Chapter 47
forty-seven
Zeke
Idon’t know how I made it here. The whole drive’s a blur. I could’ve run every red light on the way down here, but I wouldn’t even know. My heart has been exploding in my chest since the second Declan mentioned my mom, and now that I’m here, I feel like it’s ready to break free.
“Excuse me.” I tap on the front desk, but both workers are on the phone. The one on the right holds up a finger as if she’s telling me one moment.
One fucking moment. Are you kidding me? You’re leisurely talking on the phone while my mom’s in one of these rooms, possibly clinging to her life.
“Excuse me,” I repeat, maintaining what little composure I have left, but she lets out a long sigh and rolls her eyes. Then, she turns her chair to look the other way and continues her conversation. “Un-fucking believable.”
I push myself off the front desk and head down the halls, but I have no idea where to even look for her.
She could be in one of these rooms… or in the ICU…
or surgery. I have no information about what happened.
It might have nothing to do with her cancer.
She could’ve fallen down the steps or cut her finger while cooking, and Declan just didn’t get the full story.
Maybe this whole thing has been blown out of proportion.
Or, my biggest fear has finally come, and I’m losing her. Once and for all.
“Excuse me.” I try to stop a nurse as he passes by, but his eyes stay glued onto his fucking clipboard.
“Excuse me!” I say it a little louder, hoping to get someone's attention. Anyone’s attention.
I can’t breathe.
It’s like my lungs are being squeezed tighter and tighter with each passing breath, taking away any possible oxygen remaining, and I can’t breathe.
I think it’s happening again. I can’t remember the last time I had a panic attack. It might’ve been the night I found out she was sick.
Or when it came back the first time.
All I know is I haven’t felt like this in a while.
The shakes running through my body, the numbing tingles in my fingers, my throat closing up, and my vision blurring.
I hate it.
And I don’t even remember how to deal with it. Every time I try to slow my breathing and relax my body, I only make it worse.
“Zeke?” I blink open my eyes to see Dr. Sanchez standing in front of me.
“Oh my god.” I jump up, the feeling coming back into my limbs, almost like my body knows I have something more important to deal with than my own emotions.
“I’ve been trying to get someone to help me, and no one stopped to do anything.
It’s like I didn’t fucking exist to any of them.
All I was trying to do was find my mom and…
where is my mom? I got a call, well I didn’t, I was out, and I missed, I just, I came as soon as I heard and—”
“Son, slow down.” He places a hand on my shoulder. “We should get you some water. Sit down, talk.”
“Talk?” I scoff. “Why? I just need to see my mom. That’s why I’m here. If I had been here to talk, I would’ve just called you back and saved a trip. I don’t need to talk to you. I need to see my mom.”
“Zeke.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve done everything we can for her, but she doesn’t have much longer.”
My eyes fill with tears, blurring my vision. She doesn’t have much longer. I purse my lips, nodding like I understand what he’s telling me.
I don’t.
How the fuck am I supposed to understand this?
“I just,” I sniffle, “she was fine. I mean, s-she was getting better. How does this happen?”
“Better?” he asks.
“She came home. She was home because she was in remission. She’s been fine. She told me that everything had come back clean at her last appointment. That was, that was a week ago. How does this happen in a week?”
“Zeke, I think we should go sit down.”
“No! I don’t need to sit down; I need you to tell me how you didn’t catch this at her last appointment. Did you guys just not care? And now, because you fucked up, she’s out of time?!”
“She was never in remission, Zeke.”
His sentence is a knife in the heart.
“What?” I gulp.
“We didn’t send her home. She asked to leave.”
My eyebrows furrow as my chest feels tighter.
“What do you mean she asked to leave?”
“In early January, we discovered that the cancer spread to her bones, and in early February, we realized she was no longer responding to treatment. It had actually gotten worse. We told her she had six months if she was lucky. Your mom said she didn’t want to die in the hospital. She wanted to be home.”
“No.” I shake my head. “You’re lying. S-she wouldn’t keep that from me. She wouldn’t give up.”
“She didn’t give up, Zeke. If your mom wasn’t a fighter, she never would’ve made it this far.”
“How long does she have?” I don’t know if I even want to hear the answer, but it’s the only question I can think of right now.
“It’s hard to tell,” I swear I hear a small crack in his voice. Like telling me this information is just as hard for him to say as it is for me to hear.
“Can I see her?” My voice cracks, and I cover it with a sniffle. He squeezes my shoulder.
“Yeah.”
He pats my back before leading me down a long hallway. We pass another waiting room, which is located right outside the ICU. Unlike the other waiting room, this one’s empty.
