Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Gabe
My phone vibrated in my pocket as I sat staring across the small table at her breathtaking face, the expression sad enough to match the heaviness in my heart. But as I reached for the phone and saw that it was my father, the stark implication made me stand, ramrod straight and terrified.
As I put it to my ear, I was already rushing through the door and down the corridor, ready to take the stairs if the elevator doors didn’t open immediately.
They didn’t. I listened to my dad’s words, broken and choppy, telling me that my mother was fading, that her heart, her big beautiful generous heart, was failing her.
And somehow it felt like it was we who were failing her, for not being able to give her our strength so she could go on, to live long and see all of her grandchildren grow up, to see the bambinos yet unborn, my children who would someday come into the world and never know their grandmother.
It wasn’t until I pushed through the door on the floor where my mother struggled for life in ICU that I realized Mia had followed me, running after me, not keeping up. I didn’t wait for her, couldn’t afford to. And wasn’t that the story of how things were between us?
Turning into Mom’s room, the scene of my mother and father sharing a kiss hit me, slammed my gut and made me groan like an animal, feeling as if the life were being sucked from me by the vacuum of loss.
But my mother was still here, even if she was being attended by hyperactive nurses, hooked up to beeping monitors, stuck with needles and her face half covered by an oxygen mask.
It covered her nose but not her mouth and she spoke as I knelt at her bedside, next to where my dad sat holding her hand and stroking her forehead with a shaky hand.
“Gabriel,” she rasped.
“Don’t talk, Ma.” Afraid of her obvious weakness and labored breathing, I looked at the doctor who stood on the other side of the bed, watching the monitor and reading the chart.
“Where’s Dr. Aoki?” I asked.
“He’s on his way,” she said.
Dad’s face was a picture of misery, so I left him alone and motioned to the doctor for a talk.
We stepped away from the bed and I saw Mia standing in the doorway, wide-eyed and resolute and filled with empathy, the kind that made me want to collapse into her arms. But I focused on the doctor instead.
“What’s the status?”
“Your mother is in heart failure. We’re keeping her going—”
“What’s the prognosis?” It was the hardest question I’d ever asked and I didn’t want to know the answer, but I had to know.
The doctor stared at me a few beats, looking sad under the professional veneer.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wyatt. Her heart is failing and there’s nothing we can do now.
The damage from the two attacks was severe, more than we’d originally thought.
She’s not a good candidate for a heart transplant even if we could find a donor in the next few hours—which we’ve investigated. ”
“Few hours?”
She nodded and put a hand on my arm. I felt Mia approach me from behind, felt her arm go around me as she came to my side.
Her presence and warmth calmed me, if only for a moment before it faded to the horrible realization that I was about to lose my mother, that Dad was about to lose his wife, that the heart and soul of our family was about to be gone forever.
“There must be something—”
Mia squeezed me.
“We’re trying to make her as comfortable as possible. You should call the rest of your family. Let them know.” She went back to her place by the bank of monitors and made some adjustments to the tubes and bag of fluid feeding her with drugs.
“I’m so sorry,” Mia whispered, her words barely touching me.
“I need to call Joe and Annalee. And Marie.” It was the last thing I wanted to do in the world, especially calling my older sister Marie, named for my mother. Next to my father, she was closest to Mom, bringing her two children to visit their grandma nearly every day.
“Jesus Christ.” I looked at Mia, didn’t care that my eyes probably glistened with tears pushing to escape. But I held back. I had calls to make.
“Do you want me to call?” She’d read me perfectly, but I shook my head.
“No. I need to do it myself.”
I started with my brother Joe, the easiest call because he was a tough SOB.
He was with Annalee at the house, had been working out of the apartment all week instead of going to his office.
He insisted on telling Annalee himself so she could cry in his arms before they got to the hospital.
I was half relieved, half heartbroken that I couldn’t hold her myself as she broke down.
Taking a deep breath, I ended the call and stared at my phone for a few seconds.
