Free No One Needs to Know by Kevin O'Brien

ate to compensate for her misery and loneliness. She just didn’t know how to take care of herself.
    Not long after Laurie had returned from Europe and Brian had been sent to Afghanistan, Teri fell and badly sprained her ankle in the Safeway parking lot. Laurie drove to Spokane to take her to Ellensburg, where she could look after her for a while. They would make use of that second bedroom after all. During the drive home, her mom suddenly started sobbing. “When I fell, I felt like such an idiot. And, oh, sweetie, it hurt so much when I hit the pavement. But worse was my grocery bag ripping open. My stash fell out—the candy bars and donuts, everything I shouldn’t be eating. And I saw these people in the parking lot laughing at me—me, the fat lady falling on her ass with all her junk food around her.”
    Staring at the road ahead, Laurie took one hand off the wheel, reached over, and squeezed her mother’s arm. “Fuck them, Mom,” she said. “Pardon my French, but fuck them.”
    Her mother didn’t stay in the guest room long. After a couple of days, she complained of stiffness in her joints and trouble getting her breath. On her day off from the diner, Laurie took Teri to Kittitas Valley Hospital. Her mom rolled her eyes while the examining doctor mentioned that she needed to lose some weight and exercise more. He wanted to set her up for an X-ray and an EKG that afternoon. Both procedures were done in a different building. It was only a block away, but Laurie knew her mother couldn’t walk it. She had her wait in the lobby of the main building while she brought the car around. By the time Laurie helped her into the passenger seat her mother was huffing and wheezing.
    “Mom, are you okay?” she asked, bent over by the passenger door.
    Teri nodded impatiently. “Let’s go . . .”
    Closing the door, Laurie hurried around to the driver’s side. She started up the car and then glanced at her mom, who had a hand over her heart. She looked chalky.
    “I’m lowering your window,” Laurie said, flicking the master switch on the armrest. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    Her mother nodded again. Laurie pulled out of the main lot and started down the block. That was when her mother gasped. “Oh, sweetie . . . I can’t—I can’t breathe . . .” She was tugging at the collar of her sweatshirt.
    Laurie saw the emergency room entrance up ahead, and pushed down on the accelerator. The tires let out a screech as she turned into the driveway. “Hold on,” she said, clutching the steering wheel. “Hold on, Mom . . .”
    By the time Laurie pulled up to the entrance, her mother had passed out. It took three orderlies to pry her out of the car and onto a gurney. One of them put a respirator mask over Teri’s mouth and nose. Then they wheeled her down the corridor. Laurie followed them—until a tall, stern-looking nurse stepped into her path. “This is far as you can go. I’m sorry . . .”
    She watched them push her mother on the gurney through a set of double doors.
    Another nurse with a clipboard sat her down in the waiting area, and started grilling her about her mother’s medical background, and when she’d last eaten. The nurse was just getting to questions about insurance when a doctor came through the double doors. He was a pale, handsome, thirtyish man in scrubs. He whispered something to the nurse, who showed him the form she’d been filling out.
    Laurie stood up. The doctor turned to her. “Laurie?”
    She nodded.
    “I’m Dr. Lahart. I’m really sorry. We did everything we could . . .”
    Wide-eyed, Laurie stared at him. She kept expecting him to say that her mother would need surgery, or that they had to keep her in the hospital overnight. Instead, Dr. Lahart sadly shook his head. “We lost her.”
    They told her later that a blood clot must have formed after Teri’s ankle injury in the Safeway parking lot. And that blockage was what caused the respiratory problems, which led to her