Sometime after nine o’clock, the nurse stops by to turn Mom one last time before signing off for the night. She checks her skin for bedsores, running a hand up and down Mom’s legs. I’ve got the TV in the room turned on, anything to drown out that mechanical, metallic sound of Mom’s EKG, one that will haunt me for the rest of my life. It’s one of those newsmagazine shows—Dateline, 60 Minutes, I don’t know which—the one thing that was on when I flipped on the TV. I didn’t bother channel surfing; I don’t care what I watch. It could be home shopping or cartoons, for all I care. It’s just the noise I need to help me forget that Mom is dying. Though, of course, it isn’t as easy as that. There isn’t a thing in the world that can make me forget. But for a few minutes at least, the news anchors make me feel less alone.
“What are you watching?” the nurse asks, examining Mom’s skin, and I say, “I don’t even know.”
But then we both listen together as the anchors tell the story of some guy who’d assumed the identity of a dead man. He lived for years posing as him, until he got caught.
Leave it to me to watch a show about dead people as a means of forgetting that Mom is dying.
My eyes veer away from the TV and to Mom. I mute the show. Maybe the repetitive ping of the EKG isn’t so bad after all. What it says to me is that Mom is still alive. For now.
Ulcers have already formed on her heels and so she lies with feet floating on air, a pillow beneath her calves so they can’t touch the bed. “Feeling tired?” the nurse asks, standing in the space between Mom and me. I am, of course, feeling tired. My head hurts, one of those dull headaches that creeps up the nape of the neck. There’s a stinging pain behind my eyes too, the kind that makes everything blur. I dig my palms into my sockets to make it go away, but it doesn’t quit. My muscles ache, my legs restless. There’s the constant urge to move them, to not sit still. It gnaws at me until it’s all I can think about: moving my legs. I uncross them, stretch them out before me, recross my legs. For a whole thirty seconds it works. The restlessness stops.
And then it begins again. That prickly urge to move my legs.
If I let it, it’ll go on all night until, like last night, when I finally stood and paced the room. All night long. Because it was easier than sitting still.
I think then about what the guy in the cafeteria said. About taking care of myself, about getting ready for what comes next. I think about what comes next, about Mom’s and my house, vacant but for me. I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.
“Doc left some clonazepam for you,” the nurse says now, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “In case you changed your mind.” She says that it could be our little secret, hers and mine. She tells me Mom is in good hands. That I need to take care of myself now, again just like the guy in the cafeteria said.
I relent. If only to make my legs relax. She steps from the room to retrieve the pills. When she returns, I climb onto the empty bed beside Mom and swallow a single clonazepam with a glass of water and sink beneath the covers of the hospital bed. The nurse stays in the room, watching me. She doesn’t leave.
“I’m sure you have better things to do than keep me company,” I tell her, but she says she doesn’t.
“I lost my daughter a long time ago,” she says, “and my husband’s gone. There’s no one at home waiting for me. None other than the cat. If it’s all right with you, I’d rather just stay. We can keep each other company, if you don’t mind,” she says, and I tell her I don’t mind.
There’s an unearthly quality to her, ghostlike, as if maybe she’s one of Mom’s friends from her dying delusions, come to visit me. Mom had begun to talk to them the last time she was awake, people in the room who weren’t in the room, but who were already dead. It was as if Mom’s mind had already crossed over to the other side.
The nurse’s smile is kind. Not a pity smile, but authentic. “The waiting is the hardest part,” she tells me, and I don’t know what she means by it—waiting for the pill to kick in or waiting for Mom to die.
I read something once about something called terminal lucidity. I didn’t know if it’s real or not, a fact—scientifically proven—or just some superstition a quack thought up. But I’m hoping it’s real. Terminal lucidity: a final moment of lucidity before a person dies. A final surge of brainpower and awareness. Where they stir from a coma and speak one last time. Or when an Alzheimer’s patient who’s so far gone he doesn’t know his own wife anymore wakes up suddenly and remembers. People who have been catatonic for decades get up and for a few moments, they’re normal. All is good.
Except that it’s not.
It doesn’t last long, that period of lucidity. Five minutes, maybe more, maybe less. No one knows for sure. It doesn’t happen for everyone.
But deep inside I’m hoping for five more lucid moments with Mom.
For her to sit up, for her to speak.
“I’m not tired yet,” I confess to the nurse after a few minutes, sure this is a waste of time. I can’t sleep. I won’t sleep. The restlessness of my legs is persistent, until I have no choice but to dig the melatonin out of my pocket when the nurse turns her back and swallow those too.
The hospital bed is pitted, the blankets abrasive. I’m cold. Beside me, Mom’s breathing is dry and uneven, her mouth gaping open like a robin hatchling. Scabs have formed around her lips. She jerks and twitches in her sleep. “What’s happening?” I ask the nurse, and she tells me Mom is dreaming.
“Bad dreams?” I ask, worried that nightmares might torment her sleep.
“I can’t say for sure,” the nurse says. She repositions Mom on her right side, tucking a rolled-up blanket beneath her hip, checking the color of her hands and feet. “No one even knows for sure why we dream,” the nurse tells me, adding an extra blanket to my bed in case I catch a draft in my sleep. “Did you know that?” she asks, but I shake my head and tell her no. “Some people think that dreams serve no purpose,” she adds, winking. “But I think they do. They’re the mind’s way of coping, of thinking through a problem. Things we saw, felt, heard. What we’re worried about. What we want to achieve. You want to know what I think?” she asks, and without waiting for me to answer, she says, “I think your mom is getting ready to go in that dream of hers. Packing her bags and saying goodbye. Finding her purse and her keys.”
I can’t remember the last time I’d dreamed.
“It can take up to an hour to kick in,” the nurse says, and this time I know she means the medicine.
The nurse catches me staring at Mom. “You can talk to her, you know?” she asks. “She can hear you,” she says, but it’s awkward then. Talking to Mom while the nurse is in the room. And anyway, I’m not convinced that Mom can really hear me, so I say to the nurse, “I know,” but to Mom, I say nothing. I’ll say all the things I need to say if we’re ever alone. The nurses play Mom’s records some of the time because, as they’ve told me, hearing is the last thing to go. The last of the senses to leave. And because they think it might put her at ease, as if the soulful voice of Gladys Knight & the Pips can penetrate the state of unconsciousness where she’s at, and become part of her dreams. The familiar sound of her music, those records I used to hate when I was a kid but now know I’ll spend the rest of my life listening to on repeat.
“This must be hard on you,” the nurse says, watching me as I stare mournfully at Mom, taking in the shape of her face, her eyes, for what might be the last time. Then she confesses, “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” I don’t ask the nurse who, but she tells me anyway, admitting to the little girl she lost nearly two decades ago. Her daughter, only three years old when she died. “We were on vacation,” she says. “My husband and me with our little girl.” He’s her ex-husband now because, as she tells me, their marriage