The drive from my momma’s house to Knoxville took just under an hour. Lucidity was made possible by the triple-shot grande Americano I procured from Starbucks on my way out of town.

It’s really true what people say about Starbucks. My hometown still didn’t have a sit-down movie theater, an Italian restaurant, an OBGYN, or a Target, but they had a Starbucks. I guessed this was because Green Valley was located right next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our two main industries were lumber and tourism, and big-city tourists need their coffee.

When I made it to Knoxville, I stopped at a grocery store and picked up flowers and two get-well balloons with kittens on them. I knew based on several years of practical experience as a pediatric intensive care nurse in Chicago that unless my momma wanted to talk to me, getting near her or her doctors was going to be difficult. The flowers and balloons would give me credibility, but the kittens would get me in the door. Everyone loves kittens.

I parked the rental car in a visitor’s spot and walked into the main entrance, flowers and balloons in hand. Once inside, I crossed to the information desk, I hoped it was being run by volunteers, who tend to be easily confused by pesky things like HIPAA (privacy laws).

“Hello, Joan.” I said with a warm smile at the elderly woman behind the desk; her nametag was prominently placed, thank goodness. “I’m here to see my mother. I just flew in last night, and I’m not sure where I’m going.”

She returned my smile. “What is her name, dear?”

“Bethany Winston. Admission date was two days ago, if that helps.” My throat felt tight with anticipation.

Jethro, Billy, and the twins (Beauford and Duane) had all tried and failed to see her over the course of the last two days. They’d been told she didn’t want to see any family and had restricted access to her records. This had struck me as a little odd, yet not out of the realm of possibility.

Tired though I was, I started forming a plan B, just in case I was denied information on my momma’s location.

Plan C involved going floor to floor, room to room. Plan D involved dressing in scrubs and logging into the hospital electronic medical record. Plan E involved pulling the fire alarm.

Joan glanced up from her screen, her smile still friendly though not as wide. “You’re her daughter?”

“That’s right,” I managed to say, nodding emphatically as I held my breath and hoped Plan A would be sufficient.

“Do you have ID?”

I nodded again, set the flowers on the counter along with the balloon weights, and dug around in my purse for my ID. I handed it to her and waited, searching her face for clues as to how successful I would be.

She glanced at my ID, then at the screen, then at my face, then at the screen, then at my ID, then at my face.

She handed the ID back to me. “Your mother’s record has been flagged. There’s a note that she’s not to have any visitors other than you. I’m going to page her treating physician, but he may be a while.”

I released the breath I’d been holding. “Okay, thanks. That’s great. Can I go up?”

“Yes. She’s on the fourth floor. You’ll need to take those elevators.” She pointed around the corner. “Check in at the nurses’ station. They’ll want to see your ID too.”

I thanked her and placed my driver’s license in my pocket with slightly trembling hands.

As I made my way to the elevator, I couldn’t help but feel like everything was very, very wrong. I knew that it was a common practice to flag patients’ records, especially to keep out unwanted family members or the media. My momma’s decision to restrict access to her records struck an off chord.

My brothers lived with my mother. She took care of them. Even Jethro, the oldest, now thirty, still lived at home.

I briefly considered that she might be embarrassed. Perhaps she wanted to keep her diagnosis a secret because she didn’t want to admit weakness in front of the six Winston boys. I didn’t blame her. Winston men were famous for exploiting weakness.

I knew she loved them, but they drove her crazy. When I lived at home, they—as a group—had a tendency to freak out when faced with facts or reality, yet happily buried their heads in the sand otherwise. Until facts were spelled out, they were like unsuspecting hogs before Easter dinner—dirty and well fed.

I checked in at the nurses’ station on the fourth floor and received a similar inspection. This time, however, when the nurse heard my last name, her smile fell and I read sympathy in her expression.

“She’s in room 404, hon,” she said, handing back my ID and glancing at the kitten balloons. Her voice was hesitant when she added, “Have you talked to the doctor yet?”

I shook my head, my trembling hands now shaking. “No. Not yet.”

The nurse gave me a close-lipped smile. “Your momma’s asleep right now. If you want to go sit with her ’til Dr. Gonzalez arrives, you can.” Her tone was full of compassion.

“Can you tell me anything?” Without waiting for a reply, I added, “Why was she admitted?”

The nurse studied me for a minute but said nothing.

“I’m a pediatric nurse practitioner in Chicago,” I said. “You can shoot straight with me.”

Her smile returned. “I know, baby. Your mother told me all about you. But the doctor wants to speak with you first.”

I stared at her for a moment—the compassion, the sympathy, the secrecy—and I knew.

This was textbook modus operandi for the terminally ill. Nurses never informed patients’ families. It was always the doctor, and it was always done in person.

