Chapter 8 - Bernice Hears the Diagnosis
I told Bernice through a scheduled phone call.
No hospital visit.
“Congenital heart defect.”
Silence.
Then:
“Congenital?”
“Born with it.”
“Why wasn’t it found?”
“It can be subtle.”
She said nothing for a long time.
I expected apology.
Instead:
“That doesn’t explain everything.”
There.
“What does that mean?”
“She still exaggerates.”
I almost ended call.
Then forced myself to listen.
Bernice said:
“She had stomachaches before.”
“Yes.”
“She cried before school.”
“Yes.”
“She told you her heart hurt on days you traveled.”
“Yes.”
“And now because they found one defect, every behavior becomes medical?”
“No.”
“Then I am not wrong about everything.”
There it was.
The need to preserve some rightness.
I answered:
“You don’t need to be wrong about every symptom to be wrong about dragging her out of bed.”
Silence.
“You were told not to.”
“I wanted you to see.”
“I saw.”
“She can walk.”
“And she gets tachycardic when she does.”
“She smiled.”
“Sick children smile.”
“I was trying to stop her from becoming dependent.”
“She is seven.”
My mother’s voice cracked.
“I watched you disappear into her illness.”
That surprised me.
“What?”
“You stopped working.”
“I took leave.”
“You slept in hospital.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“You canceled everything.”
“Again. Daughter.”
Then:
“You did the same thing when Catherine was dying.”
There.
My mother’s real fear.
I had disappeared once into a hospital room and emerged widowed.
Now she saw it happening again.
Not rationally.
Emotionally.
She wanted to drag Elodie out of the sick role partly because she wanted to drag me out of the hospital too.
That did not make what she did less wrong.
May you like
It made it comprehensible.
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