Chapter 17

Chapter 17 of 56 · 9-minute read

Late June

Thursday – Moon in Aquarius, Waning Gibbous

I’m not sure what day it is. It’s been a month. Longer. I think it’s Thursday today. That means my mom has been in the intensive care unit for a month. More? I’ve haunted the ICU waiting room twenty-four hours a day, every day. Most of the people who go into the ICU don’t come out, but she’s still hanging in there.

They allow me to see her three times a day to stand over her bedside while she sleeps. They let me hold her gnarled hand full of IVs and bandages.

I’m thankful we had such a nice dinner together at the Magnolia Restaurant the night before my botched date with Dixon. She’d either forgotten or completely blocked out our argument over Uncle Bobby and her lack of responsibility for protecting me as a child. I don’t think our argument caused this third stroke, the worst of the three. I already feel bad enough, but that’s a level of guilt I cannot bear.

The good news is, she’s awake and undergoing tests. She doesn’t seem to have had any paralysis or physical evidence of a stroke, but she’s been diagnosed with vascular dementia that will progressively affect her memory as well as her eyesight. Exactly as Virgil had warned me. She’s not blind. Her doctors say that her vision itself will remain as stable as it has been for years now, but the way her brain—after these last two strokes—perceives letters will make it almost impossible for her to indulge in her lifelong love of reading. For now, all I can do is sit in the cheap, straight chair next to her empty bed and wait for them to bring her back from yet another test.

A nurse I don’t know sticks her head in the door and waves at me. She’s a slight woman with a gentle aura of patience and care. “Lauren? Sitting there wringing your hands is not gonna do you or your mama any good. Go home. Take a long, hot shower and an even longer nap. Later, it might not be so easy to get time for yourself.”

“I’d rather stay and wait for her to come back.”

The nurse, Janie, is already shaking her head. “They’re running tests for the next few hours and then she’s meeting with a physical therapist. We may have moved her from the ICU to this room, but we still have visiting hours, and by the time she gets back to this room, visiting hours will be over.” Before I can protest, she adds, “We’ll let her know that we sent you home, okay? I’ll personally reassure her. Plus, if she wants to call you, I’ll dial your number myself.”

It’s impossible now for me to see her as my mother. I can think of her only as a frightened child. There’s something so basic, so primal, about who she is now. She’s no longer the strong woman who suffered in silence, doing the best she could to survive but not always getting it right. I carry so much frustration with me that she didn’t protect her child from a predator and that for her entire life and mine, she’s only made excuses for herself and why she couldn’t stand up to my dad and get me out of such an awful situation. But that part of her is now lost somewhere deep inside her mind. Or maybe gone forever. For as much as I need both justice and closure, that opportunity ended when she started to feel ill while I was at dinner with Dixon and instead of interrupting the date she had orchestrated, she called Virgil.

Virgil. I’ve been promising for weeks to take a break from the waiting room and walk next door to the nursing home where he works. As exhausted as I am, there’s no sense in me going home for a nap. I already know I won’t be able to sleep. I might as well drop in on Virgil now, but for the comfort of a friend and to find out what he says he can help me with concerning my mom.

Downstairs, the hospital lobby is filled with antique walnut chairs that have been upholstered in floral tapestries, striped wallpaper that I remember from my childhood visits here to see this relative or that one, and wide open spaces separated only by floral throw rugs. I push my full weight into one of the two large, heavy, wood and glass doors.

A woman juggling three colossal floral arrangements in her arms almost bumps into me. Although I’m too stressed to muster a smile, I enjoy the split second of imagining that she’s a giant bouquet with legs and high heels. I help guide her up the steps and hold the heavy door open for her. Once inside, she looks behind her and frowns at me.

“Laurie Hartford?”

I don’t know her. I strive for a moment to visualize her without the gray hair or crow’s feet as I try on all the possibilities of which childhood schoolmate she might be. Time has long since passed by this little town and its inhabitants. The first time I’d come home as an adult after a long time away, the kids my age had grown up and their parents had grown old. Those parents are now fading into history—if they haven’t already. It’s us kids who left this town as well as the ones who stayed who are now sporting the gray hair and looking like the parents and sometimes grandparents we remembered as children.

Before I can apologize for not remembering her name—or who she is—the woman sets down the floral arrangements on a foyer table and turns to me quickly. “Oh, you don’t know me. But I know you.”

I doubt that, but okay.

