But Mom fought. She fought through chemo, the radiation, and the nights when she couldn’t get out of bed.
That was the moment I realized that if someone in this family was going to stay when things got ugly, it would have to be me.
“Are we ever coming back?”
Some evenings, I helped her walk to the bathroom. Other nights, I held the bucket when she got sick and helped her bathe when she was too weak to stand.
Jason did homework at the kitchen table while I cooked macaroni or canned soup.
I worked evenings at a grocery store after high school. I studied in hospital waiting rooms, memorizing biology terms under fluorescent lights while Mom slept through treatments.
One afternoon during her fourth chemo round, I watched a nurse gently adjust Mom’s blanket.
I worked evenings at a grocery store after high school.
The nurse smiled at me. “You holding up okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
But something about the way she spoke to Mom stayed with me. Calm and steady, as if sickness didn’t scare her.
On the taxi ride home, I told Mom, “I think I want to be a nurse.”
She looked at me with tired eyes. “You’d be a good one.”
Mom handled her diagnosis like a boss and actually survived.
“You’d be a good one.”
***
The doctors said the word “remission” when I was 19. It felt like someone had finally opened a window after years in a dark room.
Jason graduated from high school. I finished nursing school. Life slowly started moving forward again.
And Dad? He disappeared. We heard things here and there. Someone said he married Brittany. Someone else said that he started a consulting business. But he never called, wrote, or showed up.
Eventually, we stopped expecting him to.
And Dad? He disappeared.
Ten years after he walked out, I was the head nurse at a long-term neurological care facility.
We took the cases that most hospitals didn’t want.
