Her Mother's Daughter

It's been 3 months and she's slowly getting better. Rae comes in every day, checks in with the ICU nurses and spends about an hour, maybe 2 if she's got the strength of will. She rolls the reclining sleep chair over and sits next to her mom's bed, surrounded by a ventilator, all kinds of monitors and machines, flashing, beeping, keeping score. Today's a good day. Her levels are high, whatever that means. This seems to be progress. The nurses are exceptional. Patient, kind, and above all, frank. No bull, no patronizing, just the facts with a wry sense of humour and a seemingly endless supply of answers. Whether they're the ones Rae wants to hear or not is a moot point; at least they're communicative. The doctors on the other hand are elusive, cryptic. Disinterested and halfway out the door. It makes Rae crazy. She doesn't speak their language so she stumbles and sputters. On a bad day Rae weeps openly, embarrassed by her complete inability to articulate what she so desperately wants to bellow at the top of her voice: You need to fix my Mom. In that moment, she falls apart, becomes inert. The nurses have seen it all. They give her time and tissue and gently coax her back to coherent speech. At 36 she never imagined this. She's too young. They're both too young. Rae always feels like a kid around her mom. Even now, with her hooked up to an endless array of cables and lines, eyes closed, body in stasis, she wants to crawl into her lap and have her hair brushed and braided and fussed with for hours. She wants to play cards and eat toffees and argue over the Price Is Right final showdown. She wants to walk down the boulevard holding her hand singing Carol King and Hey Jude over and over until they rewrite the lyrics and Mrs. Finlayson tells them enough is enough. She wants her mom to get better so they can keep fighting and laughing and living and loving and just being. Mom and daughter. Like always, for ever and ever.

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