My fingertips are like ice, responding to how cold she felt, my mind taking a few seconds to catch up with the monstrous knowing that’s erupting in my body.
How still she was.
How silent.
I walk slowly back to her side, scared to approach her. “Mum?” My voice breaks, her name fragile in the crisp garden air.
No response.
I put two fingers on the paper-thin skin of her neck and wait for it to pulse.
I lean forward, near her slightly open mouth, hoping for a brush of air on my cheek that never comes.
Then I shake her, gently, expecting her arm to flop off the armrest, limp.
It doesn’t. It’s stuck.
When I rock her a little harder, in a last-ditch attempt to wake her from this nightmare, her entire body rocks with the stiffness of a store mannequin, and I reel in abject horror. Stagger to the rosebushes. Throw up.
Seconds later, I grab my phone. Dial the number.
“Ambulance!” I say, my breath coming fast as my heart pounds. “But I think it’s too late.”
I know it is.
“Is the patient breathing?”
“No, she’s not.”
“I want you to move her onto the ground and lie her on her back,” the person instructs. They don’t understand.
“It’s too late,” I explain again. “She’s gone.”
“I want you to give CPR until the paramedics arrive. You’ll want to know you’ve done all you could.”
Mum looks completely at peace, in a way I don’t recall ever having seen her—not in all the years she struggled with her broken body and fractured mind.
“Place the patient on the ground, flat on her back,” the operator instructs me again.
“It’s too late,” I reiterate helplessly. I don’t know why I can’t just say the words:rigor mortis. Maybe if I speak them, the truth will cement itself into this place and time.
The place and time of Mum’s death.
Herdeath.
“Put the patient on the ground,” the person insists relentlessly, and I find myself silently apologizing to Mum as I do as I’m told, dragging her body from the chair, stumbling with it as we fall onto the grass. I brush the hair out of her eyes. I know how much it always annoyed her.
“Now put the heel of your hand in the middle of her chest and do compressions in time with my count, okay? One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four …”
I become unhinged from time. Past. Present. Future. All time is now, swollen seconds in this unspeakable, desperate agony. I will pump her lifeless chest for eleven whole minutes, which is what the police officer will note on the death report as the period that elapsed between this call and the arrival of paramedics.
One, two, three, four.
One of them will tramp over her azaleas in the backyard and set down his gear as he reaches us and asks me to move over.
One, two, three, four.
I won’t move. And he’ll touch her just once as he tries to coax me aside.
