Ms. Luther turned her attention to Mama, since she had the more reasonable and far less threatening voice and look.
"Very well, I'll make an exception to our rules, but only for now. If you return, you will have to have the trustee go through a proper legal procedure.
She stepped back, and we entered. The lobby was bare. The chairs and sofas looked vintage but rarely used. On the table between them was a brochure of some kind. There was an unlit pole lamp beside one of the chairs. Against the far wall was a desk with nothing on it and a dark cherry-wood grandfather clock against the wall to the right of that. The lobby walls were otherwise bare, except for a sin that read "No Smoking."
Ms. Luther turned to her right to lead us to a door. The floor was black marble with light white streaks that reminded me of the Milky Way. Our footsteps echoed because the building was deathly silent. It was truly like walking into a giant tomb, and it gave me the chills.
"Please be as quiet as possible," she said.
Mama reached back to put her arm around my shoulders to bring me alongside her. Brenda was right on Ms. Luther's heels, her hands clenched, her body poised and arched slightly forward like a bow about to shoot an arrow. Ms. Luther opened the door to a short corridor, at the end of which was a typical- looking nurses' station that you could find in any hospital. The two nurses behind the counters looked our way curiously. The air had the scent of detergents used to scrub floors and walls. Everything looked surgicalroom aseptic.
Ms. Luther stopped at the third door on the left, put her hand on the doorknob, and turned to us.
"I ask only that you respect my situation and don't stay longer than a half hour," she said, and waited for some response before turning the doorknob.
Brenda looked as if she would lunge at her.
"Okay," Mama said quickly.
Ms. Luther opened the door and stepped to the side. The roam also resembled a typical hospital room, the walls a light blue, a set of windows to the right and the left of the motorized hospital bed. There was an intravenous bag on a stand, still with some liquid, detached but still at the side of the bed. A heart monitor beeped on the right. The floor was of the same tile that was in the lobby. It was all Spartan without a painting, a vase of flowers, anything to add color and warmth.
Daddy was slightly propped up, his head lying a bit to the left, his eyes closed. Despite his condition, his complexion was surprisingly robust. I thought. It gave me a surge of optimism. Maybe he had begun a miraculous recuperation.
"What are you doing for him?" Brenda demanded, as if she were thinking the same thing.
Ms. Luther, who remained at the doorway, smirked. "There's nothing more to do for him under the circumstances.' she replied,"I'll give you the contact number for his trustee, and you can have him put you in touch with Dr. Blocker, who administers to our patients."
"Administers what?" Brenda fired back at her.
"Peace and tranquility at a most troubling time," she answered without flinching. "A half hour," she added, and stepped out, closing the door behind her.
"That woman must be a direct descendant of a Nazi commander who ran a concentration camp," Brenda muttered after her.
Mama moved slowly to Daddy's bedside. Brenda brought the one chair in the room to her, and Mama sat, taking Daddy's hand in hers. I stood there looking down at him. Brenda moved to the window and gazed out, her body still very tight. I noticed her hands were clenched into fists that she kept at her side.
"Oh, Matt." Mama began, rubbing his hand softly. "This was so wrong, so wrong. I know what you hoped to do, but you didn't protect us by doing this. I believed in my vows, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. We love you. Matt. It's not and never has been a one-way street when it comes to that. We should have been at your side all the time, throughout this ordeal."
I looked at Mama. She was lazing at Daddy and talking to him as if she believed he could hear every word, as if they were having one of their normal conversations at dinner. Brenda listened but didn't turn to look. She kept her shoulders high, her head slightly back, as though she were experiencing a whipping.
"Now you're in this horrible cold place with people who never saw you as we did. Why?" Mama asked, her voice cracking. "Oh why, my love?"
She lowered her head until her forehead could rest against his hand. I tried to breathe, but my chest had hardened into cement. When I looked at Daddy. I thought he appeared just as he would in any deep sleep, without Death slipping in beside him and entering his body to claim it.
Why did Death want to claim it? Why couldn't he leave us alone until Mama and Daddy were old and gray and tired of struggling against maladies of age, like so many other elderly people? Why couldn't he let Daddy live to see Brenda and me marry and have children of our own? What had he done to deserve this? I felt the need to shout, but I swallowed it all back.
The heart monitor continued its slow but regular beep.
Brenda finally turned and looked at Mama. "Look at her. We shouldn't stay here more than a half hour, anyway," she whispered to me. "It's too much for her.'
From where did she get the strength? I wondered, Was it that she never stopped being a competitor? She could even compete against Death? Or did she really mean, It's too much for me, for us?
She walked around to Mama's side and put her hand on Mama's shoulder. Mama slowly raised her head and looked at her and then at Daddy.
"He's so peaceful." she said. "Maybe this was the best way."
> "Not for us." Brenda insisted.
I knew what she meant. We all knew now Daddy's purpose for what he had done, but what he hadn't anticipated was how much we would hate ourselves for how we had reacted to it. We now knew the sickness had turned him into the monster. We now knew that the man both Brenda and I had called Daddy and Mama had called her husband had died long before he had begun this attempt to stop us from mourning his death so bitterly.