I drop my heels and run.
It’s moments like this when you look back and wonder if it would have made a difference if you just ran that damn red light. Or all of them.
Would it have mattered?
You wonder if you hadn’t wasted time looking here and there and ultimately nowhere, in the right spot.
Would it have mattered?
You wonder why your feet pound so slowly against the concrete driveway when your chest is pleading for you to stop for air. If you could have got there faster. You wonder why your feet feel like lead, and why you seem to be running on the spot like in those cartoons.
It matters.
When you find a hose attached from the exhaust, around the car and stuck inside the driver’s door, everything you could have done matters.
Behind me, hands come around my waist and yank.
“Nate!” I scream. “My fucking mum. Let go!”
“Kalli, you’ll die if you go in there.”
I’ll die even if I stay out here and let this happen. What if she’s still alive?
I ignore him and yank for the knob again. When we share a look, he knows my meaning. I would knock him out cold if he dares stop me again. Nate dials on his phone and I chase him outside, too. I hyperventilate three huge breaths, barely letting anything out, and then take my last huge breath and run back in. I shut the side door behind me and throw open the driver’s door.
I’d heard it was colourless, odourless, but wow. It’s so, so … nothing in here.
I take the keys out of the ignition and yank the hose out. Mom’s head flops on her shoulder and I shake her arms, but her head just bobs like she’s a jellyfish. Like life’s escaped her.
My heart starts to pound quickly, my oxygen depleting, fast. I get one hand behind her neck and the other under her knees but her dead weight is too heavy.
Dead. Weight.
My head pounds at me now, desperate. It’s distracting trying to push aside my need to breathe, but if I breathe I’ll start to become as useless as Mum.
I grab her under the armpits and drag. Her body bumps over the seat and the car floor and finally to the concrete.
I’m so dizzy. I reach down to grab her but my instinct to breathe kicks in and I leave her and bolt to the door, throw it open. With the cool rush of air, I take it in, gasping everything I can in.
“Stay there,” Nate says.
I turn but he’s gone, his phone on the damp grass. He returns seconds later dragging Mum out of the garage. With my head throbbing less and my chest filled with air, I run to the door to close off the garage.
Nate kneels by Mum on the phone to emergency services as I lean down and lower my ear over her mouth. I place my hand just to the left side of her chest a bit and feel for a spot under her jaw with two of my fingers.
It could be the night air, but it feels hotter coming out of her mouth, and although my hands are shaking I swear it’s her chest too.
“She’s breathing, I think.”
Nate tells the person on the call as much. He helps me roll her on her side, knees and elbows bent to help keep her in that position and then I stick my fingers down her throat and start scooping. For something, anything.
But nothing comes out. Of course, I have the feeling this must have been self-imposed, but I’m as shocked as I am mad and panicked, livid at the thought someone tried to kill her.
My mum would never try to kill herself.
My mum would tell me first.
My mum isn’t the type to fall into this state.
But, she is. And somewhere inside, I already knew this. My throat tightens in panic, as if to agree.
In the distance we hear the sirens and the red and blue flashing lights begin to reflect off house windows in the night.
Nate and I exchange a wordless conversation.
His hand comes around the front of my belly. He curls around the top of Mum’s body and shakes his head at her, at life, at something, something that shouldn’t have happened.
I sit here touching her, hand to cheek, hand to shoulder, lips to forehead. I layer kisses on her face and touch her in every way I can. With her out of that garage, the cold night bring my thoughts back into place. I can’t actually think of a single way to describe finding my mum like this. It rips out my everything. I’d rather die than see her like this. She was crying out for help. She needed me, and I wasn’t there.
Actually, she was doing fine, and I gave her the ultimate guilt trip. Fuck, I’ll never forgive myself for that dump. I knew I had reason to be careful all these years.
Tonight is poisoning me, too, with unspoken dreams, unsaid feelings and unexperienced future memories.
I should have seen the signs. I’m so dumb. It’s my fault, and I should have seen the signs.
“I should have been here for you, Mum,” I say.
She won’t ever know I said it.