Mia still stood next to me, and Dad still sat bedside, leaning close to Mom, whispering to her as if they were having a secret conference, like they used to do when they’d talk about what they’d planned to get us for Christmas when we were kids.
Back then I’d try to listen in before Mom would shoo me away.
Now I didn’t need to know what they said, I knew well enough what it would all be about.
How my father loved my mother more than life, how he would be devastated if she left him, begging her to stay.
And she would console him. Even with her heart weak, barely hanging on, she would give whatever she had left, giving him strength, making him better, making us all better, stronger.
I made the call to Marie while I watched my mother struggle, watched the soft fading smile on her face as I told my sister that our mother was dying, begged her not to drive herself to the hospital as she sobbed into the phone.
Her husband came on as if he’d torn the phone from her hands and spoke to me briefly, somberly.
Eddie was a good man. He’d take care of her, get her here.
As the cocoon of my family surrounded me, even before they all arrived, my despair dissipated, leaving bearable sadness because it was shared.
Mia said, “Can I get you anything? Another coffee?” Her mouth hinted at a sad smile, one that would have bloomed anywhere else but here, now in this hospital room where my mother was dying. Hours to live.
I nodded. I hadn’t wanted the coffee, not really, but I needed a minute with my mom.
Mia nodded, slid a look toward the bed, and she knew.
She left and I felt the cold of her absence immediately, wondering if I’d been wrong to send her away.
But there was no right and wrong, no clear bright lines about what to do or how to negotiate heartbreak or love.
I went to my mother and knelt and she shifted her eyes from my father to me and he sat back in his chair, reluctantly letting go of her hand.
The dizziness and a sense of unreality took me for a moment, but I grasped her cold frail hand and squeezed it in both of mine and it brought me back, gave me strength as she always did, though I had no idea where it came from because she seemed to have none left.
“Gabriel.” She rasped my name and I leaned closer.
“I love you, Mom.” I kissed her forehead.
“I want you to be happy, caro. I want you to marry and have bambinos. This will make you happy. Football . . . is like a mistress, exciting, but not enough. It’s not so important as the people you love.”
“I know, Ma.” The well of emotion would have strangled me, but I concentrated on the feel of her hand in mine as I warmed it, concentrated on giving her back all the love she deserved.
“What about Mia?” She coughed and my father jumped forward. Fear leapt in me, making my heart race. The doctor who stood nearby rushed over and made an adjustment to her oxygen mask, pressed a hand on her chest. I gave her room, but I held onto her hand.
Joe and Annalee rushed into the room then and crowded me. My mother settled back, breathing hard and heavy, but the coughing spasm had stopped.
The doctor said, “She has a touch of pneumonia. Common in heart failure.” Her voice was tight, but she nodded at Joe and Annalee as they leaned in.
I let go of my mother’s hand, our eyes meeting in a silent goodbye.
I hadn’t forgotten her question. She reminded me with that knowing sad look before she turned to Joe and he bent to kiss her.
Backing away, I let my brother and sister have their chance to say goodbye.
Marie and Eddie arrived shortly after that and I ended up standing near the door, waiting for Mia to return with my coffee.
She never did.
The sudden loud relentless buzz of one of the monitors signaled the end, causing the team of nurses and doctors to rush into the room to try to save my mother, even knowing it was impossible.
But it was an instinctive response, one built into their psyches, like the one that made me hope they would be successful, that I’d have a chance to finish my conversation with her, to answer her question. What about Mia?
Even my father was forced with the rest of us to wait outside the room in the hallway, but not for long. A short time later the attending physician, whose name I didn’t remember, came out and shook her head, telling us that she was gone.
Annalee wept in my arms, collapsing there before the doctor finished speaking. I stayed strong for my sister as Joe hugged my father and Marie and Eddie held onto each other as if for dear life, crying.
Dr. Aoki appeared not long afterwards, finding us all back inside the room, staring at Mom’s peaceful body, all the machinery silent, tubes removed so that she looked like she was sleeping. We were invited to say our goodbyes, but I’d felt content that I’d already done that.