Chapter 22 Samson
What did I do? How did everything suddenly change?
I look down at the dirt and leaves still coating my shoes. All I could think running through the trees was that I couldn’t trip or fall. How if I fell she wouldn’t live. I’d be the one responsible for her dying. I had to keep running and not stumble. I had to reach that pay phone.
A man is pushed past in a wheelchair. He has an oxygen mask on his face. An IV. His knees are bruised.
The smell of plastic. Rubber. Smoke.
Why do we live so far from everyone? That was my next furious thought. How can it be that the EMTs had so much trouble reaching Mom? What made us move so far from help?
I want to see her, but I am afraid.
The nurse tells us she’s awake. She can talk to us now.
The worst thing I have ever seen in my life is her in the bath. The looseness of her facial features. The color of the water.
The second worst thing was the look on Dad’s face.
I had never once seen my father scared.
He doesn’t scare.
Three doctors and nurses run through and almost knock me over.
There is someone behind a curtain being worked on. Lots of stern voices. Code words. Bleeping. Nurses running out again to collect things in plastic wrappers.
My own mother.
I did not trip. I found the phone. I helped them locate our boat. When they reached her Dad had covered her with two towels, and when they lifted her onto their gurney the towels fell away and I cried out and ran to put them back in place.
Her lips were blue.
A nurse walks past me and smiles. She’s carrying take-out coffee cups.
I talked to the doctor with Dad. We sat in a narrow room with two chairs and a table and an artificial plant.
There was a small window high on the wall and the doctor kneeled on the floor in front of us.
I did not expect him to do that. He was older than Dad, much older, looked like Sidney Poitier.
He kneeled down and told me she was very sick.
Dad had already handed them the empty bottles. He told me I had been brave.
I asked Dad, “Why did she do this to us?”
He just looked away and shook his head.
For a man so gifted with language, he had no words to share.
I had never imagined in my worst nightmares that this might be possible. I had conjured up awful possibilities, terrible things, tragedies, but never Mom, never her. Not Mom. It was always me and her helping someone, or helping each other, calling the police after, running away.
It was always me and her at the end.
The nurse with the accent appears and smiles. She wears an ID badge clipped to her uniform. Her dark hair is held in a bun. She ushers me through.
My stomach is heavy. Pulling down.
I push through another flimsy curtain.
“Sammy,” she says, her voice a croak.
I walk to her, gently, calmly. I want to run to her but she looks so small.
“Mom.”
She nods and starts to sob.
“It’s OK, Mom. We’re here now.”
She wipes her face and beckons me closer.
“What is happening, Sammy?”
I recoil slightly. My mouth falls ajar. I look at the nurse, then at Dad.
“It’s OK, Mom. We’re going to make it all better.”
She sighs.
She closes her eyes.