The Choices Mothers Make

THE CHOICES MOTHERS MAKE

Lucette was finally sleeping.

Emily sat by the girl’s bed, listening to her labored breathing. It was so deep it made the bedsprings squeak. All about them were bundles of soiled tissues, cotton buds, a half empty bottle of gin, red bath towels that had been drenched red. The prior afternoon and the night that followed had been its own kind of slaughter, not so different from that which she’d witnessed at work. Emotional destruction.

These had been the most difficult hours of Emily’s existence.

She patted her daughter’s sizzling forehead, trying not to look at the bandages wrapped around the lower part of her face. The wet fabric sloshed inwards and outwards with every one of her daughter’s desperate intakes of air. This detail broke Emily’s heart because it made it all seem too real. And it was real, despite the way the hours since leaving the hospice had blurred together, like those fitful times when dreaming and waking mingled. A blur of wishing versus t