Page 51 of Reckless
16
Kelly
I’d blocked it out, hadn’t allowed myself to think of it for so long. But now, as I entered the hospital with Gage, that night came rushing back.
The lights were too bright. The air almost too thick to breathe into my lungs, with a heavy disinfectant smell. A heavy silence clung to the walls. It was dread.
There was something palpable about death when it was close, it clung to everything. Clung to me and tried to drag me into an abyss of hopelessness.
I followed Gage through the halls, my brain throwing out slivers of memory.
The hollowbeep beep beepof the machines keeping my dad and brother alive.
The sound of my mother’s screams when the doctor told her there was no brain activity. That there was no hope. Were we interested in organ harvesting?
I forced myself into the present. Gage took a left into his mom’s room, and spying Millie at the nurse’s desk, I paused to get details.
“Millie, what’s going on with Babs?”
“The doctor has transferred her to hospice care for suitable end of life care. There’s nothing more we can do for her, so he’s sending her home.”
“End of life…” I was all too familiar with those words, but I couldn’t quite relate them to Babs, the woman who was life personified. “But she’s been so…”
“I know, but her kidneys have started to fail, and she’s adamant that she wants to go home, and her friends from church are lined up to help. Now, we just need to make her final wishes happen.”
My fingers went to my mouth. “Does Gage know she’s being moved home?”
As Millie shook her head, a tightness gripped my chest.
“Someone left a message earlier today, then I called a little while ago, but as far as I know no one’s spoken to him today.” Millie scrunched up her face. This was the reason the floor felt so tense. Everyone was waiting for Gage to lose his shit.
Slam!
Babs’s door hit the wall as Gage rushed out and down the hall, gone almost before I could register his movements.
I gasped and took a step in the direction he’d gone, but Millie grasped my arm. “Give him a little while. He can’t fight it anymore. He has to accept it, and he’ll need time alone for that.”
I nodded and took off toward Babs’s room. It was one thing to know your loved one was dying, and quite another to witness them being sent home to do so.
I shoved the door open and went in, expecting Babs to be upset, but she was lying peacefully in the bed. Though pale, she still had a spark in her eyes—even cancer wouldn’t strip that from her—but her body was fading fast. Her eyes were sunken, and she looked a lot thinner. This disease was taking one of my favorite people down. At warp speed.
I swallowed back tears, trying to push back all the memories I’d shared with this wonderful woman. The Strickland house had always been one filled with fun, even if it only had two people in it, and I’d seen this woman as a member of my extended family for a very long time.
Back then, I’d assumed that she would end up my second mom…now, the lost years hit me hard.
“You’ve heard the news then?” Her words were grim, but her tone held the same matter-of-factness I’d come to expect from her. “I’m going home in the morning.”
I stepped to her and took her hands. They were frail, her skin thinning and yellow. It was funny how even if you were a nurse you could see a person how you wanted to, how you always had. “How are you doing?”
“Kelly, you know me, I’m doing just fine. I’m not worried about myself, anyway.”
I bobbed my head. “It’s Gage you’re worried about.”
“Some things never change, huh?” She chuckled. “I’ve spent my whole life worrying about my son, and I honestly don’t know why. He does what he thinks is best anyway. I always warned him that music would be a hard career to get into. Not that I didn’t believe in him but because the industry is just hard. But he insisted it was right for him, and it was.”
“He wouldn’t have been able to do it without your support though, you know that?”
“I don’t know. Gage does everything by himself, doesn’t he?”
