I am broken. Not physically, though a hangover with the force of a bulldozer wracks my body. I sit on a cheap metal chair with cracked and crumbling foam lining the seat. A soap opera plays on the tv mounted high above us, a Christmas special with some sort of argument about a cake. The orchestral song of machines beep in constant rhythm, some close, some far off in the building. Announcements come and go from the intercom above; room 6 needs assistance, or room 12-b is ready to leave. The window is dirty, but large. Lots of sunlight, though what its illuminating is not bringing me joy, and the light makes my head throb. Outside is the roof of a lower part of the building, industrial machines cycling air and heat through the vast complex. The city is frozen and lined with white snow. Clouds of heat rising from the various buildings. Next to me in a grey hospital bed with a blue mattress, wrapped in blankets like a wasp nest, wearing a bright pink toque with tassels and pom-poms that I got her for her birthday, lays my dying mother. The culmination of a multi year battle with both mental and physical health spanning nearly a decade. It is December 31st, 2024.
I was off work for a few days for Christmas vacation. What was supposed to be an extremely well-deserved break. As I'm enjoying my lazy days filled with hedonistic lounging in a robe around my house, I was fully in the swing of being indulgent and enjoying the temporary freedom and magic of the holidays. The day prior, around 3pm, I began the libations to myself. My cup filled with what some would call a strong drink, I meandered to the couch. Fifteen minutes later my phone demanded my attention with a call from my dad. Things weren’t going well; mom hadn’t kept anything down in a few days and they went to the hospital to check things out. They ran some tests and according to the doctor, she had maybe two weeks to live. She had just turned sixty-five a few weeks ago, an event I had flown cross country for. I normally did.
“It’s probably your last chance to see mom… I would really appreciate it if you could come.”
My dad tells me over the phone. I call them every other week. I send them photos every other day. I still have a little crocheted doll my mom got me in the fourth grade called Safety Boy that apparently wards off harm by soaking up all the injuries himself. I had been there a few weeks ago for her birthday in early December. Of course I’m coming. The clock begins to tick. If I don’t make it to Calgary on the next flight, I literally may never see my mother alive again. I finish the drink I just made. My phone brings me to the available flights, I live in New Brunswick, the closest airport is tiny and has two terminals. There’s a flight leaving in a few hours, and its about a half hour drive on the highway to the airport. If I leave pretty much right now, and drive maybe a little fast, I should be able to make it on time, especially if I explain the situation to the security people at the metal detectors. Going to my bedroom to ready my bags, I find the task already completed. My fiancé packed them while I was buying my one-way ticket. She's my entire world, and I wish she would see it more, but for now a kiss and a thank you must do. My clothes are all dirty, the culmination of a busy work week into living like a pig for a few days. Had the call from my dad come ten minutes later I would have had all my laundry soaking wet in the washing machine. What would I have done then? Stopped the machine, pulled them out, and thrown them in a garbage bag? Force my fiancé to dry them, pack them up, and ship them to me? Buy new stuff? A couple of lucky strokes in a row, if nothing else.
I can't help but think about how I'm travelling to my mom's doom. How the "good" outcome is that she doesn’t just fucking die before I arrive, and then I get to watch her die instead. I chug some gin straight from the bottle. My wife tells me to be careful - I still have to drive. She's right, I know.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The engine of my car fires up. I fly through the snowy roads, barely focusing on what's infront of me. Less than an hour ago I was comfortably at home in my robe, enjoying the endless possibilities of the day. Not that I wasn't aware of the situation with my mom, it's in fact the very reason that I tried to spend as much time with my parents as possible. But of course, one always tries to hold out hope, to ignore the truth of the severity of situations, to assume that you'll never actually have to deal with the loss of someone you love. Now as I hurdle across this frozen highway in my station wagon, I have no choice but to embrace the reality. Frigid and jagged as the winter winds that batter the lands. I scream into the void, it doesn’t help much.
The airport brings more drinks, as does the airplane. They'll give you little bottles of wine now, kinda cool. A taxi brings me to my parent's place, where more drinks are shared. Mom's staying in the hospital now. I pass out in a bed upstairs. It used to be in the spare-room of our basement in our childhood home. Its stiff and uncomfortable, I kinda hate it, but cest la vie. The clock tells me its around 3am, that’s about 7am in New Brunswick? A sleepless, restless night plagues me, and the liquor makes my blood swirl.
The morning sun wakes me and sears my eyeballs. Shakily rising from my bed still partly drunk, I hiss a curse like a vampire burned by the light.
"How does this man buy a whole ass house and not put blinds on the east-facing windows in the bedroom."
As the hot water and steam of the shower rejuvenate me slightly, a pop song I like runs through my head, as they tend to. There's an allegory about being the medicine you need to stave off disease, but as medicine runs out and hope fades, with no end in sight, she wants you to scream like you're gonna die. The songwriter is quite attractive, and I picture her in a nurses' outfit, before realizing that I am about to get absolutely mentally smacked in the face by reality when I step into this hospital and its all doctors and sick people and not hot nurses.
My dad drives us in his new Mercedes. We turn towards the hospital on top of the hill, windows glinting in the morning sunlight like terrestrial daytime stars. Not a lot I can say that hasn't been said already, but I'm there to listen. I mentally steel myself and silently wish he wouldn’t drive so fast but recognize that now is not the time to say that.
Stepping into the parkade I breathe deep, some fresh air and steady ground, thank fucking god. We step through the greasy doors to the stairwell, and my dad pays for parking while I find a hand sanitizer pump. Finding one, I push the plastic handle down only to be met with a sad squeak. Its empty. In a hospital…
"Ok, good start. Just don't eat anything and wash your hands when you get a chance."
I tell myself, knowing that I am terrible at not touching my face. The knowledge fully upon me that I will almost inevitably get sick if I spend enough time here. Cest la vie. This is more important. Parking ticket in hand, my dad heads down the stairs. He's a tall man, and he takes the stairs down nearly three at a time. I can hardly keep up. I'm not a small man myself. I feel like a child walking downtown with this giant all over again, practically jogging to try and keep up with him. Four stories down, we reach the ground floor and turn right towards the doors that lead to a little hallway with a second set of doors at the end. I look left towards the parkade, eyes scanning the old stonework common with architecture from the 1960s. Rundown, but still functional. The modern lights and automatic glass doors that have been shoe-horned in to try and modernize the space. The plethora of cars in the dark parkade, a bright red Prius parked right at the front on the other side of the glass door. My vision strays downwards, past the payphones, to the floor only a few feet away from me. A pool of blood. Sitting. Staring. Running down the slanted floor towards the stairwell. A few meters wide. Seeping into the walls. Footprints through the puddle of crimson liquid. People walking by. My dad didn’t even notice. Why did nobody care?
