She shifted and stared at me.
I held my breath, hoping she’d snap out of it.
After a few heartbeats, a slow smile spread across her face. “Oh, Donnie.”
I winced.
I’d gotten my mother out of the habit of calling me that ridiculous nickname when I was twelve. After her mind started failing her, she seemed only to remember me as a little boy.
“Yeah, it’s me, Ma,” I whispered. “Do you need anything?”
She glanced around the room, her gaze pausing here and there. “I want to go home,” she said.
My stomach dropped, and I slumped my shoulders. The emotional toll of the past two years weighed my body down. Though the urge to remind my mother that she was home, was strong, I withheld.
When she got like that, it was best to agree with her instead of trying to convince her she was already home. That would only agitate her.
“Okay, Mom. Soon. I’ll take you home soon, all right?”
I awaited a reaction that could go either of two ways. Luck was on my side because she relaxed, lying back down.
“Go to sleep, and then I’ll take you home.”
She nodded and blinked her eyes closed.
I remained at her bedside for a long while, stroking her hand. I thought back to the T-ball games of mine she used to attend. My mother had always been the loudest one in the crowd, cheering me on.
“Go, Donnie! Go!”she would yell from the stands, and the sound would drift across the field to my ears as if the notes had known they were for me and me alone. By the time I turned ten, I’d hated the nickname. A few of the other kids had teased me about it. Though I’d asked my mom, repeatedly, to call me Don, just Don, it took a while for her to let the name go.
“I’m not a little boy anymore,” I’d told her, finally, on my twelfth birthday.
As I stared at her sleeping body, I thought back to the flash of resignation in her expression. Her face drooped and a sadness invaded her eyes that almost hurt to look at. Yet, in the span of a heartbeat it disappeared.
I shut my eyelids and refused to let the water in my eyes fall down my cheeks. I should’ve let her call me whatever she wanted. If I’d known then what I knew now, I would’ve had more patience with her.
Now I was losing her, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Standing, I took a final look at my mom before heading for the door. Right before exiting, I remembered my plate of food on the dresser. With a reach of my arm, I grabbed my plate, before widening the door to leave, but she called out to me.
“Donnie?”
“Yes, Mom?” I turned back to look at her.
“Why didn’t you save me?”
The question speared right through me, forcing me to stumble backwards. I wrinkled my eyebrows. “What?”
“Why didn’t you save me?”
Before I could open my mouth to respond, everything around me went black, and suddenly, I was outside my childhood home as it burned.
“Mom!” I yelled, fighting the arms wrapped around me to get back inside. “Get the fuck off me.”
“You can’t save her, son.”
“Shut up. I’m not your son. Get the hell off me.”
I screamed, yelled, and pleaded for the man to let me go. I fought to get inside to save my mother, even as the firefighters pulled up.
