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The automatic doors of the convalescent hospital wooshed out of Mary’s way as she raced through with her coat wrapped tight around her. Patients lined the halls in wheelchairs and raised their heads or reached for her as she passed.
“Ma’am? Ms. Hiebert?” The nurse called to her from behind the counter. “Dr. Bullock wants to talk to you before you go in. Ms. Hiebert…”
Mary didn’t respond as she walked the familiar halls to her mother’s room. She rounded the corner of the entrance and glanced at the white numbers on a brown plaque that read Room 312. The bed was empty.
Mary turned to the nurse that trailed her to the room. “Where the hell is she?”
“Dr. Bullock needs to talk with you and—”
“Where is he?”
“He’s with a family. He lost one this morning and he is with the family, but if you’ll have a seat in the waiting room…”
“Lost one?” Mary motioned to her mother’s empty bed. She stepped up to the nurse. “Are you sure just one?”
The nurse stiffened and her tone dropped. “Ms. Hiebert. I am not authorized to give you any information. Dr. Bullock will be available soon. Let me show you to the waiting room.”
Mary saw the security guards walking down the hall toward them and relented. With a sigh, she shoved her hands into her coat pockets and brushed past the nurse.
“I’ll make sure the doctor comes straight to you as soon as he’s available.”
Mary cursed the nurse under her breath, bought a hot chocolate from the vending machine, and took a seat next to the magazine table. Lindsey Lohan smiled at her from the front of a gossip rag. Mary used Lindsey’s face as a coaster. She wanted to call Tom, but there was never any cell service in this place. Tears formed in her eyes, and she forced them to stay.
The nurses bustled past the waiting area, and a couple doctors Mary knew by face came and went through the automatic doors. No one looked at her. She sipped her drink to make sure she was still alive. The run in her nylons caught her attention just before the voice interrupted and pulled her to her feet.
“Ms. Hiebert, it’s nice to see you again.” Dr. Bullock’s eyes were red and swollen. His face scratched with a couple days’ worth of stubble. He’d aged since their last meeting when her mother was admitted.
“Where is she?”
“We have her in for observation.”
“Observation where?”
“In the other wing of the hospital.”
“Why is she being observed?”
“There was a development in her case that we found…out of the norm, I suppose would be the phrase.”
“Out of the norm?” Mary repeated, working to keep the tears in her eyes. “What are you saying? Where is she? When can I see her?”
“Oh, you can see her…I can take you there…”
“Which way?”
Dr. Bullock motioned with his clipboard free hand and Mary started in that direction. “How bad is it?” she asked. The rest of her sisters lived a minimum of three states away.
“I don’t know that bad is the term I would use. But a drastic change like this one and we always make a phone call to the nearest relative.”
“Why can’t you just tell me how she is?”
“I really think this is something you need to see.”
The horror stories of dementia patients being abused by their care takers raced in Mary’s mind. She thought of the lawyers in the yellow pages she’d talked to when finalizing her mother’s will. She pictured her mother’s thin skin purpled with bruises, and hated to think where on her body those bruises might be.
“She’s on the 4th floor,” Dr. Bullock said, pressing the elevator’s call button. They waited for the elevator, and Mary held herself tight in crossed arms.
“She’s right down the hall in room 430.”
Looking in Dr. Bullock’s poker face, Mary had no idea what to expect as they walked down the hall. She felt the doctor’s hand in the small of her back urging her along. Her legs jellied a little when she turned toward the open door of room 430.
Her mother sat in a wheelchair by the window. She looked up from a paperback novel. Her hands shook slightly as she folded the page’s corner to mark her place. “Mary!” she said with a smile. “I’ve missed you.”
Mary’s blood chilled at the sound of her name. “Mom?”
“Come here, baby.”
“But this is…It doesn’t…I never…” Mary turned to Dr. Bullock.
“I have no explanation, and I have no idea how long it will last. That’s why we called you down here right away.” Dr. Bullock winked and smiled. “I’ll leave you to her for a few minutes.”
Mary entered the room petrified that she would wake in her bed before she reached her mother. She rounded the bed and knelt next to the wheelchair. “How are you feeling, mom?”
