Page 10 of Fight Or Flight

Me, who wishes for more.

More love.

More time.

“Joss,” Riggs calls desperately, pressing his fingers to the side of her neck.

“No, no, no,” I cry.

He lifts his head and looks at his wife.

“She’s got a pulse,” he declares. “It’s faint, but it’s there.”

“Eric, call 9-1-1,” Lauren orders.

Riggs’ eyes slice to me. He calls my name, but it doesn’t register. Nothing does.

She’s dying.

She’s going to leave me.

“Brooklyn,” he shouts, and this time I blink through the tears to meet his gaze.

“She’s gonna be okay,” he assures, but I shake my head.

“No, she isn’t,” I cry, finding my voice. “She’s dying.”

When it’s our time, it’s our time.

Game over.

* * *

Most people goto a church or a temple to pray, but I bet you the walls inside a hospital have heard more prayers than any of those places of worship. The same goes for airports, they see more sincere kisses in those terminals than wedding halls do.

I’m a fan of airports.

Wedding halls too, even though I haven’t been to many.

I despise hospitals.

I don’t believe in prayer much anymore either. How can I when every damn one goes unanswered?

But back to my hatred for hospitals, it started right after my grandparents passed. Me and my mom were planting flowers—well, she was planting flowers, I was playing with the dirt. Anyway, my shoelaces came untied, and I tripped over one of the flowerpots. My mom rushed me to the hospital. As soon as we turned the corner and the familiar building came into sight, I started screaming. I couldn’t read the sign, but I knew where we were and that my grandparents never made it back home from there.

I was just a little girl whose biggest worry was what outfit her Barbie doll would wear, and yet, I had enough sense to associate death with hospitals. Thinking about it now, I wonder if subconsciously my young heart knew the narrative to my story. Maybe it was trying to prepare me for the day my mom would be diagnosed with cancer. Maybe subconsciously part of me knew that hatred would reach new heights every time my mom got admitted, and I sat in the waiting room wondering if I’d see her again.

But then the doctor said there was nothing left to do. Our run with hospitals was over and oddly enough, I hated that more. There was no more chemo. No more transfusions. Nothing. My mom could enjoy the little time she had left at home. I should’ve been happy that I no longer needed to worry if the next hospital visit would be the last, but I couldn’t be happy because I started to wonder if every kiss goodnight was the last. Would I wake up the next morning to find my mom dead in her bed? What would I do? Who would I call?

The doctors couldn’t help her anymore, but I needed them.

At least then I wouldn’t be alone when she died. The doctors and nurses would know what to do. They’d pull me away from her lifeless body I would undoubtedly cling to, and they’d call the funeral home–right before they called child services.

“I didn’t know what you liked, so I got one of everything.”

The sound of Riggs’ voice jars me away from the grim thoughts racing through my mind and I lift my head to see him juggling a smorgasbord of snacks from the vending machine. On top of his arms being full, his shades are hanging off the bridge of his nose and he’s still wearing his leather vest, only there are more snacks jutting out of the pockets. He’s quite the sight, and if my mother wasn’t dying, I’d probably laugh at him. But all I see when I look at him is the man who lifted my mom into his arms. He carried her to the ambulance and when the EMT’s insisted he couldn’t ride with us, he put one of them in a headlock and told him he’d be on the stretcher next.

Guess who won that battle.

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