into the loss, the memories, the grief, the life that no longer exists. I can feel all of that. It washes over me, so heavy and viscous I can hardly breathe. I shake my head, trying to shove the sensation away. I am angry for a moment that I have to feel this for a woman who is essentially a stranger. But then the anger is gone, too exhausting to hold on to. I watch the shades in her bedroom window clatter down like rain out of the sky, and then turn back toward the hospital.
GRACIE
I have not gone to work this week. I have not read any letters. I have not turned on my laptop. I have not returned Grayson’s phone calls. What I have been doing is sitting at home in my bathrobe when it is not visiting hours and sitting beside Gram’s bed at the hospital when it is visiting hours. Nurse Ballen says Gram is doing very well, but it doesn’t seem that way to me. She is going through the motions, and doing what she is told, but she’s not really there. She is quiet and she avoids my eyes and she sleeps much more than I would have thought possible. She seems like a totally different person, like an old lady who has taken over my gram’s body. Some of this behavior is the drugs, I know, because Gram says things to me, particularly in the first forty-eight hours after the operation, that are inexplicable and strange.
“My mother turned on the television.”
Even though I want to reason with her and draw her back to me, I don’t want to argue with everything she says the way Mom and Aunt Meggy do. “Maybe there was something your mother wanted to see.”
“No. She did it to get me in trouble. She did it because she knew I didn’t want her to. She is always doing that to me.”
“Doing what?”
“Saying things I don’t want her to.” Then, suddenly, Gram is asleep again. Breath slides steadily in and out from between her parched lips.
Aunt Meggy complains that the hospital staff is abusing Gram because they force her back on her feet only one day after her operation. A rehab nurse comes in with a walker, practically lifts Gram out of bed, and insists she walk into the center of the room and then back to the bed. Even with the drugs, Gram’s face is drawn and her green eyes watery as she takes one shuffling step after another.
“You’ve just cut her open with a knife and rearranged her bones,” Meggy says. “She’s old and hurt. Can’t you give her a few days of rest, for God’s sake? Is there someone with a brain around here that I can talk to?”
Standing behind Meggy in the corner, watching Gram’s eyes swim with tears, I agree.
Meggy sees me nodding, and says, “Shut up, Gracie.” Even though Angel seems to have forgiven me for refusing to give her my baby—she has been nothing but sweet, asking after the pregnancy, acting as if my situation is a positive one—Meggy has not been so kind. Nor has she given up the cause. She has made it clear that as far as she is concerned, my child will, by some means, go to my aunt and uncle.
Nurse Ballen enters the room then, and Meggy turns her eyes away from my big stomach. Nurse Ballen explains that it is critical to get Gram moving as soon as possible so that she doesn’t lose any of her strength, flexibility, or capacity to walk. She explains that if Gram stays immobile now, the odds of her recovery will be cut in half. She says that this is a critical and dangerous moment in Gram’s health, and that if we can all point her in the direction of her pre-fall self, she will have a better chance of reaching that goal.
Nurse Ballen’s talk seems to make Meggy feel better. At least she leaves the room and stops yelling. I am left alone with Gram, who is back in her bed now, eyes closed. But Nurse Ballen has made me feel worse. To me she seems to be saying that Gram is lost, and all we can do is force her to stand up and force her to eat and hope that she comes back to us. I need more assurance than that. I need more than just hope. I need Gram.
I SIT by her bedside through every visiting hour