Bleach
*
Death is a long game.
There are two truths in life: death is never convenient, and a repaired, yet battered car shouldn’t drive fourteen hours at full speed.
An hour after talking to Louisa, Robert called me at his usual time, after trekking to that public park. The moment I told him about my mom, he started begging me to permit him to come home.
“I don’t even know what’s happening. It could be serious, or it could be Louie freaking out. Regardless, finish the field school.”
He sighed and provided a dimmed “Okay.”
I hated bullying him. Yet, I knew how he was. If it were up to him, he’d quit his field school, drive back to me, and be there for me until after my mother’s funeral.
In reality, that could be weeks away.
He could complete the field school and earn the credits within that time. His resume would be more substantial, and he would have references to work in his field as soon as he graduated with his master’s degree.
That was assuming my mother even passed before we moved in August.
I pulled into our apartment parking lot just slightly after midnight and sat in my driver’s seat.
I held the steering wheel as I took deep breaths, attempting to calm my mind.
One.
Two.
Then I screamed, shaking my steering wheel.
The next morning, I awoke to a world unbothered by these realizations. Children still played outside, cars still drove people to their jobs, and birds still sang.
All the while, I felt as if my soul was cracking.
I turned on the shower as I tried to think through everything.
I didn’t like my mother. I had empathy for her but never sympathy.
She was manipulative, narcissistic, and cruel. I fought every day never to allow myself to be like her. Yet now I couldn’t stop the feeling in my chest that I’d shrewdly planned my life around her death as if I were just like her.
I opened the shower door to the wall of steam as I let the water wash over me.
I needed to clean off the drive. The calcium-thick water from the hotel. The shame.
The shame because I was angry at myself for not loving my mother unconditionally. The shame because even now, I was forcing myself to get ready to go to the hospital.
Because I didn’t want to go.
When I eventually arrived at the rural hospital, I sighed, removing my sunglasses. This location was a far cry from the “top-of-the-line” hospital my mother had gone to during her first treatment and her emergency a few months ago.
It was a poignant reminder of what American healthcare can do to people.
Insurance will cover it partially. Lost your job because you’re now disabled from cancer?
Here’s Medicaid. Oh, but none of the doctors who accept Medicaid monitor your cancer closely, and you couldn’t afford the estrogen-blocking medication that wasn’t covered, so you didn’t take it—then your cancer came back, and now you’re dying?
Still Medicaid, but this version gives even less of a shit about you.
That’s how your last days end up at a rural hospital, with a crumbling sign outside and a cracked-out college dropout sleeping in a bush.
When I was a child, I was hit by a police officer on a motorcycle at a St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
My parents had trusted Jean to keep an eye on me, but the parade had no barricades, and the floats threw candy.
I, dressed head to toe in green, complete with body paint, was struck, flew about fifty feet, and landed next to the curb.
I was in the hospital, on and off, for a month.
I was at fault for not paying attention, but the police officer was on my parents’ shit list as well when they sued the city.
I always assumed the trauma of that was why I hated hospitals, but now, as my nostrils were assaulted, I realized it was something else: the smell.
Hospitals have distinct smells. They vary, though. Some, we’ll call them top-tier, have a more earthy, metallic smell, like someone has electrocuted the germs off all surfaces.
The mid-tier one, your usual ER, has a hint of chemical. It’s a weird, sickly sweet smell, married to an acidic aftertaste.
This hospital—the final one of this type—was my least favorite. It was of low quality and had an overwhelming smell of bleach. It was as if this entire building were a pool, and the cleaning crew was paid to ensure every inch was stained white.
Yet, all hospitals have something in common—this strange plastic-paper smell mixed with blood. When I was a child, I thought it was just the atmosphere. Then, I felt the catheter. I saw the potty pad beneath my little body, with splotches of blood.
This is one of the only places you pay thousands of dollars to go. You become isolated from the outside world, friends, and family. Good food. To die or be one of the few who leave better than they arrived.
When I entered the “Palliative” ward, I knew it was the former.
My mother was never leaving here.
I was ashamed that I couldn’t even tear up at the thought.