Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Elena sat in the waiting room of the Millbrook County Hospital, clutching her knees and watching the double-wide doors for signs of the doctor.
The woman at the front desk had promised they’d take her back to see her mother soon.
Exhausted from the drive, from a night of absolutely no sleep back in Queens, Elena had avoided all reflections since arriving, frightened of what she’d see there.
But the kind man who’d driven her to the hospital—James Murphy, a knight in shining armor if she’d ever seen one (not that she believed in such things after the life she’d lived)—hadn’t looked at her with any sense of disgust, which was a good sign.
The last thing Elena wanted was for her mother to take one look at her, sniff with annoyance, and tell her she’d “let herself go.”
Carmen could be a hard woman. Elena had come by it honestly.
The doctor who walked through the double-wide doors and called Elena’s name was, surprisingly, someone Elena recognized. Elena popped to her feet and touched her hair. She hadn’t prepared herself to see so many ghosts so soon.
“Hi,” Elena said, her voice wavering. The doctor before her was in her early forties, still blond and slender, with legs that seemed to remember her track-star youth. “Maxine. Wow. I can’t believe it’s you.”
Dr. Maxine Cavanaugh wore a stoic expression and shook Elena’s hand. “Hi, Elena. It’s been ages,” she said. “I’m sorry about the circumstances.”
Elena was surprised at how deep Maxine’s voice had gotten with age.
Elena wondered whether Maxine had deliberately adjusted her voice to be taken more seriously by her patients and fellow doctors.
She remembered when they were sixteen, had eaten too much popcorn, sprawled out on Elena’s living room floor, laughing so hard they’d cried.
When was the last time Elena had laughed like that?
When was the last time Maxine had? Oh, but Maxine wore a wedding ring and had the air of someone with two to four children at home.
She had a gravity that suggested she was loved.
Elena followed Maxine to her office, where Maxine poured her a cup of tea and sat across from her. Elena felt the heaviness in the room.
“I got here as soon as I could,” Elena said, although she wasn’t sure if that was true. She probably should have left Queens the minute she’d learned about her mother’s hospitalization. She’d been frozen with surprise, lurching from one emotional high to another.
Sorrow, grief, and confusion would be their own roller-coaster rides.
“Where are you coming from?” Maxine asked.
“The city,” Elena said.
Maxine bowed her head. “You were always meant for something bigger than this place.”
Elena felt a stab of guilt alongside a wave of relief. Maybe Maxine didn’t know about Elena’s biggest downfall, her greatest failure. Perhaps nobody in Millbrook did.
It meant that Carmen had kept news of it to herself, probably out of shame for her daughter. Ugh, that doesn’t feel great either, Elena thought.
Outside, snow had begun to fall in big, milky clots.
“Your mother woke up a couple of hours ago,” Maxine explained soon after that, her hands folded over the desk.
“We have several tests planned for the next few days. She seems quite confused, and that confusion is manifesting into anger and resentment. She can’t imagine why we’ve brought her here. She doesn’t remember the collapse.”
“My mother always thinks she knows best,” Elena said softly, then cursed herself for acting so cruelly. She didn’t actually mean it. She stuttered, then said, “But she’s awake. That’s good.”
“It is,” Maxine agreed.
“What do you think caused it?”
“It’s difficult to speculate. It seems she’s generally exhausted. The editor of the paper quit a few days ago.”
“Sam?” Elena furrowed her brow in surprise. Sam and her mother had worked together diligently and tirelessly for the better part of twenty years.
“He’d had enough, I suppose. It’s thankless work, especially now that the internet has changed everything,” Maxine said, bowing her head.
“Suffice it to say, your mother is in no state to work at this time. The newspaper already reported a break from publishing. And, well, it’s no secret that they’ve been suffering financially.
I hope there’s a way Carmen can get out of this without losing too much—monetarily speaking. ”
Elena sucked in her breath, surprised to feel a wave of sorrow.
The 150-year-old Millbrook Gazette was her mother and grandmother’s pride and joy.
It had been in the family for generations before that.
Through that time, they’d written about everything that had happened within Millbrook and the surrounding universe.
They’d had opinions about every technological revolution, every political scandal, and every new book.
Although her mother was the owner and operator of the paper, she still wrote and published several articles per week, all of which went through the eagle-eyed edit of the great Sam, until three days ago.
Maxine led Elena down another hallway, through a set of silver doors, and into the third doorway on the right-hand side.
Elena’s heart pounded hard in her neck. Before she let her eyes drop down to the woman in the bed between them, she counted to ten, and fixated on Maxine as Maxine spoke in low tones with the nurse.
The nurse updated Maxine on Carmen’s vitals, then disappeared through the door, her hips shimmying in a way that made her scrubs make a shush-shush sound.
When Elena forced her eyes down to her mother’s sleeping form, she nearly collapsed.
The woman in the bed—the great and iconic Carmen Vasquez—was perhaps twenty pounds lighter than she’d been five years ago, skin and bones and fatigue sketched across her sleeping face.
She looked terribly small under the covers, her hands spread out on the sheets, her nails dry-looking and slightly yellow.
That wasn’t like her either. Carmen loved getting her nails done. She’d been fastidious.
What had happened?
Why didn’t you call me and tell me you needed help, Mom?
