I Amsterdam (Completed)

Chapter 9.1 - Emma

"Good memories can leave even more of a scar on your heart than the bad times."                              - Taylor Swift

It was October 12th, three days before my 14th birthday. We had gone to bed early that night so that we could be able to wake up early the next day. We were planning to move once again, this time to Liverpool. My father was busy with work, and my mother had already fallen asleep on the couch when sleep found me as well. It was probably 6:00 PM.

When I woke, it was a few minutes before midnight, and the sound of coughing flooded my ears. At the time, I hadn't learned CPR, and so my heart immediately began beating in panic. As fast as lightning, I raced out of bed to my mother's side on the couch. My father got there a full second before me.

The coughs were heavy and long, and the breath after each one was raspy and choked. My mother rolled off the couch onto the floor, and crouched over herself into a little ball, just coughing and coughing and coughing and coughing. Her brain was already in survival mode.

"Mom?" I asked, wrapping my hand around her back ever so gently. When I realized she didn't hear me, I repeated, almost in an angry voice belonging to a parent scolding their child, "MOM!"

"Layla?" my father said, just as worried. He laid a hand upon my mother's shoulder. "Layla, listen to me. I'm gonna call an ambulance."

He ran to the phone, and just at that moment, my mother started coughing blood, clotted and sticky, blood so dark crimson red that is was almost black. It splattered across the wooden floor. "Oh my God," my father said, racing back.

"No, no, don't. Call the ambulance!" I told him, and he sprinted to the phone again to make the call. "Mom! MOM!" I screamed, tears streaming down my face. I felt like I was losing my breath as well. "Why, Mom? Why did you do to yourself? Mom, you're scaring me. Mom!"

"The ambulance is coming," my father said, carrying a bucket. He placed it under my mother for her to spit the blood into, but I doubt she had the energy for that. Instead, it just come dripping down, ever so slowly.

Through coughing fits, my mother could just barely gasp in air, and with the very little breath she received, she rasped, "I'm sorry." After a few more heavy coughs I could just make out the very last words I ever heard from her.

"I was dead already."

"What's happening to her?" I cried.

"I don't know, Emma," my father answered. He stroked my mother's hair. "It's going to be okay, Layla."

But it didn't seem like it.

After a minute, my mother fell to the ground unconscious. It took another whole minute before the ambulance came. It was just two minutes, but felt like a lifetime.

The paramedics pushed their way past my father, who opened the door for them, and one literally dragged me aside while I screamed and kicked and cried. I wondered why they looked so calm, so collected, when in front of them, someone was dying.

It seemed like the world froze as one paramedic placed his two fingers on my mother's neck, and rested them silently in position for three solid seconds.

Then suddenly everything sprang back into action. With some mumbling from the medic that checked my mother's pulse, another paramedic began conducting CPR.

"One-two-three-," I could hear him softly mumble to himself. He counted all the way up to 30 before he checked my mother's airway, his gloved hand scraping her esophagus to dye the white glove the color of her blood. He drew his hand out, and blood stretched like melted cheese from her throat. My breath caught itself, and my hand went to my mouth to cover the sound of my sobs.

Seeing this, the paramedic holding me back turned my head away and drew me close to him. "Don't look," he whispered. "It'll be over soon."

But what will over mean? I wondered.

I woke at exactly 4:29 AM, the very next day, in the hallway of some hospital. I was lying down across four blue chairs, my legs folded to prevent them from falling off the edge, because there were four, and only four, blue chairs.

I sat up. I was the only one there. It was almost as if I was in some horror scene; there was even the flickering of the light down the hallway.

"Mom?" I called. "Dad?" The air-con was up way too high, and I was wearing a thin shirt over leggings, so I shivered and crossed my arms across my chest, shrinking my body as much as possible to try to retain as much heat as I could. "Hello?"

I jumped when behind me the door opened, and out came a nurse. Behind her was my father, his eyes a mixture of purple and red as if he got punched. Last out came the doctor.

"Where's my mom?" I asked.

My father struggled to keep his posture, and in the end, he broke down into miserable tears. "Your mother didn't make it, honey," the doctor told me. She said more, but her following words turned into a jumble. My eyes glanced to my father, broken and battered as if he just lost a battle, and while I felt just the same defeated feeling, I also felt anger - towards him.

"Honey." The doctor's seriousness jolted me back into reality, and I turned my attention to her as she put a gloved hand on my shoulder. "Do you want to know what the cause was of your mother's death?"

All my misery then faded into resentment with that question. Resentment of both my father, and my mother. I felt my eyebrows narrow in rage, and my hands naturally clenched into fists.

"I already know," I said with a bitter tone. "My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer a year ago." I dared to look at my father to see his reaction, but his expression was lifeless. The death of his wife was like the death of him, and now, it's like he doesn't even care anymore, for anything.

My mother's dead. I couldn't bring myself to say those words.

She died just before my 14th birthday, before the sun even rose.