‘You’ll be okay, sweetie.’ She came over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I know. I don’t like hospitals, either.’ But I wasn’t crying about my fingers. And I wasn’t crying about the hospital. Something worse had happened to me, worse than Gabe not reciprocating the feelings I had for him. I had cut off my fingers and cut off my feelings for Gabe all at once. And now it all felt so much worse.
I cried again when I woke up from surgery. I was in a recovery room, alone. A nurse came over and told me not to worry and that my mom was on her way up now. Everything had gone well in surgery, and a doctor would come by after I was moved to my room.
When my mom got there, I was still crying. She asked what was wrong.
‘It’s okay,’ the nurse said. ‘Some people get weepy when they come out of anesthesia.’ My mom nodded but didn’t look convinced. She stayed with me, holding my right hand until they came to wheel me into my room. The doctor gave us an update: the bad news was that apparently I had to stay in the ICU for a week. The worse news was that during that week they would be using leech therapy. Yes. They still do that. So leeches would be sucking on my fingers for a week.
Great.
Once he left, telling me a nurse would be bringing something for the pain, my mom shut the door.
‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
I played dumb. ‘I … cut my fingers off.’ I held up the bandaged hand. My reattached fingers were splinted so I couldn’t move them.
She sat down next to my bed and reached for my good hand. ‘I’m not talking about physically. You’ve been a mess for weeks. You burned a blueberry quick bread on Saturday, you messed up the macarons on New Year’s Eve – and you said yourself that you had perfected that recipe. You barely paid attention when we were watchingChristmas Cookie Challenge, and when I asked if you wanted to make pizza last night, you said you didn’tfeel likebaking.’
Shit. I really had been off. I should have seen this amputation coming a mile away.
‘The last time I remember you being like this was when your father died.’
That hurt even worse. And not because I was missing Gabe, but because my mom was equating the worst thing to ever happen to us with a relationship that never even got off the ground. I started to cry again, and it wasn’t the anesthesia. When my mom put it that way, being this upset over Gabe felt cheap.
‘Honey, please just talk to me. Whatever it is, I want to help.’
And in that moment, for whatever reason, I wasn’t scared anymore. I wasn’t scared for her to know this part of me because I knew what scary was. Scary was saying goodbye to my dad for the day, thinking I’d see him again that night, but being called out of school just hours later and seeing my mom in the office with tears in her eyes. Her telling me in the car on the way to the hospital that my dad had an accident at work and hit his head. And, later, the slow realization after a whole week that he wasn’t going to wake up.
And now, in the same hospital myself, I realized how stupid it all was. Because of course my mom would still love me. Like she always had.
I sniffed and wiped at my cheeks. ‘It’s stupid.’
‘Then tell me so I can laugh at you and call you stupid.’
That did make me laugh. ‘I was … sort of seeing someone. But not really. And nowreallynot really.’
She stared at me, her eyebrows scrunched in concern. ‘You cut your fingers off because you were sad that somebody didn’t like you? Okay, yes, I admit it – you are stupid.’
‘No!’ I laughed with her. ‘I swear it was an accident. But I was talking to them when it happened, and I may have gotten angry and … distracted.’
She nodded. ‘And what is their name?’
There it was. Any anxiety lifted from my chest, and I smiled. She said ‘somebody’, and she said ‘their’. So she knew. And she didn’t care.
‘You met him. Gabe.’
Her jaw dropped, and for a second I was scared I had misunderstood the signs. But then she said, ‘Oh yeah, he was cute. I might have cut a pinkie off for him back in the day.’
I laughed. ‘Ew, please stop.’
‘Though not the ring finger, becausethat’ssome symbolism, kid.’
I laughed again until I cried. Only this time the tears were happy.
My mom had tears in her eyes, too. She squeezed my right hand.
‘You know I’ll always love you, right?’ she said. ‘No matter what.’
‘Love you, too.’
