I woke up again; I could hear whispers, and a quiet sobbing from the corner of the room. An unfamiliar voice spoke, “Don’t worry, ma’am, your son is completely out of danger. He’ll be right as rain very soon.”
“No,” mom whispered, “He won’t be.”
“I’m sorry?” asks the doctor, I assumed.
“Rain falls,” she answered, “It gets splattered, destroyed, as it hits the ground… and then it runs… picking up dirt and muck and disease…”
My mother trailed off… I wondered what had suddenly urged her to become so poetic. Morbidly poetic, true, but still poetic.
“Mom?” I croaked, my voice felt strange, raw, and painful.
“Drew!” she cried, I could feel her hands, and she had rushed to my side, and was stroking my face with fluttering hands. “How are you? Are you feeling better?”
I forced my eyes open with some effort, the room was still spinning, but again, it was not so bad as before. I took a laborious breath, “I’m… ok.”
I suddenly got a good look at her face. What I saw there shocked me.
My mother was old.