Chapter 9
Farmor!” Her name rips through my throat.
I stagger toward her, but strong arms come around me, holding me in place as medical personnel surround her bed.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Hunter says, quiet but insistent. “We need to stay out of their way.”
I buck against him, desperate to get to my grandma. But he doesn’t let go.
“Farmor!”
The doctor shouts to everyone, “Clear!” and all the medical personnel remove their hands from Farmor. I barely hear the beep of the defibrillator before her body jerks from the discharge of such a high voltage into her chest. I jolt in Hunter’s arms as if they somehow hit me with the paddles too.
“She’s going to be okay,” Hunter starts repeating over and over, his voice soft in my ear, but his arms are clamped around me—unyielding, immovable.
There’s a prolonged pause when I think my heart might stop and then, “Sinus rhythm,” someone announces, and my eyes fly to her monitor—where she indeed has a steady heartbeat again.
I sag, the fight going out of me as all the adrenaline drains from my limbs, leaving me weak. Hunter holds me up, his strong body pressed against my back, keeping me from collapsing to the ground.
Mom finally spots us and shoves past the doctors and nurses until she makes it to the hallway, then breaks into a run. The moment before she reaches us, Hunter releases me, stepping back right as her arms close around me instead.
We’re both sobbing and shaking as we curl into each other.
“What happened?” I ask.
“They don’t know yet. It was so much like . . . like that day . . .” My mom breaks off with a gasped sob.
The day my dad collapsed at the beach while we were celebrating his birthday. The day we found out he had an inoperable brain tumor.
I can’t bear the thought of losing Farmor too. Not like this. Not without warning or a chance to say goodbye. I’m the one who is supposed to have the unpredictable life expectancy. Why does everyone else I love keep collapsing and leaving me without warning?
“Thank you for bringing Liv here.” My mom glances past me to where Hunter stands, still hovering nearby, hands in his pockets.
He nods in acknowledgment.
A sharp ache tangles with uncertainty when I think about the way he insisted on helping me.
It shouldn’t mean anything—but it does. I thought I had him pegged.
He’s been nothing but varying degrees of rude since we met.
But now . . . now there’s a fissure in my armor against him, and I don’t like it.
“Mrs. Karlsson,” someone calls out.
My mom immediately releases me and spins to face the doctor striding toward us, his expression grim.
“We’re going to do some tests to confirm, but my initial guess is that your mother has suffered a stroke.
We’ll know more in the next hour or two.
Our goal right now is to stabilize her and then, if my hunch proves correct, we’ll have to start trying to ascertain the severity of the stroke.
We’ll need you and your kids to go to the waiting room for now, and as soon as we get her in a room, we’ll send someone for you. ”
His words are a steady flow, too fast to allow us to correct any of his wrong assumptions. But it doesn’t matter. The only part of what he said that means anything is the part where he thinks Farmor had a stroke.
A stroke.
I don’t know as much about strokes as I do hearts, but I know enough. I know it doesn’t have to be a fatal diagnosis.
But it could be.
“Do you know how to find the waiting room?” the doctor continues when none of us respond.
“Yes, thank you, we’ll find it,” Hunter finally speaks up.
The doctor nods and turns on his heel. Before I even realize I’m doing it, I’ve lurched forward and grabbed the doctor’s arm. “Can I see her—just for a second . . . in case . . .”
He must hear the terror in my voice, or he knows the direness of the situation is worse than he’s letting on. He nods once.
I rush to Farmor’s side, shoving my way through the -people prepping to transfer her to CT.
Seeing her lying on the gurney, so still, so white, once again brings a rush of the worst memories of my life flooding to the surface. The careful dam I’ve constructed around that horrific year falters for the second time today.
I know every minute counts, so I can’t let myself get swept away by the torrent. I force myself to stay here, now, and grab her hand in mine, leaning over to press a kiss to her soft skin. “Don’t you dare leave me too,” I whisper fiercely, my cheek against hers. “I still need you.”
I’m not sure if I imagine it or not, but I think there’s a flicker of movement in her fingers in mine. And then I’m being pulled away by a small but surprisingly strong nurse. “We have to take her up for testing. I’m sorry.”
I swipe at my cheeks and back away with a nod. They’ve already unlocked the wheels on her bed and are pushing her out of the bay, multiple people following with tubes, wires, and machines in their hands or hooked on her gurney.
“I love you,” I call out hoarsely as they push her around the corner and out of sight.
Lou first texted me as Hunter was driving us to the ER, because as soon as she walked into the empty condo with my almost-finished dinner sitting cold in various pans on the stove, she went straight to worst-case scenario: that something happened to me.
When I told her Farmor collapsed and Hunter drove me to the hospital, all she sent back was a plethora of shocked and heartbroken emoji.
