I never, not once, regretted not coming here to see her before the cancer. She was no longer my mom. I had no mom. My mom died when I was five years old, when she changed.
I watch her chest rise and fall with her false breathing. There’s a tube stuck down her throat and another smaller one running underneath her nose. Both of her thin frail hands have IVs sticking out of them. She’s pale and her frame is so small, the twin bed appears to swallow her whole.
I can’t manage to muster even an ounce of pity or love for the woman before me. I’m dead inside when it comes to her. Just as dead as she’s soon to be.
There’s a noise behind me, and I turn to see a nurse walk in the room. She’s a short elderly lady with a chart tucked underneath her arm. Over the past couple months, I’ve come to learn most of the staff’s names. Nancy is one of the ones that’s been my mom’s nurse the longest.
“Hey, Nancy,” I say when she comes to stand on the other side of the bed, dropping the chart beside my mom’s hip.
“Hey, honey. How have you been?”
She pulls a needle from the pocket of her pink coat, uncaps it, then sticks the tip into one of the IVs.
“I’ve been good.”
I watch as she pushed the plunger, then writes something down on the chart. After a moment, she puts the chart back down and looks at my mom. She runs her fingers through her gray hair, like someone would do for a person they care about. It only pisses me off.
“Poor Jenna,” Nancy says quietly.
I snap my eyes to hers. “She doesn’t deserve your pity,” I say through clenched teeth. The woman doesn’t deserve any type of emotion beside hatred and contempt.
My tone doesn’t faze Nancy. She just looks up at me with sad eyes. I don’t know if the medical staff here knows what she put her son though as a kid, but I get the sense they don’t. There’s no way they would look at her with sad eyes if they did.
Nancy doesn’t say anything else, just gathers the used needle and chart and makes her way to the door. I’m sure the staff here thinks I’m an insensitive asshole, because when I come here, I’m always in a bad mood. They’ve only ever seen me with a pissed-off attitude, so for all they know, that’s the type of person I am. Always bitter. Their mouths would probably drop if they knew the real me.
Right before Nancy walks through the door, she stops and turns back around.
“Do you know who Bruce is?” she asks.
I furrow my brow, trying to recognize the name. My mind comes up blank.
“No. Why?”
“Because your mom used to scream the name at night sometimes. She’d wake up hysterical and the orderly would have to sedate her to calm her down.”
With one last sad look, she turns around and walks away, leaving me confused.
Who in the hell was this Bruce, and what did he have to do with my mom?
I look back at her comatose form. Whoever he is doesn’t matter. It’s not worth thinking over. Once she passes away, there is nothing I want to know about her. Both of her parents died when she was still young and her adopted parents are no longer in the picture. She had no siblings or aunts and uncles.
Once she’s gone, I can forget she ever existed.