White, sterile walls. A warm fuzzy blanket and a large metal bed tilting me into a sitting position. Steady beeping. I know where I am.

I leap upwards with a scream of, “Mum,” but then hands grip me, pushing me downwards, everything is fuzzy, like I’m still stuck in a dream. I sink back on to the bed, looking up into the blue eyes of a stranger, a nurse.

“Hello, Alyssa,” she says calmly, her hands digging painfully into my shoulders. I stare numbly up at her, rubbing my eyes blearily and focusing all my efforts on what she is saying. “My name’s Patricia, but you can call me Patty. I’ll be your nurse.”

“Oh god,” I say hoarsely, a flood of words sitting on my tongue, waiting to dump out at this strange, old woman doing everything she can to stop me from moving. But I don’t, I just stare at her with hot tears building in my eyes and say the only thing I can think to say. “Where’s Mum?”

“She went to go get breakfast. She said to tell you she’d be there soon.”

I give a barely perceptible nod, and then a bigger nod after that because I don’t think she saw. “Okay,” I whisper under my breath, and she lets go of me and sits down on a wheeled chair next to the bed.

I stare at her in frustration, wondering how long it will be before she finally leaves. I need some time alone, to think, to slip my fist around what’s happening and finally understand it. She seems to read my mind though, because she says, “Someone needs to be near you at all times, Alyssa. I’m sorry but it’s the way it has to be.”

I take a sharp breath and study her out of the corner of my eyes. She’s older, with greying hair and a thin-lipped smile, rather short, with dull blue eyes. She doesn’t even try to hide her interest in me, studying me carefully with a strange look in her eyes. “We’re very glad to have you here, Alyssa.”

“Thanks,” I mumble under my breath, unsure what to say. I know why I’m here, I know why she’s so interested in me, but I can’t think of what to say. The world is still so hazy, as if shrouded in mist.

“Your Mum wanted you to be here,” she says, as if it’s supposed to be a comfort. “She wants you to be okay, and you should too. For her sake if not for anyone else’s.”

I stare at her with my eyebrows knitting together, my heart giving a small skitter within me. It’s clear what she’s trying to do, trying to convince me that this life is the best one for me to be in. Trying to get me to rethink what I did last night. But her words only press hard against me, trapping me so tightly that I know I’m still willing to do anything to get out of this crazy mess.

Patty seems to sense my displeasure with that answer, because she says, “I understand your need for privacy, Alyssa, and so does your mother. We don’t want to violate that. But we also care too much about you to let you place yourself in danger, and we fear what pain you might cause yourself if we leave you alone for too long.”

I twirl a lock of hair around my finger, and lower my head, knowing exactly what she means and feeling irritation burning in me because of it. “How long will you make me sit here, then?”

She gives a small chuckle, although I didn’t mean it as a joke. “We’re trying to get you home as soon as possible, Alyssa, but you need to work with us to make that happen. Until then, we’ve worked hard to come up with all kinds of materials to keep you entertained. You have a TV up there-” She jabs her thumb in the direction of a TV on the wall behind me. “And a library in the other room. You can borrow books from there as long as you’re staying here, so long as you return them before you leave. There’s also free wifi.”

I massage my forehead gently and flick the remote., watching the screen light up with color- it’s a game show. I raise my eyebrows and settle back on the bed. It’s better than hearing the nurse pipe on about how ‘she wants me to be okay’ and ‘she has to stay with me to protect me’. So I stay there a long time, watching the mitunes flick silently by, hours pass before I can truly grasp them.

Mum still doesn’t come back for long after the nurse said she would, she leaves me curled up on the hospital bed, alone, afraid, ashamed. I barely know what’s going on, everything is just blurry, like a blanket has clouded my mind, like I’m still lost in the middle of a far away dream.

But then the door swings open, and I see her framed in the doorway.

It’s like seeing her again for the first time. And a wave of nostagia, of sorrow, of pain, sweeps over me. I survey her quietly, my eyes flicking over her body. Her dark brown hair is tied up into a tight bun on top of her head, and her face so covered in make up I can hardly see it. She’s staring at me almost mournfully, and her mouth open slightly as if she has no idea what to say. “You’re...awake,” she says finally.

“Yeah,” I mumble. “How long was I asleep?”

“Just about nine hours,” Patty says from next to me. “You’ve been unconcious a while.”

“Yeah,” Mum agrees quietly, and then she turns to Patty. “Can I have a moment, please?”

Patty meets my eyes and looks at me for a moment, and then she smiles, nods, and walks slowly out of the room. I close my eyes, my heart thumping inside me, plastering my back against the back of the bed and bracing for the screams I know will come. I’m shaking, I can’t help it, but my whole body is pulsing wildly. The monitor beeps above me, the lines are zigzagging violently, I struggle to fight it, to calm down, to look like a normal eighteen year old kid.

But the screams, the yells of anger, of fury, of betrayal never come. Instead, I see Mum crumble to the floor beside the bed, grabbing my cold, shivering hands and pulling them to her heart. Tears flash in her eyes for a moment, and then they fall down her cheeks and plink onto the cold tile floor. She rests her head on my chest and begins to sob violently, more tears flowing down her cheeks, slow, shaking breaths.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers through heavy, struggling breaths. “I’m so sorry,”

I stare at the snot dripping out of her nose and shake my head in disbelief. It’s me who should be sorry, me who should be crying, begging for forgiveness, telling her what a wonderful mother is and how much I love this fine earth of mine. But it’s her crying, her apologizing, her resting her head on my lap and telling me how much she wishes that things could be different. Tears burn my eyes, and slip slowly down my cheeks, I stare at her in strange wonder, running my hands slowly back and forth across her arms and waiting for her to say more.