I don’t know how long we’ve been sitting on hard plastic chairs in the ER waiting room, silent and cold with dread, when I hear familiar voices.
“Where is she? Do you see them?”
“It’s a waiting room full of sick people in masks. You find them!”
For the first time, as I hear my two friends, it occurs to me that I should have asked for an N95 mask before sitting in this waiting room full of sick people.
Mom gasps softly, her gaze flying to mine, eyes wide with alarm.
It’s a testament to how completely out of our minds with fear we are, that neither of us thought to protect me from the plethora of viruses here.
Mom jumps to her feet, practically sprinting to the desk, while I shrink backward in my chair, ducking my chin toward my scarred chest.
“What’s going on?” Hunter follows my mom’s mad dash with his eyes before looking to where I’m cowering as if it will do any good.
“We forgot I can’t get sick,” I whisper.
Before he can question me further, Talia and Lou see us and rush over.
“What happened?” Talia bursts out.
“What’s going on?” Lou’s eyes are wide.
“Why are you sitting in this waiting room full of germs?”
“Is Farmor okay?”
Their questions tumble out over and on top of each other—making it impossible to answer any of them. If I even had any answers to give.
“Hunter, what are you still doing here?” Lou turns to her cousin when I remain silent.
Hunter glances at me, then back at Lou. “Waiting to see if she’s okay—and if Olivia or her mom need anything.”
Lou’s eyebrows lift. “That’s thoughtful of you.”
“They weren’t going to give me the N95 mask!
” My mom returns, pushing through Talia and Lou, N95 mask in hand.
“They wanted me to take one of those flimsy, useless ones on the desk. I had to explain everything to the receptionist to get them to go get one.” With an angry huff, my mom pulls out hand sanitizer from her purse, douses my hands with it, and then gives me the mask, which I quickly put on.
“It was nice of you girls to come, but there’s no news. And we don’t know how long it will be.”
“Then we’ll wait with you,” Lou announces, plopping down in the seat next to Hunter, who sits next to me.
We all fall silent, five of us in a row on the chairs now, waiting yet again for a doctor to come tell us the fate of someone we love.
Well, except Hunter. He doesn’t love my farmor; he doesn’t even really know her. But a small, alarming part of me is grateful for the reassuring warmth and size of him next to me, so I don’t say anything about him staying.
I have no idea if it’s been minutes or hours when the same doctor who spoke to us in the trauma bay finally walks into the waiting room, scanning the chairs until he spots us.
A pit of grief forms within me, hollowing me out even before he reaches us. I’ve been in too many hospitals; I’ve dealt with too many doctors. I know what the quiet resignation on his face means.
“Mrs. Karlsson,” he says without preamble, “the tests confirmed my suspicions. Can you follow me to my office so we can talk? Your children may come, too, if you wish.”
My mom is as white as the wall behind her, but she nods and forces herself to her feet. An inexplicable numbness spreads through me—perhaps my body preparing for the blow to come.
I follow behind Mom and the doctor. I don’t even think to see if Hunter, Lou, and Talia follow or wait. It’s all I can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other, forcing myself to walk forward into a future where I may never get to tell Farmor I’m sorry and that I love her.
We file into a room that says Family Counseling Room on the plaque outside the door.
“Do you want to sit?” the doctor asks, but we both shake our heads. He nods, folds his arms, and says, “Your mother, Siv, has suffered a massive stroke.”
“It’s See-vuh,” I enunciate, cutting him off. He said her name like it rhymed with my nickname, Liv, and for some reason, I can’t handle the thought of them saying her name wrong. “It’s Swedish. She’s Swedish.”
The doctor nods, his gaze gentle. “Right, sorry. Siv has suffered a massive stroke. And I have to be completely honest with you, the initial tests don’t look promising.
She is still unconscious, and there is some swelling in her brain.
I know you must have a lot of questions, but I unfortunately really don’t have any answers.
At this point, we can only wait and see if she wakes up—and if she does, what the extent of the damage is to her cognitive and physical function.
” He pauses, letting us absorb the detonation of his words, the implosion of our lives as we know it.
“If you wish, I can take you up to see her now. She’s been admitted to the ICU. ”
I wish I had taken a seat because the numbness is receding, and in its stead, my legs begin to tremble. My stomach churns. I might throw up.
“Yes, please,” my mom says, somehow still managing to hold herself together.
The doctor nods, and we once again follow him, weaving through hallways, up an elevator, and down another hallway to the ICU. The rooms are all made of glass walls, with only curtains pulled for privacy. He guides us to one of the bays with the curtains drawn and pulls it back.
And there, on the bed, silent and unnaturally still, lies Farmor.
Mom and I sit on either side of her. When our gazes meet over Farmor’s inert form, I wonder if I look as shell-shocked and hopeless as Mom does.
I wonder if she, too, is struggling to believe Farmor will ever wake up again.