Happy Birthday, Mom

The tow-headed young boy rolled over in bed as his mind struggled to find the reason for having left the much more comfortable world of sleep. The only light he could see was that of his closet, as it always was, the door left open a crack to allow just a sliver of light to fall upon the carpet. The night light in the hallway was still glowing too, more evidence that it was not time to get up yet. His eyes were not able to focus yet…that tiny night light in the hallway looked as big as a lantern. He rubbed his eyes again and suddenly a strange thought crept through his mind, a thought that made perfect sense to a 10 year old, even if the answer did not.

“Why am I awake?” the voice in his head whispered, as if the voice itself knew everyone else in the house was asleep. He often heard stories of people hearing voices, most often in the context that they were “crazy.” He heard voices all the time…well, ‘a’ voice…it was always his own. Tonight was no different. He often wondered what he would do if he started hearing voices other than his own. He shut all these thoughts out, and went back to the original question.

“Maybe I have to pee,” he thought. A small pause. Guess that’s not it. The dog wasn’t barking, nor could he hear Spunky moving around at all. Sometimes he got riled up and wanted out from his utility room prison at odd hours during the night. But this usually entailed a whining or scratching, neither of which he could recall hearing, nor could he hear now.

A very subtle creaking noise from the kitchen suddenly possessed his entire being. Had he not been already awake, the noise was not such that it along would have awakened him. But now that he was already awake, slight as the noise was, it might as well have been a firecracker. The scary part was he knew that sound. He knew that squeak. That one spot next to the sliding glass door, where the linoleum was beginning to crack…that was it. Somebody is in the kitchen! “Get a grip,” the voice said. “Spunky would bark like there was no tomorrow if someone was in the house. And sometimes, even if there wasn’t someone in the house.

For what seemed like hours, but in reality was only seconds, he lay as still as he could, even holding his breath, daring not to move. His bed, complete with the antique box springs, made noise on their own, even when he wasn’t in it. He wanted to be able to hear anything else. He let out his breath slowly, tugged the covers under his chin and drew another breath and held it. Nothing. “You are such a pussy,” the voice said. “Shut up,” he told himself. Sometimes he argued with the voice. How he wished his Dad would hear the noise. Sometimes his dad would get up in the middle of the night and make his way to the bathroom and back. He wouldn’t be so scared then. He would get up and meet his Dad in the hallway. His Dad wasn’t scared of anything. He would walk right in the kitchen and in a huff of middle-of-the-night crankiness, bad breath and the slurred speech of someone not wearing his false teeth, would yell at the intruder and they would just fall to the ground in fear and die, right there on the spot.

“There’s no one in the house, goofy, and even if there was, Dad’s not up so just go back to sleep,” He didn’t like the way the voice intoned the word “Dad,” but he was too tired for an argument, even if it WAS with himself. And the going to sleep part sounded like a good idea. At the moment of decision, a zzzzip came from the kitchen. And of course, there was no doubt in his mind what it was. The curtains covering the glass door being moved. This sound, too, he knew intimately, if for no other reason than this was his home…a boy is supposed to be intimately familiar with every possible sound. Hearing no more lip from the voice in his head, he threw back the covers and rolled off the bed onto the floor, conscious of the explosion of noise that his bed made. In the instant that he had made the decision to get up, he had also made the decision to burst into the kitchen.

“Whoooa, boy. What if there really IS someone in the kitchen,” the voice prattled back at him. And it was enough to stop him in his tracks. So much for bravery. His eyes had been open long enough now that the sleep has all but left them. His closet light didn’t look so bright anymore, and the night light in the hall was back to normal size. He took slow steps at first…away from his bed. Dodging school books and dirty clothes, he entered the hallway. He glanced back at his bed…it looked miles away from where he was standing, even though this was the very spot from where he launched himself from the floor every day upon his return from school, just to see how high he could get before he landed on it. Funny thing to be thinking about at a time like this.

