Cheyenne Memorial Hospital
Friday July 23rd @ 12:50 PM - ICU
Sharon Matthews sat, not reading the book in her lap. As she
stared
at the page, her mind couldn't connect the characters into words nor the
words into sentences. She sat there every now and then glancing at
Jenny. She was trying to understand a world turned upside down. A short
week ago, she had sent her boys off on a short trip to go to a music
festival.
Three days later, she's playing surrogate mother to the children
of
a woman she only knew in passing. She had found that she could no longer
posture about behind slogans. For years, she told people that she
wouldn't care if her sons were gay, now Bart had taken her reality and
tossed it around. But she found that she really did love her son, no
matter what. But a whole new set of fears have given her pause. This was
something she never dreamed about. She now worried that the world in
general could be oh so cruel, especially if you were different. The
specter of AIDS haunted her nights.
Then there was Will. She and Evan, her husband, watched Bart and
Will together. How they felt about each other was clear to all who cared
to look. Will, or Willem, as she sometimes still calls him, grew up at
their house, ate with them, laughed with them, and cried with them. She
had thought him to be another son. But Will went from being a son, to
being her Bart's ... significant other, was the way she liked to put it.
That was the hardest thing, knowing Bart was a man, no longer her boy.
She found the sexual aspect of their lives still a little too
disconcerting. But Will would always be in her prayers and her heart. It
was just all too new.
She glanced again at her watch then at Jenny. Jenny was holding
her
mother's hand occasionally talking to her about the weather or her
brothers or herself. Sheri, as her husband called her, could not believe
the horror visited upon these children. She was praying that Jenny and
Will 's mother wouldn't die. She knows that it would be devastating to
them and to Ted. That was another matter. By now, she had heard the
whole story about Ted, the party and everyone involved. She found it
incomprehensible that anyone would just cut their child out of their
life.
Checking her watch again, she noticed it was almost 2. "Jenny,
dear,
your brother Ted be will here shortly, you should star getting ready."
Jenny turns to Mrs. Matthews pleading in her eyes. "Can't I stay awhile
longer?" "Well, we really do have to leave by quarter past, but you can
wait a little longer." Sheri stood up and walked over to where Jenny was
sitting. She put her hand on her shoulder to try to be of comfort to
her.
"Mom, Ted and Gary will be here soon. Ted looks so adult
now, you'd
hardly recognize him. And Gary is Gary, so nervous and shy around
strangers. Remember when last year at Will's party he sat quietly on the
back porch, till you dragged him in. You knew then didn't you? ..." As
she was staring at her mother's face she did a double take, she could
have sworn her mother her eyelids moved. "Mrs. Matthews, did you see
that?" Sheri who had been watching Jenny had not noticed a thing. "What
was that dear?" "My mom, I swear her eyes moved." Then as they both
watched it happened again. Sheri went immediately to the buzzer to call
the nurse. Jenny started crying. Then she heard her mother whisper,
"There there, dear, don't cry."
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