Don’t put her in the dark.
Jude squeezed Mia’s hand tightly, clinging to her daughter for as long as she possibly could.
Miles and Zach came up around her, reached out. They held one another upright, the three of them, the family that was left.
The knock at the door came again.
“Jude,” Miles said, his face wet with tears. “It’s time. She’s gone.”
Jude knew what she had to do, what they all were waiting for. She’d rather cut out her own heart. But she had no choice.
She let go of her daughter’s hand and stepped back.
Thirteen
Jude crouched in the hallway near the OR door. At some point, she’d lost her footing and fallen to the cold linoleum floor, and she stayed there, her face pressed to the wall. She could hear people coming and going around her, rushing from one trauma to the next. Sometimes they stopped and talked to her. She looked up into their faces—frowning and compassionate and a little distracted—and she tried to understand whatever it was they were saying, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Her whole body shook with cold and her vision was cloudy and she couldn’t hear anything except the reluctant beating of her heart.
No. I do not forgive you.
We’ll talk tomorrow.
These were the words that ran in an endless loop through her mind.
“Judith?”
She turned slightly, saw her mother standing there, tall and straight, her white hair perfectly styled, her clothes ironed. She knew her mother had been here for hours; she’d tried repeatedly to speak to Jude, but what good were words now between strangers?
“Let me help you, Judith,” her mother said. “You can’t sit here in the hallway. Let me get you some coffee. Food will help.”
“Food will not help.”
“There’s no need to yell, Judith.” Mother glanced up and down the hallway, to see who might have heard the outburst. “Come with me.” She reached down.
Jude wrenched sideways, scurrying tighter into the corner. “I’m fine, Mother. Just let me be, okay? Find Miles. Or go see Zach. I’m fine.”
“You most certainly are not fine. I think you should eat something. You’ve been here seven hours.”
Already Jude was sick of people saying this to her. As if food in her stomach would remedy the hole in her heart. “Go away, Mother. I appreciate you coming here, okay? But I need to be alone. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Wouldn’t I?” Her mother made a quiet sound, and then said, “Fine.” She lowered herself to her knees beside Jude.
“What are you doing?”
Her mother collapsed the last inch to the cold linoleum floor. “I’m sitting with my daughter.”
Jude felt a stirring of guilt—no doubt this was one of her mother’s self-interested gestures, a way to force Jude into bending to her will. At any other time, it would have worked, Jude would have sighed in defeat and gotten to her feet, doing as her mother asked. Now, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to leave this spot until Miles came to get her. “You shouldn’t sit here, Mother. It’s cold.”
Her mother looked at her, and for a split second, there was an unbearable sadness in her gaze. “I’ve been cold before, Judith Anne. I’m staying.”
Jude shrugged. It was all too much for her. She couldn’t think about anything right now, and certainly not her mother. “Whatever,” she said tiredly, and the minute the word was out of her mouth, she regretted it. How could one word bring back an era, a child, in such exquisite detail? She saw Mia at thirteen, braces and acne and insecurity, saying “whatever” in answer to every question …
She closed her eyes and remembered …
*
“Jude?”
She looked up, confused by the sound of her own name. How long had she been here? She glanced sideways; her mother was asleep beside her.
Miles stood outside the OR.
“It’s over,” he said, reaching down for her.
Jude started to get up and fell back down. He was beside her in an instant, steadying her. When Jude was standing on her own, he helped Caroline to her feet.
“Thank you,” Caroline said stiffly, smoothing her hair back from her face, although no strands had fallen free. “I’ll go to the waiting room,” she said. Glancing at Jude for a moment, she almost said something more; then she turned and walked away.
Jude clung to her husband’s arm and let him lead her into the operating room, where Mia lay on the table, draped in white. Her silvery-blond hair was covered in a pale blue cap. Jude took it off, let her daughter’s hair fall free. She stroked it as she’d done so many times before.