Winter Went | #2 Winter Series

Chapter 20

This was probably one of my favourite chapters to write.

|| Josh ||

He is six again, playing in his mother's room. Teddy is with him, smiling as always and wanting to play.

"Look," he says. "I can make Teddy dance around."

He makes the bear dance on the carpet, relishing the chuckle that he hears from the bed above him. He pokes his head up until he sees the duvet, the flat pillow, and the withering body on top.

His mother's body is frail. Sometimes when the duvet is rolled down to her feet he can see the dips in her ribs. Her eyes are sunken, weary-looking as she gazes at him.

"Can you make Teddy sing?" she croaks out, a kind smile on her lips. That's what he loves, he decides, her smiles. Even if the rest of her is almost gone, her smiles are still there, just like they always were.

Sternly, he shakes his head and then plops down on the floor again to try.

"Teddy says he's lost his voice," he reports back to his mother. "He can't sing."

"Why don't you sing to him?"

"I can't, ma."

"I'll do it then."

He smiles a little as her soothing voice takes over him. He wants to crawl in under the covers, feel her holding him, tight and strong. But he knows what the doctors said. It's best not to get too close, Joshy. You might break her that way.

So he listens to her calming voice instead. He closes his eyes, a dreamy smile on his lips, and he wonders if he can just listen to songs and poems forever.

Then his mother's hands are in his, gnarled against soft.

"My brave boy," she says, smiling again. "You'll fight with me to the end, won't you? Whatever life throws at you, son, tackle it with whatever your heart tells you." She presses a hand to his chest; he can feel the fluttering inside. "I'll be in here."

The next time he sees his mother, she is under a white sheet, skin cold, eyes cloudy, gone.

That's what they said. Gone. She took the lilting voice with her, he knew. Now Teddy would never be able to learn how to sing.

* * *

Josh wakes from the dream biting his sleeve. The fleece-like material is moist under his dry tongue, but he can't move.

Like every night, there is something holding him in place.

He can still see her under the sheet, still feel the clamour of doctors around him, the tugging on his hand as his father pulled him away. He pictures his younger brother, mother-less. Himself, with no family.

He finds something can move because a single tear falls onto the bedding of straw.

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