He nods, and he doesn’t look at a wheelchair again.
“In retrospect, I should have used one until here and then ditched it.”
At last, we’re outside her room. He knocks on the door. “Mrs. Chase? I have someone here to see you!” His voice is cheerful again. I wonder if he practices that, the cheerful voice. It’s not quite as singsong as my doctor’s, but the tone is the same. Maybe they have group cheerfulness training. “Brace yourself,” he says to me softly, very softly. I’m not quite sure if he said it, or if it’s my own inner voice telling me to be strong.
I walk into the room.
Mom lies in the hospital bed. She looks as if half of her has melted away. Her skin sags against her bones, and she looks ashen-yellow. She has multiple IV needles puckering the skin on the back of her hand and tubes taped to her arms. Her body is under the thin sheet, but her face is so very thin. Still, she brightens as I hobble into the room.
“I look terrible, don’t I?” she says.
Clearly, I haven’t done a good job at hiding my expression. I consider lying. “You look like how I feel.”
She points imperiously to the chair by the window, a twin to the one I was sitting in when Dr. Barrett came to fetch me. “William, you should have wheeled her here. She didn’t need to walk.”
“She insisted,” he says. “She has your stubborn streak.”
“Stupid streak, you mean.” Mom glares at me. “You had me terrified, you know. Aged me at least twenty years.”
“Barely shows at all.”
“You mean beneath the emaciated ill look?”
“Right. That kind of overshadows everything else.”
“Dying is a helluva diet. I don’t recommend it.” She points again at the chair. Dr. Barrett, William, guides me over to it. His hands are warm and strong, and I think of Peter’s hands. They’re similar. Hands that are used often. In Peter’s case, it was to climb onto roofs. In William’s, I suspect it’s saving lives. Or maybe golf. It occurs to me that I have done such an excellent job of avoiding talking to any doctors in the past few years that I don’t know if golf is still the standard cliché.
“Do you golf?” I ask him.
If he’s startled by this change of subject, he doesn’t show it. “Not regularly.”
“He plays basketball with friends,” Mom says.
“Sometimes. There’s a league in the hospital. We meet at lunch whenever we can.”
“Lauren likes to swim,” Mom says. “Or did. She used to be a fish.”
“Still am,” I say without thinking.
Mom snorts. “You haven’t been in the water since...well, she used to be an excellent swimmer. I’m sure she still would be if she’d make time for it.”
“I have. I mean, I will.” I feel myself flushing red. “Mom, are you trying to set us up?”
“I’m compressing three months of mothering into three minutes,” she says. “Now, give your phone number to the nice doctor, sit up straight, and don’t let your mouth gape open. You’ll catch flies that way, and while they are high on protein, it’s not attractive in front of a potential mate.”
I am blushing furiously now. “You’re right,” I say to Dr. Barrett. “She is extraordinary.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lauren.” Mom snaps her fingers. “Hand me a pen, William.”
Bemused, the doctor obeys. Mom scrawls on a napkin on the side of her lunch tray. I notice that she’s barely touched the food. I also notice that her hand is shaking as she writes. Her hands were always so steady. A few months ago, she could thread the tiniest needle in a half-lit room and then sew a button without even looking at it, much less piercing herself. If I attempted that, I’d bleed all over the button. She shoves the napkin at him. “Now give us some privacy, and call my daughter later.”
Wordlessly, he accepts the napkin. I suppose they didn’t cover this in medical school.
“You really don’t have to,” I tell him.
“I’d never dream of disobeying your mother.” He tucks the napkin into his clipboard, and then he leaves. Mom is chuckling. She then sobers and looks at me.
“Have a nice nap?” she asks.
