Love Lift Me (18 page)

I
arched my back and pressed my breasts against his mouth. He obliged, mouthing
at them as best he could through my dress.

“You
want me to take it off?” I teased. The wild look in his eyes told me he did. I grabbed
the thin material around the middle and pulled the dress over my head in one
motion.

“Much
better,” he said, and encircled his hot, wet mouth around one nipple.

I
closed my eyes and concentrated on all the sensations happening at once. It was
almost too much. My fingers twisted into his shirt as Shane drove on, filling
me again and again. A bright tingle somewhere in my core began to grow,
spinning like a star of fire, and as it did the feeling spread.

Shane
wrapped one arm around me and lifted, turning us over with me on my back and my
bottom on the edge of the bed. There, he took purchase under my knees and
guided his member back to where it belonged. I groaned loudly as he pressed
into me and, realizing how much noise I had made, I covered my mouth with one
hand.

“Whoops,”
I whispered and looked at Shane, who only shook his head and snickered. The
moment of levity passed and the fire inside me sprung back to the front of my
mind, rekindled.

Shane
stretched me backwards, closing my legs together while bringing his weight down
with each thrust. Soon, the tingling evolved into a delicious, burning ache
inside me. My release was coming fast…I bit down hard on my index finger and
tried to hold the cry inside. The muscles in my thighs stiffened and I found
myself digging into Shane’s back to urge him on. A ragged breath escaped from
me, torn from my lungs as the moment reached its peak. Then, with a hollow gasp
I tossed back my head and felt the surge of pleasure wash over me like flooding
waters. I struggled and writhed in place, trying to hold on to it forever, but
in the end it escaped, just like it always did, leaving me in a washed-out,
heated state of bliss.

Shane
discovered his release shortly after. He was white-knuckled as he held onto my
legs and his expression was one of indulgent relief. With one final, hard
thrust, he buried himself into my depths and shuddered. Once he had sought out
every last bit of pleasure he could, I felt him retreat. Shane’s arms went
around me and his firm chest settled against my breasts.

“That
was insane,” I murmured sweetly at the light feeling of gentle kisses along the
side of my neck.

Shane
chuckled softly and nibbled my ear lobe. “I had a lot of stress.”

“I
think I can sneak downstairs and grab us something to drink. You want
something?”

Shane
grabbed a pillow and tucked it under his head. “Sure. Some water would be
fine.”

Just
as I was about to walk downstairs, the buzzing of my phone against the dresser
caught my attention. When I saw my sister’s number on the cracked display, a
swirl of fear made my stomach do a flip.

“Hello?
Abby?” I said into the receiver.

“Kat,
where have you been? Why didn’t you pick up?” she hurriedly replied. Her voice
sounded full of worry.

“I
just got back from the festival with Shane. Is everything ok?”

“You
gotta get to the hospital in Wilmington, Kat. Momma…she…Daddy found her passed
out on the floor after dinner. The ambulance came and got her.”

Shane
sat up in the bed and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Abby,
is Momma all right?”

“She
was talkin’ to me after they got her in the hospital, but I couldn’t understand
a word of it. Then some nurses came and had to take her to run some tests. She
ain’t come back yet. Her eye is all swollen up and bruised, and the doctor said
he thinks she might have tripped and fallen.”

“Is
Daddy there?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.
He’s the one who told me to call you. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

I
looked at the screen and noticed for the first time that I had five missed
calls. “I’m sorry…I…I had the ringer turned off. Listen, I’m on my way. I’ll be
there as soon as I can.”

Sixteen

The
glass double doors at the main entrance of Landover Regional Hospital slid
apart for me with a smooth, automated swish. Pale green paint and varied,
evenly-spaced prints of landscape artwork covered the walls. It was an effect
meant to bring to mind peace and tranquility, but instead it came across as
overly drab. The long bars of fluorescent lights that lined the ceiling and reflected
dully in the tile floor didn’t help. There were several dozen plain, plastic
chairs arranged along the sides of the lobby or in the middle forming a hallway,
some of them with expressionless strangers waiting in them.

I
don’t think my pulse slowed since Abby phoned me with the news, and now it was
giving me a killer headache. Marching ahead with Shane trailing, I steered
myself towards the registration counter and waited as patiently as I could for
the young woman on the other side to notice me.

“Can
I help you, ma’am?” the girl asked when she turned around in her swivel chair.

“I’m
looking for my mother, Mrs. Carol Atwater. I think she’s in the emergency room.
The ambulance should have brought her in a few hours ago.” I was so preoccupied
that I barely paid any notice to Shane as he caught up and stood by my side.

“Hang
on,” the girl answered. She typed something into a computer, nodded, and then
said, “She’s in the ER. Let me tell the nurse you’re here. How many are going
back?”

I
felt Shane’s hand wrap around mine and answered, “Two.”

The
wait was not long. A nearby door opened and a raven-haired woman in pink nursing
scrubs called out my last name. Shane and I quickly stepped over to her and
almost ran into Abby and my father as they were coming out.

