Sarah Durst - The Lost

I crack a smile since that’s obviously what he wants.

“Your mother is a very brave woman, you know. She’s a fighter. That’s why she’s held on as long as she has. She’s talking about what plants she’s going to put in her garden and how no one has weeded.”

“She’s beaten this before,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Yes, she has,” he agrees. But he doesn’t say she will again. He also doesn’t say she won’t, and human bodies are so complex with all sorts of factors. He can’t know for certain that she...

Stop it, I tell myself. Stop denying. Stop making excuses. Stop running away. My entire coma-induced hallucination had an obvious point. It was clearly my subconscious helping my conscious come to grips with my mom’s death.

I won’t let leaving Peter and Claire be pointless.

Even if they weren’t real.

Hobbling, I follow Dr. Handsome into the elevator. I sag against the wall. He watches me. “She’s rallied quite a bit since she heard you woke,” he says. “But I need to caution you...sometimes it’s a shock to see someone you love here.”

“I’ve seen her in the hospital before.”

“She’s weak.”

“I’ll be strong for her.”

He nods approvingly. “Good. She needs that.”

“That’s why I came back.”

I don’t know whether I mean back from Lost or back from the coma. I don’t think it matters. He seems satisfied, at any rate. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. His hands are clasped on his clipboard, and he’s watching the numbers tick down on the elevator. It’s a slow elevator, and it rattles a fair amount for what should be a smooth ride for patients. It’s also twice as large as a normal elevator with railings on all sides for handicapped. I’m clinging to one of the railings and trying to act as if I’m leaning casually against the cool metal wall. Half the other walls are filled with posters describing what to do in a medical emergency. “I’d really hope that here of all places those posters wouldn’t be necessary.” I’m trying to joke. I don’t really succeed.

“Emergencies happen.”

“But aren’t you guys supposed to be trained?”

His lips curve up into a smile, and I notice he has nice lips. I don’t know why I’m noticing this now, when I’m on my way to see my mother. My brain’s way of distracting me. Even my subconscious has avoidance issues.

I think of Peter’s kisses, and I have to turn away from Dr. Barrett.

See, I did remember his name. Funny that. I hadn’t realized that I’d committed it to memory. “How long have you been Mom’s doctor?”

“Three years.”

“Oh.” I’d never met him before. “I thought it was that man with the white hair...”

“Dr. Scola? He retired a year and a half ago. I inherited his practice. Your mother has been coming to see me regularly for a while.” He looked at me. “Don’t feel bad. You aren’t expected to know her doctors. I don’t think she wanted you so involved.”

“She did. I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t ready.”

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. “Are you ready now?”

It’s a genuine question, and I wonder how many deaths a doctor has to see to stop caring, how many until the soul scabs over, how many until the losses stop hurting. “Yes.”

He holds open the door for me.

I don’t move. “Honestly, no, I’m not ready. I should be. But I’m not. Is anyone?”

He considers it. “Sometimes. But usually, no. If you’d like to talk afterward, have the nurses page me.”

I dismiss this as politeness. He’ll be too busy afterward.

“I mean it, Ms. Chase. I hope you’ll take me up on my offer.” He leads the way out of the elevator and then pauses as I hobble out. He holds out his arm.

I wonder at the fact that he’s taking the time to do this at all, to escort an obviously slow walker all the way over here. In my experience, this isn’t how people act in hospitals. They’re nice enough, they care, but they’re harried. He must have other patients, appointments, things to do. “Why are you being so nice?” I know I’m being blunt, but I can’t help it.

“It’s my job.”

“Seems above and beyond. Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

“As I said, your mother is an extraordinary person,” he says. “When my father died, she went out of her way to be kind to me. I owe her.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” I guess I didn’t know a lot of what my mother did while I was at work, including her friendships. I feel an unpleasant flash of anger, then jealousy... But I wanted her to hide this from me, all the details of her dying. She was only doing what she thought I wanted. “I think I have a lot to talk about with her.”

“She tires easily,” he warns me.

I flash him a wan smile. “So do I.”

We’re walking very slowly now. He’s holding on to my arm, and I’m leaning against him more than is polite, but if I didn’t, I think I would melt into the linoleum floor and not be able to rise. I see him glance at a wheelchair.

“I don’t want her to see me in that,” I say. “I want to be strong for her.”

He nods, and he doesn’t look at a wheelchair again.

“In retrospect, I should have used one until here and then ditched it.”

At last, we’re outside her room. He knocks on the door. “Mrs. Chase? I have someone here to see you!” His voice is cheerful again. I wonder if he practices that, the cheerful voice. It’s not quite as singsong as my doctor’s, but the tone is the same. Maybe they have group cheerfulness training. “Brace yourself,” he says to me softly, very softly. I’m not quite sure if he said it, or if it’s my own inner voice telling me to be strong.

I walk into the room.

Mom lies in the hospital bed. She looks as if half of her has melted away. Her skin sags against her bones, and she looks ashen-yellow. She has multiple IV needles puckering the skin on the back of her hand and tubes taped to her arms. Her body is under the thin sheet, but her face is so very thin. Still, she brightens as I hobble into the room.

“I look terrible, don’t I?” she says.

Clearly, I haven’t done a good job at hiding my expression. I consider lying. “You look like how I feel.”

She points imperiously to the chair by the window, a twin to the one I was sitting in when Dr. Barrett came to fetch me. “William, you should have wheeled her here. She didn’t need to walk.”

“She insisted,” he says. “She has your stubborn streak.”

“Stupid streak, you mean.” Mom glares at me. “You had me terrified, you know. Aged me at least twenty years.”

“Barely shows at all.”

“You mean beneath the emaciated ill look?”

“Right. That kind of overshadows everything else.”

“Dying is a helluva diet. I don’t recommend it.” She points again at the chair. Dr. Barrett, William, guides me over to it. His hands are warm and strong, and I think of Peter’s hands. They’re similar. Hands that are used often. In Peter’s case, it was to climb onto roofs. In William’s, I suspect it’s saving lives. Or maybe golf. It occurs to me that I have done such an excellent job of avoiding talking to any doctors in the past few years that I don’t know if golf is still the standard cliché.

“Do you golf?” I ask him.

If he’s startled by this change of subject, he doesn’t show it. “Not regularly.”

“He plays basketball with friends,” Mom says.

“Sometimes. There’s a league in the hospital. We meet at lunch whenever we can.”

“Lauren likes to swim,” Mom says. “Or did. She used to be a fish.”

“Still am,” I say without thinking.

Mom snorts. “You haven’t been in the water since...well, she used to be an excellent swimmer. I’m sure she still would be if she’d make time for it.”