My mom hasn’t been in the ICU in a while. She had a health scare a couple years ago where she ended up in the ICU for a few days, but most of her hospital stays have taken place in the same room. Most of her hospital stays have just been to receive treatment, not because she’s—
I guess, in some way, she’s been dying for the last five years. The cancer never leaves her body long enough for us to feel relieved. It waits until we’re hopeful it’s gone for good and then returns.
It’s like her cancer’s mocking us.
“If you need me, tell one of the nurses to page me, and I’ll be here as soon as I can.” He forces a smile as we stop outside of a hospital room. “Even if it’s just to talk, okay?”
I nod, and then I watch him leave.
But I don’t walk inside. I can’t. My body is numb. I can’t move. Because if I go in there and see my mom, if I see her hooked up to all the machines, it makes this real. If I leave right now or stay out here, I can pretend for just a little longer. I can pretend that everything is okay.
I can pretend that she’ll be here for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or my next birthday. When the truth is, she might not even make it to next week.
“Zeke.” Her voice is a whisper; I can barely hear her over everything happening in the ICU. When I turn toward her room, I notice the break between the curtain and the window, a small sliver that you would only see if you were paying attention.
A sliver that revealed my position to her.
“Hi,” I mumble, finally turning the corner and entering her room. I’m used to seeing her hooked up to machines, but this time it feels different.
“How long have you been standing out there?” I scratch the back of my neck.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice breaks as I wipe away the snot dripping from my nose.
“Oh baby,” she cries, reaching her arms out, allowing me to fall into them. “You’ve just been so happy recently; I didn’t want to ruin that.”
“Mom,” I pull away, sitting in a chair near her bedside, “this isn’t something you can hide from me. You’re dying, Mom. I don’t understand how you thought keeping this from me was better than telling me the truth.”
“I’m sorry.” She brushes a hand across my cheek. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you known?” I ask. “When did you find out?”
“On your birthday,” she whispers. “I knew in January that it had spread, but we were hopeful we could get it under control. That morning, I got some results back and, well, it wasn’t good.
They told me since I was no longer responding to treatment and was actually getting worse that, it was only a matter of time. And I just wanted to be home.”
“You didn’t even try to fight it?”
“The chemo wasn’t working, honey. If it had been, there would’ve been improvement. I wasn’t going to spend my final moments in a hospital room.”
“So much for that.”
“Yeah, fucking Marjorie just had to stop by today.” She laughs… she fucking laughs.
“That’s not funny, Mom. If she didn’t show up, you’d be dead right now, and I never would’ve gotten to say goodbye.”
“Zeke,” she sniffles, “I never wanted you to have to say goodbye. I wanted you to remember me outside of this place. I’ve been here so long I just wanted to go out on my own terms. Not attached to machines and hearing that god awful beeping.”
“That god-awful beeping is proof that you’re alive, Mom.”
“But I’m not. Not really, honey. I’ve made my peace with this, with all of this; I was hoping if I went without you knowing that the cancer returned that—”
“That what? That I’d feel better if I wasn’t with you during your final moments?
That I’d be relieved I didn’t have to watch you take your final breath?
Did you think it’d be easier for me to get a phone call telling me you're dead than me being here, holding your hand while you went to the other side?! When I found out something was wrong, I drove straight here. I don’t even know how I got here, Mom.
And I thought I didn’t get to say goodbye the whole way.
I kept questioning whether I told you I loved you the last time I saw you.
I kept questioning what my last words had been to you.
I kept thinking I’d show up here, and you’d be gone, and I wouldn’t know what to do.
So, no, Mom, not getting to say goodbye wouldn’t have been better.
Being left in the dark isn’t better than being able to prepare for what’s to come. ”
I swat away my tears.
“There’s no right way for this to happen, Mom, because no matter what, I lose you.
Whether I’m sitting beside you, holding your hand, or getting a phone call from the hospital or Dad, I lose you.
No matter what, you’re gone. There’s no right way to find that out.
There’s no right way to say goodbye because I don’t want to say goodbye.
I don’t want to lose you. I don’t know who I am without you, and I’m not ready to find out.
Mom, I need you. I-I don’t, I don’t know how to live without you. ”
She squeezes my hand as I lay my head down on her bed and cry. I don’t know the last time I cried like this. It’s not often that someone cries because they feel like their world is ending. But mine is.
I don’t know what life’s like without my mom. I don’t know what life’s like not taking care of her. I’ve been with her through doctors’ appointments and treatments since I was sixteen. What do I do when she no longer has them?
What do I do when she’s no longer here?
How do I keep going when the one person I’ve lived my life for, for the last five years, is no longer here?
“I love you.” She runs her fingers in circles on my back, something she used to do when I was a kid, the only thing that used to bring me comfort.
But it doesn’t.
Not this time.