NADIA.
By four-thirty, my mother was asleep with a tube in her nose.
I stood in the doorway of her private hospital room, one hand locked around the strap of my bag, and for a few seconds I could not move.
The room smelled like metallic medicine - a smell my mother used to hate when she was still strong and healthy. Now she couldn't do without them.
I'd learned to stop noticing all of that. You learn to stop noticing a lot of things when someone you love is dying in increments, especially the way the nurses' eyes go soft when they see you coming, because they know your loved one was running out of time.
Machines blinked beside Mum's bed. Clear fluid dripped into her vein one patient drop at a time. The curtains were half-open, letting in a strip of pale afternoon light that made her
