Just For Me

Chapter 10

Lauren was eleven years old when she heard her mother's voice for the last time.

She was in a Dallas area hospital standing at her mother's bedside. Three days later, a week shy of Lauren's twelfth birthday, her mother Rebecca died.

Rebecca had been sick for some time, longer than Lauren's eleven year old mind could really process. For three - or was it four? - years, Lauren had seen the inside of every hospital from Dallas to Houston to Fort Worth. Her mother had called it the Great Cancer Tour. Told every new doctor, every new specialist, every new team of nurses that she'd always wanted to tour the state.

Inoperable brain tumors seemed a long way to go for some sightseeing.

The tumors eventually became not only inoperable, but unresponsive. They laughed at chemotherapy. They mocked radiation. They taunted the doctors and specialists and nurses by spreading, moving from brain to liver to lymph nodes to heart.

For three - or was it four - years, the cancer refused to cooperate. And, in some sick final joke, it refused to just finish the fucking job. It made Rebecca weak, frail, slowly withering like a once proud rose bush after the first frost.

But it wouldn't kill her.

Lauren wanted her mother to live, wanted it more desperately than anything else she'd ever wanted in her young life. And every day that Rebecca held on, Lauren knew it was another day she was supposed to be grateful for.

But even at eleven, she was smart enough to know that sometimes even the things we think we want can hurt like a bitch.

The last six months, the last six months of Lauren's eleventh year of life, had been a seemingly never ending cycle of admissions and discharges, of late night ER visits, of supposed-to-be-comforting smiles and reassuring hugs.

A never ending cycle of 'is this it?'

But it never was.

Lauren spent so much time at the hospital that Rebecca and Bruce eventually had no choice but to pull her from school. Not that Lauren noticed or cared. When she had been in class, her body had been there, sure, but her mind?

Fuck. Even Lauren wasn't entirely sure where her mind was.

Eventually, Rebecca was admitted full-time. No more discharges.

Well, Lauren thought, that's not entirely true. There would be one more discharge.

She got to the point where she knew all the nurses on her mother's floor. She knew which ones always had candy (Delia), which ones would take her for walks while Bruce and Rebecca met with the doctors (Sandy and Laine), and which ones would hold her hand while she cried (Rosie).

She also knew which ones would sugar coat it and which would rip the fucking band-aid off and tell her the whole ugly truth.

Lauren liked those nurses better. They reminded her of her mother.

Rebecca wasn't one for glossing over anything. Not even for an eleven year old girl who already had more on her plate than most adults.

"I don't know what your daddy's told you," Rebecca said to Lauren one morning, as her daughter sat on the edge of the hospital bed. "But I imagine it's some bullshit about me being home soon and everything being just fine?"

Lauren nodded. Those were, in fact, the exact words Bruce had said to her the night before, as she was headed to bed.

Mommy will be home soon. Everything's going to be just fine. Night, night, baby girl.

Even at eleven, Lauren knew when someone was blowing sunshine up her ass.

But she also knew when someone needed to do it. Not for her. But for themselves.