My eyes stung and I felt my chin wobble even as I bravely nodded. “Okay,” I managed to croak, and I glanced at the ceiling, blinking. My head was overwhelmed and my heart was breaking, and I was still holding two Get Well Soon kitten balloons from the Piggly Wiggly.

“Aww, baby….” The nurse stood, walked around the counter, and wrapped her arms around me. “Baby, baby, baby….” Her soft body was a big pillow of warmth as she rubbed my back.

I sniffled, fighting the tears. Not yet, I thought, not until I’m alone and can break something that makes a very gratifying smashing sound, like plates.

“Come with me, Sunshine.” She shifted so that her arm was wrapped around my shoulders. “I’ll take you to your momma. You sit with her until the doctor comes, okay?”

I nodded numbly, allowing the older nurse to steer me to my mother’s room. She opened the door and walked me to a seat by the bed. Sunlight streamed in through the open curtains, but it was still a hospital room. There was nothing remarkable about it other than the occupant.

I looked at my momma. Her eyes were closed. Her skin color was okay—not great, but not ashen—and she looked very thin, almost fragile. My mother had never been thin a day in her life. She’d been blessed with more boobs and hips than wits, and she had a lot of wits.

At five feet nine inches, I towered over her five-foot frame. Although I’d inherited her boobs and hips, my longer legs and torso distributed the wealth, whereas she’d always looked like a curvaceous, compact hourglass.

Her hair was streaked with gray. The last time I saw her she was still coloring it chestnut brown. My brain informed me that was two years ago.

My momma had always seemed young to me. She had Jethro at sixteen, Billy at seventeen, Cletus at eighteen, and me at twenty. The twins came two years later, and Roscoe—the youngest—arrived approximately four years after that. Seven children before she was twenty-seven, and six of them boys.

Now, thin and gray, she looked older than her forty-six years. She looked ancient, like all the stress and worry and hardship she’d shouldered raising a family of seven and handling my deadbeat father had finally caught up with her.

As instructed, I sat in the chair by her bed. The nurse reassured me once again that she would page the doctor, and then she left me alone with my momma.

I couldn’t focus on anything. I don’t know how long I sat looking around the room staring at nothing, unable to form a complete thought; maybe an hour, maybe more.

Images and sound bites from my childhood, of her care and love for me, of our daily telephone calls, lobbied for attention, and my mind felt slippery and confused.

My mother shifted, and my gaze was drawn to her as she opened her eyes. They fell on mine immediately.

“Ash….” she whispered. She gave me a weak smile. “Be a good darling and get me some ice cream. I’d give my eye teeth for some ice cream.”

I watched her for a minute.

Ice cream—I could get her ice cream. That was something I could do. Because under no circumstances was I ready to talk about her death. Instead, I would go get her ice cream.

“Rocky road?” I asked quietly.

“If you can find it, though I’m not picky.”

I nodded once and stood, moving to the door.

“Honey,” she called after me. I turned and met her eyes, which were alight with amusement. “You can leave the flowers and balloons here. No need to take them with you.”

I glanced from her to the balloons and flowers still clutched in my hands.

“Oh.” I put them on the chair where I’d been sitting.

I’d almost made it to the door before she called me back again, “Ashley, one more thing. This is really important.” The urgency I heard in her voice made my heart rate spike and my eyes sting.

I crossed to her immediately and covered her hand with mine. “Anything…you can tell me anything.”

She gave me a weak smile, squeezed my hand with hers, and said, “This isn’t something you need to worry about yet. But when the time comes you should use hemorrhoid cream to remove bags under the eyes.”

Dr. Gonzalez found me coming back from the cafeteria, my momma’s rocky road ice cream clutched to my chest. He pulled me into a consultation room and broke the news I’d already guessed.

My mother was dying.

She had cervical cancer. It was stage four. It had metastasized everywhere. He gave her six weeks. Hospice had been called, and they were on their way.

She’d either ignored or confused the symptoms with menopause. He said she’d likely had symptoms for more than a year. I was not surprised that she’d disregarded her own pain. Her selflessness was her greatest strength and her most infuriating fault.

When I was sixteen, she’d walked around on a broken foot for two weeks. She finally went to the doctor when I handcuffed her to Billy’s truck and drove her to the emergency room.

After the chat with Dr. Gonzalez, I delivered my momma’s ice cream. Not long after that, the social worker for hospice arrived and spoke to us both. The entire experience was surreal.

My mother ate her ice cream and chimed in every once in a while with, “Now, I don’t want anyone to go to any trouble on my account.”

I could only stare at her. Words failed me. Thought and motor skills were also failing me.

It was decided that she would be released tomorrow and given transport back to the house. We would be assigned a day and a night nurse who would help us care for her over the next six weeks or so.

