When we almost lose those close to us, does the world stop turning? Do the birds outside sit in their nests and cry silently alongside us? Does the breeze still as we grieve, not wishing to disrupt us? I thought so… The hospital was cold, but I didn’t care. My mind was running at a million miles per second, yet the only thing I could focus on was the navy blue, childlike designs on the walls and the way the waiting room seat felt under my weight. I was surrounded by those who love me, but their words never made it past my ears; their solemn “I’m sorrys” and “You’ll be okays” only managed to make my stomach twist and churn. How could they know that? My mom was the one on her deathbed. So why did they get to say I would be okay?
My mom had been fine. She was out swimming with friends at Ivywild before she had gone into the hospital to get something checked, but she didn’t come back home that night. They found that she had contracted the rarest form of flesh-eating bacteria from the pool water, so they rushed her into emergency surgery. I was only informed that something had happened after she was out. The first time I saw her was after her third surgery. She looked so… wrong. Her face was ghostly white, dark circles resting below her closed eyes, her arms limp at her sides. She was connected to every machine you could think of. The cords that covered the ground around her hospital bed made her look like some kind of medical experiment. Every beep sounded like an alarm going off in my brain, reminding me just how dire the situation truly was, over and over again.
The bacteria moved fast, burrowing into her at a rate far higher than the surgeons could stop it. They gave her a 3% chance of survival. “You have two options. We can remove her colon to try and save her, or we can take her off of life support and put her on comfort care,” the doctor said to my grandma over the phone. Our choice was obvious. “Save her. No matter what you have to do. Save my daughter,” my grandma said. We got to see her one more time before the surgery. Nurses and CNAs gave us hugs, looking at me with that same sorry look that everyone else had given me. I knew my mom was in a bad position, I knew that what she had was But I held onto hope that she would be okay.
Hope is the thing
with feathers
That perches in
the soul,
And sings the tune
without the words,
And never stops at all.
—Emily Dickinson
I’m not a believer in a higher power; I never have been and never will be. But there is no way to describe what happened other than to claim it was a miracle. My mom went from her deathbed to walking in less than a week. She went from a coma to talking and laughing with the staff, even trying to set my sister up on a date. “Oh my god… can you put her back under, please?” my sister had asked sarcastically the first day we saw her. “Don’t you dare, young man!” my mother had said, making everyone in the room laugh. We didn’t talk much about what happened. I just held her hand as family member after family member came into the room to see her. She had fewer cords, fewer beeping machines. She finally looked like… her. A 3% chance. That is all my mom was given. That was all I was given to hope on. A 3% chance is what saved my mom’s life. A 3% chance is why I can say that I didn’t lose my mom. Just a 3% chance.
