I watched the stress in my father’s eyes grow progressively, as it always does when my mother’s in the hospital. It never bothered me, really –– it was the same routine every time. She’d be in pain, she’d go in, be there for about a week and then she’d be discharged to go home.
No one expected it to last this long.
Five days after she was admitted, I left with my father to see my boyfriend. We set up the house before we left as if she’d come back without us being home. We left the mother’s day flowers and presents on the coffee table, and we left a cake that read “Happy Belated Mother’s Day” in the fridge. Her mother was going to take her back home and my older brother would look after her until we got back. We were only gone for the weekend.
Sunday night was when we got back; 10:30PM. My mother was still not home, and that day was one week since she’d been in.
I fell asleep around 11:30, and I was skipping classes the next day to get some rest. I woke up to the sound of my name and a knock at my bedroom door –– it was my older brother. He never comes into my room; especially at 4:30 in the morning. “Call your dad,” he says to me softly. “It’s mom, something happened at the hospital and he said we should be there.” I nodded and rolled over to face my phone. A text from my dad read “Call me.”
“She’s having emergency surgery,” is all I could remember him saying in my half-asleep state. “It’s better if you guys were here.
My glasses were nowhere to be found, nor were my keys. “They’re in my suitcase in the other car,” I said to my brother, picking up the spare keys from the kitchen. “I have no idea where my glasses are though.”
When we got there, my father was in the family waiting area and caught us before we went to her room. “They already took her back for surgery.” We sat in the operating waiting area for a while, my grandparents and other older brother shortly joined us.
I watched my dad leave the area several times to “take a walk” to calm himself down. The older brother I drove with took several smoke breaks; more often than usual.
As the weeks went on, today being the third week, I saw more and more coping mechanisms. My father began to drink more often than usual. Nightly drinking turned into day and night drinking. My brother smoked twice as much, but I was never really around to see it after that. I stared at the walls. I stayed up later than usual to avoid overthinking. I binge-played video games. I impulse-bought many things. I started framing out my boyfriend’s graduation present rather than finishing things for my own graduation.
