Page 49 of Into the Mountains (Blue Grove Mountain #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHARLOTTE

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

“ S uch an idiot.” Mom brushes my hair back with her fingers and kisses the top of my head while Dad listens in the kitchen, busying himself with the coffee pot.

The gurgling water echoes through the large space and it makes me think of the last time we were all seated around the coffee table, four people taking up space instead of three.

Four cups of coffee leaving behind the scent of freshly ground beans, with voices permeating the space in between sips.

Nothing but laughter and the feeling of all things good.

Knowing it’ll never be like that again deepens the crack left in my chest and opens it a little bit more, my sobs more intense, mourning for the person I thought I’d have longer than a summer. Longer than the few short months we spent together.

Mom doesn’t say anything else as she strokes my hair and occasionally tries to soothe me with her words of affirmation. “You are so much stronger than anything he could do to you. Feel your pain now, but don’t let yourself drown in the hatred you’re going to feel. It’ll be okay.”

She’s had a good day today. The day nurse said earlier that she’s been mostly lucid.

When I came home with tear-stained cheeks and went to the couch to her side, I was shocked she asked what was wrong.

She wasn’t confused as to who I was. She was just there, which made me cry even harder for a completely different reason.

Coffee mugs are set down on the table with low clunks as I finally get my tears under control.

I can only imagine what I look like as I come up from my mother’s arms and bring my hands to wrap around the mug Dad put in front of me.

It’s a plain navy blue mug. No puns, no funny pictures. Just darkness. Poetic.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, raising the mug in his direction for what is probably one of the saddest cheers ever to be given.

“Anything for you, Peanut.” He smiles at me, but it’s a pitying smile that matches the look in his eyes.

I don’t think he’s sure what to say. We never had to navigate any of this in high school and they didn’t have any other kids to fill in the gaps I left behind.

This is my first breakup, therefore, it’s theirs too.

No one knows what to do here.

“Alright Mrs. Anne. It’s time for your meds.

” The night nurse, Cammie, walks in from the back room in blue scrubs, with two cups, one in each hand.

One is full of water and the other is a smaller cup with different medications she takes now.

After the diagnosis and her infection a few weeks ago, the doctors wanted to be more vigilant in what she was taking.

Dad insisted she be treated at home though, because of the constant research he’s been doing on dementia patients and treatments.

He came to the conclusion that with Mom, it was better for her to be surrounded by her home, her family, familiar surroundings and so far, it’s helped her have more lucid days than most patients with dementia.

But there are days she regresses completely and we have to play along with her.

One thing we learned quickly was to never deny anything she was saying or contradict her. It would irritate and confuse her.

“Meds for what? I’m not on any medication.”

Dad and I make eye contact sensing the immediate tension in the room. Since it’s nighttime, one of those medications will have something to help her sleep, but her reaction to the mention of it, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to get her to take it.

“Oh, it’s new, honey,” Cammie tries, but I can already tell that line isn’t going to be good enough tonight. Sometimes it works, but it’s not going to this time.

“You’re lying,” Mom accuses. “I’m not on anything. I don’t have anything to take medication for. I’m healthy.”

I choke back the sob that almost escapes me at the word “healthy.” I want to avoid eye contact with Dad, but I know him.

I know what will bring him comfort and that is making sure he knows that he isn’t going through this alone.

That I am here with him and I don’t plan to go anywhere. Especially now.

“You’re right,” Cammie continues. “You’re healthy. The doctor prescribed the medicine for you to keep on being healthy. These will help you with that,” she says coming around the couch with the pills.

Mom sits up slowly, the blanket falling to her hips, exposing how skinny she’s gotten over the last few weeks.

Another way dementia can affect a person.

She often refuses to eat, either because she doesn’t have an appetite or simply doesn’t have the energy to eat anything.

When that happens we try different methods to convince her to eat something.

Different foods, different plates, presentations, anything.

Some days it works, and others it doesn’t.

One week, she barely ate one meal. The doctor said that it can be normal with her stage of the sickness, but to continue to encourage her to eat and remind her what the food is and what it can do for her.

I haven’t seen her without some sort of cover up, robe or blanket on her in the past two weeks.

I guess I also haven’t been home all that much to see her, but now that I do, I have to mask my shock at just how much more weight she’s lost. Dad must not have been able to get her to eat lately and I wasn’t here to help.

I was off with Eli, living my life while she was here living the last of hers.

Withering away to skin and bones, to the part of her brain that has been lost to her.

Lost to us. Dementia has been cruel to her, but not only her.

It’s taken down those around her as well.

Guilt bubbles in my gut and I picture it in there writhing around, making sounds that could rival the coffee maker a few minutes ago. A pot of boiled over potato leek soup, leaking down to the stove, covering the top until nothing is left.

“How can I help you?” Mom asks, bringing my thoughts back to the present task. She’s asking as if she’s already forgotten that she was refusing to take her medication a minute ago.