“Daddy,”
I said and wrapped my arms around his neck. “How is she?”

His
frown grew even more severe than it already was. “Well…she ain’t farin’ so
well, Lil’ Bit. Doctor said her head is all right. They did one-a them CAT
scans to make certain. She’s got the pneumonia, too, but the real problem is
more serious than that.” He turned away and rubbed his forehead tiredly,
causing the brim of his favorite old hat to sit crooked. “I’d…reckon I’d better
let your Momma tell you the rest.”

“Serious?
The cancer’s come back?” I asked.

“I
don’t want to talk for her, Lil’ Bit. She was spoutin’ out gibberish at first,
but now she’s talkin’ so you can understand her. Go on in and sit for a while.
Nurse said only two people back at a time anyways. Me and your sister will be
out here in the waitin’ room.”

The
nurse led me and Shane through the emergency department, which was one ‘L’
shaped hallway lined with rooms covered by sliding curtains.

She
pointed her finger towards a room with a portable x-ray machine parked right
outside and said, “Take a right down there, near the end of the hall. Room
number thirteen.” Then, without another word, the nurse turned her attention to
the stack of papers in her hand and walked back the other way.

I
could hear the slow beeping of mother’s heart monitor before I even moved the
curtain aside. When I walked in, I found her lying on a stretcher, asleep, and
wrapped snugly under several blankets. The entire right side of her face was
swollen, the eyelid far more than the rest, and in the center of the swelling
the skin had turned a bright, disturbing purple. Her hair, always in place no
matter what, was tangled under her head and speckled around her temple with
dark, dried crimson. She looked like a shell of her former self. The buoyant
life and spitfire energy that could always be found on her cheeks in the heat
of an argument or just a spirited conversation was drained away, leaving them a
pale, sickly white.

The
compulsion to perform as a nurse and check her vitals drew my attention to the
screen above her bed which listed them. Blood pressure was low. Respiration,
low. I examined the clear plastic bags with tubes that ran down into a
medication pump. Saline, for hydration. The smaller bag contained vancomycin, a
powerful drug used to fight off resistant infections. Her nurse had left stickers
on the pole which indicated that two large doses of morphine had already been
administered since her arrival.

While
I was turning the stickers over in my hand, Momma stirred a bit and then went
into a fit of hoarse coughing. When she recovered, she held one hand over her
chest and looked up at me with drug-glazed eyes, almost like she didn’t
recognize me at first, and then relaxed back onto her pillow.

“I
see…you brought Shane with you. That’s…real nice,” she said between wheezes and
then gave Shane a weak nod.

“He
drove me here after Abby called. What happened?”

She
shakily reached for the button on her guardrail to raise the head of the bed,
but gave up. There was another control button on my side, so I did it for her
until she held up a hand for me to stop. “Not too high. Makes me dizzy. There.
That’s it. Did ya’ll go to the…the festival? I remember you leavin’
before…well…all this happened.”

“We
did,” I answered curtly. “Wish you could’ve come with us, Momma.”

“Oh,
phhhtt
…ain’t for me. Never was, ‘ceptin’ the night your Daddy and me was
there so long ago.”

I
stepped around the bed, satisfied that I’d gleaned all I could from the
machines and bags of medicine, and took a seat in a padded visitor’s chair.

“So,
what did the doctor say, Momma?”

“He
said I got a touch of pneumonia, Mary Katherine. Reckon it was more than just
the weather after all.” She turned and coughed once before cracking a small
grin. “Don’t tell your father he was right…or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

I
wrung my hands together, a nervous habit I thought I’d broken back in the sixth
grade. She was obviously much sicker than she let on, and had been for some
time. “Momma, what else aren’t you telling me? I know something else is going
on with you. This isn’t just pneumonia, is it?”

“Shane,
honey…step out in the hall for a minute,” she said, and Shane silently obliged,
parting through the curtain with a lingering glance back at me.

“Momma,
I know you haven’t been eating like you say you have. You toss and turn in your
sleep like you’re in so much pain that you can hardly stand it. Please, be
honest with me…has the cancer come back?”

Her
eyes seemed to slip from mine and stare out at nothing. “It never left, Mary
Katherine. Been there since the start and I s’pose it’ll be there at the end,
too.”

“But
you told me…” I could feel the tears welling up. “You said you were gonna be
fine
,
Momma. After your last appointment, the one you wouldn’t let me take you to.
Why didn’t you tell me what was really going on? Did you already know and
didn’t want me to find out? We could have helped you, we could have done
something-”

“No
you couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head somberly. “Won’t nothing anyone could
have. It done spread all over, to my lungs, my brain...my liver. Got in my
bones. They found it in the last scan. Doctor told me I was riddled with it.
Said they could put me back under that ol’ surgeon’s knife again, do some more
chemotherapy, that they could get more aggressive with it…but he
knew it
,
just like I knew it. It was written all over his face.”

