The Reluctant Daughter Part 11

Father O'Connor loses me when he says "every wise man" instead of "every wise person" but I see he has my father's undivided attention. If I had any doubt that my father was a total stranger before the priest's voice descended upon us, now I am sure of it. My father does not have one religious molecule in his body. When I was growing up he schlepped my mother and me to synagogue only twice a year: on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And as I recall, he fell asleep just minutes after the High Holiday services began, thoroughly embarra.s.sing me and disturbing those seated near us with his loud, rattling snores.

"Now let us pray." Father O'Connor has finished his thought of the day, but he is not through with us yet. As my own father clasps his hands and shuts his eyes, I can't help but wonder if he really is someone I've never met before. Maybe I've been transported to Bizarro World, a place featured in the Superman comic books Jack loved as a child. In Bizarro World, everything was the opposite of what you would expect: Superman was a big klutz, Lois Lane was ugly, and it was a crime to do anything well. Has my father turned into Bizarro Dad? That would explain a lot, I think as the priest concludes, "Oh G.o.d, come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, as it is now, and as it ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

"Amen," says my father. Then he catches me looking at him and shrugs. "It can't be bad, Lydia. A little religion never hurt anyone."

A little religion never hurt anyone? I consider my father's statement, which ordinarily would propel me into a long, pa.s.sionate diatribe against the Catholic Church's s.e.xism and misogyny, not to mention h.o.m.ophobia. But when I open my mouth, feminist rhetoric doesn't fly out of it; instead my last bite of English m.u.f.fin pops into it. "Whatever gets you through," I mumble to my father as I swallow my food and my opinions. Now I feel like a total stranger to myself. Reaching down for my pocketbook, I extract a small silver case shaped like a sleeping cat that contains a tube of lipstick and a mirror. And who might you be? I ask the reflection that stares back at me as I touch up my makeup. Bizarro Lydia?

Finished with our breakfast, my father and I rise from the table in unison, dispose of our trash, and leave the cafeteria. The silence between us, which was uncomfortable to begin with, grows heavier with each step we take toward the elevator that will carry us up to the fourth floor to see my mother. No one rides with us, and when we disembark and round the corner, my father's pace quickens. Now he's a man on a mission and I have to hurry to keep up with him. When we reach the doors to the Intensive Care Unit, he pushes the b.u.t.ton on the wall and gives me a meaningful look as we wait to be let in. I hope you're going to behave yourself are the words I think he would like to say to me, but before he has a chance to do so, a loud buzz sounds and he ushers me inside.

The ICU is much busier this morning, with nurses, doctors, aides, and orderlies all bustling about on their soft-soled shoes, making notations on charts and waving clipboards in the air. No one greets us or pays us any mind, so my father leads the way into my mother's cubicle. She is much the same as we left her last night, still dressed in a light blue johnny, lying on her back tethered to a myriad of equipment, her hands tied with white strips of cloth to the railings on either side of her bed. My mother's hair is tangled and hanks of it are spread across her pillow, going off in different directions like a family of snakes all anxious to crawl away from her head. Her eyes are closed and the color of her complexion is not one I've ever seen on a human being before. Her skin looks gray and waxy, and though I hate to even think it, lifeless. But I know she is breathing; the pleated blue respirator tube stuck down her throat doesn't give her any other choice.

"Doris," my father says softly, leaning close to her ear. "Doris, Lydia and I are here." We wait expectantly but my mother does not open her eyes. "Dorito." My father calls her by a nickname I have not heard him use in many years, but she still does not respond.

"She's sleeping," my father whispers, in case I cannot see this for myself. He nods toward two black vinyl chairs near the bed and we sit down side by side.

