Page 52 of So This Is Love

“What is your problem?” I ask, confused at the unwarranted hostility.

Shannon frowns and crosses her arms over her chest.

“No, it’s fine,” Laila says. “I was going to go to the bathroom anyway.”

Laila takes her hand out of mine and steps away from me and Shannon. I want to argue back, to tell her that she doesn’t have to go anywhere. Tell her that I want her to be right where she is, but before I can get any words out she’s stepping away walking down the hall to the nurses station. The station is too far away for me to hear the nurse’s response, but she points down a hallway and Laila walks in that direction until she turns a corner out of my view.

“Why would you bring her here?” Shannon asks.

Her tone laced with such contempt, that it draws my eyes away from Laila and to my sister.

“Really? That’s the first thing you want to say to me right now?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief. “Mom is in there lying in a hospital room and you want to talk about why I brought Laila?”

“Exactly, mom is in the hospital,” Shannon says, her tone harsh. “Which means this is family business, not somewhere where you bring your little fuck buddy to.”

Shannon is the oldest and has always been the bossiest. She always wants things done her way and thinks that she knows best about everything. Even when she’s loud and wrong.

I step closer to Shannon, getting in her space to make sure my next words are crystal clear. “Listen, I get that there’s a lot going on right now, but don’t you ever say some disrespectful shit like that about Laila ever again. She’s here because I want her to be, and that’s all that matters.”

Shannon’s nostrils flare as she prepares to argue back with me but Lauryn’s voice from down the hall breaks the tension.

“Hey, sorry, I got here as soon as I could,” Lauryn says, coming up beside the two of us. “Fill me in. What’s going on?”

“Since Shannon knows everything, she can tell you. I’m going to go see mom,” I say.

I don’t wait for a response from either of them, I step back and walk to the door of Mom’s hospital room. I knock gently before I let myself in.

Janet Taylor is the rock of my family.

The one who has always brought us all together. The one who was at every recital, every orientation, every gameday for her children, cheering us on.

I’m used to her strength and independence. Which makes me so wholly unprepared when I step into her room and see her in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV and other machines. She’s lying against her pillows with her eyes closed and my chest clenches as I take in this version of my mother that I haven’t let myself see before.

The show of aging in the form of wrinkles across her forehead. The gray hairs that aren’t just at her temples anymore, but are now winning the battle against the dark brown ones throughout her head.

The evidence of her mortality, right in front of my eyes.

“Don’t just stand there Bryce, come on over here,” my mom says, her eyes still closed.

“How did you know it was me?”

“A mother knows her son.”

I do as she says, rounding the bed I place a kiss on her forehead before pulling a visitor's chair closer to the bed so I can sit next to her.

“How you feeling, ma?”

“I’m feeling just fine.”

“Ma,” I say, my tone serious.

She waves a hand in the air as if to say it's irrelevant but I don’t believe her. I fix her with a hard stare until she speaks again.

“The doctor only wants to keep me overnight for observation as a precaution.”

“A precaution for what?”

She sighs. “I was having some chest pains and shortness of breath this afternoon. I came in to get it checked out. The doctors said my heart is just fine, but my blood pressure is high and they want to get it under control.”

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