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Like a paid actress, the door to the office room flung open and in strutted Chelsea. Her neck snapped towards the coordinator instantly, nose crinkling in disgust.

“Ew. You smell like a vampire’s nightmare.”

She crossed the room, ignoring his nervous mumbling and snatched up the brochure from the desk. “Thanks for this, we’re going to take it home and pick from there after we look at it some more.”

She stuck out her hand to me. “Come on babe, the hospital called. And this man smells.”

“I beg your pardon…” he began.

“You go ahead and keep on begging, Garlic Boy. Get some mouthwash next time.”

I stood, talking Chelsea’s hand and allowing her to lead me out of the funeral home.

“I’m not sure if we were supposed to take the brochure…” I said meekly.

I was tired. The day was catching up to me—quickly.

“Oh, honey, that’s why I am here. I don’t give a fuck about the rules.”

There was a little mirror above the sink in my mom’s hospital room. It was dingy, cracked on the edge and hanging on by a thread. The frame itself was plastic, like the kind you’d see in a child’s bedroom.

Looking into it wasn’t intentional, but it didn’t matter. As I lathered my hands I couldn’t help but assess myself. My complexion was paler than usual, and dark circles hugged the underside of my eyes.

My hair was matted. When was the last time I brushed it? I couldn’t really remember. It might have been when I was getting off the plane.

My face broke apart along the line of the fracture, one of my eyes reflecting higher than the other, my mouth and symmetry slightly off. In a way, it was fitting. I looked how I felt: damaged. I was still standing, but I was no longer whole. There were pieces of me missing. Ones I couldn’t ever get back or repair.

The coordinator might as well have added a third grave stone to the bill, because the me I used to be was dead. Set up in a frigid storage room, waiting to be buried with her father.

I turned the corner back to my mother’s bed side. Machines beeped in tandem, and a cacophony of wires and buttons hummed around my mom's lifeless body.

I didn’t know that version of her, but I wanted her to know that I was here for her.

I continued to question if it was fair—me asking her to stay. Every night, I prayed for her healing, hoping that she would keep fighting. Every night, I made a bed for myself on the orange plastic couch beside her. The thing felt more like rubber than furniture. The room was always freezing. The staff would shrug and joke that it was “for the germs.”

It felt…soulless there. There was nothing.

It had only been a few days but the nurses had gotten comfortable with me now. Even though they were older than me, they’d address me as Ms. Marsh whenever they came in on their routine checks for mom.

The hospital was anything but quiet. With the amount of pages, beeps, and loud talking from the nurses on the floor, there was anything but peace.

Even the room with my mom was loud.

Her breathing had increased in sound over night. Even with the help of the oxygen, my mom had begun to gurgle with each forced breath, heavy sounds of mucus and mechanical strain as the machines pumped her with air. Her chest puffed out with each struggled gasp, lingering in that position for a moment before collapsing back down. Her body was fighting against her, and she was losing.

She was losing.

My aunt hadn’t been as present as I thought she’d be. She was eager to bury her brother—my dad—and I wasn’t sure if it was her anger, grief or a combination of both, but she was growing impatient with my inability to make decisions for his burial.

I wished I could tell her that I was trying my best. That I didn’t know how to do this.

That I didn’t believe it was real.

She had been at the hospital on a day that my mom’s breathing was particularly bad.

“It’s called the death rattle,” she stated plainly. “It won’t be much longer now.”

When I cried, she embraced me, but it was loose, superficial. Neither of us wanted to be there, but just for different reasons.