“Mama?” Anabel’s sweet voice sang to her. “Mama, are you awake?”
Delores nodded, her mouth beginning to work, opening and closing, her tongue heavy. She nodded again, slower this time. She was dreaming, she realised immediately, and she prayed that this were heaven and not some devil’s trick. She would go mad, she surmised, she would go mad if this were how she was to spend eternity.
“Owen, go get him.”
Delores’ eyes had closed again. The sun was welcome but bright, too bright. She frowned and licked her lips. They were dry. Hard cracked skin formed small blisters across them.
Small fingers curled around her one of her hands, gripping it with strength.
A door sounded somewhere, footsteps and breathing, and still the softbeep beep.
“Delores?”
She hummed a response out to whoever the voice belonged to. A hum of yes, of no, of let me sleep.
“Can you hear me?”
She hummed again. Another slow nod. Another soft beep.
“You’re going to be okay,” the voice said. It was familiar, yet not. Old, yet new. “We’ve had to restrain you, I’m sorry. It’s for your own safety.”
She opened her eyes again, and looked up into the face that hovered above her. It was blurry, her eyes unfocused.
“Mama?”
Her gaze slipped to the side, down to the bed where a small hand gripped hers. Her gaze travelled up past the wrist of the hand, travelled across soft pale skin, up to an elbow, an arm as long and as vast as the sea, but as small as a child’s.
Delores followed the shoulder up to a neck, up to a chin she knew so well, to cheeks she’d kissed many times, to a nose and eyes she knew by heart. To the face of her daughter, of Anabel, alive and well.
“Is this heaven?” Delores whispered out, her eyes not straying from Anabel’s.
“You’re in the hospital, Mrs. Stanton. You had a breakdown,” the doctor’s voice drifted across to her like mist on a spring morning, almost palpable. “You’re going to be okay. We have you heavily sedated until we can get everything under control.”
Delores squinted as someone opened the blinds at the window, allowing in more sun. The face of Anabel blurred as her tired eyes adjusted. Panic rose in her chest that she would blink and Anabel would disappear. That she would blink and this would all be gone.
All be gone…
Tears slipped from her eyes, her heartbeat picking up pace.
“Let’s keep them closed for now, Mr. Stanton,” the doctor’s voice sang out.
“I think a little sunshine will do her good,” Michael said, coming over to the bed. “Anabel, sweetie, go sit outside. Let your mother rest.”
Michael pulled Anabel’s hand free of her mother’s and ushered her out of the door. Anabel looked back over her shoulder at the woman she called her mother, but it was a stranger in the bed. She didn’t want to leave. She had missed her this past week. Her mother was everything to her. And in so many ways they were alike. Ways that her father didn’t understand.
Anabel left the room though, because she always listened to her father, even when she didn’t want to. She took a seat next to her brother, and reached for his hand. They clung to each other as they stared straight ahead, both confused by what was happening with their mother, their family, their life.
Back in the room Delores sobbed, feeling robbed once more of her daughter. “Where did she go?” she pleaded, her anxiety growing with each panicked breath. “Where did she go?” she started to sob loudly.
“You know where she went,” Michael said, his voice flat and emotionless. “You know, Del’.”
The doctor watched the couple, a picture-perfect marriage. Both attractive, two beautiful children. A doting housewife, a successful husband. Yet, deep in his gut, he knew that something was wrong with the picture.
“I think you need to sedate her again,” Michael said coldly, holding her hand in his. “She’s getting too stressed. I don’t want her screaming and upsetting everyone.”
The doctor nodded in agreement. The children had been through so much already, as had the husband. Mrs. Stanton couldn’t help what was happening to her, but often people forgot that the family surrounding someone with a mental disorder were often the patients as well. They suffered too, yet there was no medication to help them.
“Very well,” the doctor agreed.
