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My mother is alive. His heart didn’t unclench, but at least he began breathing again.
Everyone started talking all at once, asking if she’d be able to go back to work, the risk of another heart attack, if she’d need a nurse at home and how she’d come to have a heart attack. Karl didn’t know which questions were his and which were asked by his siblings and their partners. Each question was asked at least three times by different people.
Vivian’s soft voice broke through the din. “When can we see her?”
Karl stopped midquestion to look at his runaway wife, who was avoiding his gaze.
“She’s sleeping now,” the doctor replied, “and will probably sleep through the night, but you can see her if you want. She’ll be able to receive visitors in the morning.”
The entire family turned as one unit to follow the doctor and assure themselves their mother was still alive.
Karl didn’t speak to Vivian at all as they were led through sterile hospital hallways to view their sleeping mother, back through more hallways to fill out paperwork, back through a few more hallways to get to the hospital parking and finally through the cold, dark garage.
He walked Vivian to her car, calmed by the fact that she was still in Chicago. The sheer relief that his mother was alive overpowered his uncertain feelings about Vivian for the time being.
He’d stood at his mother’s bedside with the din of the hospital thrumming around him and thought about the almost adult-size coffin that his brother, Leon, had been buried in. But every time the panic at the death of another family member started to overtake him, he’d get a whiff of Vivian’s jasmine perfume. The exotic scent grounded him in the present. His mom was not dead, she was sleeping. She would wake up and the doctors said she would be back at work within a week or two. His grandmother’s funeral would continue to be the last family funeral he’d been to.
As he watched Vivian unlock her car door, he wanted to reach out and grab her hand, to feel the warmth of her dexterous fingers and to know his future shared the lifeblood that pumped through her veins. His mother was in the hospital, but the present still had hope.
* * *
VIVIAN BEAT THEM all to his mother’s and was unlocking the door to the kitchen when Karl pulled into the driveway. Without jasmine clouding his brain he’d had fear to muddle his emotions and he got out of the car angry.
“What in God’s name were you doing at the hospital?” he yelled up the driveway as he walked to her. “I get home, expecting to find you waiting for me, and instead I find that stupid bird, no note and a call from some neighborhood cop saying my mom was in the hospital.” His fears were exploding out of him, and years of practice at showing the world only the face he wanted it to see couldn’t stop the outburst. If she cared she didn’t show it, she just unlocked the side door with his mother’s keys and let herself into the house. “Just as I’m thinking you’ve driven off to God only knows where, I find you sitting in a hospital waiting room, having been at my mother’s house when she had a heart attack.”
His wife’s eyes were drooping and her face was drawn when she sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “By the time I realized I hadn’t left you a note about Xìnyùn, I’d changed my mind about leaving.”
Karl walked over to the sink, thought about what she’d said and pushed off the counter. She was only going to leave a note about the bird? When he got back to the table, he was too angry to sit. “Leaving to go where?” he asked, still hoping her answer would be the grocery store.
“Nevada. I was on my way to my aunt.”
“You were on your way to Nevada and the only note you were going to leave was about the bird?” His clenched jaw meant the words barely made it past his lips.
“Well, I…”
“You didn’t think I’d want to know where you were going and, you know, about the baby?” How was he supposed to be able to find her if she only left a note about the bird, with no indication of where she was going? Did she even know if her aunt would take her in? He was going to find a place for her in Chicago, just not in his apartment, where he could smell her and she could drive him crazy.