“I was just coming around to give you your medication, Anne.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounds much older than her age. “Thank you, sweetheart. You’re so nice.” And without a fight, she takes the two cups from Cammie’s hand and takes the pills then swallows them down with the water.

She looks at me and furrows her brows for a second.

“Have you met,” a pause, “um…uh…” I’ve seen her fade away enough times to know what’s coming and each and every time, I wish I could get up and walk away so I didn’t have to watch her leave.

I just want to go back to when I walked in the door.

Back to when she remembered me. Now I’m once again going to wonder if she will ever remember me again.

If she will ever make her way back to us or if she’ll wander in the confines of her mind, forever lost and confused by the world and the people around her.

“I’m sorry, I don’t seem to remember your name.”

“It’s Cammie,” the nurse answers, gathering the cups and walking toward the trash can.

“Wait, who are you?”

“I’m your nurse, Anne,” she answers. We are supposed to answer. Follow her where her mind goes and never deny the time she might be in. She’s in the present, but she doesn’t have enough details to truly understand what is going on.

“What do I need a nurse for?”

I reach out and gently touch her arm, one that used to be full of life and is now shrunk down to basically nothing. “Mom, you were diagnosed with dementia a few months ago. Cammie is one of the night nurses that comes to help you.”

She yanks her arm away from me and I flinch. While I have seen her have different reactions before, I have never seen her like this. “And who the hell are you? Why are you touching me? Why are you in my home? Where is Paul?”

“I’m right here, Annie.” Dad finally moves from where he was standing behind the couch and comes around to his wife. He takes a seat on the coffee table across from her and grabs one of her hands. “I’m here.”

Her eyes flit across his features, studying them, unbelieving he is who he says he is.

“You’re not my husband. You’re too old. Where is Paul?”

So she’s not in the present. She’s somewhere in the past where I don’t exist. A past where Dad is much younger and I wasn’t even a thought.

Each time she forgets who I am, I think the next time it’ll be easier because I’ve experienced it before.

But it actually just hurts more every time it happens.

“Annie, it’s me,” he tries again and kisses her hand, but she does what she did to me and yanks her hand away as if she’s repulsed by his touch.

She thinks he’s a stranger. She thinks we all are and that she is in a house full of people she doesn’t know and has never known in her life as far as she is concerned.

“No. NO!” she yells.

“Anne, do you want to play a game with me?” Cammie comes from the hallway with a board game in hand.

My heart lurches as I think about the last time that particular game was out of its box, the four of us sitting in the breakfast nook, taunting each other as the night went on.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at Ticket to Ride the same way again.

Distracted now, Mom looks toward Cammie and then the box she’s holding in her hands. I wish I would have thought to go grab it for her. Dad and I are still so new at all of this and she doesn’t get irritated very often. She gets confused, but never angry.

“You’ll have to teach me how to play. I’ve never played before.”

“Deal,” says Cammie and it’s as if nothing had taken place in the last ten minutes. Like Mom didn’t struggle with taking her medicine and she didn’t almost have a violent outburst. Back to whatever normal is for the Monroe household.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I already know who it is before checking it. Elias has that aura about him. He’s the type to call immediately and defend himself.

I don’t bother answering and send him straight to voicemail.

For once I don’t feel guilty about it either.

Usually I have the compulsive need to answer calls and texts as soon as I can to make sure I’m not needed in one way or another.

I can’t do that anymore. My guilt is reserved for her at home, the sticky mixture has only grown throughout the night and I have a feeling there won’t ever be a way to shrink it back down.

Not for a long time. This kind of guilt isn’t digestible.

And it only gets worse as Mom places a hand to her chest and starts to rub her palm back and forth as if she’s massaging it. As if she’s in pain. Her face scrunches together and I look toward Cammie, who sees it too.

“Are you alright Anne?”

“No,” she answers as she continues to work her hand into her skin, a misplaced attempt at making whatever pain she is feeling go away.

What happens next will etch itself onto the inside of my mind for the rest of my life.

The sound that escapes her throat, filled with so much pain, the way her body slumps off the couch barely missing the corner of the coffee table.

The way she lies lifeless on the floor for what seems like hours as Cammie does CPR, before paramedics arrive only to pronounce her dead a few hours later in the hospital.

Dad and I standing outside of her room grasping at each other like we are the other’s lifeline.

And I suppose when we were in that hospital we were the only connection to Anne in that moment in time.

The two people that mattered the most to her, the memory of them faded from her mind by the end.

How did that night go from having the time of my life with a guy I loved completely to having my heart shattered by him? And then somehow going from that to watching my mother die in front of my eyes?

Time is a weird, complicated thing. The moment she collapsed feels like it all moved in slow motion, but at the same time, it was all so fast.

Too fast and too slow at the same time.