murphy’s law (pt. 3)
Pa, 30 seconds after the call
Supposedly there are a thousand thoughts running through his head at the moment. One would be which daughter is it? The second would be but there’s no way she still has us on speed dial? Also, where the hell is Ma? Obviously, this is an emergency. He’d thought about it before, what he would do and how he would feel if someone else had to bring him the news of one of his children, because Pa likes to be prepared but isn’t used to maneuvering about by himself. In all scenarios, he had Ma with him.
Gemma, on the other hand, was rarely seen. She often took the role of the girl lying helplessly, in Pa’s thoughts. He doesn’t say it but he’s seen Gemma’s stash — the razor, the band-aids, and honestly, he understands. But Gemma doesn’t talk much, rather keeps things to herself. This has never been a problem because things are better that way under this roof. Anything but them talking. Gemma is 25 and Ma is has been a parent for long enough yet all Pa hears is screaming and a lot of doors — banging on doors, doors being slammed close, crying at the door.
The other one; Pa always manages to shake those questions away.
What would Ma do? He picks up their car keys and hopes his legs don’t give out on the road.
Gemma, 1 week after the call
The best they can do at the moment is monitor her. She’s never seen a more useless group of people — aren’t doctors supposed to work their magic in times of crisis? This is why she refused to do pre-med. Ma should’ve listened. The walls she’s boring little holes with her eyes into are broken white, the hospital bed screeches every time you push the buttons to elevate it, the TV has horrible selection, and her sister lies still in a patient gown under the flimsy hospital blanket.
This sucks in many ways for Gemma. One: she has to spend time face-to-face with her parents and pretend like they’re an average family in front of the nurses who come in to check every few hours. Two: there’s really no good reason for why she has to drop everything to be here for her sister when she was never there for her.
It’s like someone packed bad luck in a lunchbox and forgot about it in the cupboard over the weekend and as they took it out, it had already gone bad, and by then bad luck was the worst luck, and when they meant to throw it in the bin they accidentally dumped the contents over this family’s head.
It’s not like if her sister wasn’t breathing through the tube, they could bond as a normal family again. But it feels nice, holding onto an imagery that you can’t afford, just to tease yourself until you’re sick of it and remember there’s almost no room for forgiveness now.
Gemma still hasn’t held her hand.
Ma, 3 days after the call
The big cities are poisonous, and they’re corrosive. People there only think about themselves and the bags they want to buy — precisely the kind of people Ma has always hated and avoided from becoming.
This is what Ma believes: children should listen to their mothers. Fathers they want to ignore — that’s fine. Fathers are only good for faking family finances knowledge and hammering the nails in when they’re replacing furnitures anyway. Children should listen to their mothers especially when their mothers tell them not to move downtown. Now that Ma thinks about it, it could’ve been partly her fault. Maybe instead of, if you want to leave, we’ll cut off funding, she should’ve said, I’m scared of losing you.
If she could have anything she wants, Ma would ask for 5 minutes with her. Just to get the important questions out of the way, like why do you never call? Where do you stay now? Are you healthy? Guess you aren’t… Did you always know I had anger issues and that Gemma cuts herself? And she’d stop her train of thoughts just before she asks the next question, which would be, how could you be so heartless, did we teach you that?
She was always so smart. Maybe that’s why she left.
It’s Ma’s shift this time. She closes her eyes, places a light touch on her daughter’s arm, plans an apology to Gemma in her head for when she visits later, and thinks about what to eat at the hospital canteen for breakfast tomorrow.
Prompt: Out of breath
