Page 14 of Hidden Justice

8

SANDESH

Gut clenched in worry, I shift into high gear. The emergency SOS text wasn’t specific. It could mean anything, but ten minutes after receiving it, I’m winding down the driveway leading onto the Mason Center grounds. The pristine grass and aged oaks that line the drive remind me of a cemetery.

I shudder. So much of Mom has already been lost. It seems impossible to believe that only five years ago, at fifty-eight, she’d developed Early-Onset Alzheimer’s. It’s so damn unfair. She worked hard her entire life, never took a sick day, and rarely complained. And this is her reward.

Pulling up to the main building, I park in our family’s designated spot. My father paid extra for this space, and though I hadn’t wanted to take his guilt gift, I did it for Mom. It’s come in handy more than once.

I turn off my truck, then race up the care center’s front steps with anxiety kickstarting my heart. The security guard buzzes me through with a nod. Damn. No checking my ID? It must be bad.

I’m running down the hall when I hear her voice, shrill and bitter, and nothing like Mom.

“You bitch! You bitch!”

A simultaneous ache of loss, anger, and fear swamps me as I round the corner and see her.

It doesn’t look like her. Like the woman who wistfully named me after a traditional dessert her nani—grandmother—would make for her. The woman who once soothed my cuts, took me to football practice, and told me I had a lovely singing voice when I can’t carry a tune. The woman who buried her artistic dreams at the insistence of an overbearing husband who wanted all her attention.

I can’t see that woman in the woman who trembles with rage before the open door to her suite. Her thin blue shift shows a frail and wiry form. Her hands shake as she brandishes a worn teddy bear like a weapon. Usually, she holds that bear as if it’s a child, singing and caring for it

Two nurses, along with the twenty-four-hour personal caregiver, stand near her, trying to calm her down. They speak in soothing tones, trying to break through the fog of delusion by playing into the delusion. Today, as with most freak-outs, Mom plays dual roles on the drama loop. Both the tormentor and the tormented.

The screeching bitch comments are a memory of my father. Not a violent man, just a cunning manipulator and an aggressive, demeaning prick. A deadly combination that made him an excellent businessman but a horrible husband.

If he’d always been loud and angry, she would’ve dismissed him, but Dad would alternate between faint praise, openly criticizing, and carefully constructed manipulations meant to destroy her confidence. After they’d divorced, when she’d begun to accurately assess what he’d done to her, she’d gotten sick.

I’d hated Dad for that, would probably still hate him right now, but it’s hard to hate someone when you understand them. And after my service, I came face-to-face with the same angry tendencies in myself.

Hands out, I near Mom. I enter her delusion. Not calling herMom, which would confuse her. Her bear is a baby. “Lina, that’s a fine baby you have there.”

The nurse clears his throat, almost apologetically. “We already tried that.”

I ignore him. It’s not the words; sometimes, it’s the tone. Conversational. Friendly. “He reminds me of your son. What is his name again?”

Mom stops. Her eyebrows raise and she jolts, as if she physically slammed from some other place back into her body, into awareness. She looks down, cries out in alarm, and clutches her bear to her chest.

She’s back. I know it the moment she begins to shake. Her blue eyes clear then mist with tears. “Is it okay? Is it okay?”

My heart breaks into a thousand sharp and cutting pieces. “It’s okay, dear. It’s always okay between us.”

Her face twitches as tremors—aftershocks of awareness—pinch the muscles beneath her too-pale skin. I understand. I’ve imagined what it must be like for her so many times. To be trapped beneath the cold memory of her illness only to have the clouds part and reflect a completely different reality. It must hurt.

I reach for her. When she doesn’t pull away, I wrap an arm around her delicate shoulders and draw her to my side, under one arm. Like a tiny bird in need of great care, she leans into me.

I look at one of the nurses. “Please get her something to drink. Apple juice.”

He nods and takes off. The attendant, the one personally paid to sit with Mom, asks in a low voice, “Would you like me to contact her private physician, Mr. Ross?”

“Yes. And I believe the first visitor coming in my absence, my buddy Victor, will be stopping in tonight. Make sure the guards know.”

“Oh yeah. I already have.”

Good. That’s something. I hate that I have to leave when she’s had such a bad episode, but the Parish family insisted on the timeline and the opportunity is too big to pass up.

9

JUSTICE

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