Chapter 17

“Sarah, you don’t have to get up every twenty minutes,” Christine said when she caught Sarah tiptoeing down the hall toward her mother’s room. “Matilda gave Beth a sleeping pill, and the hospice nurse is here so you can get some sleep. He’ll call you if anything changes.” Christine gave Sarah a miserable look.

“I know,” Sarah said. “But I can’t sleep. I have to—I just— She might need more morphine, or—” She swallowed. “I have to.” She slipped into the room. A few words with the nurse, a chance to place her hand on her mother’s one last time.

Hilda lay quietly in the bed, the covers unnaturally smooth. “Mama,” Sarah murmured, but there was no response. Her mother’s breathing was light, shallow, interspersed with terrifying, stertorous gasps. After a few moments of listening, Sarah went back to her own room.

“Try to sleep,” Dan said the next time Sarah came. “That’s why I’m here.”

“No, you’re here to be sure Mama’s as comfortable as possible. But yes, I’ll try.”

She couldn’t. Casey crawled up on her bed, something she almost never did, and stuck a cold, wet nose against her neck. Sarah hugged the dog and lay in the darkened room, straining so hard to hear sounds from down the hall that her ears rang.

Every time she started to doze, she’d jerk awake. By three in the morning, she’d made half a dozen trips to the bedside.

How long could she keep this up? She hadn’t had any sleep for nearly two days.

“Still no change, Sarah,” Dan said at four when she padded into the room. She put a hand on her mother’s bony chest to be sure she was breathing, and smoothed back the thin gray hair. “Mama.” That seemed to be the only word she could say.

Her hand rose as her mother took a deep, deep breath, and then...nothing. Sarah bent closer, and Dan shot to his feet.

Dizziness swirled through Sarah, along with a strange, jumpy panic. “That’s it?” she said, and her voice sounded oddly high and thin in her ears. “That’s it?”

No movement or sound from her mother. Sarah took a step back. The small part of her mind that hadn’t gone numb noticed that her eyes felt stretched wide and her breaths were fast and shallow.

Dan gripped her arm. “Don’t get hysterical on me, Sarah.”

“That’s it?” she repeated.

“Yes. It’s over.” He busied himself pulling a sheet up to cover the still face.

“It’s over,” she repeated mechanically. The sheet-covered form filled her vision.

She walked into the bathroom and looked at the bottle of morphine. Over. Without a word she went to her bedroom and looked at the bed.

No. She might never sleep again.

She walked downstairs. Through the rooms that her mother had lived in for over eighty years, had cherished, down the hall and into the kitchen. Habit took over and she made coffee, her hands shaking.

Sitting at the table gripping an empty mug, she watched the coffee drip. A selfish need to be held, to be comforted, gripped her.

“There’s no one,” she said, her words dropping like stones into the stillness of the room. “There’s no one left.” No one who wanted to hug her, to touch her. No one in the world to whom she was the most important person.

She trudged slowly back up the stairs to her room and sat on the bed.

No one.