My toes dig hard into the wet sand as I try to increase my speed. My legs are tree trunks, heavy and cumbersome, but delightfully taut and smooth. Fog, the color of my mother’s eyes, wraps around me, a misty straight jacket, as strands of hair leech to my face, making it hard to find the path. Each inhale is a thousand serrated needles. But I can’t stop. I can’t stop as my lungs plead for breath, my legs beg for collapse, my veins threaten to burst. I’ve been to the other side and I can feel that teasing slice of warmth on my cheek. I run through the pain. I can’t stop now. I’m so close.

I try to outrun them and their even tones and their fast hands. But they are getting closer. A man in blue reaches out, grabs my arm. I swat him away, his hand disappearing in the mist leaving a pocket of sun I try to hold. But he steps forward, takes my wrist into his cold palm and counts the sun away. I scream, “Leave me alone. Go away.”

I know what happens the closer they get. It’s happened before and it’s happening now. The pain in my chest is kerosene on fire. Fear screeches through me like a phonograph needle dragged across a record, volume set as high as it will go. My ribs crack and I drown in terror.

They are back.

And so am I.

“…on the shower floor, when I got here.  Mom, did you take your meds this morning?” my daughter says, her voice far away and under water.

“Ma’am, just step back and let us do our job,” the man says as he releases my wrist.

“Get your hands off me, you son-of-a-bitch,” I scream, slapping his paws away from my naked body. He talks to me like I am a child and tells me to relax as another man, a bigger man, slides the shower door over and steps inside. I try to kick them both away but my legs, with their sagging flesh and misshapen age spots, won’t move. “Take whatever you want but leave me be.”

I scream for Maureen. How can my own daughter let this happen? Let them into our house? She’s paid them I decide and I know I must fight. I scratch the air, unable to free myself from the big man’s grip. I spit. I bite. At eighty-eight, why can’t these bastards leave me be?

Pain. It comes on hard and fast in my chest and head as the tile grout comes into focus. I am certain my skull has been smashed, as if they’ve forced my swollen heart up, lodged it behind my eyes, where with each labored pulse, it hammers my brain. The big man’s hands are on my chest. A whisper of warm sea breeze whistles through me and I let go.

A steady beeping sound wakes me first. A nurse in green scrubs leans me forward and props my pillow as if he is readjusting a seatback. When I lean back, he says in the kind of cheery tone adults use to distract a toddler, “There you go, young lady.”

“Mom?” Maureen says as if she has never met me.

I ask why I am in the hospital but my words are thick in my mouth. They stick to my tongue and dribble in clumsy chunks onto the bed.

“Shhh. Shhh. Don’t try to talk, Mom. Not yet, OK?” Maureen’s eyes are rimmed red, the lines across her forehead, deep. Strands of hair fall house frau around her face and I wonder when her red hair got riddled with so much grey. It is then that I notice she is wearing her bathrobe. She sits on the edge of the hospital bed as if everything is made of glass.

A doctor enters the room, his hands clasped behind his back like a kindly headmaster inspecting the schoolyard. He shares a knowing look with Maureen, waves the nurse away and says, “Good evening, Mrs. Froshweitz.” He asks if I know where I am, if I know who Maureen is, if I know who the president is. I nod yes to the first two and roll my eyes at the last question.

I try to laugh with them but my lips are numb. “I know it’s hard to talk right now. We had to give you some special medicine. The effects will wear off soon. So,” he continues, as he stares into each of my eyes with his pen light, “do you know why you’re here?” I shake my head no as Maureen tightens the grip on my hand.

“It’s alright, Mrs. Froshweitz,” he says so gently I think I might cry. “It seems you have a condition called Vascular Dementia which has caused a succession of mini strokes over the past few months. The accumulation of these small strokes brought on an ischemic stroke this morning.” He reaches for my wrist and takes my pulse, allowing the words to sink into the silence. He doesn’t speak as he takes my blood pressure. “You’re going to be staying with us for a while.” He smiles broadly and pats my leg as if I am a child and summer camp has begun.

A nurse breezes into the room, her left hand holding on to the doorframe as if she can’t stay long. “Yes, doctor?” she says. “BP’s 153 over 90. Let’s get her .1 milligrams of Clonidine. I’ll need her monitored.”

The air falls heavy on my chest and I see the deep panic in Maureen’s eyes. She says, “Doctor?” in a thin whimper. The pain is back, railroading inside my head, picking up speed. I watch the nurse’s hand fall from the doorframe, finger by finger, as she pivots and runs.

Mother is standing next to the bed in that salmon-colored coat with the shoulder pads, the one that makes her look like Greta Garbo. She bends down and gently brushes Maureen’s tight red curls off her forehead.  “Sweetie, kindergarten is full of new friends. You’re going to learn so much,” she says with a sincerity in her eyes I never knew she had. “But you’re going to have to leave Roscoe here.” Maureen works the toe of her Mary Janes into the threadbare carpet and tightens her grip around the stuffed dog she’s had since she was two. She looks at me, her eyes wandering over my belly.