"That's her heart rate." My father pokes me on the shoulder to get my attention, then leans forward and points to the TV monitor above my mother's bed. "See the number that's blinking? Seventy-three, seventy-four. That's good. Anything below fifty or above one hundred would be a problem." He nods, pleased to be showing off the medical facts he's recently learned. "Your mother has always had a good strong heart. Look at her EKG." He moves one hand up and down through the air as if he is practicing how to conduct an orchestra. "And that's her blood pressure, see the two numbers with the slash? The cuff on her arm takes it automatically. Every hour. Right now it's one-fifty-four over eighty-nine. That's a little high, but not bad, not bad at all." My father gives me a backhanded slap on the arm to make sure I'm still following him, then points at the screen again. "That other number there is measuring her oxygen. They measure it with that white clip on her finger. Looks like it's ninety-seven percent. That's excellent. Of course that's with the ventilator. The tricky part will be when they take her off it." He inhales deeply and then exhales slowly, as if he's demonstrating to my mother how to breathe on her own. Then he falls quiet for a moment, and I listen to the respirator whirring and clicking, and something beeping loudly, like a garbage truck backing up out in the hall. "They were supposed to get her off that thing by now," my father says, gesturing toward the c.u.mbersome machine in the corner. "I don't know what the h.e.l.l is taking so long." He keeps his voice low, but his tone is filled with annoyance, as though my mother's situation is the result of an incompetent nurse or doctor who has fallen behind schedule. "It's been six days already, Lydia. I don't know how much more of this I can take."

So leave, I want to tell him, suddenly filled with anger. If it's too much for you, just go . All I want out of life-my life and my mother's life, whatever's left of it-is for my father to take a hike so I can have a few private moments with her for the first time since I left home thirty-one years ago. But I know better than to ask him to step outside. I'm sure he's afraid to leave my mother and me alone without a chaperone. What does he think I'm going to do, pull the plug? Tell her how sick she is, as if she doesn't already know?

I fold my arms against the chill in the room and try to come up with a plan. My father slouches down in his seat, rests his cheek on his fist, and lets out a long, loud yawn without bothering to cover his mouth. "You tired, Dad?" I ask, though the answer is obvious. "I know you didn't sleep well last night. Why don't you go down the hall to the lounge and stretch out on the couch? I'll come get you when she wakes up."

"No, Lydia, I'm fine." My father rubs his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and straightens up in his chair.

Now what? I look around the room, noticing the box of latex gloves on the counter near the sink, the receptacle for biohazardous materials mounted on the wall, the bedside table on wheels rolled into the corner upon which rests a Styrofoam water pitcher along with a stack of cups. The light in here is dim, as if the florescent tube above our head needs changing. It's hard to tell if it's day or night; the tiny window behind my mother's bed reveals only the back wall of another hospital wing. I turn my head and look through the gla.s.s wall that faces the rest of the Intensive Care Unit. A bin of dirty laundry parked right outside my mother's doorway gives me an idea.

"How are things at work, Dad?" I ask, not because I have developed a sudden interest in the dry-cleaning and tailoring business, but because my father, like me, is a cla.s.sic Type A personality and I know it is just killing him to be spending so much time away from the office.

"I didn't get a chance to speak to them yesterday," my father says, frowning. "I was going to call this morning from the room, but I didn't want to wake up Jack."

"Here." I reach inside my bag, find my cell phone, and extend it toward him. "Why don't you call them now?"

"Lydia, what are you, crazy? Put that thing away." My father looks around in a panic, as though I've just pulled a loaded handgun out of my purse. "You can't use a cell phone in here. What's the matter with you? Didn't you see the signs?"

"Take it outside." I wave the phone in front of him like I'm teasing a little boy with a piece of his favorite candy. "I'll be here in case she wakes up. You won't be on long."

My father stares at the phone, a lifeline to the outside world, and I can tell this is a tough one for him. I'm sure he feels guilty for even thinking about the office at a time like this, but then again, the opportunity to check up on things at home-on his daughter's dime no less-is an offer too good to refuse.

"What if she wakes up while I'm gone?" my father asks, though I imagine he's thinking just the opposite: What if she doesn't wake up while I'm gone? What if she never wakes up again?

"Don't worry. I'll come find you." I can see that he's starting to weaken. The words "lead us not into temptation" flit through my mind, but I ignore them while my father thinks things over. Just go, I implore him silently. Before Jack gets here and I never have this chance again.

"I guess a quick call would be okay." At last my father takes the bait and rises. "How do you use this thing?" He turns the phone over in his hand and studies it, two sharp lines creasing his brow. "It's different than mine."

