Page 1 of Alex

Chapter One

ELISE

The incessant shrillof the heart rate monitor drones on and on in the darkened hospital room. It no longer beeps in tune with my mom’s heart.

Instead, it wails like an alarm in the night for all to hear.

Mom is gone, and she’s never coming back. There won’t be any more late night calls when I need her advice. No more dinner and movie dates from separate cities.

No more holiday dinners where we scrape together whatever we can afford.

I knew the end was coming, but not this soon.

Not now. Not tonight.

Not when I’m this lost and still don’t have my life together. I was supposed to finish college and get a good-paying job.

I was supposed to get Mom out of this shitty, small beach town and be treated by the best doctors money could buy.

But I wasn’t fast enough.

I didn’t have enough time to make that happen.

The disease spread to her entire body a couple of months ago and that’s when we knew we were out of time.

No amount of procedures, surgeries, or medicine could reverse the damage that had already been done.

We were playing a waiting game, but the waiting game has just ended.

I’m frozen in my seat, unable to move or speak. I want to shut off the damn machine. I want to shut off the reminder that from now on I’m all alone, but I can’t get up. I can’t bring myself to reach over Mom’s lifeless body.

Nurses and doctors flood inside the small hospital room that I’ve called home for the past several weeks.

One doctor flicks on the overhead light before slipping on a pair of blue nitrile gloves as he walks towards Mom.

His hand reaches out to check Mom’s pulse, but I know they won’t find one. The machine is telling us what we already know.

She’s dead.

There’s no going back.

He looks down at his Rolex watch. It’s way nicer than the other doctor’s watches, but I guess you can afford to drop several thousands of dollars on a watch when you’re the Chief of Staff.

“Time of death 17:10.”

His voice contains no emotion, but why would it?

He didn’t know Mom.

He only knew her as Wendy MacArthur, room sixteen. The lady who would rather stay on her deathbed in a cold sterile hospital than her own home surrounded by friends and family.

He doesn’t know that Mom and I are loners. We have no friends and our family has long since forgotten us.

The nurse to my right grabs the clipboard from the foot of Mom’s hospital bed and writes the time.

The time that will be permanently etched into my mind now.

Several nurses speak as the doctor blurts out several orders.

---