Mom?

Susan rushed into the bathroom, closed the door behind her and rested her back against it. She took a deep breath and combed her hair out of her face. Everything's fine, Susan. She nodded, agreeing with herself and took another deep breath. She pushed off the door and straightened her cardigan. She pulled her shoulders back and marched the two steps to the sink. She reached for the medicine cabinet and clutched the edge of the mirror. Before she could open it, she caught a glimpse of herself. 

It was only day five and she looked like hell. Her hair was in knots, the gray strands running through unusually pronounced. Her eyeliner was clumped in the corners of her crow's feet. Her eyes fell to her collar, and she scoffed. Her damn shirt was on backward. “Susan, you’re a class act,” she said to herself as she shrugged off her sweater and tossed it onto the hamper. She pulled her arms through her short sleeves and spun her shirt around with the expertise of a quick dresser and popped them out again.

Susan is the youngest of five, and the baby of the group. Her next oldest sibling, Arthur, is almost sixteen years her senior. Max, the oldest of them, twenty-two. Evalynne and Gurty, twenty and eighteen, respectively. As a child Susan never felt neglected or ignored, despite the lonely moments. Really, she loved and embraced the freedom of flying under the family radar. Still, even at the ripe age of fifty-one, Susan feels like a little kid when they all gather, unheard, unregarded, and excluded from any real responsibility. That’s why when Max asked her if she thought she could handle the week, she didn’t even hesitate before she agreed. Although Max did, for just a moment.

Their mother, Victoria, ninety-seven, was a loving, intelligent, and stern family matriarch, and although it had never been outwardly expressed between the two of them, Susan knew her mother had always had an eye on her. “You’re the easiest one, Bee.” It had felt like a great compliment at the time. A pragmatic woman to the end, Victoria ensured that all medical interventions to prolong her life were in place, and so it had been almost two years now that she had lied in a coma. The eldest had exchanged the responsibility of caregivers and now their concern had begun to wane, and in the midst of a tense argument over scheduling, Max trepidatiously reached out to his youngest sister. 

At first Susan had all the confidence in the world that the week would be no problem. “I’ll call you if I need anything.” She’d been around Mom a bunch and even spent a handful of nights in the house. The idea of it hadn’t seemed that big, but sitting in the kitchen, alone in the house for the first time since she was a child and listening to the life support system hum and beep and whirr and echo through the hall, it all seemed so overwhelming. 

Susan cared for her in silence for the first two days. On the third morning she was able to look at her mother’s slackened face. “Won’t be long, Mom, Gerty’s back on Tuesday.” By the fourth day, Susan was blabbing away, revealing the childhood secrets of her siblings and asking her mother questions she’d always wanted to know the answer to. Questions that just hung in the air, but somehow hung there with a touch more understanding. 

Everything had taken such a left turn on her watch. It felt unfair. Like she’d been set up. The week Max and Gurty decide they can’t be here; everything goes downhill with mom. They felt so flippant in the conference call. As if it wasn’t such a big deal to give her the morphine, those heavy doses that end it all. She remembered why she was here in the first place. She clutched the edge of the mirror again and, with a last glance at herself, opened the cabinet.

The shelves were packed with orange and green and red plastic bottles, mostly orange. She’d written so much down, but the whole tone of the conversation about the morphine had felt so unlikely that they had treated it with a certain impossibility. And here she was after an online conference with their mother’s doctor and Max, followed by a group chat with all five siblings, in which Susan got in all of three words, giving their mother the first of her last doses of medication. 

She ran a finger along the rows of labels, muttering to herself as she searched for the medication that they had all agreed wouldn’t be needed. “Morpho. Morpho-tech-intal.” She pushed bottles to the side before moving to the next shelf. “Morpho norco anitol?” She should have written it down. Susan stood on her tiptoes, thumbing through the top shelf, this one filled with older boxes and poorly folded plastic packaging. “Morpho-dorpho-gorfo” 

She pushed a box to the side and saw the magic words. She fell on her heels reading the label over and over, finally nodding in acceptance she reached up again and snatched the box down, knocking two bottles and a box wrapped in a plastic bag off the shelf. Susan tried to catch them and only managed to send them clattering against the fixtures and around the basin like a dinner bell. 

THUMP

Susan juggled the items and brought them together over the drain under clasped hands and turned an ear beyond the closed door.

Silence.

She listened for another moment before setting the morphodorpholixisomethin’ aside and collecting and replacing the fallen bottles. She made sure they were set back with a pat of her fingertips and closed the cabinet as she clutched up the box she had been searching for. She frowned down at it for a moment before digging her thumb into the flap, breaking through the thin cardboard, and tearing it open.

THUMP

Susan froze, listening.

A static silence and the creak of the home. 

She exhaled and drew the blister-pack sheets, four-per, from the box. She set the half filled box on the edge of the sink. She broke off the first syrette and set the other three on the box. She stared at the single dose. Why am I the one doing this? This should be Max. She shut the cabinet door with a thump. 

She gave a final glance at her reflection and froze. 

The bathroom door was open, and the hall was dark.

Susan squinted through the mirror and found the ragged edges of a silhouette standing in the dark of the door.

THUMP

The dark figure stepped through the door into the light. 

Susan gasped. “Mom?”