Losing You

There was a suffocating sour smell lingering in the corridors with walls, the saddest shade of yellow. I remember a painting outside every room. A vague attempt at bringing life to the place. I can’t, however, recall what was in the one outside hers. Some landscape perhaps. With more green than there should have been. The curtains matched right with the walls, a faded pink pattern marking their borders. There was some red too. Maybe. Sunlight filtered through the windows behind them as I rested my head against the sill, breathing in the air outside, deeply.


“When will you come home?” He asks in his fourteen year old voice that is yet to falter.
She shrugs giving a slight gesture of uncertainty with her right hand. Her eyes flutter as she attempts to keep them open. So much effort. She gives up in the end. The fluids slowly enter her, through the IV needle in her already swollen left arm. The silence gnaws at my skin leaving a trail of tingling goose bumps. I clench my fists by my side. Sweaty palms.


“Try talking to her.” Someone says. I sit in front of her. I hold her hand. Carefully. So frail, I am almost afraid I might hurt her. She has lost weight, I notice. Considerably. Her hair, an unkempt mess. She has no appetite these days. A cup of soup, a day. She has an uneven breathing pattern. A series of calm and deep breaths, one moment. Shallow desperate ones, the next. I don’t remember this person. She looks at me. Her eyes speaking of exhaustion. Finality. I shudder in denial.


The monitor beeps as I silently keep a steady gaze on it. She tilts her head to look at it too. Can’t. I gently rub her hand, still looking at the rise and fall in her pulse.
“Is it low?” She squeaks. Almost inaudibly. Her voice, so different from all the twenty one years I have heard her. I stare at her hand and shake my head. “No. The nurse says, it's fine.” I tell her.
Last conversation.


It’s three thirty in the afternoon. There are six other people in the small room. One of them, talking to my father. I have dozed off sitting on the chair in a corner. I wake up. Notice she has been put on oxygen due to trouble in breathing. I stare at the air from her mouth, forming a mist on the mask. It vanishes as she inhales, only to reappear a few seconds later.
I am supposed to go back home.
“I’m leaving, Ma.” I tell her.
She nods. I wonder if I should hug her. Or kiss her cheek. Too awkward, I decide. Or too scary.
Instead, I just walk away, without looking back.
Or maybe I did.
I don't remember.