The Tattoo Part 3

You can find the previous part here

Part 3

As soon as I walked through the hospital doors everything seemed to speed up. It was like all around me was chaos and as I was just stood in the midst of it. I was just about to faint when Jemma ran up to me and practically dragged me to my mum’s room. I stopped just outside it, staring at the door. I looked at Jemma.

“Was it really bad?” My voice came out in almost a whisper and the tears were brimming in my eyes.

“Maybe you should just see for yourself.” She held my arm, I took a deep breath and walked in.

Mum was lying on a bed with tubes sticking into her arms. She looked like she was asleep but as I approached she opened her eyes. I think she tried to smile at me but it ended up being a wince. I sat down next to her and held her arm.

“Hey Mum. What are you doing in here?” I was choking on my words and I could see that Mum was trying not to cry too. Jemma had snuck out of the room quietly.

“Sorry to spoil your trip, I know you’d needed that.” Mum said weakly. I told her that that didn’t matter now and that she didn’t answer my question. She just sighed and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Mamma come on,” I squeezed her hand “why won’t you tell me what’s going on?” She shook her head.

“Not now.” I dropped the subject and I told her about all the beautiful places I’d been. After a while a nurse came in to check on her and she went to sleep so I decided to go find Jemma.

As it happened, she was in the canteen and she’d just bought me some food.

“Oh my goodness you’re a saint!” I collapsed onto a seat and dug in. Jemma sat down opposite me and watched me eat for a while. I was expecting her to ask how Mum was but she just said nothing. After her 5 minutes of silence I looked up at her. There were tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” She says, wiping the tears from her face “I just hate hospitals.” Now that she mentioned it, I didn’t think they were that great either. The whole place stank of antiseptic and depression. Nobody comes to a hospital for fun.

“Do you have any idea what happened Jem?” I was playing with the food on my plate. I suddenly didn’t feel very hungry.

“All I know is that she was at the bake sale doing really well and the next thing I knew she was complaining that her arm hurt and then collapsed right in front of me. I was terrified.” The tears were still running and she grabbed my hand across the table. “I’ve been here ever since”

I thanked her and tried to work out what had caused all this. To anyone who didn’t know her really well might think that she’d been perfectly fine recently but I knew that there had been something going on the past couple of months that had upset her. I felt like I wouldn’t sleep for days.

When I got up that morning after the predicted sleepless night of running through the past months in my head, I stared at my face in the mirror. I looked terrible. My raven black hair that I normally took so much care over was matted into huge knots. Under my eyes were massive purple bags and I had a brand-new stress zit forming on my chin. Even after attempting to cover these things up I still looked pretty bad. I guess you can’t disguise the fact that your mother had a heart attack.

Mum was looking a little perkier that morning but she still wasn’t letting onto anything. I had bought her a new baking magazine and she was going through all the recipes, humming and ahing at them. I was just watching her and the nurses walk in and out. Apart from depressing, hospitals were also incredibly boring. I really wanted to have a chat with Mum like we always did but she just seemed distant. I decided to play our favourite song, ‘Where you lead’ by Carole King and I could see a smile creeping onto her face as she hummed along.

“I think you’ll have a Luke one day.” She sighed. Gilmore Girls was our favourite show and obviously Luke and Lorelei were our favourite couple. Mum had joked about marrying a café owner when I’d first discovered what my tattoo was, and I’m not going to lie I had fantasised a little too.

By the time lunch had arrived for Mum we’d almost exhausted all the approachable subjects so she let me go and get my lunch. Hospital restaurants are so much worse when you’re alone. It’s so much easier to notice the cloud hanging over everyone’s head. As I queued up for food I felt a weight pushing down on my shoulders.

“What can I get you?” A voice almost as depressing as the atmosphere spoke into my thoughts.

“Sorry?” I heard a sharp beeping noise coming from my wrist and as I looked down I watched my tattoo disappear.