“Mommy has to stay in bed all day today. She’ll watch over him while you’re at school,” Mother says slowly, the sing-song in her tone exaggerated like a stranger who raises her voice when talking to someone who speaks a different language. Maureen searches my eyes for confirmation. I nod and she steps forward handing her stuffed puppy to me and I place him on my stomach.

“I think you should name the baby Winnie. After Grandma,” Maureen says, wanting to please.

“Good idea, Mo. Roscoe’s new job will be to stay here and watch over Winnie and me,” I say.

“Of course, Roscoe can stay with you and Winnie for as long as you like,” the doctor says, his  eyebrow arched as he pats my shoulder. I search the room frantically for Mother. He turns toward a woman with long auburn hair, speckled with wild grey strands, who is standing at the foot of my bed. “The lack of oxygen can affect the area of the brain that controls memory. It’s perfectly natural. All part of the process.” His voice sounds resigned, pained.

The woman comes around the bed, holds my hand and cries. The ocean is much closer than it used to be. The waves, warm and inviting, play around my feet, splashing up the front of my new, polka-dotted one-piece as I sit on shore. Daddy hands me a red shovel, a six-digit number I have never seen before tattooed on the inside of his arm matches the color in his veins. He wonders aloud how big we should build the castle this time.

“I think Mommy misses you,” I say.

“Do you miss me?” he asks.

“Not anymore.” I smile and feel the air whistle through the hole where my front tooth used to be. “You’ll have to change before you go back to the hospital with me.” He gives my hair a good tussle. “Well, Squirt. We best skedaddle. Not much time left,” he says, squinting at the top half of the sun the ocean has yet to swallow.

   * * *  

A social worker, portly woman with unkind eyes, comes in and says I must be moved. I know where they are taking me. The School for Dying People, where folks learn how to stop walking, stop swallowing, stop breathing. I tell her my daughter will be coming soon to take me home. Pain shoots up my left leg as I try to get out of bed and she shouts for the nurses.

Maureen races through the doorway, breathing heavy, car keys rattling from her right hand. “I just got the news. You can’t just move her like this,” she yells.

The room is full of people in hospital scrubs now, a nurse is standing between Maureen and me. Two other nurses gently ease me back onto the pillows while another, hands on her broad hips, lectures the social worker. Her words have sharp edges that pierce the veil of a hissed stage whisper. The squeak of orthopedic shoes on the linoleum, the whisk of a hospital curtain, the pulse of all those heartbeats in one room make the room spin. It all becomes a smear of color and sound except for the crystal-clear image of Maureen’s face lined with worry and pain and fear and frustration.

“Take me home,” I say.

Two days before my twelfth birthday, I screamed those same words to Mother, while she was on stage. She used to sing at Bernie Tadlow’s joint on 57th. She said Bernie was her big break because he had finally let her open four nights a week as long as that damn kid stays quiet. Every day, after school, I walked to his club and did my homework huddled in the back by the cigarette machine, the elk’s head eyeballing me from behind the bar. But that night I was sick and before Mother could finish her set, I screamed, “Take me home,” and threw up on Bernie Tadlow’s wooden floor. Two days later, Mother left and stayed gone for nearly thirteen years.

I know the power those words have. Those three words can make people disappear. But I keep yelling them at Maureen until the nurse, in the green scrubs, sticks a needle in my arm and I let the ocean wrap itself around me. When I awake, I am at The School for Dying People. The walls are beige and grey at the same time and the sheets smell like dead people’s urine. The woman in the bed next to me is getting ready to graduate, her breathing is rattling and wet.

Mother steps into my new room, victory rolls carefully coifed around her face. The plunging neckline, the clinging silk dress give her a bewitching femme fatale look that is breathtaking.  She smells like peaches. Bernie leans on the doorframe, like a cowboy minus the hat, smoking a Chesterfield. He watches the ashes fall on the linoleum, looks up at me and says, “Hey, kid.”

“Why is he here?” I ask.

“Don’t you worry about him. He’s just passing through. How’s my sweet baby girl?” Mother arches her back and makes a show of testing my temperature with the back of her hand. “Are you ready to go?”  I wonder if I am already dead. The Good Book says I’ll see my loved ones again. I didn’t realize they’d show up with their baggage in tow.

Maureen walks in the room and sets a Trader Joe’s shopping bag on the chair. She reaches inside and removes a wet washcloth and dabs my face, making shushing sounds as she goes. “Are you ready to come live with us,” Mother asks, glancing back at Bernie who raises one eyebrow and taps his wristwatch in a Morse code she seems to understand.