He began his trek down the hallway and just as he reached the light switch, he had second thoughts. “Maybe you shouldn’t turn the hall light on,” the voice caught him just as his hand has crept up the wall in search of the switchplate. For once he listened…the hall light would wake mom and dad up…his room was directly across from theirs, and the hall light was on the ceiling just between the two rooms. He squinted his eyes to look into his mom and dad’s room to see if one of them might be up and pilfering around, but it was just too dark to tell. His hand fell away from the switch and he continued his creeping toward the kitchen. He could see the living room from here, even in the darkness, and the bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. Neither light was on, so he knew that his parents would both be in bed. The big question now was, “Who was in the kitchen?” If mom and dad were in bed, and he was standing in the hallway like an idiot, there was no one left for it to be…well, no one left that would make it acceptable for there to be people-noises to be coming from the kitchen. Suddenly the voice made its presence known again, “Whoever it is will see you in your underwear. Better hope you don’t have a hard-on.” One of the major fears of his life was a two-parter. Being seen in his underwear would have made him immediately dead. Being seen in underwear and sporting wood would have killed him, and then made him explode. There was a split-second war that happened inside him…between checking for an erection and realizing that it didn’t matter, and the fact that there could be somebody standing in his kitchen made both suddenly irrelevant. He continued to the very edge of the hallway and put his face up against the cold paneling, just far enough that he could see around the corner with one eye. Nothing. Nothing but darkness. His hand moved up toward the light, and he paused for advice from his own voice, but there was nothing. He was going to have to be able to see in the kitchen before he made his next critical move, which he already knew would be to scream and to do it loudly.

He hand hit the switch and he flipped it quickly, his mind already filled with images of a large man in a toboggan with pantyhose over his face and a sack hanging from his waist to shove all the valuables in. As he prepared himself to scream, it was choked off by confusion from what he was seeing and his heart beating so loudly in his head with the realization that he was not going to die, at least not tonight…at least not at this very moment. What he found himself looking at was at the same time comforting (at least compared to his expectations) and bewildering.

“Mom?” he said. “Mom are you OK?” He knew two things immediately. This was his mother and something was definitely not right. The first was what kept the primal scream from erupting violently out of his throat. The second thing was more troublesome. Just seeing his mother looking out the glass door should not have been shocking. He glanced at the clock. 3:20, it said. He should just be getting off the bus about now and walking up the driveway, Mom would be waiting to take his backpack from him…he would find his basketball and…he shook this craziness from his head…this was definitely the wrong 3:20. Everyone should be in bed. At the very least, Mom should have been getting a drink. Or sitting at the table. She was looking out the glass door. Which was what he kept trying to rationalize to himself, maybe even looking at her reflection. But she couldn’t see any of that in the dark anyway. As all this input keep rolling and wrestling in his brain, what he noticed at that moment was that she wasn’t even really looking out the door, but rather staring at the telephone on the wall beside the sliding door. Seeing his mother while expecting a burglar was comforting. But on the other hand, seeing her from behind, and seeing her staring out the door, no…weirder…staring at a yellow telephone was very disconcerting.

He heard his own voice squeak, almost as if he was hearing someone else speak.

“Mom, are you OK?” The answer, of course, could not be yes. And it wasn’t.

“Hmmmm…,” she said. OK…that didn’t even qualify as a valid answer. He made his way to her, forgetting the fact that she had been in the kitchen, staring at nothing, well the phone, but she couldn’t have been looking at that in the darkness.

“What’s wrong,” he said, more assertively this time. She turned toward him and he put his hands on her shoulders. He noticed her eyes first. They were not his mother’s eyes. They were not focusing on anything, really. They were just staring…glazed, dilated, and the word “wild’ came immediately to his mind. He noticed her nose and upper lip next, almost as if trained to look for signs of some sort. She was sweating…so much, in fact, that it was starting to run down over her lips. He refocused his own eyes to look at her entire face…she was sweating all over.

“Are you having a spell?” he asked, shakily now.

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine,” the words themselves spoke one message, but the fact that he hardly could make them out told another. He guided her to a chair at the table, the one closest to the sink. There was no doubt about things now. He opened his mouth to yell out for his father, and then thought better of it. He rushed from the kitchen and down the hallway and into his parent’s room. Turning on the light without breaking stride, the confusion had left him. With the bright light glaring now, it immediately made his father stir. He didn’t wait any longer.

“Mom’s having a spell,” he was almost breathless.

“What…huh?” Groggy and squinting as he raised his head. Only moments before, he had been the same.

“Mom’s having a spell,” he repeated, with more urgency, more impatience. He left his father to rustle his way out of bed as he rushed back down the hallway to his mother whom although he had left alone only seconds ago, that now seemed like eternity. She was still sitting there, thank God for that. Eyes open and staring, her head propped up on one arm and smiling. By that time, his father was there.