“I’m Brenda. I see your mom at church all the time. I’m so glad you came back to take care of her. We were all so worried about her. Such a sweet lady. I recognized you from the pictures that she shows me of you. Always has. A photo album of you and your brother in her purse. The two of you children sure are the light of her life.” She touches me softly on the wrist. “How is your mama now?”

I start to speak, but instead, I swallow the lump in my throat. All those times my mom lugged a thirty-pound tote bag of a purse with her to church and other places in town, only to show off its contents. Not knowing the weight was due to photo albums of her most precious treasures, I’d teased her about carrying bricks in her purse.

Brenda sees that I’m struggling and instead of forcing it, gives me a quick hug. “I’ve got to run these flowers upstairs to some patients. You tell your mama we’re thinking about her, and I’ll be praying for her.” She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “And for you, too.”

She scurries away and leaves me standing on the red brick steps at the hospital where I was born. Maybe Virgil was right: not everyone in this little town hates me or fears me. Maybe there are more people like Brenda than Iris-Ann. Maybe, just maybe, there are even other witches in this town, and I don’t know it. I doubt, however, that Brenda is a witch. She reminds me more of my old friend, Jan, whom I miss dearly.

The nursing home looms in the distance, no more than five hundred feet away, but on the other side of what obviously used to be a cow pasture. Instead of hiking across the field, I walk the sidewalk beside the two-lane road from the hospital parking lot to the nursing home’s front door.

I’ve been here before, mainly to visit aging grandparents, great aunts and uncles, or friends of my mom’s when she dragged me here as a kid. This place has always been Mama’s greatest fear. She’s heard too much about elder abuse and about adult children abandoning their elderly parents to places like this. This nursing home’s management, however, is far superior to that of any I recall visiting as a child. If anything, it seems to be an economic boon to the small town in the absence of any significant industry. Or maybe the aging population is the local industry now.

How often has my mom made me promise that she would never live out her last days in a nursing home? It’s a promise I intend to keep.

I make it through the sliding glass doors, but the interior doors are locked. I appreciate the safety precaution and punch the buzzer with my index finger.

Instantly, I’m somewhere else, lost in another vision. I’m walking briskly through the field behind my mom’s house. Virgil’s property is somewhere behind me, and I keep looking over my shoulder to see who’s following me. I walk faster. I glance over my shoulder again. I’m afraid. Faster, faster. I’m almost running now. I can see the back porch of the house ahead of me, feel the heavy breaths in my chest. I have to move faster. Someone’s following me.

I gasp as I let go of the button.

“Can I help you?” A woman with a Southern drawl that could charm the scales off a snake.

I find my voice at last. “This is Lauren Hartford. I’m here to see Virgil. He said I should drop by anytime I’m free.”

Laughter. “Sounds like our Virgil.” The door in front of me buzzes and opens. The stout, middle-aged woman in a red flower print dress doesn’t even look up as I walk over the threshold. Instead, she waves her arm and points to my left. “All the way to the end of the hall, honey. On the right.”

When it comes to nursing homes, I’ve definitely seen worse. I understand instantly why this is the most popular eldercare facility in the nearest five counties as well as why three-fourths of the residents didn’t grow up in this small town nor ever lived in it until coming here.

I’m sure my mom recalls—if she can remember—the nursing home we visited decades ago, only to find our beloved relative abandoned in a wheelchair in a hallway, hunched over and half-sedated. One of many. Like looking at a row of mirrors within a mirror. That’s the hell of old age that she’s always feared.

I see none of that here. No half-comatose populace shelved in otherwise empty corridors. This facility, instead, has a row of recliners in a clean, modern lobby where several residents sit to visit with other residents or wave at visitors to the facility. I wave back as I pass them.

Virgil told me that this place is half assisted living facility for the still independent residents and half nursing home for those who can either no longer be physically independent or are in memory care, a euphemism for the area set aside for dementia and Alzheimer’s patients at risk to themselves and others. The latter is a growing contender for Mama’s future. Still, for as hopeful as the lobby appears, I made a promise to my mom.

I find Virgil’s office at the end of the hallway, only it’s not the last door but around the corner in some weird feat of architecture. His brass nameplate hangs on the mauve wall, outside his open door: Virgil X. Caine. If I remember correctly, the X stands for Xavier, his father’s father. As a little boy, he had loved having X as a middle initial. I can still picture him in superhero pajamas, making an X with his forearms and scowling as if he were all-powerful.

Maybe he was.

I raise my knuckles to knock on the wall next to his open door. Hearing voices inside, I stop. Or more precisely, sobs.

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