thomdahl’s Neighborhood

The sound of an infant's cries woke her out of a fitful sleep.  It felt as if only seconds had went by since her daughter had her last feeding, and now she was hungry again? 

"Stop complaining; you knew it would be the hardest undertaking of your life," the voice in the back of her mind said.  The voice was something that materialized the minute she had locked eyes on the cranky, fussing bundle for the first time.  "Do whatever you have to to make it better for her," was the first thing it had said. 

She left the comfort of her bed with reluctance, scooped up the tiny creature, and headed upstairs. 

It was mid-day, and her parents had not yet been back from her father's angiogram.  He had been deteriorating before his entire family's eyes; he was taking on a grey pallor. 

"Stop being so damn stubborn and get your heart checked out," she grumbled to him one day, ever the voice of reason of the household.

She had just laid her daughter into the pack-n-play in the living room, when her parents walked through the door. 

"How did everything go?"

"I have to have an emergency triple-bypass.  I have to go to the hospital right away."

And there it went.

The very last shred of her childhood, gone with those two sentences.