Sister Mother

Chapter 7

Addie

I hated seeing Mom and Dad hooked up to so many different machines, but Uncle Jason insisted that us going into their room and talking to them would help them wake up.

"Go tell them how you're doing in school," Uncle Jason said to Beatrice once the hospital elevator doors opened to floor seventeen. "I'm sure they'd love to hear all about—"

"They can't hear us." I gripped the steering wheel as my brother and I drove out of the elevator in our identical scooters while Beatrice, Uncle Jason and our cousin Kevin walked out. "It's pointless being here. They're not going to—"

"They might," Uncle Jason argued. I shook my head. "Addison, just get in there and be polite for once, would you?"

I rolled my eyes but complied.

Coming here so often made me lose faith in medicine. Mom and Dad were being kept alive, but they weren't living. I'd always believed that doctors and nurses make people better. Surgery exists to fix people, even if recovery's a bitch. Medicine should heal people, even if it takes it's time. There is a purpose for every scan, test and blood draw. There wasn't any purpose for the dialysis or ECMO machines or the ventilators.

Despite how much Uncle Jason and I argued over the past nine months about our opposing views on life support and how I was taking care of Gabe and Beatrice, I respected him enough not to cause a scene every time we visited the hospital So I bit my tongue.

"I can't stay for long," I said. "I have a shift at the bookstore in two hours."

"You can stay until we're ready to leave," Uncle said as he pushed open the glass door that led us to the room that my parents had been stuck inside of and would likely never leave.

"I always expect them to look different somehow," Gabe whispered.

Our parents were in room 1702. The walls were white, the nurses changed the flowers every seventeen days. I counted once in the early days after the accident. The flowers in the room were the only things that changed. The equipment beeped and buzzed and the room was always either too hot or too cold.

Mom was on the left twin-sized bed and Dad was on the right. Their faces were covered in tape and their mouths were around the tubes that breathed for them. In movies, people in hospital beds were often described as looking smaller than usual, but my parents looked bigger. Emptier, but bigger. Dad took up no more space than usual, but he looked like a squished pancake in that bed. Mom was once a beautiful woman, but seeing her without her joyful smile and kind eyes just made me hate her absence even more. I felt like I was staring at my parents' corpses.

Car keys. I put them here. If I hadn't found mom's car keys, they might have the house and the restaurant a few minutes after the speeding drunk driver flew down that road. Keys, keys, keys. All I could think about were those damn car keys.

Beatrice walked over to her designated chair in between the two beds. Gabe and I remained in our scooters.

"Go ahead, Beatrice," Uncle said warmly.

I closed my eyes and bit the inside of my cheeks. Not today, Addie. Gabe asked you not to. Please don't argue with uncle Jason today.

"Hi Mom, hi Dad," Beatrice squeaked. "I got a C plus on my Spanish test this week. I know that's not great, but Senor Gomez is really strict. He might offer some extra credit soon."

As Beatrice updated our parents about our lives, I looked over at Gabe whose face was just as white as mine was. I grabbed his hand.

"--bus still smells like gym socks," Beatrice continued. She was chattering up a storm, talking fast so could stay ahead of her tears. "Dad, we ran another mile yesterday in P.E. Coach said it wasn't a race, but I came in second."