But then one afternoon the reality of her condition came roaring back to the forefront. Mom hadn’t answered my texts all day—not even the cat meme I’d sent at lunch. She always responded to my texts. That was part of our deal; I’d continue to go to work as long as she assuaged my worry by letting me know she was okay. I didn’t even care that she’d teased me about it. “You’re worse than a hockey mom with those check-ins,” she’d told me. “I’m fine, darling girl. I’ll let you know when I’m not. Promise.”
I left the office in a rush, as soon as I was able.
“Mom?” My voice echoed through the house after I’d fumbled with the locks, dropping my keys twice. My body shook in the silence, punctuated by the grandfather clock in the living room that ticked away like a bomb to my happiness.
I found my mother curled on the couch, her knitting needles abandoned in a tangle of yarn. Her skin matched the gray upholstery. I’d feared this moment for the past few months, and now it was here.
“Mom!” I skidded to my knees, my shoes digging into the carpet. Her hand felt like chilled paper when I grabbed it. “Please, please…”
“Z-Zaila?” Her eyes fluttered open, pupils dilated. “Can’t…catch my breath.”
The diagnosis we’d danced around flashed neon in my brain. I’d Googled every symptom, and I could repeat them like a terrible litany: chest pain lasting ten or more minutes at rest, shortness of breath, and the oh-so-obvious overwhelming fatigue.
“Where’s your nitro spray?” I scrambled for her purse, sending Tic Tacs skating across the floor, as if that mattered now.
“Used it…twice.” Her wheeze clawed at my ribs. “Didn’t…help.”
I whimpered before I bit my lip and firmed my chin. Angina should subside with nitroglycerin. Mom’s symptoms had spiraled with incredible speed. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We should have more time. I needed more time with her.
The 911 operator’s voice crackled through my phone. “Ma’am, is she conscious?”
“Barely.” I pressed my ear to Mom’s chest. Her heartbeat stuttered like a rookie’s skate on fresh ice. Du-dum…Duh…………dum. “Her pulse is irregular and seems to be slowing. Sh-she has c-c-coronary microvascular disease.” Pushing the words past my stiff lips made them more real, made the situation too real.
“Paramedics are en route. Please stay on the line—” Mom’s back arched off the couch, so I threw the phone aside, my hands on her cold cheeks.
“Mom, Mama…” I rolled her sideways, just as I’d learned from the online videos I watched obsessively. Her lips leached of color, then bloomed blue.
“Mama, you need to stay with me,” I sobbed.
The ICU doors hissed shut behind Dr. Khatri as her lab coat flapped around her knees. Her expression was grim, matching my mood. “We’ve stabilized Susan with IV nitro and heparin, but…”
“But?” My nails bit into my palms. The past few hours had been sheer panic and the spiraling realization that every breath might be the first I took without a mother, as an orphan all over again.
“Her cardiac MRI showed diffuse subendocardial hypoperfusion.” Dr. Khatri’s tablet glowed with nightmare images of Mom’s heart muscle streaked like storm clouds. “Severe coronary microvascular dysfunction. We’re talking myocardial steatosis, possible progression to HFpEF…”
I stiffened, my mind both whirring and too sluggish to take in the medical jargon. “I don’t understand all those terms. Will you break it down for me, please?”
Dr. Khatri opened her mouth, but then my mind clicked back into action.
“Oh…oh…Y-you’re saying her heart’s starving.” I choked out the terms I’d memorized after way too many late nights looking up the disease. “The tiny vessels aren’t delivering enough blood. It’s…it’s why the nitro didn’t work.”
Dr. Khatri nodded, her expression resigned. “We’ll try enhanced external counterpulsation therapy tomorrow. But long term—and by that I mean later this week…” Her gaze dropped to Mom’s DASI questionnaire in my lap, the one where she’d scored “Can’t make bed without stopping to rest.”
The walls in my periphery wavered as I tried to breathe through the reality. Orphan. The word slithered from childhood’s shadows where I’d curled into the corner of the group home, before Mom and Dad had found me. I wasn’t ready. I’d never be prepared to be alone again.
“Will those options prolong her suffering?” I asked, the words as heavy as my heart. “Or will they give her a fighting shot?”
Before Dr. Khatri could answer, her pager shrilled, and she glanced down at it, her eyes tired. She spun on her heel and tore back through the doors. She shoved them so hard, I could hear and see the chaos beyond.
“V-fib,” a nurse barked.
I stood and followed, unable to stay in my chair, not while my mother struggled in that bed.
“Clear!”
Mom’s body jolted under the paddles. My teeth rattled as I shivered.
“We got it! Got the pulse.”