I give him a quick lesson in Cell Phones for Dummies and then practically shove him out the door, giddy with success. I know my father is completely incapable of making a quick call to the office. Once he makes contact, he'll want his secretary to read his mail to him, go over his phone messages, give him an update on what's been going on. I'm good for twenty minutes, half an hour, at least.

I wait until I hear the doors of the Intensive Care Unit whoosh open and shut and then return to stand by the head of my mother's bed. Her forehead is creased with worry lines that deepen every time the respirator forces air into her lungs, jarring her body so that it rises slightly before thudding back against the bed. The johnny she is wearing has slipped off one shoulder and I can see several electrode patches stuck onto her chest, one right next to a large brown mole I remember her always trying to hide underneath the top of her bathing suit when I was a child. A sob catches in my throat as I stand there watching her. "Mommy?" I offer a word my mother hasn't heard me say in over forty years and one I'm sure she gave up all hope of ever hearing again.

Instantly she opens her eyes.

"Hi," I whisper, meeting her gaze and holding it steady. My mother's eyes are light brown with flecks of gold in them just like mine. As I stand there watching her, she starts to cry. And since there is no one around telling me not to, I cry, too. We don't speak to each other: she is rendered mute by the breathing tube stuck down her throat, and I am too overcome with emotion to utter a single word. This is my mother, I think, staring into her eyes. The only one I will ever have. The woman who gave birth to me. The woman who clothed me and fed me and took care of me the best way she knew how. She wasn't a perfect mother-not by a long shot-but looking at her now, it's hard to believe she was the monster I've always made her out to be, either.

I look into my mother's eyes in a way that I never have before: openly, honestly, frankly, while tears silently stream down my cheeks. Things that would ordinarily make me queasy-the feeding tube inserted into her left nostril, the needle jabbed into her neck attached to the port that dispenses her meds, the large and alarming purple bruises on her arms-do not even register with me. Everything recedes except for my mother's wet, red-rimmed, rheumy eyes. They are filled to the brim with sadness and sorrow and longing. And something else. Something I fail to recognize at first because I don't remember ever seeing it before. But there it is, and there's no mistaking it. Love. Pure and simple. Though I know as well as anyone that love-especially between a mother and daughter-is always messy and complicated. But not today. Today there is nothing but unadulterated, unlimited, unconditional love flowing from my mother's eyes into mine.

"Mom," I whisper, taking her hand and swallowing hard. "I have some things I need to tell you."

My mother looks at me attentively and I hold her gaze. Here it is, the moment I've waited for all my life. My mother and I are alone and she is lying speechless before me, with no choice other than to hear what I have to say. I decide to begin with a gift.

"Mom, I love you, you know that, right?" My mother squeezes my hand tightly, with much more strength than I thought was left in her weak, tired body. "And I know you love me, too." She squeezes my hand even harder. We stare into each other's eyes again, the room silent except for the rhythmic whirr and click of the respirator. Maybe that's enough, I think, still watching my mother's face. Maybe that's all I have to say. I dare to break my mother's gaze for a moment, and when I do, again I remember the discussion I had with Vera early this morning, though it seems like a lifetime ago.

"Mom, I want you to know that I'm happy. Really happy. I wake up glad to be alive every single day." When in doubt, I always follow Vera's lead, and even though the words seem forced at first, as I continue to speak, I realize they are absolutely true. "Allie adores me and is really good to me. I have a lot of wonderful friends who care about me and are always there when I need them. I know it took a long time, but I finally figured out what makes me happy and how to create that for myself. So you don't have to worry about me. Just do what's best for you. I love my job and my home and my community and..." My voice falters as I observe the change in my mother's face. A look of peace has come over her. Like someone who has finally completed a long, arduous task she never in a million years thought she'd be able to finish. And as I stand there studying her, I realize something else: There was a method to my mother's madness. She was tough with me on purpose so that I would grow up to be independent and free. And not wind up like her. Tied to a man as surely as she is tied to the railings of her hospital bed. Unable to be on her own the same way that right now she is unable to breathe on her own.

"I get it now, Mom. I could never have put together the amazing life I have now, if it weren't for you. You did good by me," I say, though never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine such words would ever leave my lips. "You were a good mother. A very good mother. You did a good job."

