Pretend You Love Me (26 page)

I wrestled the bottle from her and finished it off. A new world record for speed drinking. Oh yeah.

I don’t remember getting off the tower. I don’t remember getting home. At some point I must’ve blacked out because I finally
felt at peace.

“I love you too,” she’d said. “I need you in my life.” The words churned in my brain. My damaged brain. They leaked and pooled.
They cesspooled. Swirling, picking up speed, intensity. It wasn’t my imagi
nation, and I wasn’t drunk when she’d said it: “I love you too.” She’d touched me, kissed my hand. She wanted me. I know she
did.

An excruciating pain in my shoulder made me cry out and I jerked upright. Darryl was screaming in my ear, yanking my arm and
yelling, “Goddammit, get up. Are you deaf?”

I clicked into semi-consciousness. My mind was thick, slow. My gut had ruptured.

“Ma’s bleeding to death,” Darryl said. “Get the fuck out of bed and help me.”

“
W
e have to get her to a doctor.” Darryl clenched my pits and hoisted me to my feet. I felt feverish, disoriented. My ears pricked.
A sound: Ma in her room, gagging.

Darryl said, “Jesus Christ. You smell like a brewery. Goddammit!” He raised a hand to hit me, but smacked my bedroom door
instead and stormed out.

I stumbled after him down the hall.

She was lying on her side, her head hanging off the mattress. She wheezed and choked. There was a pool of blood on the floor,
more dribbling down her chin.

“Ma?” I knelt beside her and slid an arm around her back. “What’s wrong?”

She gurgled and coughed up another spray of blood, splashing my bare legs. “You’re going to be okay,” I heard myself say.
She was dying. Where was Darryl? “Ma?”

She reached around and flung my arm off her. My brain screamed, Fine! Die! See if I care.

She whimpered like I’d spoken the words aloud. “I didn’t mean it,” I said, in case I had.

“Fuck.” Darryl rushed in. “Doc’s gone to Nebraska fishing all weekend. We’ll have to get Ma to the hospital in Garden City.”

I stood on wobbly knees. No. Please, no. Not the hospital. Darryl added, “I don’t know if we can get her in the truck.” His
wild eyes searched mine. “Maybe we could clear out enough room in back to lay down some blankets.”

“I’ll get my quilt.” I weaved down the hall. Not the hospital. Not again.

Somehow, Darryl got Ma to her feet and out the front door. She barely fit through the frame. She’d never squeeze into the
back of the truck. Even if we could push her through the double doors, there was too much equipment back there—the snake and
air compressor and water pump. Darryl helped Ma down onto the front stoop and said, “We’ll be ready for you in a minute, Ma.
Stay here.”

Where’s she going to go? I almost asked. You think she’ll run away? I wished she would. I wished
I
could. Where would I go?

She was still coughing and spraying blood all over the place. I glanced back briefly to see her fleshy arm shield her eyes
from the light. From the world. She shriveled into herself, if that was possible. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d
been out of the house.

Darryl started throwing stuff out the back of the truck. The air compressor came flying by my head and I yelled, “Don’t bust
that.”

“Just help me!” he screeched. He lifted a toilet tank under his arm and hauled it out. Bottles of wine and whiskey rolled
onto the driveway.

Darryl’s fiery eyes incinerated me on the spot.

“Look, I’m sorry—”

“Darryl!” Ma cried.

We both jumped.

“Where are you?”

“Get me a couple of cinder blocks from the back,” Darryl ordered. He leaped out of the truck and rushed back to Ma. I staggered
up the
drive, squelching the urge to hurl. The only free blocks I could find were saturated with motor oil and sticky with cobwebs.
I hefted a block up in each hand and hobbled back to the truck.

“Make a step for her,” Darryl said. He supported Ma by one of her flabby arms.

Between us, we got her smooshed inside, don’t ask me how. Darryl spread out my quilt on the floor. She groaned and rolled
over onto it. She was bleeding and sweating like a pig and the stench and stain of her would be on my quilt forever. Grandma
Szabo’s quilt. It was the only thing I had left of her.

“You ride with her,” Darryl said.

“Okay.”

“No.” Ma reached over and grasped Darryl’s sleeve. “You.”

Her beady eyes met mine and went black. Darryl snapped at me, “Can you do this? Can you do this one fucking thing for me?”

I snatched the keys out of his hand. “Shut up. Don’t ever talk to me again.”

U.S. 83 was deserted. Why? What day was this? I couldn’t have slept all day Saturday, could I? I would have felt better than
this. It had to still be Saturday. No cops in sight. I floored it. I knew where the hospital in Garden City was by heart.
I turned up the radio, but I could hear over it Darryl talking to Ma in back. She was weeping now. Through the rearview mirror,
I saw him prop her up against him, on his chest. He smoothed her greasy hair down, held her as she gurgled up blood all over
my quilt.

What I’d said to her echoed in my head. It was the day of Dad’s funeral. I’d lit into her. She was in bed as usual, weeping.
“Get up,” I’d snarled from the doorway. “Get up and get dressed. It’s time to go.”

When she didn’t reply, didn’t respond, I’d charged in and yelled right in her face, “Get up!” I’d punched the pillow beside
her head. She’d flinched then. “Get your fat ass out of bed for Dad’s service. He
was your husband, dammit. The father of your children. All three of them, living and dead.”

Ma’d glared at me. This spittle, like venom, dribbled out the side of her mouth.

Pay your respects. Is it so much to ask?

She’d rolled over and curled into a lump. She hadn’t spoken to me since. Not one word. Not to say, “hello,” or “goodbye,”
or “brush your teeth,” or “go to school.” I was dead to her. More dead than Camilia.

