“Sorry, her mouth is mine now, Jakub. Maybe you need to stay off the blow and boner pills,” I chuckle.
Her mouth is mine. Her body is mine. Her heart is mine. It’s happening so fast, but I’ve lived a whole lifetime waiting for this day. I thumb the elegant princess cut diamond ring in the red velvet box. I had my great grandmother’s ring reset in platinum and studded with two little rubies on either side. Mia’s always brought color into my world of darkness, and my love burns for her red hot. I know she’s going to love it.
I wish I would’ve waited and got down on one knee proper, but she was so happy this morning when I showed her the paintings. She was so thrilled when I suggested she open up her own gallery. Seeing her so happy makes me just want to keep doing more and more. I want to give her everything in the world, everything she deserves.
“I gotta go,” I say, when an unfamiliar number pops up on the screen of my phone. I never know who might be calling, but anybody who has this number had to really go out of their way to get it.
“Hello,” I answer.
“Mr. Mazur, this is the Oakmont County hospital. Your mother has you listed as her emergency contact?”
Dear Lord, my mother has always been a drama queen, but if our conversation yesterday made her have an episode, she’s probably going to keel over and die when she finds out what I did to grandma’s ring.
“Yes, is everything alright?”
“She’s in surgery right now. She had an accident on the tennis court. It appears she fractured her hip. I wanted to notify you.”
“I’ll be over as soon as I can,” I say. I get the details I need and hang up the phone. It doesn’t sound super serious, but I want to be there when she wakes up. At the end of the day, no matter what shitty things happened in our past, she’ll always be my mother, and I’m the only last living relative she has.
I shoot Mia a quick text, just in case I don’t get service at the hospital, and hop in my Jaguar, heading down the highway to the hospital.
I have to laugh over the fact that on one of the biggest, most important days of my life, my mom would have to find a way to get attention. I’m sure she’s fine, she probably just had a few too many martinis and tripped over her shoelaces.
When I get to the hospital, they have her in a holding room, waiting for her to wake up from the anesthesia. This place gives me a bad feeling, reminders of the year I spent here staring at the floral wallpaper, wondering why I didn’t just die that night. I blow out a thankful breath, knowing it was all worth it as long as it lead me to today.
The doctor finally walks me back into her room, and I immediately get this feeling everything isn’t going to be alright. She looks so frail and tiny, tubes and wires coming out of her body. Her hands are gray and her face looks twenty years older than I’m used to seeing. I try to shrug it off, thinking maybe it’s just that I’m not used to seeing her without all the makeup on her face.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mazur, I wish I had better news for you, but she’s got a long road to recovery ahead.”
“What?” I stammer. “She broke a bone. Can’t you just set it and move along?”
“There’s a lot of complications that can occur when elderly people break bones. Your mother may appear healthy on the outside, but even anesthetizing someone of her age comes with serious risks. She’s going to need a long time to heal and rest, and she’ll need a lot of physical therapy to get back on track. She may need to stay in a long term care facility for awhile until she’s functional again.”
I guess just because half her body parts are barely legal, doesn’t mean everything under the hood is young and healthy. I ball my hands into fists and throw my head back, wishing the last time I talked to her, I was a little bit kinder.
“I can hear you doctor,” she says, her voice weak. “I can stay with my son. We can afford it.”
My house may be big, but I don’t know if she’ll want to stay there once she finds out Mia isn’t going anywhere. I would never turn my back on my mother, but she’s going to have to learn to play nice if she really wants to stay at my place.
“Of course,” the doctor says, nodding and smiling. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye like he’s reading my mind. “It’s going to be quite some time before we can even entertain that discussion, though. You need your rest, Mrs. Mazur. You had a big day.”
“Would’ve been an even bigger day if that heifer Luiza didn’t have such clumsy feet. We were about to win our doubles tournament and she tripped me. That suka tripped me!”
I chuckle and hang my head. “You’ll have to excuse her, doctor. She has the mouth of a sailor when she has a couple pain pills in her.”
A nurse steps into the room, smiling nervously when she sees me. It’s not like everyone in this hospital doesn’t know the Mazur family name. If they don’t, I’m sure my mother has made them well aware. “I’m sorry, but visiting hours are ending in five minutes. I can fill out the paperwork if you’d like to request you be allowed to stay later.”
My mother waves her hand. “That won’t be necessary. My son is a very busy man, and my programs are about to come on.”
The nurse and the doctor leave the room, and I walk over to the bed and stroke my mother’s hair. I know I probably shouldn’t pile on to her stress, but at least if she passes out, there’s an oxygen tank handy.
“Mom, I need to talk to you about something, and I feel really bad doing it here, but I feel like there’s something you need to know before you make plans to move into my house with me.”
“Did you get a dog?” she asks, wrinkling her nose. “Oh, Jesus, did you start adopting cats again?”
I pull the ring box out of my pocket and flip it open. “Mia and I are getting married. We’re starting our lives over together.”
She pulls the box closer to her face, examining the ring my grandmother passed down for me to one day give to my bride. “If it were anyone else in the world, I’d tell you to wait, son.” She snaps the box shut. “I thought a lot about our last conversation, and I realized I should’ve trusted your judgement. You’ve always known exactly what you wanted, Serafin, and you did whatever you had to to get it. It was wrong of us to stand in your way.”
“Are you just saying that because you like her paintings?”
“I never disliked Mia,” she says, placing her cold wrinkled hand on my wrist.
I laugh and so does she.
“I am happy you’re starting your life over together. I hope that maybe she can find it in her heart to forgive me and maybe I can be a part of it in some way?”
“I don’t think she has it in her heart to hate you, mom. I don’t think she’s capable of holding a grudge. Besides, you and dad bought her an art gallery today.”
“Did we?” she asks with a big bright smile. This is going a lot better than I expected. “I really don’t need to move in with you two, Serafin. I don’t want to get in the way of your honeymoon phase. I’m not going to be around forever, and I’d like to at least meet my grandchildren.”
Those words hit me right in the heart. Mia is going to be such a good mother. I can’t wait to have a houseful of kids and laughter. I can’t wait to be a father.