Though her stroke has brought us closer together, unlike ever before, all five of us are gaunt and ashen, just shadows of our former selves. This is not what our mother would have wanted for us.

“So you think this is it?” Toshio asks, and the pain is fresh on his face.

I swallow, nodding. “Yes. I think we’re going to have to make a decision. Together.”

He stares at his nails for a moment and then says, “Sean broke up with me.”

I’m flabbergasted, not expecting that at all. “He what?”

“Yeah. Fucking dick, right?” he tries to smile but a tear slips down his cheek instead. “Sorry I’m just…I’m so fucking angry. So angry. I mean, I’ve stuck with him over so much. His last break-up, his cat dying, his STD scare. Then he lost his job and I had to support him, remember that? And then…and then he says he can’t be around me anymore, that I’ve changed too much. I’m too sad. Sad! Of course I’m fucking sad!” He hits the dashboard with his fist. “I’m sad and I’m fucking pissed off. Why couldn’t he love me through that?”

I make a little growling noise. “I can’t believe it. Who dumps someone when they’re going through a hard time? I mean, I know my work probably wants to get rid of me but they’re holding off out of courtesy.”

“Well I got no courtesy from him. Normally I wouldn’t even want that but fuck, honey, just fucking fake it until I’m better.”

I’m absolutely livid on his behalf. Toshio had been with Sean for at least a year. “I’m going to kill him.”

“I’ll kill him first,” he says, narrowing his eyes out the window. “You just help me bury the body.”

We lapse into silence. I can’t believe that asshole would break my brother’s heart like that when it’s already breaking. I can’t imagine the strain on him.

But then again, I can. I’m living it. Only it’s my own fault, not Lachlan’s. Lachlan who was reaching out for me every day, all the time, Lachlan who loved me with all his heart, even when there was no chance of loving himself. Lachlan who would never leave because I was hurting, grieving. He would only offer me his arms and kiss me until the pain was a memory.

He gave me everything he could, every part, even the dirty, cold, terrible parts. He was fucked up, entirely, a slave to demons he never asked for. And yet in the end, I was the one who couldn’t handle him. I’m the one who left him emotionally. I had the best thing and I lost it, lost myself in the process too. Even though it would never be easy and it would always be a struggle to help him be free from his shackles, to keep the dragons at bay, that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good thing. Love is always good, no matter who is giving it to you.

Once we get to the hospital, we have to wait around for Brian to show up since his work isn’t always so lenient. So we stand around, eying each other, arms hugged across our chests, stepping from foot to foot. No one wants to speak until we are complete.

Then Brian comes and Paul launches into it.

“I’ve spoken to the doctor as well as the neurologist here and…” he closes his eyes, shaking his head. “We can’t let this go on any more. She doesn’t have a hope in hell. I wish she did, we all do but…I think we have to think about what she would have wanted.”

“She wouldn’t want us to give up,” Toshio says, his heart extra soft now. “I don’t want this to be the end, not yet. I’m not ready.”

“None of us will be ready,” Nikko says. “I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to dad either. I’m still not, you know. Sometimes I see him in my dreams and I’m so relieved that he’s not dead, like it was all some bad joke. But…we can’t keep her like this. Paul, the doctors, they are right. She’s in a limbo, between us and dad. It’s selfish to keep her here for us.”

“It’s for her,” Toshio says angrily, his hands curling into fists. “What if she would have come back to us? What if she has a chance? If we end her life, we kill her.”

“She’s already gone,” Brian says quietly. “She was gone the day this happened to her. We’ve just been kidding ourselves.”

“Oh, sure,” Toshio spits out. “Throw salt in the wound, make us all seem like idiots for wanting her to live. If we never gave her a chance, we’d regret it. We’d hate ourselves.”

“After a while there are no more chances,” Paul snaps. “Don’t you see that? This is the end for her, for us. We have to let her go. It’s the right thing to do, even if it hurts us.”

Toshio walks around the room, kicking the chairs. “I can’t…I can’t accept that.”

“Well you have to because we need to make this decision together. We need you to agree Toshio. You’ll resent us our whole lives if you don’t and we’re already so broken as a family, we won’t survive that.”

“Well what does Kayla think?” Toshio asks, pausing to shoot me a look. “She’s the one closest to mom. She should decide.”

The rest of my brothers’ heads swivel toward me with curious looks.

I shake my head. “No. Please don’t put this on me.”

“She’s right, she’s done enough,” Nikko says. “She stepped up when no one else would. But…still, Kayla, we need to know how you feel.”

“How I feel?” I repeat. “How do you think I feel?” I press my palm into my chest. “Sometimes I’m surprised I’m alive, that I even have a heart. The last three weeks I’ve been in a fog. I can’t see clearly no matter how I try. You know…I think about how I left it with mom and…I should have known something was wrong. Her hands, her hands were shaking you see and I should have said something, done something. I should have never gone to Scotland, I should have never left her.”

“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.