“Tolerable,” I say. “Weird dreams, though. And terrible morning breath.”
“Don’t scare me like that again. Whole upside of cancer is supposed to be that there’s no chance that your children die first.” She looks at me as if expecting me to tell her not to talk like that, to tell her she’s not going to die. But I don’t say anything. Softly, she says, “I really look that bad.”
I don’t want to answer that, neither with a lie nor with the truth. “Want me to tell you about my weird dream?”
“Does it have someone attractive of the male persuasion?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, it does.”
She folds her hands across her chest. “Then I’m listening.”
I tell her everything.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mom doesn’t interrupt once. She listens to every detail and then after I finish, she contemplates me. I watch the display on the heart monitor. The line jolts in rhythm to the beeps.
“You disappoint me, Lauren. Three months of dreaming about a hot, half-nude wild man, and you only kissed?” Mom clucks her tongue. “Or are you sanitizing the story for your mother’s ears? On second thought, don’t tell me. I don’t want the mental picture in my head.”
“He slept in my closet most of the time.”
“That wasn’t a metaphor, was it?”
“Nope. Literally in my closet. To protect me.”
“From dangerous hangers?”
“From attackers. I think he planned to surprise them.”
She coughs, and I have to grip the sides of my chair to keep myself from going to her. Her entire body quakes from the coughs as if every muscle were spasming. When it subsides, she continues as if nothing happened, “A conventional guard would guard the doorway and stop the attackerbeforehe enters the room.”
I make myself smile. Her logic is sound, of course. “Peter was anything but conventional.”
She squints hard at me. “Now, Lauren, don’t you fall for an imaginary boyfriend after I went through all the trouble of getting sick in order to find you a nice, handsome doctor to marry.”
“Aha, I knew there was an explanation for all of this.”
“Take it from me, imaginary boyfriends will only break your heart.” Her smile fades, and her eyes flutter closed. I listen again to thebeep-beepof her monitor. I used to hate that sound, but today I find it soothing. She’s still here, it says. I lean my head back on the chair. My limbs feel heavy, and they throb. I know I should try to pee, but I don’t think I can face the burning. I ignore it. Her breathing is slow and even, and I think she’s fallen asleep. But then her eyes flutter open. She turns her head to look at me. “Oh, good. You’re still here. Unless I’m hallucinating?”
I pry myself off the chair and try not to wince. Shuffling the few steps to the bed, I take her hand in mine. It feels so fragile, like holding a baby bird. “Real.”
Her fingers close around my hand. “You should rest.”
“I can rest here.” I point to the chair. “It reclines. Besides, it’s not like there aren’t doctors and nurses on this floor, too. In fact, they’re kind of in abundance. I’ll stay until they kick me out.”
Mom pats the bed next to her. “Come on, Laurie-kitten. Let me hug you.”
It’s the nickname that gets me. She hasn’t called me that in years. I feel my eyes heat, and to hide that, I sit on the edge of the bed. It takes some maneuvering to squeeze me in beside her without disturbing any of her wires or tubes. Some get caught in my hair, and we laugh as we untangle them, occasionally setting off the IV alarm. It’s either laugh or cry, I realize. After a while, though, I manage it. We lie side by side on our backs. I’m panting from the effort of climbing onto the bed with limbs that haven’t worked much in three months. She’s breathing shallowly, too, and I wonder if this was a good idea. But then she slides her hand into mine, and she sighs softly and it’s all okay.
“Tell me what I don’t know about you,” I say.
She’s silent for so long that I think she must have fallen asleep again or not heard me or both. I think about repeating the question, but if she is asleep, I don’t want to wake her.
“You’ve finally accepted this,” she says softly.
I don’t answer.
“Really was some dream you had.”
