Wish You Were Here(56)
All around us, fumes rise from little pockets in the ground, as if we stand in a crucible. It is prehistoric and dystopian, but if you look closely, here and there are tiny green shoots and stalks. Something, growing out of nothing.
As we walk back across the fumaroles and the dark yawn of the caldera, Gabriel doesn’t let go of my hand.
An hour later, the sun is skulking lower in the sky and we reach the crotched tree with the black lava rock where Gabriel left behind his heavier pack. We can see the huddled shape of it, propped against a tree, but there’s another shadow as well, and as we get closer, it is clear that it’s a person. I scramble in my pocket for the mask I haven’t worn when it was just me and Gabriel, only to realize that it is Beatriz. She breaks into a run as soon as she sees us.
“You need to come now,” she says, and she pushes a piece of paper into my hand.
It is an email, printed out on stationery from the hotel. For immediate delivery to guest Diana O’Toole, it reads. From: The Greens. We have been trying to reach you. Please contact ASAP. Your mother is dying.
On the way back to Gabriel’s house, we sprint—and yet somehow, the distance seems even further than it did this morning. Distantly I hear Beatriz explain to Gabriel how the message arrived—something about Elena and an electrical short that caused a small fire in the hotel’s utility room; how when she went to the hotel with her cousin so he could rewire and fix the circuits, and to make sure everything was in working order, she had powered up the front office computers and seen a series of emails, each more urgent, trying to get in touch with me. I hear Gabriel tell Beatriz to call Elena, to have the Wi-Fi up and running by the time we get there.
Still, it’s two hours before we drop Beatriz at the farm and continue in Gabriel’s rusty Jeep into Puerto Villamil, to the hotel. This time, there is no flirting from Elena. She meets us at the door, her eyes dark and concerned.
My phone buzzes, automatically connecting to the network. I ignore the flood of emails and texts bursting through this tiny crack in the dam of Isabela’s radio silence. I pull up FaceTime, the last call I made to the memory care facility, and dial.
A different nurse answers this time, one I don’t recognize. She is wearing a mask and a face shield. “I’m Hannah O’Toole’s daughter,” I say. All the breath seizes in my throat. “Is my mother …?”
Those eyes soften. “I’ll bring you in to her,” the nurse says.
There’s a lurching spin of scenery as whatever device she is holding is moved in transit. I close my eyes against a dizzy wave, expecting to see the familiar confines of my mother’s apartment, but instead, the nurse’s face appears again. “You should be prepared—she’s decompensated very fast. She has pneumonia, brought on by Covid,” the nurse says. “But at this point it’s not just her lungs that are failing. Her kidneys, her heart …”
I swallow. It has been a couple of weeks since I saw her on video chat. I had used Abuela’s phone to call The Greens twice. Just days ago, they told me she was stable. How could so much have gone wrong since then?
“Is she … ?awake?”
“No,” the nurse says. “She’s sedated heavily. But you can still talk to her. Hearing is the last sense to go.” She pauses. “Now is the time to say your goodbyes.”
A moment later, I am looking at a wraith in a hospital bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. She is hollow-cheeked, faded, taking tiny sips of air. I try to reconcile this image of my mother with the woman who hid in bunkers in active war zones, so that she could chronicle the terrible things humans do to each other.
Anger washes over me—why isn’t anyone doing anything to help her? If she can’t breathe, there are machines for that. If her heart stops—
If her heart stops, they will do nothing, because I signed a do not resuscitate order when she became a resident at The Greens. With dementia, there was no point in prolonging her life with any extenuating measures.
I am uncomfortably aware that the nurse is holding up the iPad or phone and waiting for me to speak. But what am I supposed to say to a woman who doesn’t remember me now, and actively forgot about me in the past?
When she reappeared in my life, already in the throes of dementia, I convinced myself that putting my mother in a care facility was more compassionate than any consideration she’d ever given me. She couldn’t move into my tiny apartment, nor would she have wanted to, when we were little more than strangers. Instead, I had figured out a way to use her own work to fund her living expenses; I had done the research and found the best memory care facility; I had gotten her settled and had patted myself on the back for my good deeds. I was so busy being self-congratulatory for being more of a daughter to her than she was a mother to me that I failed to see I had really just underscored the distance between us. I hadn’t used the time to get to know her better, or to become someone she trusted. I had protected myself from being disappointed again by not cultivating our relationship.
Just like Beatriz, I think.
I clear my throat. “Mom,” I say. “It’s me, Diana.” I hesitate and then add, “Your daughter.”
I wait, but there is absolutely no indication she can hear me.
“I’m sorry I’m not there …”
Am I?
“I just want you to know …”