“If she can come back?” I ask incredulously.

“Our goal is to get her out of the coma as quickly as we can. We don’t want to have her under for any more than we should. But it’s still a risk to put her there. We never know if the patient will come out of it, even if we lessen it. But sometimes it’s the only chance we have.” She tilts her head sympathetically. “When we decide to put a patient into a coma, we’re already talking about extremes. Your mother has a very tough time ahead of her. You’re all going to need to be very strong.”

I almost faint. Steph tightens her grip on my arms, keeping me upright. “Can I see her?” I whisper.

The doctor nods. “Of course, follow me.”

We go into the nearest room and she pulls a curtain aside.

There is my mother.

But it’s not my mother.

My mother was tiny but she’s never this tiny. Not this old.

This is a small, dying woman, skin greying, almost translucent, painfully thin and hooked up to a million machines. They beep, monitoring her, the only sign that she’s not dead at all. I watch her heart beat on the monitor for a moment, then look back at her, trying to connect the two images, the proof that she’s alive.

“That’s not her,” I whisper, my hands at my mouth, waiting for someone to agree with me, to tell me that this is all a big joke. But no one says anything. The amount of pain between us all is staggering. I can’t even comprehend it and my brain shuts down all over again. Switch by switch.

But still, I pick up her hand, her papery skin so weak and thin, and I hold it, willing strength into her, screaming inside my head for her to please, please pull through.

There’s no response. I don’t know why I thought there would be. They have to wait to bring her out of the coma anyway. But even so, I thought that maybe, maybe just me being there, having all her children around, would let her know that she has a lot left to fight for.

I’m terrified, terrified, that wherever she is, that she can see my father and that he’s reaching out for her and that she’s going to take his hand. She’s going to let him pull her away because that’s all she’s ever wanted since the day he died.

I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. Even I can’t shut down completely.

Steph holds me and I’m so glad she’s here and I’m so glad my brothers are here but I know who I really need, whose arms I want to crawl into tonight.

With everything that’s happened, everyone I’m losing, I’m amazed I can still feel my heart in my chest at all. I would have thought there was nothing left.

***

The next few days ghost by. Somehow I go back to work, though after one day of moving through the motions like a robot, Lucy tells me to take more time off. I know it’s also because Candace has effectively taken over my job now but I don’t care one bit. I don’t care about anything at all.

So I’m at the hospital most of the time. I sit by my mother’s side, I hold her hand and I talk. I just talk. About everything. Happy things. Old memories between us, the good old days. Things were so beautiful, so simple then. Everything that seemed to happen before this seems to shine in remembrance. Nothing will ever be the same again. I know this.

Steph comes by when she can. Sometimes with Linden. Sometimes its Nicola and Bram. Usually one of my brothers is there. They all have the same apology to me, that they should have never let me be the one to handle everything to do with my mother, that I needed their support, that they should have been less selfish, that they weren’t raised to be that way.

But it really doesn’t matter what they say. I don’t blame any of them. I just blame myself for not being there. If I had never left for Scotland, maybe this would have never happened. I don’t know what the signs were leading up to it, but I’m sure if I could have got her to a hospital, I know I could have made a difference.

The funny thing is, I’m starting to understand Lachlan more and more. It’s grief and guilt of a different kind, but in the end, the emotion eats at you the same way. When I’m at home, I find myself drinking a few glasses of wine just to take me to a fuzzy place where I don’t have to think, if not to just pass the hell out and find sleep.

I haven’t talked to him much. He texts me, always, asking how I am, how my mother is. I never answer him back with more than a few sentences. It seems easier that way, even though I care about him. Even though I want to know he’s okay, that he’s getting help. I want to know how his rugby game went. It’s enough that I look it up on the internet instead of asking him. He didn’t play that first game against Glasgow, but they won and that brings the smallest, saddest smile to my face.

After it’s been about a week since she had her stroke, we’re told by the doctors that the swelling has lessened a bit and they’re optimistic about bringing her out of it.

We all gather at the hospital, just my brothers and I, anxiously standing around while it happens behind closed doors. This could be it. We could walk in there and she might be smiling at us, groggy, but she could be our mother again. She can tell us about the dreams she had about our father and we’d laugh and cry and thank her for coming back to us, her children who need her more than we’ve ever been able to say.

But when the doctor comes out, we immediately know it’s bad news.

She exhales heavily and looks us all in the eyes. “We weren’t successful.”

The floor drops out from under me.

“She’s alive but…we can’t take her off the life support. She wasn’t able to come back.”

“So she’s still in the coma?” Paul asks, sounding irate. That’s always been my oldest brother’s job. To get angry.

The doctor nods. “As I said, putting her in a medically-induced coma is a last resort for anyone, especially someone her age. It is, and always has been, a leap of faith.”

“Well what do we do now?” Toshio says, panicking. “What…what can we do for her?”

“We’ve weaned her off the barbiturates that essentially turn off her brain to begin with. But sometimes the brain doesn’t switch back on. It’s impossible at this stage to know how much damage was done because of the stroke and how much was done because of the coma. If she had a good chance to begin with, she should wake up. But she’s not. We’ll give it a few more days, but, I’m so sorry, I don’t think she’s going to come out of it. The only thing you can do is wait. Pray if you must.”

“Pray?” Paul says with a sneer.

Nikko elbows him to shut up then says to the doctor. “Look, how long can she be in the coma for? She’s in one of her body’s own doing, correct? Well, people wake up from comas all the time. I don’t even think we should be discussing any alternatives until we give her all the time that she needs.”

Toshio is nodding, wiping away a tear. “Yeah. Sometimes people wake up after years and they’re fine.”

Yeah, I think sadly to myself. But those people are young. Our mother is not.

I glance at the doctor and I know she’s thinking the same thing. It’s the truth and one I’ve spent my whole life trying to come to terms with, knowing I’ll have to see my own mother die and probably while I’m still a young woman.

But the doctor doesn’t say that. Instead she says, “We will keep her on life support until you, as a family, tell us not to.”

I close my eyes and feel Nikko’s arm around me.

I want to believe we will never have to make such a horrible decision.

I want to believe that my mother will still come out of it.

I want to believe in a lot of things.

But I’m not sure how much belief I have left anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Lachlan

For days after Kayla left, the only people I see are my teammates and Amara. That’s all my world has whittled down to. Without Kayla, everything just shrinks. When she was here, the world was wide and infinite. Now, it’s back to sleepwalking, just as I had been all those years before she came into my life.