Alone

At 4 30 this morning I was woken up by a bang. I managed to get back to sleep but later, at 6 AM I was awoken by moaning and screaming. My mom was moaning and crying and screaming in physical pain in the living room, which is technically attached to the den that I use to sleep in. The noise she was making was so very loud that I got up and went to the bathroom and got ready to go out.

Mom is in, she says, terrible physical pain. Just general physical pain. She keeps trying to figure out why she is pain. If she was to go to the hospital, she says, even in an ambulance, she would require several hours and an attendant to wash her and to make her presentable. So she cries and moans and can barely move as she tries to figure out her next step.

She doesn’t want my opinion.

I dress and eat a quick breakfast. I am in tears to myself as Mom keeps apologizing passive aggressively for the pain she is in. She keeps telling me that she can’t help it. Then she moans again.

She tells me not to worry. “Don’t worry if you can’t reach me,” she says. “I may have fallen asleep or I may have gone to the hospital in an ambulance or a cab. Just don’t worry.”

Of course, I worry.

She is barely able to move, she is almost sobbing in pain, in what sounds like torment. “Don’t worry about me.”

I worry.