But Elena knew why her mother hadn’t done that. It wasn’t Carmen’s way.
Elena sat down on the chair beside her mother’s hospital bed and fought to keep her tears at bay. Maxine was talking to her, but her words were all fuzzy in her ears. It wasn’t until Maxine said the terrible term Alzheimer’s that Elena yanked around to look at her.
“I’m sorry,” Elena interjected. “Did you say Alzheimer’s?”
Maxine nodded. “I did. We’re going to test for it. We can’t rule anything out.”
“She’s sixty-seven years old,” Elena shot back angrily.
Maxine pulled a chair up beside Elena and sat down, as though she wanted to give her old friend the courtesy of pretend solace. Or maybe it wasn’t pretend. Who knew?
“I’ve just learned that the nurse spoke to a few of your mother’s colleagues. They suggested that she’s been hiding symptoms over the past few months. She’s been forgetting things. Odd things.” Maxine swallowed.
“I’m sure she’s just stressed,” Elena said.
“Maybe. But it’s better to know what’s causing this, to face it,” Maxine said.
Elena imagined herself saying something similarly in the past, back when she’d been the sort of journalist who’d fought to discover the truth in every circumstance. For a little while, she’d prided herself on her drive, her intellect. But it was these very things that had led to her downfall.
She remembered an hour earlier, when the car had begun to smoke and she’d considered getting out and hitchhiking back to Queens. She couldn’t handle real life any longer. It was why she freelanced those awful articles. It was why she hadn’t made a friend in years.
It was time for Maxine to go. She had other patients, other responsibilities.
Elena thanked her and watched as she clipped the door closed behind her, leaving Elena and Carmen Vasquez alone in a room for the first time in five years.
Elena’s tongue was dry with panic. She wanted to wake her mother up and demand answers.
Why does everyone think you’re losing your memory? You, who never forgets anything?
It wasn’t long until Carmen’s eyes fluttered open.
When they did, Elena half considered leaping up and getting out of there.
She was terrified that her mother would immediately rip her in two, bringing up Syria and all the disappointments Elena had brought into her life.
Instead, the look Carmen gave Elena was one of childlike wonder mixed with fear.
She sat up in bed and blinked at Elena, her dark gray hair ruffled.
For a moment, Elena was terrified that Carmen didn’t recognize her.
And then Carmen said, “What are you doing here?” Her voice was sweet and tender, and it nearly broke Elena’s heart in two.
“Your neighbor called me,” Elena said.
“That was silly of her,” Carmen said. “She’s always worrying.”
Elena considered saying, "Mom, you collapsed at the Christmas tree lighting ceremony. That’s not nothing." But she didn’t want to embarrass her mother.
“How are you feeling?” Elena asked.
Carmen rolled her head around and took in the room. “Like I need to get out of here and get back to work.”
Elena couldn’t help but smile. “I think they’ve got things taken care of down there.
You need to rest.” It was a lie, of course.
Maxine had said the paper would stop publishing for the time being, that it couldn’t keep up now that Sam and Carmen were gone.
Small-town papers were closing all over the country, Elena knew.
Maybe it was time for this one to go, too.
Carmen gave Elena a rueful look. “I haven’t taken a day off from writing in decades.”
“I know that,” Elena said.
“And you?” Carmen demanded. “Have you stopped writing?”
I’ve stopped writing anything of value, Elena thought. I haven’t written a single word that mattered in years.
Instead, she said, “I still write every day.”
“It’s because you’re my daughter,” Carmen said, leaning against her pillow again. “It’s in our blood. It was in your grandmother’s blood, too. God rest her soul.”
Elena blinked back tears, remembering the old story.
Her grandmother Rosa had died in a car accident on Christmas Eve.
Carmen had only been two years old, which meant she’d come to know her mother through reading her old articles —her writing.
But Elena knew there was never enough material.
Carmen always craved more of the woman she’d never gotten to know.
Sometimes, Elena wondered if Rosa’s death was one of the reasons Elena and Carmen couldn’t fully get along.
Carmen didn’t understand what a genuine mother-daughter relationship was supposed to look like.
She’d put too much stock in Elena, had needed too much from her.
Elena had failed her. She’d failed everyone.
“You know, I don’t think you should go back there,” Carmen said suddenly, stiffly. She tightened her grip on the bedsheets. Her face looked petrified.
Elena furrowed her brow. “To Queens? It’s fine. It’s not like it was twenty years ago.”
“No! I don’t think you should go back to Syria,” her mother said sternly. “There’s plenty to write about here. There’s plenty of news, of stories, of connections. I don’t know why you have to run off and chase glory all the time. It’s unbecoming. More than that, it’s dangerous.”
Elena’s heart dropped into her gut. It was the same sort of stuff Carmen had said to Elena years ago, before everything had fallen apart in the Middle East, before Elena had had to return home. She swallowed.
“I understand,” Elena managed to croak, too frightened to ask her mother why she didn’t remember what she’d done.
The word “Alzheimer’s” rang through her mind again. But it was impossible that her mother had such a ravaging and horrendous disease. Carmen had lived an active, healthy, and academic life. She’d stretched her mind to every conceivable limit. Alzheimer’s wasn’t meant for her. It was too unfair.