Breathing
Breathing. My mother said I needed to work on that. Breathing. The world grows dark. I know breathing will bring back the lights. I'm not sure I want them back.
"Jess, you can't give up yet. Breathe." My mother's voice calls me to come back, to breathe. She is too insistent, too adamant that I must live. I don't want to live. She tells me I have to. I have to find my voice. I've always known where my voice was, but I don't want it. Every birthday, she thinks I will talk. She thinks that one day, one day I'll start talking. I can talk, I know this. I don't want to, I don't have anything to say. Nothing she says can change my mind. She also thinks that I'll be going home before I die. But, I know better. I was born in this hospital, and I will die here.
I desperately want to hit the morphine button. I want to block out my mother and the light, the sound, and my world. I just don't want to be alive. I can't reach the morphine button, she moved it. My mother has this idea that I will live, I will speak, I will start loving her. I just want her to leave. Her enthusiasm is exhausting. She is flat out ignoring every single one of my doctors, who all say I'm never going to leave this bed, never going to speak. They understand that I don't want her. Don't want to be related to her, don't want to feel obligated to live for her. I want to die, to give up. It is too exhausting to live. It is too exhausting to breathe. Why won't she go home?
My nurse comes in. I called her. My mom didn't take the call button away, mostly because there are regulations about that now. The hospital knows what's going on with my mother. We are all waiting until I turn eighteen, can shut her out of my life, and can finally get down to the business of dying. My nurse today is Kathleen, and she pretends to do some test and generally hovers. Mom starts feeling awkward, so she watches Kathleen slip on my forced breathing machine, and leaves. I listen as her pointy high heels click down the hallway. I hit the morphine button; it's the only way I can sleep.
I wake up somewhere around three in the morning. Kathleen left a little pink sticky note by my bed. It says that some of my favorite YouTubers have made new videos and that Nancy will be my nurse from midnight until six a.m. and then it will be Lydia until noon. I lean over to hit the call button. Someone needs to adjust my IV; it is digging into my arm awkwardly. Someone's hand is over the call button. The hand is masculine. I hit the light switch instead. I don't know the person sitting at the end of my bed, but he is crying.
"Jess, my baby. You've grown so big." I desperately want to speak, but I can't. I can't find the words in my mind. I've forgotten how to speak. Probably because I never have.
"You don't know me, Jess, darling, but you should. I'm your father." I cough a little and start laughing at the same time. I sound possessed. My mother told me that my father was dead.
"Jess? Are you going to say anything?" I start writing. I don't talk.
"So you can?"
I don't talk. Mom said you left.
"I've been living in the same house as your mother for this whole time. She said you'd died."
Unfortunately, no. She keeps forcing me to live.
"She planned a funeral. When you were born, she had a funeral for you."
I'm alive. Have been the whole time.
"Last night, she wasn't as careful as she usually was. She left out her phone, unlocked, while she went to the bathroom. I saw that she had been listening to a recording of what happened in your room while she was away. She thinks you talk when she isn't there."
I don't talk.
"I gathered. I turned off the recording device in here. The nurse at the front, Nancy, pretended not to see me come through. She believed that your mother had done that."
They all see her as she is. They feel sorry for me because she is my mother and always here. How did you find which room I was in?
"A piece of paper in her drawer. I can't believe she kept this from both of us."
Dad, you should leave. My IV hurts and since it's past visiting hours Nancy will have to report you She can't keep this under wraps all the time. You should be able to come most nights, though. I'll see you tomorrow. Please come back. I want to talk more. He stands and grabs his jacket, then leaves. I hit the call button with all of my pent-up anger. Nancy comes in and helps me with the IV. She also turns on the recording device, according to my written directions, and resets my morphine. I hit the morphine button again. I want to be sleeping when my mother comes in. And all through her visit.