In the Morning

I remember the painted pink and blue bedroom walls. Shadows of the night bathing the room on one side and the dim light of the lamp from the lounge room on the other. I remember walking, feeling the floor beneath my feet transition from cold tile to carpet. I remember pulling back my hot pink fluffy blanket and the feeling of my long pyjama pants rubbing between the sheets as I get into bed. I remember, at ten years old, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark solar system stickers on the ceiling above my head. I remember wondering if, in the morning – when I wake up to start getting ready for school – if I will have my parents in the house with me. Or if I will even have a mum at all come tomorrow.

This had been the first night back in my own bed in a couple of days – maybe even a week or so. Even as a young child, your own bed is so much more comforting than the one in your aunt's spare room, or the fold up couch at a family friends'. Yet, despite how comfortable I felt back in my own bedroom once again, I still found it hard to fall asleep that night. I was on lookout. My eyes may have been closed from time to time, but my ears were always listening for any sound in the house. Making sure my dad's steps were still moving about in the loungeroom and kitchen, hoping never to hear the beep of someone picking up the phone in the night.

That phone never meant anything good. Picking up a phone in the night meant needing to call someone, which meant Mum was in a bad way.

Sometimes it wasn't so bad. There were times they could get a hold of the doctor and he would be able to say if her symptoms were bad enough to come in, or if to wait a couple more days and see. Other times it was bad. They wouldn't be calling to get a hold of a doctor, you don't always need a doctor to tell you the obvious. Those times, it would be my aunt on the other end of the line.

"Yeah, I'm going to need to run her up to emergency. The pain is only increasing; she's gone really pale – light-headed. Would you mind spending the night with Jam?"

There were times though, when it was really bad. Times when they couldn't afford to wait for my aunt to get to the house before they had to leave for the hospital. Times when I would wake up scarred from a nightmare, go looking for my parents, and be completely and utterly alone in a big dark house.

Well, alone save for the miniature poodle, but she isn't all that much of a comfort in emergency situations. She'd get excited thinking people were rushing about because it was a party, and not someone suffering from massive internal lesions, bleeding, and infection.

But those times didn't happen often, and when they did it wasn't like that for very long. One of the small mercies during this time was that my aunt lived around the corner, quite literally.

It was always so different when my aunt was there instead of my parents, I could always just tell. Back then I didn't know how exactly I always knew, but now I do. It was always the loudness of the silence. At night you'd either hear my dad's snoring or hear Mum watching the tv at a quiet volume when she had trouble sleeping (which was most nights). Come the morning, it would be the sound of the kettle boiling for their first of many coffees, or the clank of ceramic bowls as Dad gets his cereal.

With my aunt it was different, it was just the roar of silence. She'd be too worried of the noise waking me to make a cup of tea, or make some toast for breakfast. She'd be watching the news at the other end of the house on the small TV at the lowest possible volume. Ironically, for a child that avoids going to sleep in case she hears a noise, it's the lack of sound that wakes her. I'd always know when it was my aunt in the house and not Mum and Dad, but I would still find myself hoping – every time. I'd tiptoe out as quiet as I could, knowing how to move my feet around on the tiles to make the least amount of noise. I'd peep my head the smallest bit around the corner to see who sat in front of the TV watching the news, knowing each time who it would be, yet always hoping it was Mum.

I remember tiptoeing back to bed, with thoughts that were too big for my little mind. Thoughts swirling too fast, and I moving too quickly over the tiles to be bothered by their icy touch on my feet. I remember getting back into bed, the sheets less smooth to touch, the bed less comforting. I remember rolling over and acting as if I were still asleep. I was too young then to understand that I was trying to fool myself, as much as anyone, else that I was still sleeping - that it was all a bad dream.

"Good morning, Jam. It's Aunty Paula," she called from my doorway minutes later. "Dad had to take Mum up to the hospital last night, so I'll be taking you to school today." But nothing stopped the day from continuing, not even the whispered prayers of a child.

School began for the day and I returned to my seat - backrow, third from the left. It's where all the tall kids sat, regardless of if they had bad grades and needed to be seated up the front. I continued on with where things were left off the day before; pretending I knew my timestables so as not to give people another reason to tease me.

The bell began to ring in the distance, 3pm had come at last. On any other day, at any other time, I would have been overjoyed. When I left that classroom that day I knew it was to go somewhere I both didn't want to see, yet was desperate to get to.

Brisbane's Wesley Hospital to this day is still a place I look on with disdain and discomfort. The smell, the Wesley Hospital smell – different from all other hospitals – is the strangest mix of disinfectant, cafeteria food, and sickness. There is no other place I've found with a smell exactly like it, similar maybe, but never the true exact match to this one. I can't map perfectly in my mind the path from the car park to her room, but I remember the landmarks that I used to guide me on days like those. There were the artworks - put up on specific walls in an attempt to spread some sort of cheer; paintings of all kinds with every imaginable shade of bright colour. Clearest of all in my mind was the scale model of the hospital and all its grounds. I remember this most of all because to me, in the entire hospital, this was the closest thing to entertainment, the closest thing to a toy – a cold, dark dollhouse.

Ignoring the signs about touching, I'd place my hands on the glass box encasing the little buildings. Bringing my face close, I'd imagine a mini me walking the small grey halls, same as the real me does. Pulling me away from the glass, Dad lead me on, both of us avoiding meeting the eyes of others – especially the nurses.

Before even walking in her room, you hear the sound of softly playing worship music. Stepping through the open door the many bunches of bright flowers draw your eye to their colours. Her smiles always tried to rival the brightness of the flowers. It was her mask that she used to make you believe 'everything's okay'.

I stopped looking for her smile and started looking in her eyes. They couldn't lie to you, even if they so badly wanted to. If they were bright, you knew things were good. If they were sunken and cloudy, you knew things were... Things were not good.

...*...*...*...

I'd like to tell you there's an ending to all of this; a happy ending or a fitting sad finale to a sad story. Either way it would have been something. But there isn't – there's no happy ending, or succinct finish – there's no completion to this tale. You may find some kind of resolution in the fact that my mother did in fact survive – but only after multiple surgeries many years later. But the anxiousness, the awkwardness; they never left me after that.

To this day I feel them, sitting there on my shoulders, like two little devils with no angel to counter their influence in my life. To this day I still go to bed, feel the floor change from tile to carpet under my footsteps, get into the soft sheets, look up at the ceiling above me and wonder if, in the morning, would I wake up and still be that little girl.