My Name Is Lucy Barton

30

It was the next day in the hospital — Monday — when Cookie said I needed just one more X-ray; it would be simple, she said, they’d be up to get me soon. Within an hour I was back in the room. My mother wiggled her fingers at me, and I wiggled mine back once I returned to my bed. “Piece of cake,” I said to her. And she said, “You’re a brave girl, Wizzle-dee.” She looked out the window, and I looked out the window too.

We must have spoken more, I’m sure we did. But then my doctor came in hurriedly and said, “We might have to take you to surgery. You may have a blockage, I don’t like what I see.”

“I can’t,” I said, sitting up. “I’ll die if I have surgery. Look how skinny I’ve gotten!”

My doctor said, “Except for being sick, you’re healthy and you’re young.”

My mother stood up. “It’s time for me to go home,” she said.

“Mommy, no, you can’t!” I cried.

“Yes. I’ve been here long enough, and it’s time I go home.”

My doctor had no response to my mother’s remark. I remember only his determination to get me to the next test to see if I needed surgery. And while I would stay in the hospital for almost five weeks more, he never asked me about my mother, if I missed her, never said that it must have been nice to have her there, not one thing about her did he say. And so I never told this kind doctor how I missed her terribly, that her coming was — well, I couldn’t have said what it was. And I didn’t say anything about it at all.

So my mother left that day. She was frightened about how she would find a cab. I asked one of the nurses to help her, but I knew that once she reached First Avenue, no nurse would be able to help her. Already two male orderlies had brought the gurney into my room, and the bed rail was taken down. I told my mother how to raise her arm, how to say “La Guardia” as though she said it often. But I could see that she was terrified, and I was terrified too. I have no idea if she kissed me goodbye, but I cannot think she would have. I have no memory of my mother ever kissing me. She may have kissed me though; I may be wrong.