My mother shuts her eyes tightly, opens them again and then, using all the strength she has left, slowly nods her head up and down, letting me know she agrees with me. She faintly squeezes my hand one last time and then releases it.

"Why don't you rest now, Mom?" I ask, stroking her forearm lightly. Her skin feels dry and hot. "I'll sit right in that chair and keep an eye on you. I won't go anywhere. Okay?"

No one comes in or out as I sit in the semi-dark and semi-quiet, watching my mother sleep. The only thing that exists is this room, this moment, each breath my mother is forced to take. We are completely cut off from the world outside the hospital, the world outside the Intensive Care Unit, the world outside this cubicle. We are alone together, suspended in time and s.p.a.ce, just my mother and me. I listen to the steady whir and click of the respirator, the soft inhale and exhale of my own breath, and I feel almost peaceful except for the thought that keeps flickering through my mind: My mother is going to die. I don't know how I know this, but I do. I can feel it with every fiber of my being. She waited for me to come and now that I'm here and I've made peace with her, I can feel her getting ready to go. My little mother. She looks so worn out and helpless lying here with tubes and needles pumping air and nutrients and drugs into her body, it would be a blessing to release her from all this suffering and pain. Mom, I know you're tough, but you don't have to fight anymore. You can stop struggling, I silently tell her. You can go. But oh, how I wish you would stay.

SHE IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL MOM. Average height and average weight, though I would bet anything she'd love to lose ten pounds, and has probably tried Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the South Beach Diet many times. Straight ash blond hair cut to a sensible length and held back with a silver clip at the nape of her neck. Pale skin despite the blush brushed on her cheeks that is a bit too pink and was probably bought from a neighbor or a co-worker moonlighting as an Avon Lady. Lipstick peach instead of red, mascara brown instead of black. A plain gold wedding band around the fourth finger of her left hand and small sapphire posts that lie flat against her earlobes and are probably her birthstone and a recent gift from her husband. A mother-and-child charm hanging from a gold chain around her neck, which she fingers from time to time without realizing she is doing so. She wears no perfume, but if she did it would carry the odor of freshly baked cookies, lemon furniture polish, sheets hot from the dryer, moist coconut cream that she smoothes on her hands. She is Angelina, my mother's angel of a nurse, and I am half out of my mind in love with her. If anyone can make my mother well it is Angelina, whose very being exudes calmness, capability, and TLC.

She breezes into the room, her white crepe-sole shoes not making a sound, and goes straight to her patient, nodding briefly in my direction to let me know that before we can chat, she needs to attend to the business at hand: reading the numbers and graphs on the monitor, checking the fluid level of the bag attached to my mother's feeding tube, measuring the ounces of urine in the receptacle attached to my mother's catheter hanging near the foot of her bed. I can tell by the way Angelina moves about the room briskly that she has done this a thousand times before, but I can also tell from the sympathy in her eyes that she cares about every patient she has ever attended, and my mother is no exception. When she finishes her tasks, I tell my mother that I'll be right back and follow Angelina out into the hall.

"I'm Lydia," I say, extending my hand. "Her daughter. We spoke on the phone a few days ago."

"Oh, nice to meet you. I'm glad you're here. Come." Angelina leads me to two office chairs parked in front of a desk with an old blue clunky typewriter on it and gestures for me to sit down. The nurse's station is quiet at the moment; I imagine all the members of the medical staff are busy attending their patients.

"How does my mother seem to you?" I ask, trying to keep the new, ever-present note of fear out of my voice.

"She's holding her own," Angelina says, careful not to give anything away. "She had a bit of a rough time last night so she got something to help her sleep early this morning, at about five o'clock, before I came in. She won't open her eyes before noon."

That's what you think, I say to myself, feeling even more grateful that my mother and I had a chance to talk a few minutes ago. "How long do you think she'll stay on the respirator?" I ask.

Angelina frowns slightly and I see that her lipstick has feathered below the right corner of her mouth. "You'll be able to speak with Dr. Harte this morning. He'll be in for his rounds soon."

"Dr. Heart?"

"H-A-R-T-E," Angelina spells out. "I know. We used to have a doctor who worked here named Dr. Payne. P-A-Y-N-E. He was a great doctor, but not many patients were happy to meet him." Angelina laughs and I am struck by how unfamiliar the sound is. I feel like I haven't heard anyone laugh in years.

