Chapter 11
The next eighteen hours are a blur of waiting-room chairs, choking down awful hospital food, and weary--faced doctors delivering news that is nothing more than fancy lingo for, We don’t know if she’s going to make it or not.
My brothers drop by when they can, once or twice between classes and work, but neither of them is there when we finally end up back in the ICU with Farmor, resuming our vigil at her bedside.
This time, her hair is partially shaved, and they’ve fitted her with a specialized headpiece to protect her brain—as there is merely some mesh and a flap of skin between it and everything else.
We’ve had to temporarily close the bakery since neither of us is willing to leave her side, and none of our part-time employees can bake. Whatever financial problems the closure may cause is something I’ll worry about if—when—Farmor gets through this.
I don’t know how to wrap my mind around the fact that instead of shaping kanelbullar beside Farmor in the kitchen, I’m sitting on a hard plastic chair, watching her chest rise and fall, inspecting the monitors that show the difference between life and death.
They’ve officially declared that she’s in a coma, and they don’t know when—or if—she’ll wake up.
Everything hurts. My back, my head, my heart, the inside of my bones—as if my very marrow is rejecting the reality that we are losing Farmor now too.
I’ve only felt this kind of soul-deep weariness twice in my life before: Before my transplant, when my body was being forced alive by the LVAD machine, and the weeks and months after Dad died, when my mom became a shadow of her former self, unable to function without the love of her life.
I took care of my brothers. I made the meals.
I cleaned. Taking on all that at thirteen, while still going to school, was crushing.
But the worst part was trying to convince my mom to eat, trying to get her to bathe or change her clothes or get out of bed at all.
I barely slept during that time and could barely eat myself.
And somehow, here I sit, in an ICU yet again. I should have become a doctor, because I am clearly destined to spend much of my life in hospitals—then, at least, I might have felt as if I had some sort of power to do something.
The helplessness is debilitating.
“You have to go.” My mom’s voice is jarring. It’s the first thing she’s said to me in an hour.
“What?”
Our eyes meet across Farmor’s still body.
“You have to go home. You need to rest; you need your medicine.” Mom’s eyes are circled by dark bruises. “I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to stay healthy. I can’t handle it if you end up—” Her voice cracks. “I understand that you’re scared to leave, but you know I’m right.”
I clench my teeth together to keep the sudden rush of anger from exploding out of me. It’s not her fault I’m incapable of going for days with little to no sleep, crappy food, and missing doses of my medications. “I can’t. I can’t leave her.”
“You have to, Livvy.” She reaches across the bed to clutch my hand. “You need to sleep. To eat a real meal or two. You can come back tomorrow. And I promise to call if anything changes.”
I have to look away from her, from Farmor, staring at the monitors instead, where her heart and brain activity are being mapped until the burning in my eyes subsides.
Hunter brought me my meds last night and this morning.
Lou dropped by this afternoon with the ones for tonight—but she forgot one of them, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her because she was going out with Chris the Banker again, and I didn’t want to ruin her night.
My mom is right. I can’t afford to miss a dose, especially with so little sleep and having been exposed to so many potential illnesses while I’ve been here—even with the N95 masks I wear everywhere outside of the ICU room.
“Fine,” I whisper, still not looking away from Farmor’s vital signs.
“I promise if anything changes, I’ll call,” my mom insists.
I pull my hand out of my mom’s grip and stand up. “Sure,” I say, but I don’t meet her gaze. Because she’s made that promise before.
I can tell she starts to cry, but I still can’t look at her as I gather my purse, phone, charger, and toothbrush Hunter brought me.
If I have to leave, I’m not walking out of the hospital a sobbing wreck.
I hold it in, hold myself together—refuse to think of the last hospital room, the last time she made me that promise.
“I’ll be back in the morning.”
The ride home in the Uber is silent, thankfully. He’s not one of those drivers who tries to make awkward conversation, but the silence also gives me far too much time for my brain to replay the last two days on an endless loop.
The moment I saw Farmor in the ER.
The way her body started seizing.
Her shaved head and ghastly pale face, so still, so foreign.
Hunter’s surprising kindness.
I shiver when I remember how our eyes met across the waiting room when he came back with my medicine, the way it felt like he was looking into me, seeing far too much.
As the Uber pulls up at our condo, I fight the urge to flee rather than go through that door and potentially face Hunter since he still has no furniture or appliances in his half of the duplex, knowing the kind, helpful man I saw a glimpse of will most likely be gone, erased by the absence of a crisis.
I don’t want to let my guard down with him.
I don’t want this confusion about my feelings toward him gnawing at me.
Luck is on my side; when I unlock the door and walk in, there’s no sign of him, and Lou must still be on her date.
I’m not sure if he’s in the other half of the duplex or gone, and I don’t wait to find out, rushing up to my room and quietly closing the door.
