One Night Stand With My Enemy

CHAPTER 7

Gwyn

My body hurts and my head is killing me, but I force my body out of bed. I am exhausted after three shows and the time I spent with Gareth last night. Thank f**k I decided to do my first solo dances on a Friday and not on a Saturday night and not during a working day. That gives me the day to ponder on what the f**k I am going to do about Gareth and if I should bother trying to call Luke and try to explain myself. f**k, this really isn't a headache I need right now. I have been doing just fine for the past six months. I have finally gotten over my hurt and embarrassment and I have moved on, made my own choices and started a life that doesn't have any space for my past.

My phone rings, making me groan, the noise making my headache worse. I quickly answer the phone, pressing a hand to my temple to try and get some relief from the pain. "Gwyn speaking." I say in greeting, wondering who the hell calls on a Saturday at seven thirty in the damn morning.

"Gwyn, it is Michelle." Hearing her voice has me sitting up straight, ignoring my headache. Michelle has been my mother's nurse for the past five months and whenever she calls, it is never good news. When we found out my mother has brain cancer, we knew she didn't have long and we tried to make the best of what time she had left. At first my mother was ready to just spend her time with her daughter and as much as I hated that she wasn't willing to fight the cancer, I knew that it wasn't my choice to make. Brain cancer isn't just something you come back from and seeing as my mother had never really been the same since my father died eight years ago and my mother said she was more than ready to be with her husband again, I didn't push her to go for treatment. Five months ago, she decided that she wanted to fight the cancer. I took her to the doctor the day after she told me she was ready to fight and the doctor had started her on trials a week later. So far my mother has had her bad days, but she has also had great days. She is truly fighting this monster and I am proud of her. Sometimes I feel guilty for not being right there with her, but we had both decided that if she was going to fight it, she couldn't have me hovering over her at every corner. My mother had made her house a home for two other patients suffering from brain cancer that had traveled to California for their treatments. I love the bond that she has formed with Daisy and Rachel, but I fear that if one of these women die because of cancer, my mother will lose hope and I am not ready for my mother to lose hope, not when it seems like her treatments are working.

Every time I answer the phone and find Michelle on the other side, my heart stops and I wonder if this is the last call I will get. If this is where she tells me that my mother didn't wake up from her nap or that she stopped breathing. "How can I help?" I ask her, my throat tight, making it hard to say anything more.

"Dear, I think it is best that you come to the hospital. Your mother had a stroke this morning and it doesn't look good." She says and my heart sinks. This is what I was hoping to never hear but I knew it was coming. "She is stable right now, but it doesn't look like she is going to make it through the night." Michelle says and I can feel tears stream down my face as I nod, but then I realize that she can't see me.

"I will be there in an hour." I tell her and then end the call. I get in a shower and put the temperature so hot that my skin is blood red by the time I get out of the shower twenty minutes later. I know I should probably rush, but it is like my mind can't comprehend time at the moment. I stand in front of the foggedup mirror for a few minutes and take in my distorted reflection. Tears have been streaming down my face non-stop, but I haven't stopped to actually acknowledge them. I refuse to just accept that she is gone before she is actually gone, but I know I will need to make a few calls that I really didn't want to make. I might not have spoken to Luke in the past six months, but I know he would want to know about my mother and I know my mother would want him to know. I make my way out the bathroom and find some comfortable clothes to wear, knowing I will be at the hospital for a while, then I pick up my phone and make the call I dreaded to make. Luke answers on the second ring. "f**k Gwyn, I have been wondering when I would ever hear from you again." Luke says and hearing his voice is what makes me fall apart. "Baby, what's wrong?" He asks and hearing the old f*****g nickname just makes another c***k in my armor. My sobs come out harder and I try, I really try so hard to hold it in, to hold myself together, but every sob forces its way past my lips.

"Mom." I choke out. "It's my mom." I finally got past my lips.

"Where are you?" He asks and I can hear the pain in his voice. He loves my mother like his own and I know he has been visiting her the past six months, my mom kept telling me how worried he was and how bad he felt about that fact that he didn't even realize that I had feelings for him. I didn't care that he went to see her, she needed the company, but I refused to be stuck in a life where I was moping around after my best friend while he had someone else in his arms. I wanted to make sure that I felt nothing for him by the time I saw him again, but now I will have to face him far before I am ready.

"I am going to the hospital now. They told me to come say goodbye. I thought you should know." I tell him and then end the call, not waiting for him to say anything else. I need to pull myself together and get to my mother. Maybe if I am there, she will find a way to pull through.

It takes me fifteen minutes to get to the hospital and five minutes to find my mom's room. I stand at the door to her room for a minute, trying to prepare myself for what I am going to see, but I realize I will never be ready to see my mother die. So, instead of delaying longer, I walk into the room and stop when I see my mother lying on the bed. There are tubes attatched to her and a heartmonitor, measuring every beat of her heart. I don't need to be a doctor to know that her heartbeat is too slow. I try to remember how my mother looked before the cancer, before my father passed away. I try to remember her smile before it was laced with sadness, try to remember her eyes before it had lost its spark, but it is hard to remember the sound of her laugh when I am looking at how fragile she had become. She doesn't have any of her beautiful red hair thanks to the Chemo, her skin has lost its golden glow and has turned into a translucent white. Where she had curves, there is nothing more than skin and bones now. The strong woman that used to dance with me in the kitchen while we cooked, the woman that used to stand next to the netball field and jumped up and down as I made the goal, she was no longer here.

I take a seat next to her bed and take her thin hand in mine and just watch her, wondering how I missed how thin she had gotten. Guilt starts to eat at me as I think about all the time I have wasted by not being by her side the past few months. I know we had both agreed that I needed to keep living my life and she needed to fight this her way, but I should've fought her on that. I should've told her that I would stay until she was in the clear. I should've been there. "Gwyneth?" My mother's voice pulls me out of my head and relief slams so hard into me that I let out a laugh at the sight of her blue eyes.

"Mom." I say as I wrap my arms around her.

"Oh, my baby girl." Her arms don't wrap around me, but she does press her head into me. When she talks, it is like it is taking everything in her to get her lungs to hold enough breath to get the words out and I hate to hear her like this. "Baby, I need you to listen to me." My mother says and I shake my head. I know what is coming and I don't want to hear it. "Baby, please." I can feel my tears begin to stream down my face again, but I force myself back in my chair, knowing that I will be wasting precious time by refusing her this. "I am not going to make it." She begins and I shake my head. I knew this is where she was going to go, but I don't want to hear it.

"No, you said you were going to fight, so don't you dare give up." I tell her.

"I have fought my darling and I lost. I can't do this anymore. Baby, I can hear his voice, I can hear your father calling to me and I know that doesn't make sense to you and you probably think that I have gone insane, but I am not. I want to go home, baby. I don't want to fight anymore. I am so tired." She says and a sob leaves me. "I will always be there for you, my baby. I will always look over you, but you have to let me go." She says and I shake my head. "I love you, my baby girl." She says softly and I look up to find her eyes closing slowly.

"No, please don't go mom. I'm not ready. Please don't leave me." I tell her, but she shakes her head.

"It is time, baby." She says, but I keep shaking my head. When her eyes close, they don't open again and my whole world falls apart.