"Why are her hands so swollen? And why are they tied to the bed?" I ask, fighting to keep my voice neutral. "Is that really necessary?"

"In your mother's case, I'm afraid it is," Angelina says, folding her own hands and resting them on her light blue polyester lap. Her nails are polished a pale, translucent pink. "Her hands are swollen from the steroids the doctor gave her. And they're tied for her own safety, so she won't pull out all her tubes and needles."

"Did she try and do that?" I ask, though I can guess the answer.

"Oh yeah." Angelina's green eyes widen. "She's quite a fighter, your mother."

I smile, feeling oddly proud. "You don't know the half of it."

"When she woke up from her anesthesia, your mother was not very happy, believe me. She kept trying to pull everything out. So I'm sorry, but we had to restrain her." Angelina hesitates, studying me as if she's trying to make a decision. "You can untie her hands while you're in the room," she finally says, "as long as you promise to keep an eye on her. But at night, we'll have to tie them up again."

"Thank you." I accept this small gift gratefully. Then I force myself to ask the first of what I imagine are going to be many difficult questions in the days ahead. "Angelina, do you think my mother would prefer not to be on life support?"

Angelina shifts her weight around; clearly my question has made her uncomfortable. "I have something for you," she says, getting up and going over to a neighboring desk. She plucks a folder out of a wire basket wedged between a computer and a fax machine and sits back down next to me. "The first few days your mother was here, she was able to write a little," Angelina informs me as she flips through the folder. "But lately, all she's been able to come up with is this." She shows me a piece of paper with meaningless penciled curlicues whirling down the page. "Then yesterday, she made it clear to me that she wanted to try to write again."

"Was she able to?"

Angelina silently hands me another piece of paper, also covered with a continuous loop of circles that remind me of the silver Slinky toy Jack stole from me when I was a child. The sight of those circles momentarily comforts me; they look just like the doodles my mother always drew on paper napkins when she was sitting at the kitchen table talking on the phone. Maybe she's just scribbling to pa.s.s the time, like she used to do when she was put on hold, waiting for the plumber, the electrician, the gardener, or the car mechanic to come back on the line. But my denial is shattered when I see, underneath the penciled coil that rolls off the page, one distinct word that try as I might, I can't pretend isn't there.

"Kill?" I read aloud.

Angelina nods, looking from the page to me.

The shaky letters swim before my eyes, but I blink my tears away. "Kill," I say again, the word not a question this time. "Angelina, did you by any chance show this to my father?"

"And your brother."

"Cousin." I correct her. "What did they say?"

"Not much."

"That figures. Do you know if they talked to my mother about it?"

Angelina shakes her head. "I doubt it. Your father is having an extremely difficult time with this, Lydia. He's a man who likes to be very much in control, isn't he?"

I raise my eyebrows. "Tell me about it."

"It's very hard for men like that to feel so powerless. Your father is afraid, and I'm sure that's not a feeling he likes to have." Angelina looks to me for confirmation; I nod. "Your dad wants this all to go away so he can have his wife back, just the way she was before. So he doesn't want to hear or think about anything that might upset or scare him."

"Such as?"

"Such as the possibility that your mother might die."

Hot beads of sweat collect under my armpits and I can smell a sour odor rising up from beneath my clothes. I recognize the scent at once; it is the smell of fear. I wonder if Angelina can detect it. A tremor begins in my chest and moves up to my skull, increasing in intensity until my whole body is shaking and I feel like my head is about to shatter. It's one thing for me to think that my mother is going to die; it's quite another thing to hear someone else say it. I stare at my mother's nurse and force myself to ask her the second hard question of the day. "Do you really think my mother is going to die?"

A shadow crosses Angelina's face as though she is suddenly aware that she's said too much. A phone rings loudly on a nearby desk, and she waits for another nurse to pick it up before she speaks. "Lydia, your mother is seriously ill." Angelina is obviously choosing her words carefully. "At the moment she is unable to breathe on her own. There's always a chance that someone in her situation won't pull through. But there's also a chance-a very good chance-that she will."

