The door closes between us, and I feel Hayden’s arm around me.
“Come on, let them work.” Hayden's voice is low, and all I can do is nod.
I can hear them. Not their words, just the sound of urgency. The sound of people working fast.
Hayden is beside me. At some point he's taken my hand and I'm holding it so hard I can feel my own pulse in my fingers. He just stands there, telling me they are working on my mom, they’ll tell us soon as they know something. Well, that’s what I think he’s saying, because at the moment I can’t hear anything.
Fifteen minutes.
The doctor comes out and I know before he opens his mouth.
I know from the way he's carrying himself. The weight of it. The way his eyes find mine first, before anything else, like he's been preparing what he's about to say for the entire length of that corridor.
"Miss Banks."
My hand tightens around Hayden's.
"I'm so sorry."
The words land somewhere beneath language. Somewhere I don't have access to yet, somewhere my body receives them before my mind can, because my mind is still standing in that room watching my mother look between us with that happiness on her face. I can still hear her sayI knew, Livvy, I always knew.
"We did everything we could. Her heart?—"
I stop listening.
Not because the words stop. They don't. He keeps talking, careful and kind, and I know he means every word. I just can’t hear a single one of them.
There is a sound.
It takes me a moment to understand that it's coming from me.
I’m not crying. Not yet. It’s something before crying. It comes up out of the center of me and escapes before I can do anything about it and I feel my knees do something they shouldn't, feel the floor tilt sideways, and my knees hit the floor as I scream out a cry.
Hayden wraps his arms around me. I press my face into his chest, and I cry for my mom.
I cry until I can't anymore and then I cry a little longer after that, and Hayden holds me through all of it. His arms don't loosen.
I sit in Hayden’s arms in the middle of the waiting room, and I grieve for my mother, and he never once lets me go.
I remember mom taking Hayden's hand and saying, “Promise me,”and she believed him completely. She looked at the two of us and felt peace about it. She knows Hayden will look after me, and he’ll never let me fall.
I also have to remember my mother spent her last fully conscious moments being happy. That is going to get me through a lot of dark nights.
The room is quieter than the corridor.
There's only one machine in dad’s room. It’s steady, marking time in the way that has become the background sound of my life at the moment.
I’ve been sitting by the side of his bed for so long, and I don’t know how to tell him.
The bruising has faded to yellow at the edges of his face. Someone has shaved him recently. I notice small things like that. I notice them because they're the only things I can process.
I reach out and take his hand. It's warm.
"Mom's gone, Dad," I whisper, the words are still too hard to say out loud. The machine keeps its rhythm. "She woke up." My voice is very quiet, like the room requires it. "She was awake, and she knew me, and she… she was happy, Dad. At the end she was really happy. I need you to know that."
His hand doesn't move undermine.
"She made Hayden promise to look after me." A sound escapes me that isn't quite a laugh and isn't quite a cry. "You know what she was like. I need you to wake up," I say softly. "I know I can't make you. I know it doesn't work like that, but I need you to." My throat tightens. "Because I can't do this without both of you, Dad. I can't."