“Sue, what’s the matter…are you having a spell?” He wanted to scream at his father at this point, but wisely kept quiet. He motioned to his son and said, “Find the orange juice.”

He practically ripped the cabinet door off its hinges and at first glance saw nothing but canned corn and green beans. Hundreds of cans of corn and beans. He reached in a little deeper, and begin slinging cans until he found what he was looking for. His father was waiting with the sugar and a spoon as he stood up, already tearing the aluminum wrapper from the top of the orange juice can. He shoved him the glass, already filled with sugar, along the cabinet and he poured the juice in, stirring before the can was even emptied. Stirring so hard it seemed like the glass would break, the sound of the spoon upon the side of the glass was so out of place.

He passed the glass on to his father who knelt in front of his wife and placed the glass in her hand.

“Drink this, Sue. Drink it all.” She held the glass in her hand and made a slow, almost careful move toward her mouth. A small swallow. Too small.

“You’ve got to get more than that in there or it won’t do you any good,” his voice boomed. He always seemed so rough with her at times. There really was no other choice now, however. The son remained quiet. She kept the glass close to her mouth and brought it up for another swallow.

“You’ve got to drink it all, Mom,” her son pleaded. He found himself watching like it was almost a game to be played with a three year old.

She smiled, which should normally be a good sign, then opened her mouth to speak, but nothing but a gurgle came out as the juice slid from her mouth onto her night gown. It splashed down her chin, rivulets making their way down her throat. Most of it landed in her lap. She seemed almost pleased about this. She had placed the glass down on the table, and his father picked it up and pressed it to her lips again. The smile faded this time as came around with her hand and knocked the glass from his hands. The glass hit the floor and shattered. She was screaming something, but father nor son could make it out.

Then, more clearly this time, “I don’t want it.” Angry. Very angry. The boy had heard this voice before, but never at a time like this. This was the voice reserved for times when he had done something wrong, or time when she was upset with his father. He was scared; confused and scared. Scared because this wasn’t his mother. The body was the same, but it wasn’t her at all. The eyes, that look…never had he seen her speak and act like she was at this very moment. There wasn’t time to ponder all of these things right now. Before his father had to tell him, he flew back to the cabinet, slipping on the mess of broken glass and juice on the floor, throwing cans again, silently praying there would be another can somewhere among all the vegetables. When he found it, he tore the silver tab with his teeth, reaching for the sugar at the same time, mixing it all together hoping it was good enough. The spoon on the glass was even louder this time, but he didn’t notice. Neither did he notice the tears rolling down his face.

“Mom, please drink this…please, please, please drink it all…” he stammered. He braced himself for the shock of another refusal, but none came this time. That smile came back as she reached for the glass, but her hand fell missed its mark and her head hit the table with a sickening thud.

“Dad, dad, dad, dad,” he was trying to scream but the words came out barely above a whisper.

“Grab that side and help me. Gotta get her on the couch.” They carried her together through the kitchen and made their way to the living room. It couldn’t have been more than 10 steps, but it seemed to take forever. They placed her half sitting, half lying. He was winded…it was like carrying a rag doll, so limp yet so heavy. She couldn’t be over 120 pounds, but it was like it really took both of them to negotiate the distance.

He was about to ask what to do next…he had never seen anything like this, and his father was so quiet.

“Please God,” he prayed, “let Dad know what to do next.” Before his father could give him any direction at all, his mother’s body began shaking. He was sitting next to her, still holding on to her hand, but he saw the tremors begin before he felt them. He thought she might simply be cold, but the tremors got worse. He could hardly hold on to her hand anymore, in the next instant, it felt like her hand had been ripped from his own. He didn’t really remember when he blinked and missed it, but when he cut his eyes back to her, she was in the floor, still shaking violently. Her head would rise what looked to be a foot off the carpet and come back down with an even duller thud than it had been the first time at the kitchen table. He was in the floor with her without remembering going there. His father put his hands under her head, although it didn’t seem to do much good other than to keep it from hitting the floor so hard. For the third time that night, he experienced this strange expansion of time. Although it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, holding his mother while she seized. The family dog had somehow extricated himself from his room and was bouncing around his mother. He ran a couple if circles around her and jumped excitedly right on top of her back.

