_Allegheny Elder Care Facility #33, Year 29_
Soph passed through the revolving door, from the bright summer sunshine to the subdued lighting of the reception area.
Immediately, she felt as though she was an intruder. She could feel the way people who glanced her way either looked again, longer, suspiciously, or deliberately averted their gaze as soon as possible.
In some places, including many she’d had to visit for work, it would have been her skin and hair that marked her out for suspicion and mistrust. In others, it would have been her response, or lack thereof, to men’s pathetic attempts to flirt with her. But the staff and residents here had the diverse range of backgrounds you’d expect in the big city, and short shrift for any bigotry from newcomers. What they didn’t trust about her appearance was the sharp-angled suit — not quite a uniform, but you never saw an agent wearing anything else — and the barely concealed bulges of her badge and weapon.
On her way to the desk, she slowly, carefully, took off her jacket and loosened her tie. The message she was trying to send: I might have come here straight from work but this isn’t a professional visit. She’d never come anywhere like this for work, but you did sometimes hear stories, never from anyone who’d directly experienced anything, but an agent who knew an agent in another city who’d heard it from his friend. All sorts of things could happen, apparently, when elderly professors lost their executive function but not their ability to manipulate equations. And, supposedly, all manner of measures had been taken.
She shook the thought aside and made a big effort to bestow her broadest smile on the nearer of the two receptionists. “Hi,” she said. “I got a call, it said to come urgently.”
“Uh huh.” The receptionist was young, probably had still been in school the last time Soph had been here. “Name?”
“Er, Sophia.”
The kid’s eyes flicked idly back and forth across a couple of lists. “No Sophias here. I got you two Sophies, a Sylvia, a Serafina even–“
“No. No, I’m Sophia. Sophia Owusu. My mom’s name is–“
“Agent Owusu.” The voice wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. Unlike the kid she now loomed over after stepping out of the back office, Sister Ford very definitely had been here the last time she’d visited.
“You can call me Soph.” Nothing. “You are the one who called me, right?”
“I did,” Ford said. “I’ll take you to your mother.”
“The message said it was urgent,” Soph said once they were in the elevator. Ford had pressed the button for the top floor, which wasn’t where mom’s room was. Or hadn’t been, at least.
“You should prepare yourself,” Ford said.
“It would help me do that if you told me what was going on,” Soph snapped. “You’ve practically summoned me here, left me to assume the worst–“
“Your mother is gravely ill,” Ford said as the doors stuttered open. “She has an acute pneumonia infection.”
“And on top of twenty a day for most of her adult life …”
“Quite,” Ford said.
“So.” Soph caught herself swallowing. “Is this … last chance to say goodbye?”
“I hope not,” Ford said. “But I cannot deny that it may be. She has been asking for you.”
“She has?”
“Mostly she rests.” Which was code for mom being under sedation a lot of the time. “But yes, she has been asking for you.”
They had reached the room. There was a large window, but through the frosted glass Soph couldn’t make out much detail, just the outlines of a small woman in a big hospital bed, dwarfed by the IV drips and medical equipment that surrounded her.
Ford opened the door. The full sight of her mother was more alarming than she had imagined even a moment earlier. She looked frail in a way she never had before, her hollow-cheeked face and matchstick-like arms making her look as though she was just too-pale skin stretched over fragile, spindly bones.
The nurse got up and left. On her way out, Soph observed a brief and entirely wordless conversation between her and Ford. Despite it having been conducted via the medium minute changes of facial expressions — a slightly raised eyebrow, a curt nod — the meaning was perfectly clear as far as Soph was concerned. _This is the daughter? Well, better late than never, I guess._
“How far under is she?”
“It will be some time before she wakes,” Ford said.
Soph sat down in the seat vacated by the nurse, pulling it awkwardly closer to the bed as she did. “I can wait.”
“If you need anything, or if there is any change in her condition, please do press the buzzer.”
“I know how this works,” Soph said. Ford retreated without a further word, closing the door quietly.
Not sure what to do, Soph ended up clutching her mother’s fingers between both her hands, wary of going any further up for fear of disturbing the cannula through which the antibiotics were being steadily pumped into her system.
“Hi mom. I guess I’m back.”
* * *
It had been over two years since she’d last been there. Mom’s room on the second floor was decorated with all the junk Soph hadn’t been able to persuade her to get rid of, and she had the TV on basically the whole time she was awake. It was like a miniature version of the home they’d shared before her father’s death.
When Soph had been coming every week, most times they’d have miniature versions of the same fights they used to back home, too. It was as though, without her father around to referee, they each pulled back from saying anything that went all the way over the other’s red lines.