So what? I didn’t care. She could die too.

I didn’t mean that. She was my mother.

I squealed the truck into the emergency entrance and slammed on the brakes. Darryl said over the seat back, “Go tell them
we need help.”

I hurried up the wheelchair ramp. Please, God, I prayed. Don’t make me remember. There was a black lady at the receptionist’s
desk keying into her computer. The harsh lights, the smell. “My mom’s outside in the truck,” I told the lady, my chest seizing.
“She’s real sick. She’s—”

“Rudy,” the lady barked at a guy in scrubs who was passing behind me. “Can you help this little gal out?” The phone rang.
The receptionist didn’t take her eyes off me as she spoke into her wired mouthpiece, “Hello. St. Joseph’s Emergency.”

Rudy grabbed a wheelchair from an area near the door. “She won’t fit in that,” I told him.

His eyebrows arched.

“She’s… big.”

He said, “How ’bout a gurney?”

I shook my head. “You’ll never get her on it. If we can get her up to her feet, she might be able to walk in.”

Outside, Rudy peered into the back of the truck. His eyes bulged. Darryl got out and he and Rudy discussed it. They decided
to use the quilt to slide Ma as far as she’d come, then leverage her up with brute force.

On the first pull my quilt ripped. The sound made my eyes well. Sorry, Grandma. They got Ma to the end; squeezed her legs
out. I
reached up to help her down, but Darryl muscled me out of the way. Fine. You do it. He propped Ma up. She had blood all over
her face and down the front of her shift, on her socks, her arms. I just stood there, helpless. Wanting to hold her, help
her. Mean something to her.

“Park the truck,” Darryl commanded. “Then come back.”

I opened my mouth to snap a retort, but swallowed it. Darryl looked strung out. Rudy, meanwhile, had managed to wedge Ma through
the Emergency Room’s sliding glass doors. She didn’t seem to be coughing as much, or spitting up blood. Good. I felt relieved.
For Darryl’s sake, anyway. He still loved her. She loved him. They could have each other.

The parking lot was practically empty, just like the last time I was here. Forget about that. Block it out. When I got back
inside, the receptionist informed me Ma was in Examining Room 2, right down the hall. She added, “You can’t miss her.”

Her face seemed to flood with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling. I didn’t want her to feel bad. Enough people felt bad. I didn’t need one more person feeling
sorry for me.

It was claustrophobic in the examining room, too crowded for all of us to stay. I told Darryl I’d wait in the lounge.

The sounds were what finally got to me. The screeking carts and the phone ringing and the constant din of voices, the whoosh
of doors opening and closing, someone sneezing. I took the same seat I’d sat in when Dad was wheeled in off the ambulance.
It made me shudder, the clammy feel of vinyl against my bare legs. The vise grip in my stomach clamped down. Waiting, wondering.
Where did they take him? Why?

Why, Dad?

I couldn’t just sit—again. I wandered over and stood by the window, gazing out onto the parking lot. Last time it was dark.
Quiet. 3:00
AM
. 3:06
AM.
Time of death. Dead on arrival. I don’t know why they even bothered with the ambulance. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I jumped out of my skin.

The receptionist lowered herself to the windowsill, smiling wide. She had a nice smile. “Juice? A cup of coffee? I’m on my
break. Thought I’d head down to the cafeteria for a snack. You want to come?”

“No. Thanks. I’m all right.”

“A sweet roll? Your mom may be a while.”

“I’m fine.”

She pushed to her feet, rubbed my arm, and left. She was kind. Probably Ma’s age. Probably a mother. A better one than I got.

The sounds all quit at once. It was dead as a morgue. My head hurt. I felt claustrophobic. Sick. Wanted to barf. I decided
to wait outside in the truck; maybe take a nap. Not on my quilt. I’d have to burn my quilt now.

Next thing I knew Darryl was pounding on the driver’s side window, yelling at me to get up. “The doctor wants to talk to us
together,” he said.

Bleary-eyed, I followed him inside. We passed the examining rooms, a maze of supply closets, unplugged machinery, cramped
offices. The doctor was sitting at his desk filling out papers. He stood and introduced himself. Dr. Good-somebody. Good-fellow?
Good-hollow? He leaned across his desk and shook my hand.

“Your mother’s going to be fine,” he said. He motioned us to sit. Me and Darryl both chose to stand. “It looks a whole lot
worse than it is. These things always do. She probably ruptured a blood vessel and started hemorrhaging. We packed her nose
and gave her something to calm her down. It can be unsettling, seeing all that blood and having it run down the back of your
throat.”

I was processing his words.

Darryl said it for me, “She had a bloody nose?”

“A ruptured vessel.” The doctor nodded. “But yes, basically.”

“A bloody nose?” Darryl repeated. “Shit,” he hissed.

“You were right to bring her in,” the doctor said. “She could easily have gone into shock.”

“Can we take her home now?” Darryl’s voice hardened.

“I’ll get someone on staff to help. She should be fine. You can remove the packing in a few hours.” Dr. Goody-Good made a
call, wrote something in Ma’s chart, and replaced his fountain pen in his breast pocket. Folding his hands over the desk,
he said, “Your mother is morbidly obese.”

Darryl and I both made the same choking sound in our throats. Like, tell us something we don’t know.

“Her blood pressure’s slightly elevated, which could be a result of her panic attack. It isn’t dangerously high, but in her
current condition, she’s at increased risk for any number of medical problems: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteo—”

“Can we go now?” Darryl cut in. “Mike has to be at work.”

I do? I looked at Darryl. Oh yeah. I do.

“Your mother has a serious condition. Life-threatening. Have you considered gastric-bypass surgery? It’s an operation where—”