Chapter 32
The cab ride back to the Marriott was only eighteen minutes long, but it felt like forever. I watched the minutes change on the digital counter on the dashboard of the taxi, wishing I could just call my mom and let her know I was okay.
Nothing was worse than worrying her.
We passed the pink church, the donkey sanctuary, the airport, everything, all in reverse.
Finally, we pulled up around the square, and the taxi driver delivered me safely to the automatic sliding glass doors of the Renaissance Ocean Suites.
I pushed the elevator button, but it took too long, so I gave up and ran up the four flights of stairs.
By the time I got to the fourth floor, I had to catch my breath, but the fast-paced walk down the hall to our corner room slowed my heart rate enough to make it there without panting.
I could only imagine how ridiculous I must have looked, bringing the term “walk of shame” to new heights in my wrinkled white dress with my hair still damp from last night’s sexcapades.
I fished my hotel key card out of my purse, held it up to the door to unlock it, and leaned hard on the heavy plank of wood to open it.
The first thing I noticed was the television. It was humming a high-pitched sound that was annoying at best and disarming at worst.
“Mom?” I called out.
The second thing that stood out was that the room wasn’t as I was expecting it to be. My mom was particular about cleaning up after herself, so I fully anticipated walking into a situation with our luggage packed up and sitting by the door, ready to go. But that wasn’t the case.
I poked my head into the bedroom. The bed was made but she wasn’t in there. “Ma?” I called again. Probably in the bathroom, I figured.
I had to turn off that obnoxious television sound.
I walked out to the living space, where my foldout bed was still open, as if awaiting my return.
The foldout was decidedly less made than the master bed, but that was to be expected, since I wasn’t much of a neat freak.
Everything in my area was as I’d left it, which was curious, given my lateness and our impending flight time.
I picked up the remote and shut off the TV.
The silence that followed was deafening.
A vent fan was on in the bathroom. It was automatic: you turned on the light, and the vent fan came right on with it. So I went up to the door and knocked. “Hey, Mom? You okay?”
I wiggled the doorknob. It was unlocked. I didn’t want to embarrass her if she was on the toilet, so I just opened it a crack and looked away. “Ma? You good?”
No answer.
I pushed it open a little more but the door stopped abruptly when it was about a third of the way open, as if it was jammed on a wet towel someone left on the ground.
I looked down.
It was her foot.
My mother was on the floor, crumpled up in her nightgown, lying in a puddle of—I inhaled—urine.
Everything that happened after that was a blur. I launched into a refrain of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God” and went to shake her awake, but her skin was cold to the touch.
Like, really cold.
And her body was stiff. Rigid.
I covered my mouth, immediately overwhelmed with nausea.
Somehow, I managed to make it over to the phone. I hit the button for the front desk.
“Ocean Suites front desk. How may I help you?”
“I need help. Please. An ambulance,” I stuttered.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
“It’s not me. It’s my mother. She’s—she’s unconscious. I need—”
“Okay, ma’am. I’ll call 911 immediately. Room 401, yes?”
“Yes. Please hurry.”
I began to panic. I went back to the bathroom and tried again to wake her. She was so cold, still, and wet, and the smell of urine mixed with a very particular odor that I knew I would never get out of my nose was overwhelming. I didn’t know what it was, but it was potent and unpleasant.
Seeing her like that was too much for me to bear. Still, I reached out to try and locate her pulse on her neck.
I placed two fingers there and forced myself to locate her carotid artery, trying desperately to ignore the frigid temperature of her skin. I repositioned myself and saw her face: mouth open, eyes open. Cheekbones hollow. Her face looked like it had melted into the floor.
And then I lost it.
I slumped to the ground, pulling my knees to my chest. I began to sob. Wail. I cried animalistic howls of intense heartbreak.
Until there was a—loud—knock on the door.
I got up and opened it. Medical personnel swarmed the room. I pointed to the bathroom. Three or four—I’m not even sure—men and women filed in, ready to help. A yellow metal stretcher sat in the hallway, waiting for use.
They spoke to each other loudly at first, then in hushed tones, verifying without saying a word to me that it was, in fact, the worst possible outcome.
My mom was dead.
Beautiful, vibrant Birdie Paulson. The songwriter. The high school teacher. The mom.
My mom.