"What if she doesn't want to?" I study the word written on the page before me whose four uneven letters look like they were printed by a small child just learning her ABC's instead of a woman who once worked briefly as a stenographer and takes great pride in her meticulous, even handwriting.

"Motivation is definitely a factor in recovery," Angelina says, looking directly at me. "Having so many family members around is bound to lift her spirits. You'll have to wait and see."

"May I keep this?" I ask Angelina, who nods and rises as I fold the page and tuck it inside my pocket. I get up from my chair, too, and when Angelina gives me a motherly pat on the shoulder, it takes everything I have not to throw myself into her arms, rest my head on her soft, inviting bosom, shut my eyes, and weep.

SO SOFT, SMOOTH, and young looking, even their hands won't give them away," said the male voice-over while the image of two fresh-faced smiling women filled the screen of our large, bulky console TV. As a teenager, whenever this particular skin cream commercial came on, I always stopped what I was doing and paid close attention, even though I had seen the ad many times before. Both women had shiny brown hair smoothed into Marlo Thomas That Girl flips that I could never master, and their smiles never once faltered as they held their matching hands up to the camera as though they were a recently won, much coveted prize. The women turned their palms this way and that, fanned their fingers like the tentacles of an exotic, graceful sea anemone, and then with an almost obscene amount of pleasure, each one used her right hand to caress the flawless, unwrinkled flesh of her left. Which was the mother and which was the daughter? It was impossible to tell, and that was the point of the whole thing. But that isn't what held my attention-they always identified who was who at the end of the sixty-second spot anyway, making both women dissolve into identical peals of helpless laughter. No, what fascinated me was that this mother/daughter duo, or any such pair, actually looked like they were happy to be together, on national TV, sitting in their bright sunny kitchen, showing off their perfect, creamy hands.

The commercial comes flooding back to me when I return to my mother's room and catch sight of her once beautiful hands, now tied with fraying strips of white cloth to the railings on either side of her hospital bed. I have always been jealous of my mother's hands; often she remarks that they are her very best feature. When she was a young woman, my mother's hands were slim and elegant with long tapered fingers. They looked like they belonged at the end of someone else's arms, someone taller, thinner, and more refined than any female member of our short, pudgy family. When I was growing up, my mother's weekly manicure appointments-Tuesday afternoons at three o'clock-were sacred and she would not miss them for anything, even to pick me up from school the day the bus got a flat tire (Colleen's mother drove me home). Doing the dishes was out of the question, of course; my mother wasn't going to spend all that good money on manicures just to have them ruined by hot, soapy water. And since the idea of rinsing off a bowl or plate would never even occur to my father, the job naturally fell to me. Though my mother's hands are now dotted with age spots and her skin is less firm than it once was, she still takes special care of her hands. I don't think I've ever seen her with her nails unpolished. Even now they are filed into perfect ovals and painted a warm, shiny red.

As gently as I can, I tug at the knot on the white strip of cloth that anchors my mother's left hand to the railing of her bed. When it loosens, I slide it out from under her wrist and lay her hand down against her side, being careful not to disturb the white clip attached to her middle finger that measures her oxygen level. Then I walk around the bed and do the same for her right hand. My mother continues to sleep and I continue to study her swollen hands. The jewelry that she always wears-the white gold wedding band and matching engagement ring on her left hand and a ruby and diamond c.o.c.ktail ring on her right-look like they are cutting into her puffy flesh and I wonder why no one thought to remove them. Now they lie trapped beneath her enlarged knuckles and there's no way anyone will be able to slip them off. I hope they won't have to be cut away eventually. The thought of someone taking a knife to the rings my mother has worn on her delicate hands for over fifty years is almost more than I can bear.

"Still sleeping?" My father comes back into the room, his face more relaxed than it's been since I've arrived. His arms are full of newspapers, which he piles onto one of the chairs beside my mother's bed after removing my pocketbook from the seat and dropping it to the floor. He drops himself into the other chair and settles in for the duration. "Want part of the paper, Lydia?" he asks, and when I decline, he disappears behind the business section of the New York Times as he did every Sunday morning of my childhood after he'd had his fill of coffee, bagels, cream cheese, and lox.

