Sorrow weighs my shoulders down and trouble haunts my mind
The hospital wing was stuffy. That was hardly unusual - but the collective shock that seemed to be gravitating around everybody was making it worse. It was stifling.
No one was crying anymore, no one was even saying anything. There had been so much yelling, so much noise and there had been crying and... so many things. At some point it had all abruptly stopped. Fiona wondered when exactly that had happened, as she glanced up at Glynna’s face.
On the bed opposite her, Glynna dangled her feet over the bed where she sat, in patient wait for their mother. Her cheeks were tear-stained, but her eyes were dry now. Farry was leaning on the edge of his bed, and Fiona could feel his gaze as she looked back down.
Voices arced across the room, bringing it to a sort of stagnant life. There was a hysteric sort of atmosphere about the speakers, but they were so hushed it was hard to tell if that could not have come from somewhere else in Fiona’s mind.
Belatedly, she realised Glynna had turned and was watching with anxiety as their mother appeared in the room. There it was, with a jump and a noise Glynna was crying again. Nothing was unfamiliar about it, but somehow - it seemed like the most foreign sound.
There was hugging and sobbing and talking in a babbling kind of way that had no real direction. It was sort of noisy, but the feeling was not changing. It was just not.
“Fiona.”
Someone was saying her name.
“Oh,” she felt her mouth say, as she looked up.
It was immensely difficult for that moment to make eye contact with her mother, and Fiona had no idea why. Tears streaked down Glynna’s face again; and Farry was watching her with a dulled expression that seemed to mirror Fiona’s own feelings.
“Your father is on his way,” she could hear her mother saying. There was more but it failed to reach her ears.
“Fiona ...”
Suddenly there, right in front of her, was her mother’s face. All the love and openness and the warmest hugs were in that face. Two inches away - and Fiona stared it down.
Then, without warning - those arms were suddenly around her. Fiona shook with the suddenness of it. She leaned away. The arms retracted. Fiona watched them go without a sense of regret. She couldn’t glance up - and so, missing whatever expression her mother wore.
“Are you not coming, Fiona?”
There was something funny in the way her mother said that. Compared to everything else in the last little while, that hardly stood out.
“No,” she heard herself say.
What would home do for her right now? It had occurred to her that this stagnant feeling was her own, and there was no way she wanted to project that onto home.
There was something else her mother way saying. Fiona wasn’t looking or listening. Then there was a flurry of activity and linen, and she found herself tucked into the bed.