Page 9 of The Lies We Play

Creed.

They should be here.

That’s what people do when they belong to each other. They sit in terrible chairs while you’re mangled.

They drink terrible coffee. They argue with nurses. They learn the schedule for medication rounds. Creed would know the name of every doctor by now and hate all of them equally. Halston would stand near the door and say almost nothing while terrifying everyone into competence.

They should be here.

Then I remember my father’s last words: Critical condition.

Halston is in critical condition.

Somewhere.

I don’t know where.

I don’t know if he’s alive. Did he make it? When was the accident? Yesterday? Maybe last week. I’ve been in and out of consciousness so many times, I don’t know what day it’s today.

Creed would tell me if he were here, but he’s not. He should be here if Halston can’t . . . but he’s not.

That thought breaks something.

I turn my face into the pillow and cry as quietly as I can, which is ridiculous, because if there were ever a situation that justified dramatic sobbing, it is waking up in a strange hospital with partial hand betrayal and missing husbands.

Still, I cry quietly.

Old habits. Mom would hate it. She always says that good girls don’t make people uncomfortable with their pain. Good girls make charts. Good girls say thank you to nurses and apologize for needing bedpans. Good girls don't scream into soft pillows about the men they married in secret.

The door opens.

I stop crying.

My mother stands there.

She looks like my mother and not my mother at all. Smaller somehow. Worn down. Her hair is pulled back, but pieces have escaped around her face. Her cardigan hangs open. Her eyes go wet the second she sees mine open.

“Hi, baby,” she says.

Baby.

I am twenty-two years old, married to two men, possibly widowed in one direction and abandoned in another, and my mother still says “baby” as if she can bring me back by naming who I used to be.

“Hi, Mom,” I say.

My voice sounds like it belongs to someone who survived something I haven’t been briefed on.

She comes to the bed.

Sits.

Reaches for my hand.

The right one.

She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't look at the left hand. She doesn’t even glance that way with the tense awareness of someone avoiding a wound.

She simply chooses the hand she knows will respond.