“Is this level of morphine safe?” Hena asked the nurse. “She’s on constant pain medication, and the dosages are high. People can get easily addicted, can’t they?”
“Oh, hon.” The nurse looked at her sympathetically.
Ah. There was that knot in Hena’s chest again.
When the nurse left, Hena glanced at Khala. Gita rubbed her eyes and yawned. She finally asked the question she had been avoiding since she arrived.
“How long does she have?”
Gita and Khala exchanged concerned looks.
“Please,” Hena said. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“Soon,” said Khala.
“Soon, as in…?”
“It could be weeks. Or it could be any day, really,” Khala said softly.
Any day. Hena looked at her mother as the words sank in. She had known, hadn’t she? Deep down, she knew. All she had to do was look at her mother’s skeletal frame to know she was barely holding on.
“The goal is to keep her as comfortable as possible,” Gita said. “The pain is the hardest thing to deal with.”
Pain so brutal that her mother—who hated hospitals, doctors, medication—was letting Gita and the medical team load her up with whatever it took to dull the agony.
“This is the worst time to throw a wedding,” Hena said. “No matter how comfortable we make her, the schedule isgrueling, and the exertion is wearing her out. She can’t keep going like this. Someone should have talked her out of it. It’s—it’s killing her.”
“We tried our best to reason with her. All of us did,” said Khala. “But your mother said seeing Lulu off in a grand wedding was her dying wish. You know your mother. If she sets her mind on something, there’s no stopping her. She’s difficult to counter on an ordinary day, but once she pulled the ‘I’m dying’ card, how were we to refuse?”
“She’s the most stubborn person I know.”
“You have no idea,” Khala said.
But Hena did have some idea.
Looking at her now, a strange sort of grief climbed up Hena’s throat. It wasn’t just sadness for Ammi. It was for herself. Deep down, a part of her had hoped there would come some kind of turning point for the two of them. Their relationship. A moment where her mother would have a realization. That things didn’t have to be the way they were between them. That maybe there would come a day where they would mend things. But sometimes there was no fixing what was broken. Sometimes you ran out of time before you could.
—
Hours passed. Hena was perched on the edge of the bay window next to Gita, her eyes drifting closed, when Lulu burst into the hospital room. She’d been in and out since Ammi had been hospitalized. Now she stepped inside with their mother’s favorite pillow. Her special filtered water. All these hours later, she’d still not changed out of her mustard-yellow mayoun outfit. Her makeup was smudged. Her hair, half-unpinned, fell haphazardly down the sides of her face.
“How is she? Any updates?” Lulu began, but she stopped abruptly when she saw Ammi. A sob escaped.
“She’s all right. Just sleeping,” Khala reassured Lulu. “I told you to get some rest. She’s stabilized now.”
Lulu shoved down the side railing and squeezed into the bed next to her. She wrapped an arm around Ammi’s frail body. “You’ll be okay, Ammi,” she said softly.
Her mother’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at Lulu. When she spoke, her words were barely a rasp.
“You’re going to ruin your outfit.”
Everyone froze for a moment, before bursting into laughter.
“You fainted,” Hena told her mother, once the laughter subsided. “They’re running tests to see what’s going on, though the current guess is severe dehydration.”
“I’ve been hydrating as much as I always do,” Ammi said. “And you have me on those godforsaken IVs each day.”
“Even so,” Gita said, “a full desi wedding schedule is exhausting even if one is fully healthy. You need to pare down how much you’re doing. Your body can only handle so much stress.”