“Great! A little tired, and I haven’t figured out how to get this thing moving.” She tapped the arm rests of the wheelchair. “Doctor says he’ll get me a motorized one soon as he can scratch one up.”
Scratch one up. Mary thought she’d never hear that phrase again. “Wow, so…You slept well?”
“Reasonably so. How did you sleep?”
The years of having her mother call her by a long-dead friend’s name danced across her mind. “Yeah…I slept all right.”
“Why am I in a hospital?”
“You…Um…You’ve been sick.”
“P’shaw. I’ve never felt better. When can I go home? The smell of this place reminds me of my working days.”
“Did you ask the doctor?” Mary said, looking at the faded identification bracelet that circled her mother’s thin arm.
The old woman leaned forward, “They don’t know anything.”
“Indeed.” Mary nodded. A bird landed on the ledge just outside the window, hopped twice, and was gone.
“So let’s go. If we hurry, I can watch the sunset from my back porch. Did you bring my BMW?”
“Uhm…No. I didn’t bring it. How about if we stay at my place? I mean, you’re just getting out of the hospital and all.” Mary took a seat on the side of the bed near her mother’s wheelchair and fixed her sleeve cuffs.
“Nonsense. You stay with me. Your apartment is so closed in. I have plenty of room. Ryan can stay with us too.”
“I’m not with Ryan anymore, mom.” A tear pushed out the corner of her eye.
“Oh honey. I’m sorry. You never did keep them around very long, honey. That’s my Mary. So what’s the new name I’ll need to learn?” Her mother smiled.
“Tom.”
“Tom is a nice name,” her mother said, “but I won’t get too used to it.” She laughed until she coughed.
“Easy, mom.”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I just want to get out of here.”
“That’s really up to the doctor.”
“Well, then find him and let’s get out of here. I can’t wait to be home in my real bed. I just got that new king sized with the mattress pillow…”
Eight years ago, Mary thought.
“It beats these beds to the market, I’m telling you.” Her mother reached out and swatted the side of the hospital bed where Mary sat.
“Yeah…Yeah…I will find the doctor. That’s a good idea.” Mary pressed the nurse call button by the bed and asked where she might find Dr. Bullock.
The hospital halls changed into each other, and Mary was soon stopping at nurse stations and tapping staff members in the hall for directions to Dr. Bullock’s office. When she finally stood outside the door and looked at his empty desk, she was ready to collapse.
She took a seat in one of his leather visitor chairs. Behind his desk on the windowsill were pictures of his wife and family. One showed Dr. Bullock in a sweat-drenched shirt next to a red mountain bike. He’s just like anyone else, thought Mary.
“Can I help you?” A nurse with a clipboard in hand and a stethoscope draped over her shoulders stood in the doorway.
“I’m looking for Dr. Bullock regarding Rosalie Hiebert.”
“Hiebert…” The girl swallowed hard. “I’ll have him paged.”
Mary watched the doctor’s screen saver reflected in the window while she waited.
“Ms. Hiebert. What can I do for you?”
“She wants to go home, doctor.”
“I don’t see why she can’t as long as she has someone to look after her. I’d like to keep her here a few more days though. I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I don’t see how it can last.”
“Last week, she didn’t even know me, and now she remembers a bed she hasn’t slept in for 6 years.”
“It’s amazing,” Dr. Bullock said. He walked behind his desk and took the seat of authority, “It’s beyond me.”
“She asked about her BMW too.”
Dr. Bullock shook his head. “Stunning the way the mind works really. Even we in the medical field still haven’t fully tapped into the hows and whys of the brain. If the dementia killed her memories, she’d never get them back, one would think. It’s almost as if she has been downloading memories from the infected part of her mind to a functioning part and now the download is complete.” He leaned back in his chair and cradled the back of his head in his hands. “Stunning.”
Mary moved her lips to form words, but none came.
“And the car and the bed,” Dr. Bullock nodded and swiveled his chair from side to side. “One of the first things she spoke to me about was her jewelry. The diamond watch she wore into the hospital and her wedding ring.”
Mary slumped lower in the chair and stared at the front of Dr. Bullock’s desk.
“What seems to be the trouble, Ms. Hiebert?”