“Get off, Spunky…get down!” he yelled, even as he backhanded the dog from his mother’s back. “We’re not playing with you.” She kept shaking and the dog kept orbiting, but kept what seemed to him a safe distance from the boy’s rough hand. He thought to himself, “this is like holding a flopping fish,” then wondering where that thought even came from and immediately felt guilty for even thinking of his mother and fish in the same thought.

The tremors stopped and he realized he was holding his mother by himself. He hadn’t even noticed his father being gone. As he turned around to look, his father was suddenly there again, this time squeezing a packet of honey onto his first finger. He even noticed that the packet of honey was from Kentucky Fried Chicken…his father loved chicken livers drenched in honey and that was what he always ordered, and was always ordering extra…he gritted his teeth and willed his mind to rid itself of these senseless, random thoughts.

He watched as his father brought his honey covered finger over her lips and heard his father speak to him.

“You’ll have to hold her mouth open,” he ordered. He didn’t move a muscle. “Just do it!” he said. “Put one hand here,” he said, as he pointed with his other hand, “and put the other one here and pull. Just be careful. Keep her from biting me if she starts shaking again”

He hesitated another moment and did as he was told. He pulled her jaws apart in what felt to him like would be enough force to break them, but they barely opened.

“Little more,” his father said. “That’s enough…hold ‘em right there.”

He slid his honey covered finger past her lips and began to smear the honey over her gums. Before he was done with that one, he had another packet torn open and was doing it again, this time with his other hand. He finished and wiped his hands on the carpet.

“I’m going to start the truck. Stay with her,” his father said, more calmly this time. His father’s calm wasn’t affecting him much. He felt numb all over, and wanted to scream and cry and laugh all at the same time, but could find no emotion to do any of those things.

Another time-lapse. His father came back in the house and directed him to put some clothes on. He scrambled to his room where he grabbed the first shirt, the first pair of jeans, and the first pair of shoes he saw. He ran back to where his mother still lay motionless in the floor. He wanted to ask his father if she was still breathing, but he couldn’t find the words, or perhaps couldn’t face what he knew the answer might be. Instead, he grabbed a leg and an arm as did his father, and they carried her through the kitchen, through the utility room, and out the front door. Down the steps, he and his father matched steps perfectly as they made their way to the passenger side of his truck. His father had already opened the door and they lifted her carefully, at least as carefully as one could be with a wet rag doll, into the truck. He slid in beside her and tried to straighten her head. Her neck was limp and didn’t resist his effort at all, which he was thankful for. His father jumped in behind the wheel, carefully putting the vehicle in reverse, and made a quick U and pointed the truck down the gravel driveway. The boy glanced in his mirror to the right and for a second caught his breath. The house looked almost as if it was on fire. All the lights were on, and the front door was standing wide open. For a split second, he worried he would get in trouble for leaving so many lights on and then realized that he had never left the house with the door standing wide open before. He refused to even think about it. How silly those lights seemed now.

The three miles to the city hospital seemed to take forever. He didn’t remember there being this many curves on the road that he could almost drive himself blindfolded. He stopped thinking about the road as his mother began to tremor again. A small tremor this time and a cough. Another cough. A gagging sound, as his dad screamed, “Put her head down or she’ll choke.” The truck never slowed as his mother vomited a thick pink liquid over the dash and on her lap. A curve in the road, and the truck crossed the yellow line to keep its purchase and his mother slid toward him. Another cough, another spasm and more pink stuff all over him this time. His father reached behind the seat for a towel and threw it at him, offering no instructions. The boy took the towel, sensing his mother was done, and wiped off her chin and throat, patting her nightgown where it had pooled. A gag arose in his own throat, and he swallowed hard once, twice and took deep breaths through his mouth to avoid the smell. Time was once again acting funny, because the truck shivered to a stop and has he looked up through the windshield, he could see the Emergency room entrance. His father had already jumped from the truck and was standing at the door about to push the intercom button when the door slammed open and what looked like a small army of men and women came rushing out. He felt two hands pull him not so gently from the truck as they took over. Before he could mind could even fathom what was happening, he saw his mother strapped to a funny looking bed on wheels. He watched her disappear through the shiny metal door at which his father had been standing.

