it hung there in the moment. Thankfully, the waitress chose that second to return with our bill and I pulled myself together.
“Hey, thanks for coffee and letting me unload all my drama on you.” I said with a small smile.
“No thanks necessary. My only alternative was dealing with my washing, which thanks to a few hours of procrastinating with you, I can now put off ‘til tomorrow.” he replied.
“Well I hope I haven’t left you shirtless.” The words were out of my mouth just as an old memory of him came to mind and I had to look away. “Anyway I have to get going, my brothers will be wanting to get home soon and my Mother’s coming home in a few days so we have some stuff to get organised.” I said.
“Can I drop you somewhere?” he asked.
“No, I’m okay thanks her ward is just on the other side of the building, it’s only a few minutes walk and I could do with some air before I go back in.” I replied.
That wasn’t the only reason I needed some air, but I just returned his smile.
“Listen could I ask a little favour, my phone battery died and I just need to make like the quickest call – would you mind?” he asked.
I forced myself not to flinch when his fingers grazed mine as he took my phone from my hand. I watched him enter a number and then heard a ringtone I didn’t recognise coming from somewhere in his jacket and I realised he had called his own phone and I’d been tricked.
A few days later my Mother came home and was able to get in to her own comfortable, double bed which at least was in a more pleasant room than the one she had in the hospital with its bare, magnolia walls and the constant sound of machines and people walking passed. She fell asleep as soon as she had finished the soup I had made for her and slept soundly until early afternoon the following day.
We had a very quiet Christmas and New Year at home, just the four of us and Oscar and it was one of the hardest. I couldn’t help notice the difference from the previous time she had come home from hospital. She was less eager to return to her normal life or get back to work so soon. Her efforts were labored both from the pain of her stitches and the drowsy effect of the medication she was on. Last time she had demanded to do everything herself, whereas, she seemed content to let my brothers and I care for her. I knew then she had been frightened by what had happened, and I worried it had changed her and that she had lost the strength she had always had.
Over the next month, in the few hours here and there that I could bear to be away from my Mother and I just needed to get out of the house and breathe new air, Adam would pick me up and just drive for miles. He listened when I wanted to talk, and patiently answered all of my questions and spoke about his life when I didn’t. Perhaps we would become sort of friends like Ali and I had become. I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me but I thought it was probably more than polite conversation.
And one afternoon in early March he confirmed my thoughts when he suddenly pulled me to his chest and breathed me in. I didn't resist as he titled my head up to face him and gently kissed my mouth. And then, nothing. Not a glimmer of emotion in me or even a physical reaction as his kiss became a little more intense for a moment and then he pulled away. A memory came to my mind and I thought of my life in Italy and wondered if I could be happy again. I wasn’t thinking of Nika specifically, but I felt ashamed of myself for thinking of something else in that moment and I blushed. He brushed my check gently, probably thinking the heat under my skin was from his kiss. I almost wished it had been.