1.

I remember the call. The way the woman took just too long between her words and how the phone felt unbearably heavy by the end. My rushed apology as I stole the taxi from a couple in front of the cinema. Disinterest from its driver as he alternated grunts between two phones. Raindrops on the window that gained momentum as they found another; ones that wandered alone until they reached the sill. How the staff seemed to know who I was as I arrived.

‘Neighbours found her and called for an ambulance,’ the doctor informed me. ‘It appears she suffered a myocardial infarction … a heart attack.’

I nodded as my jaw fell away and hung in the air – the automatic response of someone who should have something to say. He paused. I had nothing to fill the space, though I tried anyway.

‘I guess it was always going to be one or the other.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Her heart or her liver, I mean. They seemed to be in a race towards the finish line.’

‘Hmm, I see. Is there anyone else I can call? Any relatives or close friends?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else.’

We took the lift and glided down a corridor in silence, moving past rooms of the new, the expiring, and everything in between. I wasn’t sure what marked the shift from growth to decay in those hallways, but was sure I’d passed it.

We neared the only closed door. He approached and gestured towards it with a slow, upturned palm, like a robot mimicking compassion. ‘Take as long as you need,’ he said. I pulled down on the handle. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he added. I pushed the door open.

The room was bright with artificial light. In the corner, a bed with a drawn curtain. Through caustic odours of hospital-grade cleaners, her perfume. I closed the door behind me and flicked off the lights.

The curtain swayed as I approached and bunched its edge in my hand, wondering if a good time to draw it back would ever arrive. Its hooks let out a screech as they slid along the rail, jolting me backwards. I knocked a pan from a cart and stood frozen while it bounced and shook against the floor, ringing out with a chime. I squeezed myself between the curtain and the wall.

Sliding a seat up to the bed, I took her cold hand in mine, somehow expecting a squeeze back. I brushed hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Deep wrinkles rested in her brow; bite marks of a life spent bottling things up.

‘Hi there,’ I said, my voice like dried leaves underfoot. ‘I don’t know what to say. I wish I could have given you more. I wish this life had given you more. You never took from those who take and it killed you … it killed you so long before you died. Oh, god, that can’t be all there was for you.’

I buried my head into her shoulder as the city fell to night. The air conditioner hummed as rain tapped on the window, like static from an LP after the final track.

No warm sunset pierced the blinds to rest across her face in gentle strips of gold. I never got the chance to say goodbyes. There was no rainbow for my mother.