The unthinkable. The phone call came at 2:17 a.m. I’ve always feared middle-of-the-night calls, those harbingers of news too terrible to wait for daylight.
My trembling hand reached for the phone on the third ring. “Mrs. Reynolds, this is Mercy Hospital.
Your son James has been admitted with a suspected brain aneurysm. You should come immediately.”
The world tilted on its axis. At sixty-five, I’d lived through my husband’s death a decade earlier, but nothing had prepared me for this moment.
James, my brilliant, kind-hearted, only child, couldn’t be dying. It wasn’t the natural order of things. I arrived at the hospital still wearing my nightgown beneath my coat, hair uncombed, hands shaking as I gave my name at the reception desk.
A grim-faced doctor led me to a private consultation room, and the words that followed destroyed my world. “Massive aneurysm. No warning signs.
Nothing could have been done. Already gone.”
Already gone. My James.
Gone. Hours blurred together as paperwork was processed and decisions no mother should ever have to make were thrust upon me. It was nearly noon when Sophia, James’s wife of ten years, finally arrived.
Designer sunglasses hid her eyes; expensively manicured nails tapped impatiently on her phone. “There was traffic,” she offered, without meeting my gaze. “And I had to find someone to watch Lucas.”
I had already called Lucas’s school, spoken with his teacher, and arranged for him to spend the day with his best friend’s family.
The fact that Sophia hadn’t thought to do this, that she’d left their eight-year-old son without information about his father’s condition, was sadly typical of the woman my son had married. “James is gone,” I said simply, watching for the reaction that would tell me how to respond. Sophia’s perfectly painted mouth formed a small O of surprise.
Her hand fluttered to her throat in a gesture that might have seemed natural if I hadn’t spent years observing my daughter-in-law’s calculated performances. “But he was fine yesterday,” Sophia said, her voice catching. “We had dinner, and then he was working in his study.
I went to bed early. I didn’t even say good night.”
For a moment, genuine regret seemed to flash across her face, quickly replaced by something I couldn’t quite identify. Relief.
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