“I love you, Alyssa,” she falters, looking up at me with her black eyes burning with hope. “I do, I love you. And I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen.”

I have a million questions threatening to slip off my tongue, but instead I just say, “Sorry for what?”

“For not being the mother I know you needed,” she says immediately, as if reciting off a memorized response. Then more tears pop out of her eyes and she buries her head in her hands, sobbing bitterly.

Tears burn my cheeks as they slip down, and I rest my hands on Mum’s back, completely unsure what to say. “I’m sorry too,” I stammer finally. “For...saying such mean things about you. And talking about you with Marya like you were some kind of a…” I stop, my tongue caught in my throat. I just stare up into her eyes that look so much like mine, and she looks right back, her lips pressed into a thin frown.

“Monster,” she finishes slowly, not breaking her gaze away from me. “You touch this phone and you prove your the monster that Marya says you are.”

Shame burns through me, and my cheeks glow red. I tear my eyes away from her, staring at the blanket and fingering the threads. “Why did you break the phone?” I ask finally.

“I was scared. And hurt. And afraid. I didn’t know who you had become. And you didn’t belong to me anymore.”

“What do you mean?” I murmur, my heart pounding. I know this question will change everything, know that everything is already changing before my eyes. But I have to know.

She clears her throat and looks at me carefully before beginning, weighing each word as if it’s a bag of gold. “When you were born,” she begins, and then she stops. “When you were born,” she repeats slowly, tilting my head up to meet her eyes. “I was younger than you are now. Seventeen. I...I was ashamed. And guilty. So guilty. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I know,” I said quickly, knowing where she was going and feeling a sudden urge to swing away from that as soon as possible.

“That was before abortion and stuff was allowed here, I- yeah, you know all that. But I couldn’t stop seeing you as my mistake, the baby I never wanted to have. I hated you. I mean, I would never have admitted it but I- gosh, I don’t know, Alyssa, you could probably tell this story better than I could.”

Tears blaze in my eyes, I want to yell at her, but I know she’s just telling the truth as she saw it. Instead, I just say, “Go on.”

“You grew up, you were just a little girl with little girl needs. But I had blinded myself to that. I saw the space you took up, the money you coset, and above all, I saw the disgrace that you made out of me. You made me into that, Alyssa, and I hated you for it. I needed someone to take my anger out on, and you...you were always my scapegoat when I had nowhere else to go.”

I pull my hand away from hers, but when I look up and see the pain ripping her face apart, I slowly bring my hand back and lace it in her fingers. I don’t say a word, just tilting my head and listening.

“I loved you, Alyssa, you have to understand that. I did, I loved you. But...it was a different kind of love. And I wouldn’t let myself show it.” She squeezes my hand tightly, and then goes on. “When you started going to highschool, you started talking about this girl named Marya. You said she was...beautiful, and talented, and popular, and there was some guys who was bullying you or something-”

“Billy,” I interrupt softly.

“Yeah. You called him William then, I think. Anyway, you asked me to go to the school and ask them about him- you wanted to get him in trouble. Well, I said no. I knew you just wanted him to get punished, and I knew that that was the teacher’s job. I didn’t want to interfere. You got mad, you started yelling about how I spoiled all the fun and all that. But then apparently Marya got involved, and she punched Billy in the face or whatever, and then from then on she was your hero.”

My cheeks burn, I look away, little salty raindrops soaring along the sides of my face. “I didn’t mean it like-”

“I know. But you acted that way. You talked about Marya this and Marya that incessantly. And then Marya came over to my house one day, and she saw me. And I don’t know what I did that made her so mad, I guess it was seeing that you cooked most of my dinners, or all of the work that you did around the house. I thought it was me trying to make you useful, trying to make you more than the mistake that I thought you were, but she saw right through it. She looked into my eyes that day, and I saw hatred. So much hatred. And rage. You would come home after than, you’d talk like you had found this new freedom, like you had found truth. You talked about this ‘self discovery’ course that you had done at school, Marya had shown it to you. You said you were so proud of your new identity, you wanted to be nurse and you had a full plan for your future. But I knew what this new life was. I knew it the moment you started talking about it, the moment you started standing up to me defiantly and saying that you wouldn’t do chores for me because you were too special for that.

“You thought you had found happiness, but all you had found was a way to shun me in the way that you had always been looking for an excuse to do. You talked about hope and healing, but I had become the antagonist right in the middle of it. And I didn’t want to be that, Alyssa. I didn’t want to be the monster I knew you thought I was. Partly because I knew you were wrong, and also because…” she takes a deep breath, looking fearfully away from me. “I was afraid you were right.”

“Mum,” I whimper, staring up at her with a cold shiver dribbling down my back. “I never knew.”

She brushes tears out of my eyes, and kisses me lightly on the cheek. “It’s okay, Alyssa, I’m not mad. I was wrong for what I did to you.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I ask quietly. “Why now? Why after...this?”

“Because last night I saw what I had turned you into. I saw my mistakes, my ignorance, the way that I had refused to be the mother I knew you needed. You showed it to me. You made a choice that I knew would break everything into pieces. And I...I broke with you.”

“Oh.” I want to say more, but that’s all I know how to say.

Mum smiles and brushes my hair out of my eyes, massaging her fingers through my hair. “Sweet girl.”

I wrap my arms around her neck and squeeze her in a tight hug, and she squeezes back with tears dripping down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” Mum says.

“I’m sorry too.”

“I forgive you,” I say with a small laugh, and then I pull away and lean back onto the bed.

“I forgive you too,” she echoes with a small grin, and she stands up and begins to walk towards the door. “I’ll give you some space.”

And as the door swings shut behind her and Patty silently comes into the room afterwards, I just lay there with a tiny smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. I have the most wonderful mother in the world.