I got the call soon after I’d sat down at my desk. It was my Grampa and he was telling me that my mother had just been brought to the ER. He said it didn’t look good.

I worked at the hospital, but in a another building. So I raced to my car and sped towards the ER. My Grampa was just inside the entrance waiting for me. He grabbed me, hugged me and then led me to a special room the ER had for family. We all sat quietly. Numb. Waiting.

My mother didn’t make it in the end and everything that happened after I stepped into the ER is only remembered in flashes. A doctor with flecks of blood on her pristine white coat trying to explain what happened. My Gran sniffling in a chair. Nurses coming to me with paperwork. One asking me if I wanted a lock of her hair to keep. I always thought that was weird.

I remember being led in to see mom one more time to say goodbye, and wishing I hadn’t gone. Now my last memory of her is lying dead in the ER instead of smiling as she’d been the just the night before.