“She was shaking before that,” Toshio says quickly. “Her hands, her legs when she walked. It’s been going on for a while Kayla. I figured you saw that.”
I close my eyes trying to think but all my memories are blurred now. Now I just see her lying in the hospital bed, barely hanging onto life. “I didn’t notice,” I say quietly, feeling so much shame. And I thought we were so close.
“You can’t always notice things like that when you see the person all the time,” Paul says. “This isn’t anyone’s fault. Sometimes it’s just life and it does what it wants with you.” He sighs, running his hand through his thinning hair. “But us, the five of us here, we’re in charge of what happens next. Kayla. Please. We think it’s time to cut her off from life support. We think it’s time to say goodbye, to let go. What do you think?”
My chin trembles and I have to blink back tears. Such a terrible burden on one’s soul. I’m not God and I would only want to play God if I could bring her back.
But I know, I know in the deepest part of me, I know she’s not ever coming back.
That she’s made her choice to leave us. And that she’s waiting somewhere. On boat in the middle of a river. Us on one side, the love of her life on another.
I cry softly but I don’t wipe the tears away. I just nod. “Okay,” I choke out. “Let’s say goodbye. But…twenty-four hours from now. To give us all time alone with her. And for Toshio, just in case she comes back.” He gives me a grateful smile but I can’t return it.
I walk away from the waiting room and down the corridor to the outside. There’s fine mist in the air above the parking lot and even though it chills me, it feels better than being inside there for another minute.
I sit down on the curb and put my head in my hands and try to breathe. I can’t believe what I just said. I can’t believe what’s happening. In twenty-four hours, if she doesn’t wake up, I will cease to have a mother. I’ll never see her smiling face again, just as I’ll never see my father’s.
I will be an orphan.
An orphan.
A quiet sob rips through me and I start to shake. There’s too much loss in my life for me to even stay contained.
My hands shaking now like my mother’s once were, I take out my phone, ready to call Stephanie to tell her what’s going on.
But she’s not who I want to talk to. Not right now.
I dial Lachlan’s number and while it rings, I calm my heart by trying to figure out what time it is over there. It has to be the evening. God, I hope he’s around, that he still cares for me, that he hasn’t found anyone else, though I know, I know from the intensity of his love, neither of those things seem likely.
When he answers with “Kayla?” I breathe in so sharply it makes me cough. “Kayla is that you?”
“Yes,” I manage to say. “I just…I wanted to talk to you.”
“Alright,” he says in that beautiful brogue of his, deep, warm and silky. I close my eyes, imagining it wrap around me. “I’m so glad you called me.”
“Me too,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I was so mean last time.”
“No, listen,” he says. “I more than deserved it for the horrible way I’ve been.”
“You’re not horrible.”
“Oh, love, you know I can be.”
“But that’s not you. It’s not the you that I know and I should have been more understanding. I didn’t want to end things like we did.”
“I know but you had no choice. You had to go.” He pauses. “How…how is she?”
I let out a little whimper. “We’re pulling her from life support tomorrow. I have to figure out how to say goodbye in the next twenty-four hours.”
He groans softly. “I am so sorry my love. I can’t…if there is anything I can do for you, please, just tell me. I wish I could take all your pain and carry it for you. I’d do anything to help you through this.”
“I know you would. I guess that’s why it hurts even more. Because I could have had you here. I mean, if rugby wasn’t a factor. How…how have your games been?” I ask, trying to switch the topic.
“Good,” he says slowly. “Lost a few, won some more. Kayla…just tell me what you need me to do.”
I need him to be here. But I know he can’t be.
“Do you…do you still love me?” I ask rather bravely.
He sounds breathless at that. “I’ve never stopped loving you. Please. Please believe that. You’re the only way I see the sun.”
My heart swells, the feeling so strange and unaccustomed as of late.
“Then, please keep loving me. I need it. And if I can’t have you here, then I need your love. As cheesy as that sounds, I need it. I need the strength in it.”
“You have it. All of it. All of me.” He pauses. “What hospital are you at? Are the doctors being nice, has she been taken care of well?”
“I’m at UCSF,” I tell him. “And yeah. They’re some of the best. They’ve been doing what they can and they’re very patient. They want what’s best for her just as we all do.”
“That’s good…good,” he says softly. “That means that she’s had the best people looking after her. It’s all you can do Kayla. You’ve done all you can do.”
“And now I have to say goodbye.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I can barely exhale. I get to my feet and stare up at the building, knowing I’m going to be spending the weekend here. I’m not leaving until the very end.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“For what?”
“For picking up the phone.”
“I’ll always pick up the phone when you call. You know this.”
How wonderful it is that it’s the truth.
“I better go,” I say softly.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” I hang up the phone. It feels like all my bravery goes with it.
But even so, through all of this, his words have bought me a little bit of strength.
I slip the phone back in my pocket and head back into the hospital.
***
I don’t know how I get through the night, sleeping on the chairs in the waiting room for maybe an hour at a time. We all spend our time with her throughout the night, though Nikko is the first to really say goodbye and leave, heading back to his family. We hug and cry and it’s so unbelievably horrible that we all have to go through the same thing.
For the moments I’ve gotten with her, I just talk. I’m saving the best for last, letting her know how I feel at the very end. I don’t want to pretend she’s dead until she’s gone. So I talk with her as I have been these last few weeks. About everything I can.
Finally, when the birds start chirping somewhere in the sky and you can feel dawn about to break, I feel the end is near. For us. For a mother and her daughter.
I take her hand, squeezing it, rubbing my thumb on her skin and thinking that she’s nothing more than a husk. That the real her, with the way she used to do a little dance when she was eating a good piece of chocolate, the way my father used to make her laugh so hard she’d almost fall out of her chair, is somewhere else. I remember the look of concentration in her eyes, while these same hands pruned her roses. She took so much joy in them. She took so much joy in everything. She loved life so much, I just think she loved my dad that much more.
I cry, my head on her arm, holding onto her like a baby. I’m still her baby. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the rest of my life without her. She’s just always been here, always been watching me, loving me. Even when I do something to upset her, she could never hold a grudge. Her heart and arms were always open.
“I hope I’ve learned so much from you,” I cry out, the sobs shaking me. “I hope you’ll be proud of me. I love you so much mom, I don’t think I ever said it enough, but I hope you know now. You’re my best friend. I don’t know how I’m supposed to live the rest of my life without you.”
I’m crying so hard now that the bed is shaking, her arm is soaked. I’m dying for her to wake up, dying for anything other than the beep of the machines. But she doesn’t. She’s gone to me and I’m left all alone without the one person in my life who loved me unconditionally.