Heartbeat. Elizabeth Scott

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      8

      Mom is...she’s the same as she’s been since she was put in this room. She’s still, so still, and I sit and look at her closed eyes, at her slightly downturned mouth. At the tube going into it.

      Her skin is strange-colored, almost waxy-looking, and her hand is warm but limp in mine.

      “It wasn’t much of a day,” I tell her, and look around. The unit Mom’s in has huge open windows by every door—I don’t know why—but I can see people in other rooms. Most of them are sitting like I am, hunched by a bedside. A few are weeping. A few are just staring, lost-looking.

      I look away, look back at Mom. “I turned in my paper on the New Deal,” I say. “And we’ve started a new book in English that I like a lot. Oh, and I got an A on my Algebra II quiz.” I talk and talk, spinning a story of a day filled with academic success. Filled with lies.

      Part of it is because I am looking at her and I want her to think everything is okay even though I know she can’t hear me.

      Part of it is because part of me thinks that maybe she can, that despite everything the doctor said she will somehow open her eyes and say, “Emma, I know something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice. Start talking, okay?”

      Yes.

      Yes, I want to talk about it so much; I love you and I miss you and I wish you were here but not like this, I don’t want you here like this and I know I’m seventeen but I don’t want you to be gone. I want you to open your eyes and tell me everything is going to be okay. I want you to squeeze my hand and tell me something, anything. I want to hear your voice, not the machines that beep all around us.

      “Mom,” I whisper, and kiss her hand, pressing my cheek to it, eyes closed as I imagine.

      I feel movement, a slight shift in her but I know it’s not her.

      It’s the baby.

      “Why did you do it, Mom?” I ask. “Why did you try so hard for this when it was so hard on you? When the risks were so many? When you cried so much? When you ended up—when now you’re here?”

      I hear Dan’s voice as he comes back into the ward. He always says hello to everyone, like he’s so friendly. Like he’s actually thinking about anything other than himself.

      I open my eyes and see a magazine cart in front of the door.

      And I see Caleb Harrison staring at me again.

      “Hey there,” Dan says to him as he comes to the room. “I saw you earlier, right?”

      Caleb nods, looking at him and then my mother. I see him stare at her stomach.

      Dan walks into the room. “Lisa, Emma and I are both here now, and I thought we’d all talk for a little while before we have to go.” He pats Mom’s stomach. “I was thinking today we could talk about names.”

      “No,” I say, and Dan looks at me.

      Caleb, still standing in the doorway, looks at me too, and Dan glances at me, then at him, and says, “We don’t need anything to read now, thanks.”

      Caleb shrugs and moves off, the cart squeaking as he goes.

      “You know him?” Dan says.

      “No, but it’s not every day you see a girl sitting with her dead mother, is it? People would stare at that, don’t you think?”

      “Emma, honey, your voice—”

      “She can’t hear me.”

      “The baby can, though, and I don’t want—”

      I stand up so fast that I’m dizzy for a second. I don’t want to hear more. I can’t hear more.

      “I don’t feel good,” I say. “Can we go?”

      “I really was hoping we could talk about names. I’d like for you and I to...” He sighs. “Your little brother is in there, Emma. He’s in there and he’s fighting to stay alive.”

      I walk out of the room then. I stop at the nurses’ station and ask to use the phone. I hear Dan come out when he realizes I’m not coming back. I hang up the phone.

      “Emma,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him and walk out. He follows me, of course.

      “You’re hurting your mother,” he says when we’re waiting for the elevator. “She wanted this baby. She’d want you to be part of this. She’d be so sad to see how you’re acting.”

      I stay silent. I stay silent all the way to the car, all the way to the house. I don’t think of it as home anymore.

      “You say what she wants. What she thinks, what she feels,” I say when we get there. “She can’t do anything now, and it’s all because of you and what you want. So don’t tell me how she feels, because she can’t feel. She’s dead. She died trying to have your baby, and if you want to think about feelings and Mom, how do you think she feels about that? How do you think being dead makes her feel?”

      “Emma,” Dan says, and then “Emma!” but I’m out of the car and heading down the driveway, heading toward the car I know is waiting there.

      The lights turn on as I reach it, and I open the passenger door and get in.

      “Thank you,” I say, and Olivia nods, squeezing my hand before we drive off.