I’ve written a little about my mother’s accident, but I have been putting off the most painful parts of it, because they’re, well, painful. And scary. Overwhelming. One of those memories we are terrified to dredge up, unlocking the cage of some terrible beast that will burst out and devour us while we scream in helpless agony.
So yeah, I don’t like talking about it.
But the more I work on this journey, the more it surfaces, sniffing around the edges of its enclosure, looking for openings or weaknesses. Like the terrible Nothing from The Neverending Story. As much as I fear it, I need to get it out. Fair warning, though; it might be pretty rough reading.
(Side note: my mother had beautiful eyes. To borrow from The Princess Bride, they were “like the sea after a storm.” My eyes are like my father’s, the pale blue of washed-out denim; I always wished my eyes were like hers instead, a deep gray-blue. They were always deep in thought, always full of her. Beautiful.)
My mother coming home broken and helpless and in pain was bad. Taking over the household at 11, that was difficult. Washing my mother’s hair while she sat naked in the bathtub, draped in a plastic dropcloth, sobbing in pain and relief, that was damaging. But the worst part came later, when she was almost healed, almost back to us.
The way it was explained to me then, she broke her left collarbone, which had to be immobile to heal, but she also did other damage to her shoulder that needed to move to heal properly. Because it was a displaced fracture (the broken pieces of bone were forced out of alignment), it took priority over the other injuries, and she was kept as still as possible to avoid surgery. The result was that by the time the bone healed, her shoulder was nearly frozen in place, full of scar tissue. She could not lift her arm higher than her belly button straight out in front of her and could not lift it to the side at all.
Rather than take her to a specialist, my father decided he could take care of it himself. And gradual improvement through physiotherapy exercises would take too long. It just “needed to be loosened,” and he was going to be the professional to do it.
This is what I remember.
The dinner dishes are loaded in the dishwasher; the pots, pans, and knives are drying on the counter. My father says it is time to go.
My brother isn’t home; he rarely is anymore, staying overnight with one friend after another several days every week. The mothers feel sorry for him. I don’t know why I’m going with my parents, other than it’s dark outside and I’m only eleven.
I pull my mother’s shoes on her feet, tie them, and help her out of the old brown recliner she’s been living in. She is silent. I am silent. I help her into the passenger seat of our gray Dodge Grand Caravan, leaning carefully across her to buckle the seat belt, and climb into the back, sliding the big side door closed behind me. Her eyes stay closed the entire time; she relies on me to guide her. My father gets in and drives silently through town to the back door of his medical clinic. The lights are all off. Even the cleaners are gone by now.
He unlocks the door and turns off most of the alarms, though he leaves the other exterior door alarms active, “so no one can break in and demand drugs when they see someone is here.” He turns on lights in one hallway, and we walk down to one of the treatment rooms. I have not heard my mother speak since this afternoon, and she hasn’t made eye contact with me either. If she didn’t pause to let me help her with things, I would think she didn’t know I was there.
He helps her lie down on the examination table in the middle of the room and raises the platform for her legs, so she can lie flat. He points to the door, so I walk out, but hover just outside, trying to peek into the room without being seen. He leaves the door open and turns back to my mother, as though he’s already forgotten I’m there.
Standing at my mother’s left side, he takes her left hand in his left hand, not lovingly, but gripping it tightly like an armwrestler. He presses down on her collar bone with his right hand and pulls her arm up sharply. My mother shouts in pain. I cringe back from the doorway; my stomach feels weird.
I can’t bring myself to look again. But I hear her softly asking him to wait, but a moment later, she yells again, followed by a few gasping breaths. I wrap my arms around myself and lean my shoulder against the wall. My heart is starting to pound.
There is a crunching sound and my mother screams. Feeling acid in my mouth, I turn and run the opposite way down a dark hallway. I’m about to run out the emergency exit when I remember it is still alarmed. I can’t get out. My mother screams again.
I run back to a junction in the hallway and turn down the short hallway to the unused office I sometimes hang out in when I’m waiting for him to finish work. It is the farthest away from them that I can possibly be. But I can still hear her. The door is blocked with a stack of boxes, so I cannot close it, but I throw myself under the old olive drab metal desk and jam myself as far back as I can, curling into a ball and covering my ears with the damp palms of my hands.
But I can still hear her, the screams almost constant now, piercing through my hands. Then silence for a moment. I drop my hands. She is begging him to stop, her voice painfully raw. I don’t hear an answer.
Her screams are rough-edged now, with panting sobs in between. She doesn’t try to talk, not that I can hear. Then there are a few beats of silence, almost long enough for me to crawl out.