“Ma’am,” an older man said, “I’m so sorry…” His voice trailed off.
I covered my face with my hands. I didn’t want to hear any more.
“Is there someone we can call?”
Beckett, I thought. I nodded weakly. “He’s in Savaneta,” I whispered.
“Okay.” The man nodded, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket.
He was grateful, I’m sure, to have something useful to do, especially considering the fact that another medic grabbed the sheet from my foldout bed and was about to drape it over my mother in the bathroom.
“What’s the number?” he asked, trying to divert my attention from the mechanics of what was occurring in my peripheral vision.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s a hotel. Villas, maybe?”
“Aruba Ocean Villas?” the man asked.
“I think so,” I replied, wiping my face.
He typed it into a search engine, which pulled up the number. Then he handed the phone to me.
“Bon dia,” a young woman sang. “It’s a beautiful day at Aruba Ocean Villas. How may I direct your call?”
“Um, hi,” I managed. “Can I please speak to Beckett Nash? He’s staying in a bungalow called Joy?”
“I’m so sorry, my dear,” she replied. Her voice sounded like a lullaby. “Mr. Nash checked out just a short while ago.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said, and handed the phone back to the medic, shaking my head. “He’s not there.”
“Is there anyone else we can try?”
I looked down at the ground. “No,” I mumbled.
He placed a tentative hand on the middle of my back. “We will stay with you. Don’t worry. What’s your name?”
“Melody.”
“Melody,” he repeated, “I am Edwin.”
“We were supposed to be on a plane going home,” I told him.
“I understand. And I am very sorry.”
I nodded, unable to absorb the full weight of what was happening.
“This is your mother, yes?”
My eyes filled and overflowed, like a dam busting during a hurricane. “Yes.”
“Please. Follow me this way.” Edwin walked into the living area and motioned for me to sit down in one of the two chairs at the table there. He sat across from me and set the clipboard down on the table.
“Let me get you some water.” He went to the kitchenette and produced a glass from the cabinet. He filled it from the tap. He grabbed the roll of paper towels from next to the sink and brought that over as well.
I took a square of paper towel from the roll and blew my nose into it with massive force. I didn’t care what I looked like or sounded like; I would never stop crying anyway, so what difference did it make?
Edwin slowly, carefully led me through the motions as my mother was closed back into the bathroom.
With nothing more for the emergency personnel to do, they left the room and took their stretcher back outside to the ambulance.
Meanwhile, Edwin took my name and contact information, along with my mother’s name and basic information—birthdate, height, weight, what little of her medical history I was able to produce in my state of distress.
Then, once I was a bit more composed, he helped me pack our things.
He was kind enough to remove all of the toiletries from the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to go back in there, and he shut the door afterward.
It was clear she collapsed many hours before I got home, likely on the earlier side of the night before, since the bed was made.
If she’d gotten up this morning and made the bed, she would have packed her things as well.
The bed would have definitely come last. Mom was always a “stumble to the shower first thing to wake up” kind of person who saved bed-making as the final chore before leaving the bedroom for the day.
But nothing had been done. She wasn’t showered.
Still in her pajamas. Nothing had been packed.
Her clothes were still neatly folded in the drawer, and her garbage bag of dirty laundry sat squat in the corner of the bedroom.
Also, the temperature of her skin was so cold it felt as though she’d spent the whole night in a refrigerator.
I couldn’t unfeel it on my hands.
A doctor would need to come, Edwin explained, to officially pronounce her deceased. Following that, a coroner would come to remove the body and transport it to a funeral home of my choosing. There were three on the island, he told me. Aurora Funeral Home was the closest.
“What about an autopsy?” I wondered. “Since she died alone, wouldn’t that be required?”
“Do you suspect a crime?” Edwin asked.
I shook my head.
“Aruba does not have a forensic pathologist. The only way to get an autopsy would be to bring one in, but given your mother’s heart condition, it wouldn’t make sense to do that unless we believed there was evidence of a crime,” he explained.
“There was no forcible entry. No theft or robbery. And there is no evidence of substance abuse or…”—here his voice wavered—“suicide.”
“No,” I agreed.
“So we must assume this happened due to natural causes. A doctor will come and confirm the death, and the coroner will follow. For now, let me help you gather your belongings.”