Nine Calls From My Hospital Bed

The part where they tried

I will give my mother this. She did not give up easily, and for about ten minutes in that hospital room she showed me the whole toolbox.

First she tried disbelief. I could not have really done it, not legally, not in a hospital bed on medication, no court would honor it, Warren should be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of a sick woman. Warren, to his eternal credit, simply said, “Mrs. Denning, your daughter answered every competency question I put to her, in front of two medical witnesses, and I’d stake my license on it, which is more or less what I’ve just done.”

Then she tried love. Oh, she tried love. Her eyes filled and she came to the side of the bed and she took my hand, the one without the needle, and she said, “Carol, honey, we love you. You know we love you. You’re our daughter. This is family. You can’t let one bad day with the phones tear apart a family.” And I looked at her hand on mine, the hand that had not been able to make the twenty minute drive, and I did not pull away, but I did not squeeze back either.

“I’m not tearing apart a family, Mom,” I said. “I’m just no longer paying for one that was never going to show up.”

Then she tried Shelby. She said, think about the children, Carol, the babies, they didn’t do anything, you’d punish the babies over a misunderstanding. And that one, I will admit, that one had a hook in it, because the children truly had not done anything. But I had thought of them already, lying there, and I had made my peace with it. I said, “The babies will be fine. Shelby married an insurance man and you love her best and she has never wanted for a thing in her life. She’ll be fine. And when they grow up, if they want to farm, they can apply to Grandma Eleanor’s foundation like everybody else’s kids, and they’ll get a fair look, which is more than I ever got at this family’s table.”

And then, last, when nothing else worked, she tried anger, and the anger was the truest thing she said all night. She stood up straight and she let go of my hand and she said, “After everything we did for you.” And I almost laughed, except it hurt my ribs.

“Name one thing,” I said quietly. “Name one thing you did for me, and not for the business, or the church, or the way it looked. Take your time.”

She could not. My father put his hand on her arm. “Diane,” he said. “We’re going home.”