What seems to be the trouble. Mary didn’t know where to begin. “Nothing, I mean, it’s a miracle. I can’t believe it to be honest. It’s almost too much to take in.”
The doctor nodded and pulled himself closer to his desk, steepling his fingers just below his lips. “Then what is the hesitation.”
“None of it’s there.” Tears streamed from Mary’s eyes. “None of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the things she had. The cars, the house, the jewelry…none of it.” Mary pressed her hands to her eyes, and the tears leaked through her fingers. Dr. Bullock blurred in front of her to a white coated smear. “She can’t go home. She can’t ride in her BMW.”
“Have you told her?”
Mary shook her head.
The doctor twisted his tongue and held the tip in his teeth. “We have counselors on staff…”
“You don’t understand. My mother is not the sort of person that is going to be grateful for the miracle of waking up. This will be her hell.”
Dr. Bullock looked across the desk at Mary as if she were speaking in tongues.
“I’m serious. She’s the kind of woman that…and don’t take this the wrong way, I love my mother.”
“Of course.”
“She loves her things. She worked her whole life and saved every penny to buy what she wanted. When we would visit, she would show us the new things she bought and talk about them. The ring with so many carats, the painter that painted the original painting, the way the seats in her car were heated.” Mary’s tears broke loose again, and Dr. Bullock handed her a tissue across the desk.
“Maybe she’ll surprise us?”
Mary wondered when Dr. Bullock became one of “us,” but decided to let that go. “My sisters and I, we all thought she was done. A lot of her things went to pay for her stay here, but some of it…” Mary sobbed and her words were lost for the effort.
Pushing the box of tissues across the desk, Dr. Bullock said, “We do have counselors on staff that might be able to help you break the news to her. If I allow her to be released, is there a place she can stay?”
“She can…stay with…me.” Mary sighed deep to try and maintain control, “But she’ll be angry and bitter the rest of her life. Like the time I broke the crystal punch bowl.”
“Ms. Hiebert, I think you are getting yourself all worked up over nothing. You’re mother seemed reasonable to me. I’m sure she will understand that you had to do what you had to do.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Mary dabbed at her eyes and took out a compact to check her makeup.
“Why don’t we go down there and tell her together?”
“No. This is my mess. I’ll have to tell her. I don’t know how, but I’ll have to.”
“Your choice, should I send a counselor? Someone just to wait outside her room for you?”
Mary weighed the option. “I guess that would be okay.”
Dr. Bullock nodded and reached for his phone. “I’ll have someone meet you at the room.”
Mary thanked the doctor.
In the halls, the patients reached for her hand from wheelchairs. Mary concentrated on the movement of her feet wondering if making eye contact would give them a false sense of reality. Her mother had been one of these—people that had seen so many faces that every one of them appeared as a friend from long-gone days.
At the elevator, Mary considered leaving. The green exit sign at the end of the hall was far more inviting than the elevator ride to her mother. “The good news, mom, is that you remember everything again. The bad news is all the things you remembered are gone.”
With a ding, the elevator opened. An orderly in light blue scrubs pushed a food services tray out and past Mary. She watched the doors shut. Holding the skin of her lower lip between her teeth, she pushed the call button again.
This time, the open doors revealed an empty elevator. Mary pushed herself onto it. Tears threatened again. The door opened to the 4th floor, and Mary almost pressed the 1 button again. There were other things she could have done to afford her mother’s care.
In the hallway, orderlies and nurses bustled around like whitened worker bees. She dodged them on her way to room 430. “Ma’am, that room is being used right now.”
“It’s my mother’s room.”
“The doctor is with her.” An orderly stood in front of the door blocking the entrance with his arm.
“I’m going in,” she said. Mary surged toward his arm and thought of the Red Rover game they used to play in the schoolyard.
In the room, a doctor Mary had never seen before stood by a gurney with a body draped from head to toe in a sheet. “What?” she said, her voice a little less than a squeak.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Ms. Hiebert.”
There was a whirlwind in which Mary signed some papers, talked with a counselor, and answered a bunch of questions. At the end of it, she left the hospital not knowing how to feel. She had to call her sisters, but she would let that wait till the morning.
That night she dreamed of her mother driving down a long highway in her BMW, jewelry glimmering in the sun against her young skin, smiling.
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