Fantasia

XXXIV

August, eleven years ago

"Mum?"
Eddy was pretty sure the silhouette on the bed hadn't moved since the last time he'd peaked into this room.
"Mum, are you alright?"
His silent, careful steps didn't make sense after him half yelling for her, but Eddy couldn't help it. The closer he got to his mother's bedside, the more concerned he grew.

She was still. Way too still.

"Mum?", Eddy asked again with a slight tremble in his voice. He was right behind her now and stretched out his arm to lay a hand on her shoulder. Despite her wearing a thin sweater, Eddy could tell right away that something wasn't right.
His mum was cold, too cold for someone who was simply taking a nap, even being uncovered. Her eyes were closed and Eddy immediately checked on her breathing for a horrible moment, thankfully discovering her chest rising and lowering a second later.
He gently moved her shoulder back and forth.

"Mum?"

Still no reaction. Eddy felt panic rising inside him, his heatbeat and breathing accelerating from allegro to presto. What the hell happened to her? Did she just pass out after their fight or something?
"Mum! Please wake up!" His voice jumped two octaves in the middle of his desperate plea as he shook her more fiercefully this time. Yet, she didn't open her eyes.
"Mum... mum... no!", Eddy mumbled while he turned her around so she was lying on her back. For the first time in his life Eddy wished he'd started learning for the med school entrance exam or had at least some sort of first aid knowledge. He checked her pulse in the neck, which was very weak, gently slapped her cheeks in a desperate attempt to get her to regain consciousness, but to no avail.

"Mum, please!!!", Eddy yelled, grabbed her shoulders almost brutally, his mind panic ridden.
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! This couldn't happen, musn't happen! Eddy had just lost his dad. He wouldn't bare to have to live without his mother too! In no universe would he be able to deal with this! When he saw that all his effort of waking her up were futile, he took out his phone with trembling hands and started to dial. How was it fucking possible to punch in a freaking tripple digit number wrong twice? Eddy was a nervous wreck when he finally managed to dial the three 0s and could barely stutter his name and all the required information for getting an ambulance to come pick up his poor mother as soon as possible.

During the longest ten minutes in Eddy's young life, he held her cold, limp hand, called out for her continuously and shook her from time to time, still hoping and praying that she'd open her eyes and smile at him. Maybe ask him what this fuss was all about. A thousand thoughts whirled around in Eddy's head. Why hadn't he checked on her earlier? Why had he let her just leave their conversation like this? What happened to her? Would she recover? And all these thoughts were held together by a single one, which screamed louder than all of them:

Was it his fault?

By the time the ambulance arrived, Eddy's tears had soaked her sweater by her shoulders. The EMTs had to drag Eddy away in order to get to her and immediately put her on some sort of IV, laid her on a stretcher and rolled her out the house with Eddy stumbling behind them, still yelling for his mother from time to time.
They allowed him to sit with her in the back of the ambulance and hold on to her hand as the car raced through the streets of the neighborhood Eddy knew so well, blue lights and sirens included. The whole package! They even passed by Brett's house without Eddy noticing, not knowing that Brett glanced out the window right this moment, when he heard the noise, the question where Eddy had went to and why he wasn't answering his phone bigger and way more unsettling than him wondering about what the reason for the ambulance's hurry was.

Eddy even forgot that he'd normally get motion sick whenever he found himself in a moving object of any sort. When they got to the hospital, the medics rushed Eddy's mother into emergency with Eddy on their heels. His fearful and widened eyes just blankly observed how a bunch of docors did some kind of tests in highspeed, how another needle punctured his mum's free arm to draw blood and how they all talked to each other in a language of which Eddy just understood twenty percent, with all the medical terms they were throwing at each other. He felt like he was four again, completely helpless, useless, depending on his mum to wake up as soon as possible.

And for the nth time, his phone in his school bag vibrated without being answered. For the nth time, an incoming text lit up the screen, showing a concerned, unread text, the undertone almost equally helpless like Eddy's cry for his unconscious mother:

Eddy, where are you?