I DON’T REMEMBER FALLING ASLEEP AGAIN THAT night.
But I wake up in the wooden chair to see hospital staff surrounding Ma’s bed. I pull off my headphones and slowly stand.
“Marley?” someone calls out. “Marley, we need to go.”
I stare at Nurse Colleen in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“We need to leave the room now,” she says.
“Why?” I ask as I try to see past her. I have to see Ma, have to know she’s all right.
“We need to go,” Colleen tells me again.
“I don’t understand,” I say as I slide down into the chair again and stare at my mother’s bed, stare at the doctors examining her. “What’s happening?”
“I’ll explain in a minute,” Colleen says, and then I’m being pulled to my feet by a huge orderly who helps Colleen lead me out of the room.
I study the expression on her face and then try to see over her shoulder, look back into Ma’s room. “My mother…”
“I know.”
“I need to get back in there.”
Colleen shakes her head. “No, Marley. Not right now.”
I try to move past her, try to go back to the room.
“You can’t see her right now,” she says.
And then it feels like everyone is talking to me at once. Nurse Colleen, and the orderly, and another nurse I don’t know. “I don’t understand,” I tell them. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” I just keep saying it over and over as I try to get past the people talking to me, try to get to Ma. “She’s okay. I just need to see her.”
“She’s not okay,” says Colleen. “You can’t be in there right now, Marley. I’m so sorry.”
“But I can… help her…. I can…” I start to feel dizzy as someone pul1s me farther from the room and gently lowers me into another chair. I stare at the door to Ma’s room. “She was okay last night.”
“She hasn’t been okay since she got here,” the other nurse tells me.
“I don’t understand,” I say as I watch the doctors and nurses walk out of my mother’s room one by one, their faces grim, their heads shaking.
Ma’s doctor breaks off from the group and walks over to me. He wears a sad smile and speaks in a gentle tone, but his words are harsh. Horrible phrases sting my ears—“probable brain death” and “waiting for an EEG” and “second opinion before confirming.”
“But I thought she was supposed to pull through,” I say.
Dr. Fehrman shakes his head. “I’m very sorry,” he tells me. He’s apologizing even though he doesn’t have the test results yet. I realize he doesn’t need them.
He knows.
I know too.
She’s gone.
She left me.
My mother just up and left.
Colleen kneels down and puts her hand on my knee. She tries to say something comforting, but I can’t let her do that.
I can’t let this be real.
“I’m so, so sorry, Marley,” I hear her say, but I won’t listen. I can’t hear. I can’t understand.
I don’t have the strength left to understand something like this. Not this. This can’t happen.