Page 53 of Scarlet Chains
There she is— my mom.
The sight of her hits me even harder than I’d expected. This isn’t the woman who raised me, who weathered my father’s death, who encouraged me to chase my dreams even when they took me across an ocean. This is a stranger wearing my mother’s face, pale and drawn and frighteningly thin against the pristine hospital sheets.
Her once-vibrant brown hair, now streaked with silver, is limp against the pillow. Her skin has a translucent quality that makes the blue veins beneath visible, mapping a geography of illness I never knew existed. An IV line snakes from her arm to a bag of clear fluid hanging beside the bed, and the steady beep of the heart monitor fills the silence with artificial proof of life.
But it’s her eyes that destroy me. When they flutter open and focus on me, they’re still her eyes— warm and deep and full of love— but there’s something else there now. Knowledge. Theterrible wisdom that comes from facing your own mortality and finding yourself wanting more time.
“Ilona,” she whispers, and her voice is paper-thin, almost inaudible above the electronic sounds of medical equipment.
Tears blur my vision as I rush to her side, taking her hand in mine. Her skin feels fragile, like tissue paper that might tear if I grip too tightly, but her fingers curl around mine with surprising strength.
“Mom.” The word comes out broken, everything I should have said over the past months but didn’t compressed into a single syllable. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
It’s a stupid question— she’s clearly not okay, hasn’t been okay for months while I was playing at being an adult in Budapest. But it’s all I can manage, all my brain can process in the face of this new reality.
She sighs weakly, and the sound is full of regret and love and the particular exhaustion that comes from fighting a battle you’re not sure you can win.
“I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t want to worry you.”
Worry me.
As if her illness, her suffering, her facing this alone is somehow about protecting me from discomfort. As if my worry is more important than her need for support, for someone to hold her hand during the worst moments, for family to share the burden of whatever she’s been carrying.
The guilt crashes over me. While she was sitting in doctors’ offices receiving devastating news, I was falling into bed with a man who murdered my father. While she was enduring tests and treatments and sleepless nights of terror, I was playing house with his baby and convincing myself I could handle the complexity of my situation.
As if on cue, a doctor enters the room, clipboard in hand and the careful expression of a man who’s about to delivernews that will change everything. He’s younger than I expected— maybe mid-forties, with the kind of gentle demeanor that probably took years to cultivate. His presence fills the room with professional authority, but there’s genuine compassion in his eyes.
“Miss Katona,” he says, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Patel. I’m glad you could come.”
His grip is firm, steady— the handshake of someone who specializes in being a rock when other people’s worlds are falling apart. But there’s something in his expression that makes my stomach clench with dread.
“I’m sorry,” he continues, glancing at my mother and then back at me, “but I need to examine your mother first. Could you wait outside for just a moment? It won’t be more than two minutes.”
Two minutes.
It sounds reasonable, professional, routine. But as I step back into the hallway and the door closes behind me, those two minutes stretch into an eternity. I pace the corridor anxiously, my mind spinning through possibilities that range from hopeful to horrific.
Maybe it’s something treatable. Maybe she just needs surgery, or chemotherapy, or some kind of medication that will make everything go back to normal. Maybe the secrecy was just her way of protecting me until she knew more, until she had a treatment plan and could present me with a problem and a solution at the same time.
Maybe she’s going to be fine.
But even as I try to convince myself, I know better. The medical files I found, the months of hidden appointments, the way Dr. Patel carefully chose his words— none of it suggests a minor condition with a simple fix.
When the door finally opens and Dr. Patel emerges, I’m a wreck. My carefully maintained composure has cracked completely, leaving me raw and desperate and terrified of whatever words are about to come out of his mouth.
“Miss Katona,” he says quietly, his voice carrying the weight of news that will divide my life into “before” and “after.” “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but there’s no easy way to say it.”
No easy way.
The phrase that precedes every piece of news that changes everything, every revelation that splits your world in half.
“Your mother has stage three breast cancer,” he says quietly. “It has already spread to her lymph nodes. Unfortunately, all the treatments we’ve tried so far have failed to stop its progression.”
The words steal my breath and make my knees buckle. I have to grip the wall to keep from falling, my vision tunneling until all I can see is Dr. Patel’s compassionate face and the terrible knowledge in his eyes.
Cancer.
The word echoes in my head, reverberating through every carefully constructed plan I had for the future. My mother has cancer. Advanced cancer. Cancer that’s been growing and spreading while I selfishly living my life.