I need a shower, but when I look at my bedraggled reflection in the mirror and then drop my gaze to the prescription bottles lined up on my dresser, everything that’s happened hits all at once.
Stifling grief overtakes me, pressing in from all sides.
It’s all I can do to stay standing long enough to use some face wipes, take the pill Lou forgot to bring me, peel off my leggings, and crawl into bed in my T-shirt.
Hot, choking tears soak into my pillow through my hair. I silently shake, all my terror and sorrow swallowing me whole. The assault never seems to end, fresh waves crashing over me again and again. I have no idea how much time has passed when the torrent finally starts to wear itself out.
That’s also the moment I hear the murmur of voices outside my door.
“She came back?” Hunter whispers.
“Yeah, her mom texted me that she sent her home about an hour ago,” Lou says softly. “But she’s worried about her.”
It’s a testament to how completely exhausted I am, that as my crying finally stops, leaving me boneless with fatigue, I can barely keep my eyes open as I strain to hear them.
“I would have gone back and given her a ride if I’d known she was coming home,” Hunter says.
“Be careful, or she might realize you actually are a nice guy after all.”
“I used to be a nice guy, Lou. I’m not the person you knew before the accident.”
“Yes, you are, Hunter. The only person who can’t see that is you.” There’s sadness in Lou’s voice.
It makes something in my own chest crack open. I wish I knew what he’d been through—who he was before and why he’s so different now.
I wait, but either she offended him so much he left, or they moved too far away for me to hear anything else.
As sleep finally claims me, Lou’s words run through my mind over and over again. Yes, you are, Hunter. The only person who can’t see that is you.
We pull into Farmor’s driveway. The sunset has faded, the sky turning a deep blue, as dark as the bruises beneath my mom’s eyes.
She puts the car in park but sits unmoving in the driver’s seat, her fingers clenched around the steering wheel.
I am frozen next to her, my brothers’ soft snores and her uneven breathing the only sounds.
Should I wait in the immobilized silence until she is ready?
Or should I gently shake my brothers awake and start taking our luggage into our new home?
Before I have the chance to decide, the front door opens. Suddenly, Farmor is there, standing beside our car.
Dimly, I realize this is a dream, a memory I’m being forced to relive.
“Are we already here?” Cameron yawns from behind me, his hair sticking up on one side exactly as it did that day all those years ago.
“Welcome home! I made Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes for dinner!” Farmor declares.
You didn’t. You can’t. You’re in a hospital. You’re dying. This isn’t real.
“This isn’t home!” Cameron shouts.
“It is now, buttface. Don’t make Mom feel bad,” Cory yells back.
But it’s too late. Mom is crying again, hunched over the wheel of the car, the individual knobs of her spine visible through her thin T-shirt.
I try to hug her, but my seat belt traps me, chaining me to my chair.
I fumble with the release, but it won’t unlock.
“Mom, it’s okay,” I say, over and over. A whisper that becomes a shout as her tears fall and fall until the car starts to fill with the unfathomable ocean of her grief that threatens to drown us all.
“Mom!” I scream as the sea of tears rises to our necks.
She jerks and looks at me, her blue eyes hollow, her voice empty of anything except her pain.
And suddenly, she’s gone, along with the car, my brothers, and the tears. Instead, I stand in the room where I lived after we moved in with Farmor.
“Ah, sotnos, what a heavy load you are carrying.” Farmor’s Swedish accent makes her words sound musical, especially her nickname for me: sweetheart. I love that about Farmor. And the way she always smells of brown sugar and butter from baking cookies and cinnamon rolls every day.
“It looks heavier than it is,” I say.
Farmor’s arm comes around my shoulder, pulling me gently but inexorably into her soft, sweet-smelling body. I stare up at the star stickers I put on the ceiling when I was eight. They used to glow, but now they are only off-colored shapes above me, drained of their former magic.
“I’m sorry, sotnos.”
And suddenly she’s gone, leaving me alone in a room that goes entirely black. A tight ball of pain forms in my chest, white-hot and suffocating.
Then in the corner—a hospital bed. But it’s not Farmor; it’s my dad lying in it. Gray-faced, lips bloodless, cheeks sunken.
Don’t leave me, Daddy. Don’t go!
I try to scream the words, but they’re trapped, cutting my throat like I’ve swallowed shards of glass.
I bolt up in bed, the half-gasped scream from my nightmare caught somewhere between my heaving lungs and racing heart, leaving me sweaty and shaken. I fumble for my phone.
2:34 a.m. And no notifications.
I consider texting my mom but then set the phone back down without unlocking it.
If I text her at two thirty in the morning, she’ll panic that something is wrong with me.
I have no choice but to trust that this time, she’ll keep her word.
With a sigh, I wipe the sweat off my forehead, flip my damp pillow over, and lie down again to try to go back to sleep.