“Daddy here?” I ask.

Maureen drops the washcloth in mid-shush and frowns. She opens her mouth to speak but stops as her eyes begin to fill. “You see him, Mom? You see Grandpa?” She runs her fingers through my thin hair. “Tell him that I miss him and that I love him, okay?”

The volley between my two worlds is dizzying, both sides just as real. I want to hold Maureen’s hand but my arms have already died. Mother kisses my forehead and sighs. A priest walks through Bernie and enters the room, whispers over the woman in bed next to me.

“I’m right here,” Daddy says, suddenly standing behind Bernie in the doorframe. He’s wearing his Army uniform, the top button of his shirt undone. His helmet slightly askew, just like the picture in my cedar chest, the one I told Maureen she could have after I go.

“The gal there looks a lot like you, Squirt,” my father says over Bernie’s shoulder.

“She’s my daughter, Daddy. She was born fourteen years after you died. You would’ve liked her.”

“Frank, I’ll take care of my little girl now,” Mother says with authority. “She’s going to come live with us. She doesn’t even know you. You left when she was nine.”

“Winnie, I was captured and killed. Hashtag war. Didn’t you get my text?”

“Always the comedian,” my mother says as she places my head on her chest.

My father slips past Bernie and steps into the room, holding the hand of a young girl. A warm sea breeze dances over me and I hear the whistle it makes as it slips from the hole in the little girls’ mouth where her front tooth used to be. I can feel Mother start to cry, the heaving from her chest causing my head to bounce. 

“Squirt, this here’s Winnie. She found me and said she belonged to you so I figure I best take care of her until you come lookin’ for me.”

“Winnie? My sweet Winnie? You’ve gotten so big,” I squeal, jumping from the bed and extending both arms. She wraps herself around me and we fit like puzzle pieces. I am laughing and crying and warm.

“Mom?” Maureen says. The priest crosses the room, passes clean through Winnie and me and places his hand on her shoulder. “My mother. She, she lost a baby. Stillborn. I was five.” The priest takes a long look at me, lying so still, then turns to face Maureen, whispers something I can’t hear and holds her as she sobs. I don’t even try to touch her. I know she is out of reach now.

“She’s not,” my father says, reading my thoughts. “Not completely. We’ll watch over her in ways you cannot yet understand. I promise.”

I wrap my arm into the crook of my father’s arm, Winnie hanging off my hip. Warm, wet sand forms under my feet.

“I can’t compete with that, Frank,” Mother says, tear tracks snailing through her make-up.

“It’s not a competition. Never was. You’re more than welcome, honey, to come with us.” My father turns, looks back at Mother with such a vulnerable tenderness that it makes me want to turn away. “The choice is yours.” 

“I’m a mess,” Mother says.

“You’re beautiful,” Daddy says, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand.

Bernie steps forward, “Tick, tock, doll. You’ve got a show in twenty.”

A pinpoint of light ping pongs from wall to wall, a frantic search for its host. It lands on my mother and grows in diameter. I watch her breathe in the light as a faint applause gains volume. She’s glowing.

“I’ll take care of them both, Win,” my father whispers. “Go ahead. It’s alright now. It’s alright.”

Mother tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She looks like a young girl as she stares at my father, her lips and eyes taking on a smile that starts out tentative, her head slightly cocked. My father nods and together we see the heavy burdens of guilt and shame and worry release her. 

“It’s nice,” I say to my father.

“What’s nice?” he says, blowing a kiss to Mother and turning toward me.

“Not to feel angry or hurt, resentful or bitter. Those things circled Mother and me all of my days, like hungry wolves, snarling and nipping at the love that was kept at bay.”

“It’s like that here, Squirt. Lettin’ folks go here isn’t the same as it is down there.” And what he says feels right. I’ve run for so long but now that I’m here, on the other side, I finally understand her.

Bernie steps forward, shakes my father’s hand and I see these two men anew, both once in love with the same woman. “See ya kid,” Bernie says, pretending to snatch my nose. I’d forgotten he used to do that to me as a child. “I always liked you.”

“I know,” I say, feeling it for the first time. I turn to Mother and whisper, “Go, Mom. Go,” filling each word with a love so intense, my legs feel watery and weak.

“In five. Four. Three. Two. And…,” Bernie says, pointing his finger.

The applause is thunderous as she grabs the microphone. Bernie, his face softer, more tender, than I ever remembered, smiles. Mother’s voice fills the room, lifts us up, swims through our bodies. Daddy grabs my hand and with him, Winnie and I slip inside the sliver of sun that peeks above the ocean and we are gone, the echoes of our laughter rising toward the evening sky.

# # #

Patti Santucci is an emerging writer in Fair Oaks, California, and has been published in Piker Press, Literally Stories and American River Review. Read more here: pattisantucci.com

Photo: Phil Henry