THE Only One I Have.

Two days.

I had not gone home properly, I had not gone to class. I had eaten whatever the hospital vending machine offered at odd hours and slept in the chair beside Carol's bed in increments that didn't qualify as real sleep and I had watched nurses come and go and monitors beep and the light outside the window change from day to night to day again and Carol had not opened her eyes once.

I texted Zara again yesterday morning.

This time the ticks had stayed grey.

 Like her phone was off or dead or somewhere it couldn't receive anything and that was a different kind of worry from the read and ignored situation two days ago. I had called twice and both times it went straight to voicemail and I had sat with that in the back of my mind alongside everything else and told myself there was a reasonable explanation and I would find out what it was when Carol woke up and things settled.

The morning nurse came in at eight. A different one from the night shift, older and efficient. She moved around the bed checking the monitor, adjusting something on the drip, making notes on her tablet with the quiet focus of someone whose attention was entirely on the task.

I watched her from the chair with my knees pulled up and my phone in my hand and thought about nothing specifically and everything generally.

Zara was not responding, Carol lying there and the illness the doctor had described in that corridor two days ago. The nurse finished her checks and made a quiet note and looked at me briefly with the kind of professional warmth that didn't overstep. "She's doing well. Her vitals are stable and she'll be fine."

"Thank you," I said.

She left.

The room settled back into its beeping quiet.

I looked at Carol.

And then Carol's head moved.

Just slightly. Just a small turn against the pillow that was so subtle I almost missed it. But I had been watching that face for two days and I did not miss it.

I sat up.

Her eyelids moved. Slowly, with the particular heaviness of someone coming back from a very long way away. Her lips parted slightly.

Then she said, "Brielle."

My name in her voice after two days of silence hit me somewhere I wasn't prepared for and I was out of the chair before I had decided to move and my hand was on hers on the blanket and I said "I'm here. I'm right here."

Her eyes opened. Unfocused at first and then slowly finding me and settling.

"You're here," she said. Like she was confirming it to herself.

"I've been here the whole time." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Don't move. I'm getting the doctor."

Doctor Simmons came and did her checks and asked Carol questions and shone a light in her eyes and looked at the monitor and made notes and declared herself satisfied with what she found. Carol tracked everything with the slightly bewildered expression of a person whose body had taken a decision without consulting them and was still catching up to the consequences.

When the doctor left I sat back in my chair and looked at Carol and Carol looked at me and neither of us said anything for a moment.

"You look terrible," Carol said finally.

"You're in a hospital bed," I said. "You don't get to comment on how anyone looks."

Something moved across her face. Not quite a smile. Something more complicated than that.

"How long?" she asked.

"Two days."

She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again they were slightly brighter. "You stayed."

"Of course I stayed."

Another silence. The monitor beeped between us.

"Brielle." Her voice dropped into something quieter. "I'm sorry." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "I said things that I…" another stop. 

I looked at her.

"I was angry," she continued. "And I was scared and I took it out on you in ways I cannot justify and I am sorry. Genuinely. The things I called you.." her jaw tightened, “.. I'm so sorry Bri."

The room was very quiet.

I had waited two weeks for this apology and had imagined several versions of how I would receive it… coolly, distantly, making her work for it the way she had made me bleed for the words that needed apologizing for.

Instead I just felt tired.

"It's okay," I said.

She looked at me. "Okay?"

"I hear you." I leaned forward in the chair. "And we will talk about all of it properly when you are out of this bed, home and stable." I held her gaze. "But right now I need you to tell me something and I need you to actually tell me the truth."

She waited.

"The Coronary Artery Disease," I said. "How long have you actually known?"

The shift in her expression was small but I caught it. The particular stillness of a person whose carefully maintained secret has just been named out loud.

"The doctor told you," she said.

" Carol..." I kept my voice even because she was sick. "Why didn't you tell me."

She looked at the ceiling for a moment. "Because you would have worried."

"I am worrying now."

"I know." She brought her eyes back to me. "But I didn't want to be something you had to manage Brielle. You were in school. You had your life. I didn't want to become…" she searched for the word, “... a burden."

I stared at her.

This woman. This infuriating, complicated, impossible woman who had called me a burden two weeks ago and had been quietly refusing to be one herself for two years while her heart did what it was going to do with or without anyone's permission.

"You are not a burden," I said. "You are.." I stopped because the sentence had several possible endings and I needed a moment to find the right one. "You are the only only one I have. Do you understand that? Whatever else we are to each other and whatever we've said and however complicated it gets — you remain the only one I have."

Her eyes went bright.

I felt mine doing the same thing and I blinked back firmly because I had a rule about crying in front of people and I was not breaking it today.

"So you don't get to keep things like this from me," I continued. "Not anymore so the medication, the appointments, all of it… we do that together from now on. Agreed?"

She nodded once. Small and tight.

"Good." I sat back. "I'm going to get you food, you must be hungry. The doctor gave me a list of what you should eat to help the situation and I am following it exactly and you are going to eat everything I bring without complaining about it."

The almost-smile came back. "You know, you would make a good mother.”

"Thanks," I gave a faint smile.

I squeezed her hand once, stood up and picked up my bag.

Whatever had happened and whatever was still unresolved between us, I was not losing Carol. I could not afford to lose Carol. She was difficult and she was flawed and she had kept things from me and said things I was still healing from but she was here and she was the only parent I had ever actually had and I was keeping her alive if it was the absolute last thing I did.

That was simply the decision.

I went home and cooked. Properly following the dietary notes the doctor had given me with the focus of someone taking an exam.. no excess salt, no fried anything, lean protein, vegetables, nothing that was going to ask Carol's heart to work harder than necessary.

It took me an hour and a half and I packed everything carefully and on my way back to the hospital I made a decision to stop at Zara's house.

Two days of silence was not Zara. Even at her lowest, even in the deepest part of her grief after her mum died, Zara had never gone two days without responding to me. The grey ticks were still sitting on my last message and the calls were still going to voicemail and I needed to see with my own eyes that she was okay.

The house was locked.

I stood on the front step and knocked and got nothing. I walked around to the side window I knew had a view of the kitchen and the kitchen was empty. I called her number standing on the pavement outside and listened to it ring out and go to voicemail for the third time in two days.

I stood there for a moment with my phone in my hand. 

I texted her.

Z I'm outside your house right now. Where are you? 

Grey ticks.

I got back in the car and drove back to the hospital.

Carol ate everything.

 She ate all of it and I sat beside her and watched. We talked about small things while she ate. The hospital food she had apparently been given earlier and found deeply offensive, the nurse who she described as lovely, a program she used to watch that she wanted to catch up on when she got home and basically other normal things.

When she was done she leaned back against her pillows and looked at me with eyes that were clearer than they had been this morning and said quietly, "I love you so much Bri"

"I know and I love you too,” I said.

And I meant it. She nodded and closed her eyes.

I looked at her for a long moment.

Then I looked at my phone.

Still grey.

I put it back in my bag and looked at the window and the evening outside it and thought about Zara and where she was and why she wasn't responding and whether I was overreacting.

And then, a knock on the door.

I turned.

"Can I come in?"