They walked back to the truck, which was still running, got in and shut the doors. His father pulled into a parking space in the nearly empty hospital lot and they got out again.

“Let’s go see her, son,” he said. He opened the door for both of them and took his son’s hand in his own. He felt somehow childish to be holding his father’s hand, being led around a maze of corridors—around first one corner, then the next. He sensed somehow that perhaps it was he who was leading his father, even though he had no idea where he was going.

After countless corners, fish aquariums, and an ungodly number of green, plastic plants, he heard voices. It sounded like everyone was talking at the same time

“What are they saying?” he thought. “Are they talking about mom? Is she in there? Is that her?” He could see a rolling bed very similar to the one that carried her in, but under the bright lights, he couldn’t really see anything. The harsh glare made it difficult to make out much. His father stood silently by the door, and he peeked from behind. It was his mother…at least he thought so. His father must have gotten some sort of signal from one of the voices from within, because he walked slowly towards the rolling bed, pulling the boy behind him.

He took a position on the same side as his father. He stared at his mother under the harsh lights and watched her chest. When he saw it gently rise, he realized he had been holding his breath. He let it all out slowly and begin to breathe normally again. He looked at her face and for some reason couldn’t keep his eyes focused. He blinked hard against the glare and when he opened his eyes again, she was still there, but the blur caused by his tears made her seem almost a hallucination rather than his mother. He blinked again so he could see better. Her skin was so pale, and it looked like she had been drooling. Her mouth was partly open, and he could see that familiar chip from her left eyetooth, the one they had always laughed about together. It was a validation of sorts, neither positive nor negative, that this pitiful, wasted soul laying here was not some stranger…there was no doubt it was his mother. Images of the evening begin rushing through his head even as he tried to shut them out. She was here. He was looking at him. She had to be OK. She was in the hospital. People didn’t die in hospitals.

The voice inside his head that had been silent for so long now suddenly reared its head.

“If she knew her hair looked like that, she’d kill both of us.” He almost laughed but sucked in a mouthful of stale hospital air.

“Little bit more pressure, Dr. Lane,” he heard someone say. It startled him a little…for a few seconds, there was no one else that existed on the planet besides he and his mother.

He looked down at what others in the room was looking at, a foot-long syringe in her arm that was full of a clear, thick liquid. He had always been interested in “doctory” kinds of things and among the many words on the side of the syringe, he craned his head until he could make out the word GLUCOSE in big, bold, black letters. Must be a gallon of stuff in there, he thought. To him, the thing looked as big around as a baseball bat. Surely they don’t have to give her all of that. His eyes went back to her face and he found he couldn’t take them off of her. He didn’t know how long he stared, not blinking, until he heard a voice say, “OK…that’s good” and some more words that he didn’t understand. He glanced down at the syringe and saw that it was empty. It was pulled away and a cotton swab was held over the crook in her elbow where the needle had been.

He looked over at his father, who was still looking at her face just as he had been only moments ago. They looked at each other, and then back at the woman on the rolling bed. They stood unmoving, bolted in place. He began to grow tired of standing in the same spot, but was afraid to move…either afraid of leaving his mother behind or afraid of what his father would thing, or maybe both. His father made the first move. Away from the bed, and toward the door, he carried his large frame with a weight only he seemed able to carry.

“Come on, son,” he said. The quietest perhaps he had ever been. He was about to move from her side, but noticed a flutter of his mother’s eyes.

“Wait a sec, Dad.” Any movement, at this point and time, could only be a good thing. She opened her eyes, unseeingly at first and tried to focus them on the small, scared boy at her side. She squeezed his hand very slightly, which frightened him at first. He had forgotten he was still holding on to her fingers.

A word came from her mouth, garbled and thick, as she tried to speak and smile at the same time, but was unsuccessful at both.

“Love you,” she said. Or maybe it was “Thirsty” and his mind just heard otherwise. Her eyes closed again and she made an almost imperceptible move with her head, maybe to get more comfortable. The paper-covered table rattled slightly.

Then from his father, “Clint, come on…let’s wait out here…let her rest.” He squeezed her fingers as slightly as she has squeezed his.

“I love you too, mom,” he whispered. He took another look at her face under the harsh lights of the emergency room, then turned and saw his dad waiting. He walked slowly to his father and reached out his hand again. Together, they turned the corner, and matching step for step, started down the hallway.