I
felt the first wet tear drop from the corner of my eye and run down the side of
my nose. Holding it back was not an option. The woman that I could always ask
for advice, the one that kissed away my scraped knees and tanned my hide when
I’d done wrong, the one who sacrificed every meager dollar she could for us…she
was lying there and dying right in front of me. She’d been dying the whole time
and I’d barely seen it.

I
went to her then and put my arms around her, feeling at once how fragile and thin
she’d really gotten. Her body radiated with feverish warmth. My sobs resounded
in my own ears and the tears running down my cheeks stained her hospital gown
with dark spots. Her hand glided smoothly down my back to comfort me like she
did when I was a child and I wished that there was something, anything I could
do to lift her out of that stretcher and make her well again. I held her for a
long time, afraid that I might lose her if I dared to let go.

“Now,
now,” she cooed when I finally slinked back into the chair, wiping my eyes.
“There ain’t no need to spend no more time cryin’, child. It’s in the Lord’s
hands.”

“I-it’s
not fair.”

“It
ain’t about what you or me think is fair, honey. It’s God’s way. He’s got his
reasons.”

“You
were supposed to have more time, Momma. For weddings, and babies…grandchildren.
Abby’s not even finished with high school-”

“When
it’s time, it’s time, I s’pose,” she said matter-of-factly and lifted her chin.

“Did
they say how long? The doctor at the cancer clinic?”

“That
doctor didn’t act like I’d make it out the door that day, but here I am. Reckon
I’ll keep on kicking for a little while longer just to spite ‘em.”

It
was Thanksgiving, five days later, and mother was sitting up and talking from
her bed in the intensive care unit like nothing bad had ever happened. She
still had a bit of a cough, but when the fever finally broke most of the
hacking and wheezing went right along with it. The food they brought to her
disappeared in short order, especially the chocolate pudding. It was like she’d
never been sick at all. As much as it pained me to think about it, I’d seen
such things happen myself a few times and it never lasted.

Sometimes
terminal patients will regain their strength and vitality for a few days near
the end. From the outside, you can’t tell anything is wrong. It seems to come
on as if by grace. It gives families something to hope for – a miracle, a
last-hour spontaneous recovery…whatever you want to call it. Unfortunately, the
most I’d ever seen them get was a few more precious days with their loved one.

Despite
that, I
was
full of hope. Such a thing is natural, even for a person
that thinks they know better. So I sat with her and enjoyed every moment, fear
resting at the back of my mind like a constant companion; a reminder that the
dark hour might soon come and take her away.

“Lookit
there, Mary Katherine! He done hit the one dollar mark two times in a row! Can
you believe that?” Momma said excitedly. She held the corded remote control
that was hooked into her bed and waved it around while she spoke.

I
smiled at her, but couldn’t for the life of me join in with the same
enthusiasm.

She
went on, “First time I ever seen somebody hit two in a row like that.
Twenty-six thousand dollars! My
word
. Bet that young feller is gon’ take
it all in the showdown. He’s on one good streak of luck, you watch.”

“I
didn’t think you liked television,” I said, and she pretended to glare at me,
one eye making a better show of it than the other from underneath the fading
bruise on her eyelid.

“Reckon
I got to liking this here show while sitting around at the clinic all day. Not
much else to do, ‘sides read them magazines and try not to get sick.”

“Oh,
Miss Pauline called while you were still asleep this morning. I almost forgot,
Momma. She said she would be by again after lunch.”

“That
woman,” Momma began and shook her head. “Ain’t never known anyone else like
her, that’s for sure. It’s amazin’ how she does it all and still has time to
tend her own house and that husband of hers. Some people spoke bad about havin’
a integrated church with black and white folks worshipin’ together back, ‘fore
you was born, but don’t nobody know what our church would be like without Miss
Pauline.”

The
cheers of a studio audience blared from the television. One look confirmed
that, indeed, the young man who had spun the big wheel and won twice had taken
home not one, but both showcases. I wondered how he had to be feeling at that
moment. On top of the world, probably.

“Tol’
you he’d win it,” Momma said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Did
I tell you Shane and I saw Miss Pauline at the festival the other night? There
she was, running one of the rides, and dressed up like some kind of diva in an
elf outfit.”

Momma
let out a sharp laugh and slapped her leg and said, “No wonder she tol’ me to
stay at home and rest. Now I know why.”

“She
was definitely working that costume, though. She downright refused to let it
ruin her style – it looked like she was ready to either head to the North Pole
or the dance club, but couldn’t decide which.”

Momma
bobbed her head and stared down at her wrinkled hands. “Hard to believe she’s
older’n me by near ten years. All her youngins moved away long ago. Maybe she’s
got less worries now and that’s what keeps her lookin’ and feelin’ so young.”

“She
had some worries when I talked to her,” I said.

The
background noise of the television switched from yet another commercial about
reverse mortgages to the theme music used by the local news.

Momma
tilted her head and replied, “Probably wonderin’ who in the congregation’s been
spending too much time at the gamblin’ house, knowin’ her. Stuff like that
gives her a fit. Poor woman just can’t help herself when it comes to everybody
else’s business.”