I stay where I am, watching my mother's body jerk in time to the respirator as she sleeps, the one-word note she wrote yesterday burning a hole in my pocket. What does it mean? Does she want us to kill her? And if so, will we be able to grant her wish? And if not-though I can't imagine what else she might mean by the word "kill"-will we be able to keep her alive? I am seized with a desire that is completely unfamiliar to me: a desire to do whatever it is my mother wants, if only I can figure out what that is. As I hover near her bed, my breathing slows on its own, until I am inhaling and exhaling along with the even rhythm of the noisy respirator. Off to the side, my father clears his throat and turns a page. My mother's eyes flutter and she moves her head slightly to the right. I look at the watch on my wrist I keep set to West Coast time and am stunned to see it is not even ten o'clock. It's going to be a very long day.

Might as well make myself comfortable, I think, lifting the stack of newspapers off the chair so I can sit back down beside my father. Now he is reading the sports section. I skim the front pages of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, pretending interest in the headlines while I wait for my father to finish reading the scores. When he does so, he drops the newspaper onto the floor and extends his hand to me, palm up. I know he wants and expects me to pa.s.s him another section of the paper, but instead I hand him the page upon which my mother has scrawled the word "kill."

"What's this?" He lifts the white sheet of paper closer to his face, recognizes it, and then turns his head and holds it as far away as possible, as if it repulses him. "Lydia, where did you get this?"

"Angelina gave it to me. Why didn't you tell me about it?"

"Why should I? There's nothing to tell."

"Dad, there's plenty to tell. This is important. Very important. I'm going to talk to Mom about it."

"No, you're not," my father says. "Lydia, If you dare, I'll-" But before he can finish his threat, I s.n.a.t.c.h the note from his hand, drop all the newspapers from my lap onto the floor, and return to the side of my mother's bed.

"Mom, are you sleeping?" I ask, bending close to her ear. She opens her eyes, startled, but when she sees my face, her expression calms. "Mom, you can understand me, right?" I ask. She nods, a tiny, almost imperceptible motion.

My father stands close behind me, a great menacing bear about to attack. I ignore him as best I can. "Mom, your nurse showed me what you wrote yesterday." I hold the page in front of her eyes. "I have to ask you a really hard question, okay?" Another slight nod. "What did you mean by this? Do you want to die? Do you want us..." I swallow hard, "...to kill you?"

"Oh for G.o.d's sake, Lydia," my father explodes. "What kind of question is that? Doris, you're going to be fine. n.o.body's dying here. n.o.body's killing anyone. We're all going home. Soon. Very soon. I promise."

My mother glares at my father like she wants to kill him . He flinches at her gaze, shuts his mouth, and takes a big step back.

"Mom." I look directly into her eyes and smooth a tendril of sweaty hair off her forehead. "Tell me what you want. I'm listening. Do you want to die?"

The room seems to hold its breath while I wait for my mother to answer. She locks eyes with me and shakes her head. My sigh of relief is drowned out by the respirator's loud belch.

"All right," I say, folding the paper and putting it away. "I'm sorry I had to ask you that, but I really needed to know. Now that you've told me, I'm going to do everything I can to help you get better. Okay?"

My mother nods again.

"But why did you write 'kill'?"

"Lydia, please." My father is at my back again. "I mean it now. Enough."

"Dad, this is important. She's trying to tell us something." But what, I wonder. I look at my mother again and she starts bobbing her right hand up and down in a frantic motion. "Is your hand hurting you?" I ask, and then glance over my shoulder at my father. "Angelina said I could untie her," I inform him before he can yell at me for doing so. "Is that it?" I bring my attention back to my mother. "Is your wrist sore from being tied to the bed?"

My mother shakes her head, then waves her hand again.

"She wants to write something," my father says, moving across the room to fetch a clipboard that has a white pad pinned underneath its clasp and a pencil attached to it with a long white string. "Here, Doris. Here you go."

My mother lifts her right hand and grasps the pencil my father offers firmly. He holds the clipboard steady as she tries to write. All she can manage is a wiggly line that crawls across the paper in a downhill slope until it falls off the end of the page. She makes another feeble attempt, but the result is the same.

"Why don't you rest now, Doris?" My father takes the pencil out of her hand and tucks the clipboard under his arm. "Just take it easy. You can try again later."