The Weekend Arrangement

When Even Your Breath Has Abandoned You

Everything hurts in this place.

The office felt empty- sterile and lifeless with a thin veneer of 'comfort' haphazardly laid over it. Even the art on the walls was anonymous, clashing modernist colours that hurt Martin's eyes to look at. Trying to focus on the photos arranged on the desk didn't help- the faces in those pictures were too happy, their smiles stretched and uncomfortable looking and it made him shudder.

He's forced to put his attention back onto the sheet of paper that had been slid across the desk at him even though the information on it is as painful as the rest of the office.

Martin has been here, in this nightmare of a hospital for days now; surviving on horrible, bitter, cold tea and cafeteria sandwiches that always seemed slightly damp. His phone died sometime the first night, and now he doesn't even have any way to reach out to anyone.

He had been taken to his mother's room as soon as he arrived, and had sat vigil by her bed for nearly two full days. The doctors and nurses had bustled in and out taking blood and doing tests and none of them had given Martin any information, so all he could do was sit and watch and hover nervously. The chair was hard and uncomfortable as he waited to find out what was happening. Why would the hospital have such terrible, uncomfortable chairs for visitors? It's already bad enough just being here, waiting on any news and having to breathe the chemical smells of disinfectant with the tang of disease underneath it.

When she did wake; Martin had given her a smile and a Hi, Mum; and her look of recognition had almost immediately turned into a sneer. When he went to lay a comforting hand over hers she had pulled away from him with a grimace.

It had initially filled him with rage- this was all her fault; whatever she had done to herself in Blackpool had obviously precipitated this newest medical emergency. Almost immediately he was plagued with a deep shame- she was sick, so very sick and he needed to care for her. He was always going to need to care for her. He was always going to need to put himself aside and care for her.

Martin recognizes that they had a terribly unhealthy dynamic, but it's been two decades of him being the only one of the two of them who was responsible enough to care for the both of them.

He's pretty sure he was only nine or ten the first time he had to go find her out in the streets and bring her home. She had berated him for it then, but he had gotten her home and gotten her food and at least knew she was safe; and he remembered being showered with praise and affection for days afterwards before she turned cold again. It was a cycle they ran through with a clockwork regularity. The older he got the fewer and further between the periods of benevolence became; but Martin still chased after them, striving endlessly for even just a smile or a charitable word from her. He could hate their relationship all he wants- it was what it was and he had long ago accepted that. He wishes things were different, that she was different but Martin knows this was simply the way things were for them. It just hurts to know he had rushed to her side and she wouldn't spare him even an ounce of kindness.

And now he was trapped in this office with a social worker and an enormous burden he knew he was going to have to shoulder no matter what else it cost him.

He already feels so guilty for ignoring his phone for so long. Nobody calls him. He should have known it was an emergency. Martin should have known and he ignored it- he ignored the calls because he was happy and now that happiness may have irreparably damaged his mother.

He looks hopelessly at the paper; maybe it was wrong, maybe he was reading it incorrectly.

"Is- is this number right? I've finished the means test and I thought..." Martin just keeps staring at the paper in front of him, not quite comprehending the amount it's listing. He knew, in an abstract way, that his mother's care was going to be expensive- but this was an astronomical figure. The social worker just gazes at him with a pasted on look of vacuous sympathy.