One thing kept me from collapsing and giving up: the baby growing inside me.
I may no longer be a daughter or a sister, but I am—and will always be—a mother.
Catherine and I have each other. We’ve never needed anyone else.
The final person I check on is my old boyfriend, James Bates.
There’s nothing new on James either. He never married, which I have mixed feelings about.
There aren’t any recent photos of James, so I’ve constructed an age progression image in my mind: his sandy-colored hair is close-cropped now, graying at the temples. The lean frame he had at nineteen is thicker, and lines bracket his mouth. All this only adds to his appeal.
Late at night is when I think about James the most. When I can’t sleep, even though the time my shift will start is drawing closer. I try to imagine what James is doing at that exact same moment, nearly a hundred miles away.
I always come to the same conclusion: He’s lying in bed in the darkness, just like me.
I wonder if he’s thinking about me, too.
A heavy crack erupts beside me, the noise exploding through the air.
I leap to my feet, twisting toward the sound.
“Sorry.” The teenager who dropped a stack of hardback books onto the table next to me shrugs.
“You need to be more careful!” My voice is loud and harsh. Heads swivel in my direction.
I’m no longer invisible.
Which means I need to leave the library as fast as I can.
CHAPTER THREE
CATHERINE
The doctor rises from a chair behind his desk as we enter his office. I’m not sure what I expected, but it isn’t this: a small, sterile room with mud-dull carpet and a schoolhouse-style clock hung on the beige wall. But the diplomas displayed on his bookshelf are from good schools, and I’ve checked him out. He’s the best neurologist around.
He walks around his desk, not avoiding our eyes but not smiling either. I can’t read a verdict in his expression. He’s good at navigating this fraught moment, but then he must have a lot of practice.
“I’m Alan Chen,” he introduces himself.
“Nice to meet you,” my mother replies. “I’m Ruth Sterling, and this”—she touches my shoulder—“is my daughter, Catherine.”
I step forward to shake his hand as his eyes widen in surprise behind his glasses.
Now our roles have shifted and I’m the one who has had practice navigating this uncomfortable moment. Dr. Chen urges us to sit down and offers us water, but all the while I can see him doing the mental math.
My mother has a few silver strands glittering like tinsel in her chocolate-brown hair and slightly crimped skin around her big hazel eyes. She looks her age—forty-two. I look older than my twenty-four years, and I’m told I act it, too. That’s probably because smiling isn’t a reflex for me the way it’s expected to be for young women.
Dr. Chen recovers quicker than most. By the time he is back in his chair, opening the chart on his desk, his expression is inscrutable again.
He jumps right in: “Ruth, can you tell me about some of the symptoms you’re experiencing?”
I’m certain that information is already documented in his folder in the pages of paperwork my mother filled out, along with the results of the blood test from her primary physician that ruled out possibilities like a vitamin B12 deficiency and Lyme disease.
“At first it was little things.” The material of my mother’s slacks rustles as she crosses her legs. “Dumb stuff that happens to everyone. It just started happening more often to me. Like I couldn’t remember the word I wanted. Forgot to unplug the iron. That kind of thing.”
“And you noticed an increase in these sorts of events how long ago?” Dr. Chen prompts.
The silence stretches out. A red button on the doctor’s desk phone begins to flash, but he ignores it. A strange current is humming through the air. It feels electric.
I’m about to break in with the answer—a month ago—when my mom opens her mouth and beats me to it.
“Maybe four months ago.” Her voice is almost a whisper.
I suck in a quick breath and whip my head to the side to look at her. Her expression is calm, but her hands are restless. She’s toying with the delicate topaz ring she always wears, spinning it in circles around her finger.
Dr. Chen jots a note on one of the papers in his file. “And it’s getting worse?”
My mother nods.
I pull my iPhone out of my purse and call up my list.
5/07: Put sunglasses in kitchen drawer.
5/10: Called ice cubes “water squares.”
5/12: Forgot what month it was.
Dr. Chen asks my mom a few more questions, then closes his folder. “There are some tests we can run.…”
My throat is so tight I have to clear it before I can speak. “Cognitive tests, or do we go straight to brain imaging?”
My mother leans forward and even now—standing alone in the path of what must feel like a great onrushing cement wall—pride fills her voice. “Catherine’s going to be a nurse. She just graduated cum laude and she’s about to start work at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She’s moving to Baltimore in two weeks.”
“Congratulations,” Dr. Chen tells me. “Hopkins is an impressive place. What’s your specialty?”
“Geriatrics. I work part-time at a nursing home.” I watch as the irony hits him. He may be the expert in neurology, but when it comes to my mother’s presenting symptoms, I’m no novice.
I’m assigned to the Memory Wing, the section of our facility where people with dementia or Alzheimer’s or traumatic brain injuries reside. I see symptoms like the ones my mother is describing nearly every single day.
I refuse to assume the worst, though. I know my job could be shaping my fears, and there might be a simple reason for my mother’s confusion and memory lapses.
My mom is petite, but there’s nothing soft or weak about her.
She’s a fighter. Indestructible. She has to be.
We talk with Dr. Chen about various testing options, but my mom resists scheduling a CT scan. I assume it’s because of the expense. We’ve got a bare-bones health care plan, and after the cost of this appointment our savings account will be one car breakdown away from being demolished. Then something happens that makes me feel as if I’ve plunged into ice water.
My mom stands up and paces between her chair and the wall. My stomach coils tighter with every step. The longer her pacing, the worse the news. It’s as pure a formula as a mathematical proof.
My mom paced when I was in the tenth grade, shortly after I began dating my first boyfriend and was enjoying the best school year of my life—right before she announced she’d lost her job, we were being evicted, and we were moving from Lancaster to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
She paced at Christmastime, when I was four, and then she told me Santa’s workshop had had a fire and I wouldn’t be getting any presents.
She paced just before she told me why her conservative, religious family had cut her off, why I’d never met any grandparents or aunts or cousins and never would: She got pregnant in high school, her boyfriend denied I was his, and they threw her away—every single one of them did. But she didn’t care because I was worth all of them put together.