I really wanted this white table with the purple flowers on it. Someone spent some time on it and I don’t like it crammed between two chairs in a hospital waiting room. This waiting room is generic. It’s plain, typical. I don’t know what a waiting room is supposed to be like, but I don’t like this one.

There’s a man sitting across from me. His hair is gray and his shirt is gray. He’s probably mature and wise and conservative. Gray-man has a newspaper but doesn’t seem interested in it because it’s remained in his hands the whole two hours I’ve been sitting here. On the table next to him are outdated magazines, along with different tabloids flooded with celebrity life. Unevenly placed on the magazines is a cup of coffee. It looks cold. Gray-man routinely pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. So much for the gray. Cigarette-man lights a smoke; I glance at the no-smoking sign and cough even though my throat is clear. He holds his cigarette between his thumb and pointer finger. With his other hand, he picks up his worn coffee cup and drinks. Cold coffee and cigarettes—delicious.

Next to him is a woman—I’d guess mid-forties—who looks uncomfortable. She has a purse on her lap that looks like possum covered in fur. Possum-purse-lady takes an apple out of her purse with a trembling hand. Her bony hands position it and she bites; the crunch of the red delicious fills the overheated room. I feel bad for her because I know she must feel sort of bad eating a loud fruit in such a quiet, delicate room.

I took a magazine from the table I want so much and noisily flipped through the pages so possum-purse lady could eat in peace. While I turned the pages, my eyes wandered. This is the saddest room I’ve been in. I noticed the almost dead roses wilting over the edge of a cheap vase that didn’t have any water in it. That made me angry.

I carelessly threw the magazine aside and got up from my seat. I picked up the vase of crusty-yellow roses and slid it across the sign-in desk’s surface. The woman behind it looked up at me. She didn’t look happy. I wouldn’t be happy if I had to work at 3:35 a.m., either.

“These are depressing.” I told her. She looked up from the antiquated computer monitor.

“You’re kidding, right, kid? No one else gotta problem with the flowers.”

“That man there is smoking.” I snapped. She craned her neck at cigarette-man. I smirked and left.

My sister’s room was 412A. She was on the surgical floor of Highland Hospital. I walked around looking for it, but I really had no idea where I was. I eventually navigated my way through the sterile halls of the hospital until I reached 410A. I assumed my sister wasn’t too far away. In 411A, I saw possum-purse-lady. Her shaking hands were wrapped around the hands of a man lying in the hospital bed. I hope they’ll be okay together. I really do.

I tiptoed into my sister’s bedroom hoping not to wake her. She was wide-awake anyway and I guess sort of reminded me of an owl.

“I thought you’d forgotten you have a sister.” She said. Oh, painful, familiar guilt. I mumbled something inaudible and she laughed.

“The man next door to you had brain surgery.” I mentioned.

“Oh.” She replied. We sat in congested silence. I didn’t know what to say to her. She looked out the window. I did too. There was nothing exciting happening outside. It was dark, and a few cars drove by. Sometimes I wonder where people are driving to at this time of night. I hope everything’s all right.

“We couldn’t have saved her Noah.” She took my hand.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Noah, and you do, too. The doctors told us she would never have made it.”

“We could have tried harder.” I walked away from the bed and sat down on one of those cheap plastic chairs they throw in hospital rooms.

Eleven days ago my mother, my sister, and I were in a car crash. My mother was driving and my sister was in the passenger seat while I sat in the back. We were on the highway and going fast. My mom always used speed limits as guidelines; she was free like that.

Out of nowhere, or rather, the lane next to us, came a truck. The truck hit my mother’s side of the car with full force. My mother flew through the windshield into the air. My sister had hit her head against the window. She was bleeding heavily on the right side of her head, just above her ear. I was untouched. I don’t have any mark, any scar to prompt a story, any bruise to be conscious of. We had a four-door Volvo Sedan, and the back of it was intact. I got out of the car and opened my sister’s door while trying to keep her from falling over. She was awake but screaming with pain. I, gently as I could, pulled her out of the car. She was covered in her own blood, and I quickly became drenched as well. I laid her down and took off my jacket, folding it under her head as a pillow. I couldn’t leave her, but I had no idea where my mother was.

There was a river next to the highway, and I hoped, prayed even, that she had been spared of it. I squeezed my sister’s hand and ran towards the river. The water was forgiving; it moved slowly. I stood on the edge of the eroding bank and frantically searched for any sign of my beloved mother. The feeling that pierced my body was painful and cold and when I saw her atop those rocks my lungs felt deprived of air, my head wasn’t in focus, I suddenly felt very small. I closed my eyes and tightly gripped my torso. Retaining the throw up was hard, and eventually unbearable. I relieved my stomach behind a bush, the throw up irrelevant at the time, though reminiscent of the pesto I had for lunch earlier that day. I hurried down the bank and reached her. My strength at this moment surprised me. I was frightened, terribly frightened, but I stayed with her, and that was more than I thought I would’ve done. Her fragile body had landed on the rocks, and the sharp cone-like rock had gone through what I later found out to be her small intestines.

I held her hand. That’s all I thought to do. She shouldn’t be alone during this. No one should be alone. Now I did something that was incredibly stupid. That’s not how the doctor put it, but we’re all human and I understand when I screw up. I gently lifted my mother’s body from her perch. There was a hole where the rock had been. I held her as gently as I could and ran up the hill back to my sister. I could hear sirens, although I didn’t call 911. I found out that a witness was gracious enough to call for me. I took off my shirt, wadded it up, and tried to clog the hole to stop the bleeding. I held it there as steadily as I could. I sat there and inhaled. All I knew at that moment was that I was breathing, and there, as there as anyone could be.

“Noah?” My sister brought me back to the hospital room. “Noah, sleep. Please, sleep. You don’t have to play the hero anymore. I’m okay.”

I was dizzy. I stood up and kissed my sister’s bandaged forehead. She took my hand and squeezed it. Our palms curved together like two puzzle pieces, finally placed within each other’s hold.

“I love you very much.” I told her. She smiled, and I took that as approval to depart.

It’s cold outside. Not the cold that hurts, it’s just, cold. I sat down on the curb of the deserted city street. My pants were dirty. I should clean them before I go back. I placed my hands together as if to pray, but I’m not religious. What I did with my family wasn’t playing the hero. I was scared. I wanted to know that everything was going to be okay. I’m twenty years old and adult, but hardly grown up, and my sister is eighteen, and the accident eleven days ago taught us a great deal more than we’ve learned in the past few years. My mother was the one to assure us of everything but now she is gone and I cannot replace her. No therapist can assure me the way my mother could; no aunt or uncle can protect me; no human being that I have met can reach her standards.

When you have to, you take care. You take care of the people you love, and then some. That is what I did. I love my mother, my sister, and my father who has been gone for longer than I can remember. I tried, and that was all I could do. We are all only human, but therein is the contradiction. Humans have great capacity to love and be loved but in the end it is what you know that gets you through the day. I will stay with my sister until my fingers grow cold and I know she will never leave me in return. What I did that day was human, nothing short of it. I miss my mother and know that she’s still with me, wherever I go.

I was reminiscing in the attic yesterday, looking for old pictures of her. I found a small white table with purple flowers on it that she had painted. It now comfortably sits next to my bed, along with flourishing roses in the most expensive vase I could find.