Chapter 6 Molly
Molly
When she comes out of surgery, the doctor says there’s no way of knowing what the damage will be. That is, if she even regains consciousness. I ask if I can see her and am told that one family member is allowed into the ICU. Jesse squeezes my hand. “I’ll be right here.”
My mother is still and small, hooked up to wires and monitors. Her head is wrapped in a white bandage. There are still flecks of blood on her neck.
“I thought we went over this,” I say softly, sitting on the chair beside the hospital bed. “If you love someone, you stay.”
Tears narrow the funnel of my throat. I try to memorize the roots of my mother’s dyed hair, peeking out at the crown of her head; the sweep of her lashes against her pale cheek; the bow of her upper lip.
The sprays of fine lines at the corners of her eyes and bracketing her mouth.
She did not get to see me grow up; I want her to see me grow old.
“Come back,” I say, my voice small.
It is the prayer I used to whisper at night as a child, the wish I made on every birthday candle, the dream in my mind when the clock read 11:11. But miracles rarely strike twice.
“You’d think I’d be better at this,” I choke out. “I’m supposed to be an expert at preparing for the worst.” But what I do not let myself acknowledge, when I am at work, is that when it happens, it hurts like hell.
“You can’t leave,” I beg her. “You just got here.”
I remember something she said about her sister, whom she had loved more than anything: The world was magic, because she was in it.
Tears slide down my cheeks. I thread my fingers with hers. Her hand is limp in mine.
Sometimes you get a second chance. But no one tells you how brief it may be.
This is all a joke, a terrible, thoughtless joke; she is going to be fine.
I was too young to remember my father murmuring that refrain.
I imagine the thousands of family members all winging that same thought skyward after 9/11, all those fragile hopes braided together into something stronger.
I think of all those thousands of family members, each replaying a conversation they’d had with a loved one that morning—-Have a good day.
Can you pick up milk on your way home? For God’s sake, I don’t have time to argue about this right now—-not knowing it would be their last.
I have never been religious, but I find myself silently snapping at a higher power. Why bring her back to me, if you were always planning to rip her away?
Here’s my dirty little secret: I could be the best chief of Emergency Preparedness in the country—-in the world—-but tragedies will still happen. Floods rise. Planes crash. People die. Nothing I do, nothing, can ever stop catastrophes from coming. But that’s not why I do it.
It’s to preserve the moments in between. To make sure people have the space and the safety to be intentional, so those days aren’t wasted. I think of the weeks I pushed Georgia away because I was so angry when she first returned. Well, I will never get that time back.
In the field of emergency preparedness, the reason we celebrate survivors is not because of the one tragic day they persevered, but because of all the ordinary days that they still have to come. How you died defines you for a moment. How you lived . . . well, that defines you forever.
I turn my mother’s hand over in my own, and I say the words I shouldn’t have waited to say. “I love you.”
There are finite grains of sand in your hourglass. There’s no guarantee your hourglass won’t shatter. Don’t blink.
I let go of her hand and bend forward, my body a question mark bowed with why? and how could you? until my forehead touches the hospital blanket. I cry for everything I haven’t gotten a chance to tell her yet.
I imagine the slightest twitch, a finger catching in the red ribbon of my braid where it snakes on the bed. Her voice so soft, I might be dreaming it.
I love you, too.
Think of someone you’ve lost.
You think you would trade anything to hear their voice again, or to see their smile. To hold them, or be held by them, just one more time.
You would be right.