But she is screaming again, lower now and hoarse, somehow one long continuous sound that reverberates in my skull. I can’t get away from it; I know I am rocking against the cold metal inside of the desk, but I feel none of it. My heart is racing, beating its way out of my chest. That I can feel. That burns. And my throat burns, too.
I don’t know how long it lasts, but it blurs into hours in my mind, until I realize it is now eerily silent in the building. So silent that my ears ring, and I have a flash of fear that she is dead. I have to go see.
I crawl out from under the desk and stand up, but grab the chipped edge of the desktop because my legs feel weak. I am shaking and my throat burns like I threw up. The cool, clammy air of the dark office tastes like mold on my tongue. Leaning against the wall, I walk slowly back through the building toward the light, drawn in, but terrified of what I will find, my shirt rubbing along the wall creates whispers in the darkness.
He is standing at the counter in the exam room, writing notes on a chart, his back to the door. My mother is still lying on her back on the table, her arms at her sides. Her eyes are closed, her face so white. I panic for a moment, until I realize I can hear short, tight breaths and can see her body shaking. I feel sick again.
Getting her up from the table and back to the van is a blur, except that when I walked to her side and gently brushed her right hand so she would know I was there, she whimpered and squeezed her eyes so tightly shut.
No one has spoken to me since the afternoon. I don’t know what time it is now.
We drive home, silent in the dark. My mother leans on me as we walk up to our house, but I am afraid to touch her. She can barely stand and still trembles. I walk with her through the house to the living room and try to ease her back into the recliner. Her left arm is held tight to her side and she cries out softly when her hand hits the chair and jars her arm. I don’t know where he is. I remove her shoes, lean the chair back one notch, and cover her with her favourite afghan, dark green with orange zigzags. She crocheted it herself.
Her eyes are still shut. But she must know that I am there, because she whispers, “Water.”
I scramble to the kitchen to put fresh water in her big jug and rush back to her as quietly as I can. I hold the straw to her lips because her eyes are still closed, trying not to let my hands shake, and she manages a small sip before she looks like she might throw up. Her skin is so gray. Her hair is damp around her face.
I move to lie down on the couch so I can be near her, but he walks into the room.
“Bed.”
I open my mouth to protest that I want to stay, but nothing comes out. I pee, wash my hands, brush my teeth, change into pajamas, and turn off my bedroom light, leaving my door part way open, listening. When he comes down the hallway a short time later, he closes my door loudly and then his own. Both sounds make me jump, and my heart races.
I cannot sleep. After I hear his shower and bedtime routine end and the snoring begin, I wait about half an hour, until I can’t stand it anymore. I creep through the house to the living room. I have to see if she is still breathing, if she needs me.
In the dim light from the street, I can see that she hasn’t moved since I left, though there is now a small bottle of medication next to her water jug on the table beside the chair.
I sit on the floor with my back against the couch, my knees pulled up to my chest. I rest my chin on my knees and watch her until I get too sleepy. I am afraid to fall asleep here, afraid he will find me, so I creep back to my bedroom.
But I am afraid again. If I am not by her side, I am afraid.
I spend the rest of the night moving back and forth through the house, staying as long as I dare by her side, until I hear his alarm clock. I rush into my room until it is late enough for me to reasonably be awake before I come out again.
My eyes feel heavy and full of sand. My throat still burns. My chest aches. It hurts when I wash my face. Looking closely in the mirror, there is a shadow of a bruise on the right side of my forehead. I am confused until I remember the desk.
I hit it on the desk when I was rocking. The memory of the screaming floods back and my stomach twists. I taste bile and mold, and dry heave into the sink.
I arrange my hair down over the bruise and go to check on my mother.
He is in the kitchen packing his lunch when I walk through toward the living room. He doesn’t look up.
She is still gray, her eyes still closed, though her breathing seems a little deeper.
Later, after he leaves, I make her some rice, but she doesn’t eat it. When she fumbles for the bottle of pills, I get one out for her, put it on her tongue, and raise the straw to her mouth.
I play records for her, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Chieftains, John Denver. I help her to the bathroom when she starts to try to get up from the chair on her own. We are silent. I haven’t seen her eyes in more than a day.
My brother comes home in the afternoon and goes into his room. I hear him start to play a game on our Commodore 64. Shogun.
I make spaghetti for dinner. My mother stays in the recliner. She doesn’t eat.
It is another day before she starts to eat again.
Two before she starts to talk.
Four before she makes eye contact.
We will never speak of it.