Stripped (Stripped #1)(8)
Author: Jasinda Wilder

But now…she’s losing the fight.

And all I know is that I’m going to USC. Mom understood my passion, before the cancer took her soul. I used my allowance to buy a Flip camera and started making my own films, artistic pieces about me, about life. I made friends with a homeless man living in Macon and did a piece on him. Mr. Rokowski helped me edit it and put a soundtrack on it using some pro programs.

I showed that piece to Daddy. He said it was a moving piece but if I went to school in L.A., my intentions wouldn’t matter. I would get sucked into sinful lifestyle of Los Angeles. I let him rant, and then walked away. Film is my art, as much as dance. I don’t need his approval.

I’ve filmed Mama’s fight with cancer. She let me film every moment of it. I even skipped classes to go to film the chemo with her. She said it was her legacy, that she would beat it, and my film would record her victory.

My Flip is on a tripod in the corner, watching her die now. Recording her struggle for breath. It recorded her last words, two days ago: “I love you, Grey.” It’s recording every beep of the machine monitoring her heartbeat.

They’ve said she’s going to die any day now. They don’t understand why she hasn’t yet. I know, though. I think she’s still fighting. For us.

Daddy is gone getting coffee and something to eat. I glance at the door, closed but for a crack letting in a thin stream of fluorescent light from the hallway and the occasional squeak of sneakers. There’s the distorted squawk of the overhead PA: “Dr. Harris to OR seven…Dr. Harris to OR seven, please….”

I gently squeeze Mama’s hand. She squeezes my hand back, a breath of pressure. Her eyes flutter but don’t open. She’s listening.

“Mama?” I sniffle and fight for breath. “It’s okay, Mama. I’ll be okay. I’ll miss you every day. But…you’ve fought so hard. I know you have. I know how much you love me and Daddy. I’ll take care of him, okay? You…you can go now. It’s okay. You don’t have to fight anymore.”

That’s a lie: I won’t take care of Daddy. She needs the lie, though, so I tell it. A sob breaks free from my lips. I rest my face on her frail chest, listen to the faint thumpthump…thumpthump…thump… of her heart beating.

“I love you, Mama. I love you. Daddy loves you.” I hear the faint beating grow fainter, slower. A few seconds between beats, then almost a minute. “I love you. Goodbye, Mama. Go be with Jesus.”

Those words are the worst lie. I don’t believe them. I don’t believe in God.

Not anymore.

Someone is sobbing loudly, and I realize it’s me. I choke it off. I have to be strong for Mama.

A faint patter from her heart, her chest rises…falls. A breath of pressure on my hand, once, twice, a third time, strongly. Then nothing. Silence from beneath my ear. Stillness.

I’d tuned out the monitor. Now I hear it flatlining. A team of nurses flurries in, begins the scramble of resuscitation.

“STOP!” I yell it at the top of my lungs. I don’t even rise from my chair. “Just…stop. She’s gone. Please…just leave her alone. She’s gone.”

Daddy is in the door, a white little Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. He sees the commotion, hears the flatline, sees the tears on my face, and hears my words. The cup slips from his fingers and hits the floor. Scalding, burnt-smelling coffee splashes up onto the legs of his expensive jeans and shiny leather shoes.

“Leanne?” His voice cracks on the last syllable.

I’m mad at him still. But he’s my father and this is his wife and he’s lost now. “She’s gone, Daddy,” I say.

“No.” He shakes his head, pushes through the flock of nurses in red scrubs. “No. She’s not…Leanne? Baby? No. No. No.” He brushes at her forehead, kisses her lips in a broken, silent plea.

She doesn’t kiss him back, and he crumples. Slides to the linoleum, clutching the metal bars of the bed railing. His thick shoulders quake, but he remains silent as he weeps.

His grief is awful to witness. As if something inside him has been broken. Shattered. Sliced apart by the knife of an uncaring God.

“Why did He let her die, Daddy?” I can’t stop the words from escaping my lips.

They’re cruel words, because I know he doesn’t have the answers. I’ve always known the reality: his God is a charade.

He’s on his knees beside her bed. The nurses quietly and respectfully watch. This is the oncology ward; they’ve watched this scene play out time and again.

“God…my God, why have you forsaken me? Eli eli lama sabachthani?” He pulls away from me, covers his face with his hands.

Really? He’s spouting Aramaic now? Is he putting on this pious show for the nurses? He’s really grieving, I realize that. But why does he have to act so damned holy all the time? I turn away from him. I lean over Mama and kiss her cooling cheek.

“Goodbye, Mama. I love you.” I whisper the words low enough so no one can hear.

I leave the room. It’s number 1176. The route to the elevators is one I could walk in my sleep now: turn right from room 1176, down the long hallway to the dead end. Turn left. Another long hallway. Right at the nurse’s station, through the doors that open in opposite directions, one away from you and the other toward you. The elevators are at the end of that short hallway, a double bank of silver doors. The button lights up pale yellow, the up and down arrows blurred from a thousand thumbs pressing against them. I have no visual memory of the elevator ride down or leaving the hospital, only stumbling out into the sunlight. It’s a beautiful, gorgeous fall day. No clouds, just far, endless blue sky and a bright yellow sun and cool October air.

How can it be a beautiful day when my mother just died? It should be a black, awful day. Instead, it’s the kind of day I should be cruising around downtown in Devin’s convertible Sebring, listening to Guster.

I find myself on my hands and knees in the grass, surrounded by parked cars. I’m sobbing. I thought I’d cried all my tears, but I haven’t. Not by a long shot.

I feel Daddy’s presence in the grass beside me. For the first time in my entire life, he’s something like real. He sits down in the grass next to me, heedless of the moisture from the sprinklers from an hour ago. It’s early morning, just past dawn. I’d been beside her bed for forty-eight hours, waiting. I hadn’t moved, not once. Not to eat, not to drink, not to pee.