Nightwolf

“So far away from me,” Mark Knopfler sings, “so far I just can’t see.”

And suddenly I’m choking on a sob, because she is so far away from me right now. My mother’s body is here and in her mind she’s somewhere else, far, far away.

I keep the phone held up until it’s shaking so hard in my hands and I have to lower it. I don’t want her to be in some strange dreamland and hear me crying. I don’t want her to feel any distress where she is. I just want her to feel peace, wonderful warm peace, and I want her to heal and come back to me.

“Please come back to me, Mommy,” I whisper. I want her to hear me but I don’t want to yell. “Please come back. When you’re ready. There’s no pressure, don’t…don’t get upset or hurt yourself, just…when you’re ready, please come back.”

I wait until the song ends and then I turn off the phone. I was planning on staying here all night, playing all the songs, but I feel like my presence is stressing her out. I feel so guilty leaving, but I feel like I should.

“I’ll be back,” I tell her, squeezing her hand. So frail, so thin, so small. “I’m not going far. Just going to let you rest, but I’ll be right here, right nearby. I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

I watch her. I watch her chest rise and fall as the ventilator moves it. I watch her heartbeat on the monitor, I watch her hands, her face, for any sign of life.

But I see nothing.

I spend the night sleeping on the couch in the ICU. Lenore stays with me until I insist she goes home, looking so uncomfortable in her chair. She doesn’t want to leave me alone, so she gets Solon to come over.

I like Solon a lot. I’m indebted to Solon. I revere him. But crying and being snotty and sleeping on the couch next to him in a small room is not the level of comfort we have between each other. There’s always been a bit of polite distance between us; I’ve always been hyper-aware that he is a vampire and he’s also my boss, so no matter how we joke with each other, or run errands together, or the club itself, I’ve always kept myself a little bit guarded.

So once Solon is in the waiting room with me, I can’t sleep anymore. Instead, I venture back into the ICU to go see my mom, hoping I can play her more music from the playlist and not have a mental breakdown again.

The night nurse is still here and she gives me a polite smile as I walk past her station and into the room, pushing back the curtain.

My mom is lying there as before. She has a window in her room and though there isn’t much of a view, the sky is lighting up a little, the morning is on the way.

I go to her good side. “Hi, Mommy,” I say, and it feels natural to call her that like I did as a kid. “It’s your daughter. It’s Amethyst. You’re in the hospital but you’re okay. You’ve got a great team of people looking after you and you’re doing so good.” I keep repeating myself because I’m never sure what she can hear or remember, if anything. “I’m so proud of you. You’re so strong and I know you’re in there, I know you can hear me. So I’m just here and I’m going to be here when you wake up, okay? I’m going to be waiting for you, right here. You’ll find your way, I know it, you just need some rest.”

I clear my throat, feeling those tears building again. I refuse to succumb to them.

I press shuffle on the playlist.

Fucking same song plays again.

“So Far Away From Me.”

But I don’t want to turn it off just in case it’s the song to help bring her back. If I’m having an emotional connection to it, maybe she will too.

So I play it.

And when it gets into the chorus, the familiar guitar notes, my mother moves her hand.

She raises it a few inches.

I gasp.

I grab her hand and squeeze it, leaning into her face. “Mom! Mom it’s me, it’s Amethyst. You’re okay, you’re safe, I’m here.”

I squeeze her hand again.

“Mom please, I’m here. It’s your daughter. I know you can’t see me but I’m here. Just squeeze my hand, okay? Can you do that? Can you squeeze my hand?”

I squeeze her hand again and again.

Hoping, praying, wishing.

And then she squeezes my hand back.

Chapter 13

Amethyst

It’s been five days since my mother was hospitalized.

I feel like I’ve aged a million years.

I look like it too.

I haven’t gone home yet to sleep. Lenore brings me clothes and I sleep in the waiting room. I brush my teeth in the bathroom next to the ER. I took a shower once at the gym down the street, other than that I’ve been using wet wipes. I’m a gross mess, inside and out.