“Just a little lightheaded.”
“Yeah, Mama. Let me change and we’ll go.”
“Thank you.”
She stepped into the hallway and closed the door, and I stripped and threw on clean boxers and jeans and grabbed the flannel hanging off the back of my desk chair, and when I met her in the kitchen, Merv stumbled as she walked to dump her coffee in the sink.
“Mama?”
She set her mug on the counter, and it almost tumbled off the edge, but I reached forward and nudged it further back. She turned toward me, and the fear I saw on her face scared me down to my bones.
She stuttered, “I th-think… think somethin’s wrong.”
The ambulance would’ve taken too long to get out to her house, so I ransacked Merv’s bathroom and found a bottle of aspirin and made her chew two, and then I drove her and met the paramedics at Dr. Whitley’s clinic in town, the whole time begging silently for her not to have a stroke or a heart attack. For her to live.
I’d wasted so much time being antithetical, thinking I was better and different from my family, resenting my dad and what he’d done to us all. The way he’d darkened the light, happy family we used to be. I’d barely had time to patch what had been broken between us, but I wanted to. Desperately. I wanted my family back in my life. I wanted them to want me back in theirs.
I was so fucking pissed at myself, and the anger ran through me now as I thought about the contempt I’d felt for my mama all these years. I’d never spoken to her about how life had been for her married to the son of a bitch.
Would she die now and I’d never know?
“Brand?”
Dr. Whitley operated his clinic out of a house in downtown Wisper, and I’d been pacing the waiting area since I’d carried Merv inside and the doctor and his assistant had helped her onto a rolling bed and wheeled her away, but when I heard his voice, I turned on a dime. The soft smile I saw on his face dropped me to my knees because I couldn’t decipher its meaning.
Abey and Bax were on their way, but it felt like hours since I’d called them. I’d never needed them more. And I’d never felt more alone.
“Your mother is stable now, but she had a heart attack,” Dr. Whitley said. “I suspect it’s not the first. She may have been having small attacks she didn’t even notice; she reported pain in her neck and jaw and bouts of heartburn and other things that could be symptoms of small myocardial infarctions.
“We’ll need to send her for testing, but a cardiologist will be able to discern if it’s connected. Thankfully, this time it was mild. You did the exact right thing, giving her aspirin. I’ve given her medication to help dilate her arteries until a specialist can assess her and come up with a treatment plan. I’m having the paramedics transfer her to the hospital in Jackson.”
He laid his old, frail hand on my shoulder, and I lost my careful composure. All the bullshit I’d held inside for so long rushed out of me in sobs. I felt like the worst son for denying my mother for so long when all she’d wanted to do was love me.
“It’s okay, son. You got her to help in time.”
Dr. Whitley waited for me to sop the mess off my face with my sleeve.
Finally, I stood. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. Sylvia and Cord will be ready to transport her soon, but you can have a few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
He led me back to his exam room, and when I pushed open the door, Merv’s eyes were closed, her breathing a little uneven. She lay on the rolling bed still, and when she heard my boots on the floor, she turned her head toward the wall, probably to hide tears from me, but she said, “I fucked up.”
I had never heard my mother utter the word “fuck.” In fact, she’d smacked me more than once for saying it, and hearing it now from her mouth nearly knocked me right back down to my knees.
“Mama?”
Her choked voice and tight throat told me she was holding back tears. “I spent years smokin’ and abusin’ the one body God gave me and look what happened. Look what I did to myself. I could’ve died.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could’ve. What if you hadn’t been home?”
I shuddered at the thought. “But I was.”
She nodded and finally looked at me, and we both cried.
