Half-Turned: Claimed by Blood and Hunger

CHAPTER 4: My Mother Doesn’t Remember My Name Tonight

•IVY•

“Mrs. Calloway, your daughter’s here.” The aide smiles as she says it to my mom on the other side warmly and what I know to be practiced as she holds the door open for me.

It’s the kind of smile people wear when they’re already preparing for whatever comes next. And I know that smile because I’ve worn it myself with patients.

I walk into the room and my stomach instantly sinks further.

My mother looks up from the chair by the window. She’s looking at me the same way you’d look at someone you have nothing to do with. There’s no flicker of recognition of any sort. She's basically studying me the way she’d study a stranger who knocked on her door during dinner.

“Mom,” I say, my voice coming out softer than I expect. “It’s me.”

A crease forms between her brows.

“I don’t have a daughter.”

The words make my shoulders slump.

“Mom.” I force a smile that doesn’t feel like mine. “It’s Ivy.”

Her fingers tighten around the blanket covering her lap as she looks past me, toward the hallway, then at the window like she’s scared and trying to find an exit.

The realization that my mother is looking for an escape to get away from me makes my eyes get teary and blurry. So, I face up towards the ceiling, breathing slowly and blinking, waiting for the years to go away.

“Who let you in here?” She says.

I stop breathing. And at the same time I feel the side resting her hand on my arm carefully as she guides me back one step.

“She’s had a rough evening,” she says quietly. “This happens sometimes. It comes and goes.”

I shake my head before she finishes. “No,” I say way too fast out of panic/ “No, it’s never been this bad.”

Her expression softens. “The doctor noted her decline has accelerated over the past few weeks.”

Not to my mother please. I can’t afford losing the only person keeping me sane.

“And we don’t know why yet.”

“You don’t have a reason.” I retort.

“We’re still running tests.”

Tests. Always tests. They’re always running tests! Always waiting? And there’s always another appointment, another scan, and somehow another answer that is never an answer!

I pull out the chair beside my mother anyway and sit down. The chair is not too close to her, but it’s close enough that she can see me for me to get the usual comforting feeling she always makes me feel. But still not close enough to frighten her.

She watches every movement politely and cautiously like we’re sharing a bus ride instead of a lifetime.

“You have his eyes.” She suddenly says, catching my full attention.

I blink. “What?”

She tilts her head a little bit to the right while I keep staring. “Whose eyes are those?”

My throat tightens.

“Whose eyes, Mom?”

Please mama. Tell me what you mean. Please talk to me, please remember. Just this once please. I beg you.

Her face pinches like thinking about it is hurting her, and like the question itself costs her more than she can afford.

I continue waiting for her to say something with my eyes pleading. And just when she opens her lips to say something, a tray falls to the ground:

The noise rattles her, and immediately she slips away from the moment and curls herself back into her hand.

I reach for her hand. It’s cold. So much colder than I expect, but I don’t leave it, and I just wrap my fingers around hers. She doesn’t grip mine back like she used to.

Years ago she’d squeeze back immediately at every visit and every single time. “‘I miss you’ she’d say to me before I even sat down. But now? Now there’s nothing.

“I’m your daughter,” I say, my voice barely rising above a whisper. “I promise.”

She pulls her hand away from mine like it’s burning her and like it never belonged in mine.

I look down before she sees my face.

I’m not gonna cry, at least not here. And I’m not going to try to make this about me.

This is about mom.

The woman at the front desk catches me on my way out.

“Ms. Calloway?” She says, making me barely stop on my tracks. “Before you go… do you have a minute?”

No. I don’t miss. Not when the woman who carried me for nine months and nursed me all my life no longer remembers me mostly because you guys don’t know how to do your job properly.

“I really don’t.”

“It’s about the account.”

My stomach drops again.

Of course it is.

“The balance has gone unpaid for two billing cycles.” She hesitates. “I know this isn’t the best time.”

No, you clearly don’t know s**t.

“But I needed to let you know.”

“How much?”

She turns the monitor toward me so I can see the number, and the stupid, disrespectful number stares right back at me.

I don’t say anything for a second as I give myself time to digest what I’m seeing properly, because if I open my mouth right now I think I might actually be sick right there on this ugly-looking counter.

Because the heck do they mean I’m to pay this huge sum of money?

Why the f*Ck even is healthcare not free?

Oh my God, I wish I was an animal or something, or even a mango because that way I wouldn’t have to think about bills, work, and a way to make my sick mother remember that she actually does have a daughter.

“I’ll figure it out.” The words scrape their way out of my mouth.

“If you’d like, we can discuss a payment plan—”

“I said…” I say sharply, now staring at the lady standing behind the counter. “I’ll figure it out.”

Age doesn’t say anything but nods in understanding like she’s watched this same conversation happen a hundred times before.

Maybe she has. I don’t really give two f*cks.

Neither do I give one.

I leave before she can say anything else.

The walk home is cold but I barely notice it because numbers keep circling through my head over and over again. My rent, the care facility, groceries, gas, and my own paycheck that never stretches far enough to fit the bills. And somewhere in between me running the bills over in my head again for the fourth time, I think about Callum.

The thought literally appears without permission.

Is my brain being serious? Out of everything in the world to think of, the stupid organ chose to think of him? Wow.

Well, thinking of him now should I even call? Would he answer? And what would I even say if he answers?

Uhm, ‘Hi. Remember when you refused to explain what I am? Could you maybe do that now? Because my life is falling apart, and I’m about to lose the last person who used to know my name.’

That s**t sounds so cringe and crazy that I laugh.

God.

I hate that he’s the first person I think of. I hate it even more than that number sitting on the receptionist’s screen.

I don’t call though. I just shove my phone deeper into my pocket and keep walking. And somewhere in the middle of me hating on myself and giving myself reasons why I deserve and don’t deserve any of the things happening in my life, my feet suddenly stop.

I frown.

What is it again ugh?

I look up at my surroundings and see that I’m not standing in my street.

I turn around slowly and nothing still looks familiar, I don’t see the landmarks I’d expect on my usual walk home. Everything is so different here including the strange building standing in front of me that seems to be pulling me in.

My pulse jumps.

I grab my phone and see that fifteen whole minutes have disappeared.

My breathing turns shallow.

I try to retrace it, the moment it happened, and the last thing I remember clearly is the number on that woman’s screen and the specific cold panic of thinking I don’t have this, I don’t have any of this, and that I was about to lose the last person who still remembered who I used to be.

That’s when it happened. It happened right when the fear got loud enough to drown everything else out.

I stand frozen on the sidewalk, with the only part of my body shaking hard being my hand, trying to figure out what this entire situation means, that maybe after all it isn’t random. And that maybe the moon, date, or the bad luck isn’t a coincidence. Maybe this is it, the exact kind of fear I’m standing in right now… because every time it gets bad enough… everything just disappears.

I slowly lift my head to look at the old building in front of me. The building with bricks darkened with age, and black windows. The creepy building that nothing about it should matter to me.

Then something white catches my eye.

A small white card that’s neatly tucked into the doorframe, placed exactly at eye level on purpose and waiting.

My stomach twists, but my feet carry me closer anyway.

I pick up the card and see my name scribbled across the front of it.

In a handwriting I don’t recognize.