Page 83 of Beyond Friendship

The nurse leads me away to the visitors’ room. Inside, I plop down on an uncomfortable bench. Many others had surely done the same while waiting for news about their own loved ones—I’d seen this scene play out on TV, but experiencing it in real time is mortifying, and I wish I could do something, but here I am, stuck in this helpless waiting game.

God, I hate waiting. Minutes drag on to hours before a tall figure enters the room. I feel my heart speed up as I recognize the man in blue scrubs: a surgeon. He runs a hand through his hair and approaches me.

“Mr. Fox?”

“Yes,” I say, standing up to shake his hand. “How is she doing? What happened?”

He motions for me to sit, and I do.

“Your mother has Traumatic Brain Injury, after a fall from the stairs,” he starts. “She had a fracture in her skull and blood was causing pressure to build. So we operated right away.”

I close my eyes tight and swallow against the bile rising in my stomach.

“Is she...” I start but can’t finish the sentence.

“She’s alive,” he answers.

I exhale in relief until my breath freezes upon seeing the stern expression on his face.

“How bad is it?” I ask.

His eyes are already telling me what his mouth is about to say.

“We don’t know if she’ll make it through the night. We stopped the bleeding, but there’s severe swelling in her brain... We’re treating it with medication, but there’s nothing else we can do at this moment.”

My body tenses up, but I jump to my feet. “Take me to her.”

The man rises from his seat and nods. “Follow me.”

Please don’t take her away from me, I pray as I follow him through the hallways. My heart lurches and my inner world shrinks to a single thought:this can’t be true.Surely I’m dreaming. But the nurses’ scurrying and the phones and pagers ringing around me dash that hope.

A low hum of murmured voices fills the corridors. The ICU area, however, is eerily quiet. Suddenly, the doctor stops before a doorway on our left, and I take a ragged breath before turning my head to glance inside.

A horrified gulp of air leaves my lips when I spot my mother lying on the bed with her delicate face hidden by a white bandage while hooked up to monitors and an IV. The steady beeping of the monitors cuts through the stillness like a mechanical metronome.

I stumble into the room, feeling like I might pass out from the shock. My eyes dart to the beeping machines around us. “Can she hear us?”

“I encourage people to talk to their loved ones, but she has been given strong pain medications,” the doctor replies.

“We’re monitoring her closely, hoping the swelling subsides in the next hours. You can stay and we will regularly come in to do checkups.”

As he exits, I walk over and take hold of my mother’s hand, my voice lowering as I look upon her pale features. My throat tightens, and I fight to get the words out. “Mom... I’m here. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when you got hurt, but I’m here now and I’m not leaving until you wake up.” Gently, I kiss the back of her hand. “I love you, Mom.”

For hours, I sit by her side, talking to her. A memory surfaces in my mind of Sunday mornings when Mom would make me a big stack of pancakes topped with bright red strawberries. We would pour on the syrup and talk while we devoured them all together.

“I always loved the summer vacation,” I say while rubbing the back of her hand with my thumb. “Do you remember how just before school started again, you and Dad would take me camping for one final family trip? Every night we’d build a fire, roast marshmallows, and tell stories until late into the night. And on our last night there, you’d treat us to a special surprise: chocolate-dipped fruits from a nearby farm stand that remained open even during the off-season months. It made me feel so special and loved.”

The memories bring tears to my eyes as I squeeze my mom’s hand tighter in mine and hope more than anything else that everything will turn out all right and that soon enough she’ll be back home where she belongs.

Hours pass by as I cling onto hope for a miracle, endlessly recounting funny stories from my past in an effort to keep myself sane. The night wears on, and then, as the room fills itself with the light of the morning sun, an almost imperceptible squeeze gets my attention. My head whips up, my pulse racing when my mom’s eyes flutter open, and a relieved sigh escapes me as she looks up at the ceiling.

“Hey, Mom... Everything will be okay,” I stammer, my hand gently stroking her cheek. My heart soars from the love I have for her, but before I can express it, the monitor erupts with an alarmed beep. I look at the noisy equipment.

What the—

My eyes shoot back to my mom, and I’m horrified to see the blue eyes I’ve known for my entire life roll back in her head, turning white before closing again.

“Mom?”

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