Dr. Kim laughed good-naturedly and told her that he’d see her upstairs for surgery.
“Mom, tell me you didn’t,” Byron signed-said when she FaceTimed with him about fifteen minutes before she was due to go upstairs.
I noticed that she was careful to keep the room beyond the hospital bed out of the frame as she spoke with my brother. That meant Byron couldn’t see Victor, who was sitting on the couch.
“I did!” she answered, her tone belligerent and self-righteous. “At this point, it’s the only way I’m going to get a doctor in this family!”
Byron took her ribbing with his usual good nature. And after they talked for a few minutes, he asked her to give the phone to me. I also made sure nothing beyond mom and me made it into her Android’s frame. Yep, we were still a family that kept everything from each other.
“Thanks for going down there to be with her,” Byron said. “I would be there if I could, too.”
“Seriously, it was no problem.” This lie slipped off my tongue easier than any of the other ones I’d told over the past few years. I glanced at Victor on the couch. “I’m just glad I could be here.”
“Me, too. Plus, you and Mom are good now, right?” he asked as if our nine-year silence had just been a ripple in our family pond.
Nonetheless, I answered, “Yes, I think so.”
After a few more moments of small talk, Byron made me promise to call him after the surgery and we hung up.
I was glad we got the chance to talk with him together. He’d sounded so relieved.
But the smile fell off my face when I saw how scared and small my mother looked in the hospital bed.
She had seemed relaxed and in a good mood when she was talking to Byron. But I guess that was just a mask she was putting on for her baby son.
“Mom, everything is going to be all right,” I said-signed to her.
She shook her head, her eyes shining with fear. “I haven’t been in a hospital since I got my implant. What if they put me under, and I don’t wake up? I’ll never see either of you again. Or your father.”
She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “We got in a fight about his work the last time he was home. He has been promising to switch jobs ‘soon’ for years. So, I threatened to divorce him if he didn’t make a change. But he got so angry with me, he stormed out. And I haven’t seen him since. What if that’s the last thing he remembers about me? All my anger and none of the love?”
Her voice broke. And the tears that had only been trembling in her eyes beforehand began to roll down her face.
I cursed silently at my father for not being here with her. There wasn’t a big enough hospital room in the world to make up for not having her husband here when she was this scared.
I wanted so badly to hug her. But with her implant on the fritz, that would mean she wouldn’t be able to see my lips or hands as I assured her, “That won’t happen. You’ll see him again.”
“It could happen. It was in the paperwork you gave me. They said there was a chance I wouldn’t survive the surgery. And if they can’t cut out the cancer, I might not survive after that anyway.”
My heart squeezed painfully at the thought of my mom dying just a little while after we finally made up…. Nine years of silence. Why were we so stupid and stubborn? I’d never forgive myself if either of those hypothetical outcomes came to pass.
So, I insisted to both of us, “Mom, it’s going to be okay. It has to be.”
My fierce reassurance made even more tears roll out of her eyes.
“I wasted so much of my life waiting on him. Being angry at you.” She looked up at me mournfully. “Dawn, I was so sure you had failed me. But when I needed someone the most, you were the only one who showed up. Why was I so mean to you? Nine years…”
My chest cracked open at her question. “Mom, you were an immigrant who didn’t know she was about to lose all of her hearing when you moved to this country. You were an exceptional mother. Do you hear me? You raised me right. You made sure I got good grades and stayed on task, and you made my favorite meal every week. I loved—I still love you so much. Even nine years of silence can’t change that.”
My mom shook her head miserably. “But I made you think you weren’t beautiful. I watched all the YouTube videos, you know. I saw girls just like you talking about how much they hated their mothers because of how bad they made them feel. Just like I did with you. The truth is, I knew it was too much when I was doing it. Your dad said I needed to stop, but I couldn’t figure out how. Why couldn’t I make myself stop? I was so afraid for you. All I could do was criticize you. But you’re beautiful, Dawn. I don’t care how fat you are. You’re my fat, beautiful daughter.
Okay, now I was tearing up too. I gave up on talking and drew her into my arms. Not just because I never realized how much I needed to hear her say that, but also because I was crying now. And that wouldn’t exactly sell my “everything’s going to be okay, you’re definitely not going to die” argument.
We sniffled together for a few moments, and when we drew apart, we found Victor once again standing on the other side of my mother’s hospital bed.
“Do not cry. Everything will be OK,” he told her. The look on his face was both tender and stern. “I promise you.”
His words made my mother smile. Authentically, not falsely as she had for Byron.
“OK, Dawn’s Husband,” she said to Victor. “If you say everything is going to be OK, then I believe you. I’ll wake up from the surgery, and that handsome gay doctor will say, no more cancer for you! Then after that, I will set him up with Byron, and there will be nothing either of them can do about it.”
My mother actually rubbed her hands together with gleeful anticipation.
We all laughed, but I don’t think it was a joke. Victor had that way about him. If he said something was true, people believed him. Even my scared mom.
Attendants came to wheel her into surgery a few minutes later. And suddenly, the space between Victor and me was empty.
For the first time in fifteen years, I closed the distance between us, and I took him by the hand. I didn’t mean to do it. I think I was just upset. Not to mention weirdly grateful for all he’d done for us today.
He stilled at my touch, his entire body stiffening beside me.
“We can go back to hating each other tomorrow,” I whispered. “But right now, I need your strength.”
He stood there frozen, and I wondered if he’d pull away.
But no, in the end, he squeezed my hand. Holding it tight until my mom had disappeared from sight.
Only then did he let me go.
As it turned out, Victor was right. The news came down a few hours later. Mom made it through surgery. They still had to send some tissue samples in for further testing, and she’d need to do some chemo to be sure. But Dr. Kim was “fairly confident” that he had gotten it all.
Cue more tears when my mother woke up, and we got to tell her the news.
“You’re magic,” she insisted to Victor. “The next time I need luck, I’m going to fly to you in Rhode Island and rub the top of your head!”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Victor didn’t live in Rhode Island, and I guess Victor didn’t either. He didn’t correct her.