He leaned over the bed watching Katrin’s chest move up and down slightly. There was no distress in her breathing, no ragged rasping sound as she inhaled as he had become accustomed to hearing from his mother toward the end.
He let his hand hover over her forehead, but he didn’t feel heat being thrown off of her body. Her cheeks were very pink, he suspected, because of the rash. As soon as she woke up, he would get a washcloth from the bathroom and soak it in cool water to try to soothe her irritated skin. She had a large glass of water by the bed, and tissues. He looked around, finding a bucket for her vomit, should she still need one. There was a small pile of towels, and an extra pillow if she wanted one. He grimaced at the IV pole lurking in the corner, lines neatly coiled like behaving snakes. Looked like everything was in order.
His shoulders relaxed a little, and he crept to the rocking chair in the corner of the room by the windows. Without making a sound, he lifted it and moved it beside her bed, so close that his knees would almost touch her covers as he rocked. Then he sat down and waited.
When Erik’s mother lay dying of cancer, her care had been left, primarily, to him and Jenny. They weren’t the sort of family who could afford much outside paid care, and anyway, they wouldn’t have wanted that for his mother. Once her diagnosis was terminal, it was all about making her comfortable in the few months she had left.
That long, hot summer they had re-read her all of her favorite books in the last lucid weeks of her life: Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion, Jane Eyre, North & South, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. When they weren’t reading, they were watching her favorite movies, twenty-one-year-old Jenny lying to her left on the bed, and when he wasn’t working, twenty-two-year-old Erik to her right.
In a strange way, mutually—if not verbally—agreed upon, he and Jenny had recreated their years in the schoolroom with their mother, reading the familiar words and discussing the Edwardian tales of love and longing. They were older now, but their mother was still the teacher, the adult, the voice of reason and experience, sharing her thoughts and life experience, an urgency to her words as she delivered final lessons to her children like a legacy, knowing that she was running out of time.
In those hot summer evenings, occasionally his father and brothers would join them for a movie, even ordering pizza a few times. They would all sit on her bed together, teasing each other, laughing about old memories, trying to ignore the fact that they were all sitting on their dying mother’s bed in the middle of what used to be their dining room.
His mother had turned a bad corner at the end of the summer, and the pizza and movies ended for good. His father suddenly spent more and more time in the park, leaving Erik and Jenny alone to care for her throughout the last terrible days.
It was then, in those terrifying, dark days of fall, that his father abandoned his dying mother, demonstrating with heartbreaking clarity for young Erik that vows are meaningless and nothing, least of all love, lasts forever.
As Katrin slept peacefully and Erik rocked in the quiet of her room, he sensed something changing inside of him. When other women had wanted to be half of an “us” with him, it had been unthinkable for him. Until now. Until Katrin. Looking at her, so little and red-cheeked beside him, made him wince, made him wish it were him, not her, lying there.
His head wasn’t having it. That is crazy, Erik. Is that what you want? To care about someone so much it hurts? It leaves you unprotected? You don’t want that…do you?
His heart roared back, Goddamn it, I do. I can be a better man than he was.
It was a strong voice, deep inside, brooking no argument, firm and sure. He closed his eyes, bowing his head in total defeat, his eyes burning from unshed tears.
I’ve never felt this way before, I’ve only read about it. But I want her in my life, I need her in my life, and I just hope it’s not too late.
He heard her stir beneath the covers. His eyes flashed open and he leaned forward, the old encouraging, sick-room smile coming easily. She moved her head toward him, her eyes fluttering open, then closed, then open again, dreamy, only half awake.
“Erik,” she murmured, and her eyes closed again, her lips turned up slightly. Her voice was soft and thick and breathy. “You’re here. Where were you? I wanted you so much. So much.”
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, it wasn’t over. The relief he felt was so huge and so humbling, he shivered and wanted to weep. He hadn’t lost her after all.
Her throat must be on fire after being so sick for hours on end. He took the glass of water from the bedside table.
“Drink something, Ӓlskling.”
He put one hand behind her neck to prop her up and with the other he lifted the glass to her lips. Then he put the glass back on the bedside table and used a tissue to wipe her lips.
Her eyes fluttered open and then closed again. She murmured something and he leaned in to understand her. “…mig inte. Lämna mig inte, Erik.”
Don’t leave me. Erik’s heart clenched as he stared at her face, running the back of