Six weeks.

I stayed for the rest of the day. We chatted about my job and her coworker friends at the library. She asked me to break the news first to her boss, Ms. Macintyre. Momma felt confident that Ms. Macintyre would know what to do about the rest of the staff.

I stumbled out of the hospital around 9:30 p.m. feeling exhausted and empty. My brain whispered to me as I walked to my car that the only thing I’d consumed that day was a triple-grande Americano at 7:00 a.m.

I wasn’t hungry, though. I was the opposite of hungry, but neither full nor satiated.

I slipped into the driver’s seat and stared unseeingly out the windshield, and was pulled from my trance by the sound of my cell phone ringing. I glanced at the caller ID. It was my friend Sandra, my best friend Sandra.

Relief and a tangible feeling I couldn’t name seized my body, a pain so sharp that I gasped. It felt like the glass chamber that had surrounded me all day had finally shattered. I was suddenly breathing, and the air that filled my lungs hurt. The photo of Sandra’s smiling face on my phone blurred, or rather my vision blurred because I was crying. I swiped my thumb across the screen and brought the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Ashley! Thank God, you answered. Marie and I need you to settle a debate. Which is worse: not having enough yarn to finish a sweater or discovering that the yarn you used for the sweater was mislabeled as cashmere and is actually one hundred percent acrylic?”

My brain told me that it was Tuesday, which meant that back in Chicago where I lived and worked and had a lovely life reading books and enjoying my friends, it was knitting group night. Sandra, a pediatric psychiatrist with a pervy heart of gold, was in my knitting group, as was Marie.

“Sandra….” My voice broke, and I rested my head against the steering wheel, tears falling messy and hot down my cheeks and neck and nose.

“Oh! Oh, my darling….” Sandra’s voice emerged from the other end earnest and alarmed. “What’s going on? Are you okay? What happened? Who made you cry? Do I need to kill someone? Tell me what to do.”

I sniffled, squeezed my eyes shut against the new wave of tears. “It’s my mother.” I pressed my lips together in an effort to control my voice, then took a shaky breath and said, “She’s dying.”

“Your mother is dying?”

“They’ve called hospice. She has stage four cervical cancer. It’s metastasized everywhere. She has six weeks….” I sobbed, almost dropping the phone and shaking my head against the new onslaught of tears.

The other end was quiet for a beat. “Okay…where are you? I can be there by tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “No.” I sniffed and wiped my hand under my nose then took a deep breath. “No, no. Don’t do that. I just…I just needed to tell someone. I’m leaving the hospital now.”

“Are you in Knoxville?”

“Sandra….” I covered my eyes with my hand and sighed. “You are not flying down here.”

“Yes. I am flying down there.”

“So am I!” I heard Elizabeth’s voice from the other end. Elizabeth was also in my knitting group and was an emergency department physician. She worked with both Sandra and me at the hospital in Chicago.

Their threat to fly down to Tennessee sobered me, and I gathered a series of calming breaths before responding. “She’s at the hospital in Knoxville. They’re releasing her to home hospice tomorrow.”

I related the rest of the facts surrounding my mother’s sudden hospital admission, how she hadn’t told anyone she was sick, how she’d ignored all the signs and symptoms until it was too late. Reciting the details calmed me. By the time I was finished, the tears had receded.

“Oh, honey.” Sandra’s impossibly kind and empathetic voice soothed me from the other end of the line.

“Tell her I found tickets,” Elizabeth said in the background. “We can leave first thing tomorrow.”

A disbelieving laugh tumbled from my lips. “You can’t just drop everything and rush down here.”

“Yes, we can. We’ll see you tomorrow.” I heard Sandra say, “I want the aisle seat.” It was muffled, as if she’d covered the phone with her hand.

I heard a rustle and then Elizabeth’s voice was in my ear. She’d obviously commandeered the phone from Sandra. “Honey, listen. Sandra and I will be there tomorrow. Just text Sandra your home address. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll stay in a hotel and help you get your mother settled. Where are you going now? Is anyone there with you? One of your brothers?”

“No. I’m on my way back to the house now to tell them the news.”

Elizabeth tsked softly. “Oh, my dear friend, I wish we were already there. We would huddle hug and get drunk.”

“Me too,” I admitted, grateful that there were people in the world who loved me. I didn’t have the strength to argue against their generous offer, so I simply said, “Thank you.”

“No need for thanks. We’ll see you soon.”

I nodded, and my eyes watered again as I clicked off the call, but I blinked the wetness away. I needed to pull myself together. I needed to tell six boys that their momma was dying, and I had no idea how they were going to take the news.

After eight years with barely any contact, my brothers were basically strangers.