Blink

The hospital called to say there was an emergency. I was listed as her next of kin. I drove for two hours, to a place I had never been, with a tiny, confused baby. They called because my mother's heart stopped. She was dead for many minutes. They persevered. They started her heart. Tests follow.

Today has been nothing but waiting. There's nothing in the thick, recycled air but the choking fear that gnaws away at you when you've had that phone call at 5am.

I wait, here in this room that has never held daylight, a room so sad with tragic purpose, its artificial window is a false view of a faded orchard, wild pear trees losing their colour. I wait with such stillness that the automatic lights periodically switch off in frustration because I have no compulsion to entertain them, no will even to escape this grey cell with its aggressively bleached floor. I sit so quietly, all I can hear is the cyclical ticking of a fading clock with a failing battery, and the fluctuating struggle of an overburdened ventilation system.

When I wait, I become nervous, edgy, anxious. Waiting is an isolating, painful, purgatory. I destroy the skin around my nails, I pick at my eyelashes, rearrange hair. Nails peeled, I might poke zits, irritate blemishes. Scratch at itches that came purely from my restless mind. Unthinkingly stripping away any signs of beauty on my body, like removing all my disguises, all my strength; the wait makes me vulnerable, pre-broken. Time and space thinking, worrying, dwelling. An unexpected reminiscence might punctuate the mental silence to give way to sadness, to recurring grief, to fleeting guilt.

I look at my sleeping baby and wonder if he will grow up without knowing her; if one rainy Christmas is all they will ever share. I look at myself - this hollowed out Samson-self - in the chipped and mocking mirror, and I wonder if this is the day I will lose a parent, if those hurried goodbyes on a drab Christmas Day are the last words we would ever say to each other.

The fear bounces between stark terrors. Afraid for myself, afraid for her; I may lose this woman in my life, this person who gave me life. In this moment, how can we ever have loved enough? In the other moments, when we were full of anger, or hate, will that be what lingers? I fear she will never know anyone was here, waiting, picking the skin around their fingers. I'm afraid she'll give up. What fears now dimly lurk behind her closed eyes? To die, suffering, frightened, alone, and in pain?

There is no ointment for emotion; no bandage for our fears. There is no explanation that can resolve the visceral dread following that call, that drive, that doctor's hung head as he walks towards you with tired legs and an exhausted soul. The smile that walks a line between comforting and seriousness, as you become his wide-eyed disciple, willing to believe anything might be possible.

***

You have only that breath which hangs as a pause in your chest right now; you have only the micro-expression of a look you last saw in someone else’s eyes. You have only one moment to speak the words that stay stuck behind your pride, or to kiss with the love you think is so obvious, or to show the utter nakedness of your tarnished soul. Right now is simultaneously every moment you will share, and yet, it is none of them at all. When we wait, every moment is forever gone, and nothing remains. While we sit in silent rooms with no windows, picking at our fingers, soon, a person in a white coat will remind us that we do not have any of the time we thought.

Don't wait.