Fragments

Alyson felt guilty for even thinking of deserting Elena but she couldn’t stand staying a moment later in that hospital room. Her head would surely explode if she did. So, instead, she found herself walking through the hospital corridors, her breath growing shorter each step she took.

Her daughter needed to wake up, needed to open her eyes and smile and start talking about the pointless things she used to. Why wasn’t she waking up yet? Where was her mind underneath the blanket of unconsciousness?

As she rounded a corner, her thoughts drowning in images of Elena’s peaceful sleeping face, she saw someone who sparked a wave of recognition she couldn’t quite place. The person was a woman about the same age as her, maybe a little older, with wavy hair and worry lines across her forehead and in the tender skin beneath her hazel eyes. Alyson squinted, trying to match a name to the face – a feat easier said than done. Sighing, she began to walk over to her, surprised to glimpse a fatigue that looked like it ran even deeper than her own – if that was possible.

“Hello,” she said timidly, hoping she actually knew this weary lady. Alyson’s eyes widened as the woman turned to her and promptly fainted. Her body crumpled to the floor, face alarmingly pale, oblivious as Alyson called for help from above her.

Alyson was still there when she began to stir and lift herself upright in the hospital bed – she’d been carried to the nearest empty one as the nurses asked Alyson questions she didn’t have the answers to. The only nurse present now shoved a bowl into the woman’s arms as she vomited up whatever was in her stomach. “You’ll be okay now,” the nurse comforted, handing her a tissue.

Suddenly, Alyson’s face brightened. “Lacy!” she exclaimed at the woman without thinking. “You’re Lacy, Andrew’s mother…” She trailed off into memory.

They’d only met once despite their children’s relationship, before a school-hosted dance last year. Elena had bounced excitedly the entire afternoon beforehand until she finally slipped into the perfect knee-length dark green dress that pulled in at the waist and flowed out in waves. Alyson had just finished dabbing on the last of Elena’s lipstick when their doorbell rang a cheery tune.

“He’s here!” Elena had squealed, jumping off the top of the dresser and forcing her feet into strappy, high torture devices before taking off down the hall. Alyson followed, smiling.

The door opened to reveal a handsome teenage boy with an awkward expression on his face and a woman with a friendly but tired grin. “Hi, Elle,” he mumbled. “I told Mum not to come but she insisted on getting a picture of us together…if you don’t mind, of course.” He scratched the back of his neck nervously while Elena beamed and asked them to come in.

The next few minutes were consumed with the snaps of two cameras and the young couple being forced through a number of different poses with the same genuine-but-impatient smiles. Finally, Elena’s tolerance broke and she groaned, “Okay, Mum, we’re leaving now.”

“Be careful and have fun!” Alyson called after them as Elena tugged Andrew down to hall and out the door. They were going to walk to the school, as it wasn’t far away – and, as Elena had put it, who wanted to turn up with their parents in the car anyway? Lacy, too, walked outside and exchanged a small smile with Alyson that reminisced on children who were no longer children anymore. “It was nice to meet you,” Alyson said softly with a happy gleam in her eyes. “I’ll see you around.”

Lacy nodded and spun around, her back to the door as it closed.

Alyson blinked back just-forming tears as she gazed down at the frail woman on the hospital bed. An awful thought struck her cold – what if Andrew was in the crash? What if he’d been just as hurt?

It shocked her to realise that she barely knew anything about the event that had hurt her daughter so much.

She swallowed down her questions, unsure how to phrase them, instead settling on, “Are you okay? I’m not really sure what happened. You just kind of fainted.”

Lacy narrowed her eyes at her in irrational anger. “Am I okay? Am I okay?” she nearly shrieked, her eyes flickering strangely. “Am I fucking okay?” she murmured, shaking her head. She closed her eyes briefly and then flicked them open to stare straight at Alyson. “Please leave,” she said evenly.

Alyson allowed herself to be steered out by the nurse, thoughts confused and tangled, lips slightly parted. The nurse, outside the room, leaned in the talk quietly with her. “Sorry about that,” she said, angling her head to indicate what she meant. “Mrs Emerson has been here, wandering around, ever since she found out about her boy. She keeps asking to see him but nobody in their right mind is going to let her down in the morgue.” She bit her lip, pity all over her face. “I think she’s going a bit mad but nobody has the heart to tell her to leave or move her to the mental hospital near here. I don’t know what it is about you but I think you hit the wrong nerve, what with the fainting and all that.”

Alyson’s mind was startlingly clear with fright. “What happened to Andrew?” she struggled out.

The nurse appeared to be surprised – her eyebrows rose halfway up her forehead. “You know him? I’m sorry to say this, but he died in a car crash just yesterday. There wasn’t anything the doctors could do to bring him back.”

Alyson stumbled backwards, her thoughts reeling with shock. He died…just yesterday. He died. Ignoring the nurse and her puzzled yelp, she whirled around and ran through the corridors, past the doctors and families and nurses. She burst into Elena’s room, tumbled into the chair and clutched at the unresponsive hand.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into the sheets. “But don’t join him, Elena. Please don’t leave me.”