Chapter 17: Stay

Lydia would not get out of the car.

We were in the lot at Westbrook General.

She sat in the back seat with both hands over her stomach and her face turned to the window.

"I can't," she said. "I called her Mom in my head my whole life and never said it to her face."

"What if she looks at me and sees what I did to you?"

"She's dying, Lydia. She's going to look at you and see you."

"That's worse."

I opened her door.

"Then you can be scared in there," I said. "It's warmer."

Miles took her bag, and she took my arm.

My father was waiting outside the room on the fourth floor with a thermos in his hand.

He stood with his feet apart, his big hands hanging, ready to be asked for something.

He saw Lydia and nodded to her.

"She's been awake an hour," he said. "She's been waiting."

"Dad. Did you go in?"

"I went in."

"What did you say?"

"I said, hello, Barb." He looked at the thermos. "She said, hello, Tom. That's about the size of it."

He opened the door for us.

My mother lay propped on three pillows with an oxygen line under her nose.

Her hair had been brushed.

Somebody had put a blue cardigan on her over the hospital gown.

My father had brought it from the Harbor Inn.

She looked at the three of us in the doorway.

Her eyes went past me.

"Lydia," she said.

It was barely a voice.

Lydia let go of my arm.

She crossed the room one step at a time and stood at the foot of the bed.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't do what you asked."

"I didn't tell her, and I didn't tell anyone, and I made it worse."

"Come here."

"Mom, I..."

"Come here, baby."

Lydia went around the bed and fell to her knees beside it, with her forehead on the blanket.

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