I get a text that my mom’s in the ICU.
I don’t know how bad it is. I already have a flight to see her in four days and I’m not sure it’s worth moving. This isn’t the first time she’s been in the ICU; for years she’s been in and out of hospitals and stuff that used to make us panic now makes us go ‘oh darn, again?’
I ask, How serious is it? The answers are fuzzy, and I am frustrated. I ask my dad to ask the doctor if she thinks family should come. I get the message: “Doc says yes come immediately.”
Five hours later, my sister and I are landing in Boise. We stop by my parents’ house to grab my mom’s car; I collect photos, a blanket I made her, a little stuffed otter. My mom loves otters. I haven’t thought too hard about her dying, I don’t know if she’s going to die, but everything we’re doing feels important in a way I haven’t felt before. We’re shaky.
We park in the freezing Idaho hospital parking lot at 1 am; my sister says it feels like we’re walking through a fiery gate into doom. She’s right, we’re bracing. The edges of reality begin to pulse.
The front desk gives us wristbands, and we begin the long winding walk to the ICU. At the end of the big hall stands my dad and an old family friend I haven’t seen in years. She hugs us and says “I’m gonna warn you, it’s shocking.” She says, “I’m so sorry, girls.”
We get into the ICU, they make us wash our hands. A nurse preps us, says our mom can hear us but will be unresponsive. Our mom might move, but this is instinctual and not conscious.
We go in. My mom is barely recognizeable, shriveled down like her soul is half gone and her flesh is deflating around the space it’s leaving behind. She’s got a tube in her throat and out her arms and neck, wires all over her head. She’s handcuffed to the bed so she doesn’t tear out the ventilator.
My sister and I hold her hands and cry. We speak to her, but there’s no movement, not even twitching. We sob ‘i love you’ over and over.
My dad’s been sleeping in the hospital. We tell him he should go home, he’s barely slept in days, we’ll keep watch over her. He leaves, but we can’t sleep; we sit by her side for hours, staring at her, talking to her. I read her sweet messages sent by people who love her.
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