Sometimes, when her brother Bobby was there, they even managed to have a civil conversation without any raised voices at all. But as his work had increasingly taken him abroad and he’d morphed from big brother Bobby to respectable businessman Robert, things had become more tense.
Everything boiled over the week the EEE went public with the hunt for Allie. The whole week had been terrible, her bosses grilling her for any insight she might have and then ignored when she’d given it — that Allie would thrive on the publicity, see it as a win. But even after making it through to Friday night, she’d known that the toughest part was yet to come: her mother’s reaction.
At first, to Soph’s surprise, it hadn’t come up in their conversation. But then the TV segued into the local affiliate’s half hour show, and it was obvious that they were loving that the latest Dangerous Individual had grown up on their patch. They’d been out interviewing anyone and everyone they could find, an obvious ploy to get their clips used as B-roll on the major networks.
The headline scrolling along on the chyron was entirely in keeping with the tone of the coverage: “Wicked Witch of Westsylvania?” The little question mark at the end was particularly cute, as though it would stave off the lawyers Allie didn’t have and couldn’t afford because it acknowledged that nothing was actually proven.
“I always knew there was something wrong with that kid,” Mom said matter of factly.
Soph tried her best to keep her tone light. “Even when she was in your kitchen, asking for extra helpings of anything and everything you cooked for her and telling you what a culinary genius you were?”
“Your late father used to say she was eating us out of house and home! And I was only doing the right thing, making sure she was fed and watered, given that that old bat didn’t look after her properly.”
Allie’s grandmother had been one of the kindest, sweetest people Soph had ever known. And sure, dad had said that, but it was always with a smile and a wink, and usually accompanied by pushing even more food Allie’s way. “You’re twisting–“
“Why are you defending her? Aren’t you supposed to be finding her? Isn’t it your job to–“
“I know very well what my job is, mother.”
“I wonder.”
Looking back on it, as Soph often had, that was where things had really gone south. She blamed herself for not just letting that comment hang there, not having managed to be the bigger person and ignore it, but she was sure that it was her mother who had crossed the Rubicon.
“What do you mean?” Soph said icily.
“I mean, _Agent_ Owusu, that you’d better not be a _double_ agent.”
Soph didn’t remember clearly exactly who had said what after that, but she did remember Sister Ford coming in and sternly saying that they were distressing some of the other residents.
“Goodbye, mom,” Soph had said with as much dignity as she could muster. That was another moment she thought back over a lot: how final had it sounded to mom?
* * *
It was past ten in the evening when Mom finally woke, ironically enough just as Soph was starting to nod off.
She’d spent the whole time in between here at the bedside, except for a half hour or so using the outrageously overpriced payphone to make various arrangements. Work had allowed her the next few days as compassionate leave, but she would have to undergo the full suite of security and consistency checks on her return. And Fiona, her neighbour in the apartment block who she’d swapped keys with “for emergencies”, was putting together a bag of clothes and toiletries and bringing it over. A godsend in the moment, but likely to cause awkwardness later — both of them had defined “being drunk and horny” as an “emergency” on multiple occasions since Soph moved in, but that was as far as it went for Soph. She’d been trying to stop giving in to the temptation since it had become obvious that Fiona was developing more serious feelings, and now that she’d taken a train and two buses to bring Soph her things in an emergency, dropping them off without even seeing Soph in person … Well, that was the sort of serious thing that you did for someone you were serious about.
But worrying about that could wait. Right now, mom’s fingers were gripping her own with all their feeble might.
“I’m not dying,” she said. “They’re just very melodramatic here.”
Soph let go of her mom for a moment to wipe away the tears that sprung unbidden to her eyes. “They’re looking after you well, that’s all.” As she took her hand once more, she added quietly, “Better than I ever could, that’s for sure.”
There was a long silence then, long enough to make Soph wonder whether her mom didn’t think any response was required. Eventually, though, she said, “It’s not your job to look after me, it’s my job to look after you. But look at me. We’re past all that now. You’ve grown and I’m shrinking. All I can do is hope that your father and I raised you right.”
“I don’t think you did too bad of a job, all in all.”
Mom made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a croak. “Well, there you go.” She fell silent again for a long while, but for once Soph didn’t find the silence oppressive, or find herself worth the desperate urge to fill it. “Seriously, though, I know you’ll always do the right thing when it comes down to it.”
“Thanks, mom.”
“Now, be a dear and find the remote control for that TV in the corner. I must have missed all sorts of important news.”