Emergency Room

So the weekend started off to kind of a bad start the other day. I was at my parents house in Tracy for the night to meet my boyfriend to drive to Oregon the next day. The unimaginable happened. It was about one in the morning and I was relaxing by the fire doing some homework and waiting for jeff to arrive when my mother comes out coughing up her lungs...nothing unusual. So I walk by her to go outside and change my laundry and come back in. What I failed to realize before is that she was trying to talk to me but couldnt...she couldnt breathe. I walk back by her and glance up to meet my mom's face. Its covered with fear. She kept coughing and acting like something else was wrong, only she couldnt utter a word because she couldnt breathe. Five minutes later we were in the emergency room...me sitting at a desk doing paperwork and her in a backroom where I had no clue what was going on. I cannot describe to you the sheer pain and fear of that night. All I remember is looking at my mom bent over in her room gasping for a breath and being suddenly rushed with the thought "Oh my God, this is it. My mother is going to die tonight. My world is going to come crumbling down." No fear such as that has knocked me down so completely. My mother--the woman who gave me life, the foundation and strength of my family, the embodiment of the woman I so long to be--was at her weakest moment. And I was at my most helpless moment. Its like watching the superhero that you so idolize crumble and fall right before you. You watch them go day to day with this amazing strength and press on always, constantly encouraging you and making you ultimately feel more confident in yourself. Then one day their strength is gone and you see them at their weakest moment, when suddenly fear catches up with them. Your heart shatters. Your mind goes a thousand times a minute with one pounding thought "This is it. Oh my God, this is it. Please, dont let this be it. I cant lose her." I sat in the emergency room across the hall from my mom while she had triage done on her and it was the oddest feeling in the world. She was no more than 20 feet away but she seemed out of my reach now. I couldnt hold her hand. I couldnt hug her and tell her I love her. She couldnt even utter a single word to me...she couldnt work up enough breath to do it. Then the worst thing in the world happens...shes whisked away into an unknown room in the hospital while i sit with the clerk and get insurance lined up. Shes taken away--my superhero in shambles--is taken away where i cant see her, i dont know what theyre doing to her or whats happening. It was that night that I had the longest hour of my life, strucken with a fear i had never known. But the greatest comfort came when i got to see her again in her curtain room. I got to sit with her and hold her hand and take care of her at her weakest and most vulnerable moment. I got to kiss her forehead like she used to mine and rub my fingers through her hair and tell her i love her. I got to change her clothes from the soil she got on herself and cover her feet with my sweatshirt and hold her vomit bag while she threw up. All the same she would have done for me. For just one night I got to be her superhero while mine lay sickened on a hospital bed. I dont care if i sound cheesy folks. I almost lost my mother the other night. Youd do the same.