Slipping Away

Daisy stared straight ahead. She didn't look to either side. She didn't blink. In fact she didn't move at all. She heard the melee of sound around her but it didn't touch her.

"Mother, can you hear me? Mother." Cassie grabbed her husband's hand in panic, tears beginning to fall down her face in a thunderstorm of pain.

"Call the ambulance again, John. Tell them to hurry." The slim blonde knelt at her mother's feet and looked up into the eyes she knew so well. But they were different somehow. They were blank. They were devoid of anything at all."

She reached out to hold Daisy's hand, but there was no response that indicated the woman was aware of her daughter's existence. The truth was the touch meant nothing to the old woman and, if she could have had her own way, she would have preferred it had not happened at all.

The blonde buried her head in her mother's lap, wailing the word "Mommy" over and over again. Daisy wasn't there. She was lost somewhere else; however, is how she got there.

The world around her was gray like it was banked with a dense, ugly fog. It held none of the color and sounds to which Daisy felt she'd once been accustomed. She could hear things, feel things, see things and even touch things. The problem was those acts no longer held any meaning.

"I am. . . ." The thought caught in her mind as if some invisible roadblock had been thrown in front of it, not allowing it to come to fruition. "I am . . . ." Still nothing. A moment of panic set in. "I don't know my name." The feeling almost made it's way to the surface before the sticky gray fog reached up and snatched it away.

She decided to concentrate on the women clutching at her with such ferocity. "She is . . . ." Again, nothing came to mind. "She is . . . pretty." The thought surprised her but wasn't what she wanted. "She is . . . persistent." That applied as well. Nonetheless, try as she might Daisy could not place a name or even a feeling to the creature kneeling at her feet. Her only though was, "I wish she'd go away."

Sirens wailed in the distance. It was a familiar sound but still Daisy couldn't connect it with anything in particular. It didn't frighten her but neither did it calm her. It didn't elicit any type of emotion. The sound just was.

"Cassie, upsetting yourself further isn't going to help your mother. Come on, let's let the paramedics in together and explain what happened." The big bear of a man gently gathered his wife into his arms. She looked like a frightened child mashed up against his giant frame.

He hated to see Cassie cry. It broke his heart, especially since he knew this was a situation from which she would not easily recover.

The couple opened the door and allowed the paramedics into the room. The leader looked at them and demanded, "tell me what happened in as much detail as you can remember."

His words set Cassie into another crying jag and she collapsed on the floor in utter frustration. John reached down and picked her up like a rag doll, placing her carefully down on a nearby loveseat.

"We came home at our usual time and found Daisy that way; starring straight ahead at the wall. We called out to her but she wouldn't respond. Cassie was shocked to see her half-dressed like that. Her mother is very old fashioned. She never leaves her room without being completely clothed."

"Has she said anything; moved from her position or made any indication that she knows where or who she is?" The paramedic was watching both the couple and his men as they worked on the catatonic woman just feet away from them.

"No, there has been nothing at all. She just stares at the wall." Now the 6'3" man who weighed nearly 250 pounds began to resemble a child himself. "Please help her. She's like a mother to me too." The tears he had valiantly held back now began to echo those of his bride.

Daisy thought all of the fuss going around her was strange. One woman pulled a blanket around her. A man was talking at her as he did something to her arm. "Who were these people and what did they want?"

Daisy had the urge to run away and hide but, alas, she wasn't even allowed that. She could not move. It was like she was grounded in some kind of thick, sticky substance that held her in place.

"Lift your arm and slap them," she thought to herself. It was a senseless thought, though. He arm would not respond. "Kick, scream, hit, punch; do something!" The thoughts formed in one spot of her brain but ended before they were able to take root and actually accomplish their goal.

"I don't like this." It was the first totally coherent thought Daisy had understood in hours. Then the fog settled back in and surrounded her, making her too frightened to do or think anything at all.

She felt herself being lifted onto the gurney and finally into the ambulance. She heard her daughter's cries in the background, but they had no real affect on her. She felt nothing at all!

Once at the hospital, she was aware of the doctors and nurses around her. She particularly hated the machines they kept shoving her into. They clicked and whirred away above, below and around her. She screamed inside her own mind, begging for release. She pleaded with some unseen force to take her away from it all.

Daisy kept trying to connect the dots in her brain but they refused to cooperate. Whenever she got too close to linking point A with point B, the second point would move or disappear altogether so she could not complete the task.

"I must be dead," she thought to herself. "I'm dead and this is purgatory or Hell. I'll never know who I am again or what I am or even "if" I am." Unbeknownst to her, a tiny trickle of tears had gathered in the corner of her eye. Had any of the medical personnel bothered to notice, they might have been moved.

"I'll never get out of here," she knew with total certainty. But then something miraculous happened. A flash of bright pink light went off in her brain. Inside the flash was one perfect memory. It was her, Daisy, holding a squirming baby girl in her arms.

"Cassie." The name floated out of her mouth almost as though it were a perfect breath. "Cassie."

It was enough. The blonde girl flew to her mother's side and threw her arms around the frail woman surrounded by machines and tubes. "Mom, I'm here," she confirmed. "I'll never leave you."

The eyes of the two women connected and for just a brief second, Cassie saw the love she had seen there every day of her life. Her heart leapt with pure joy. Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone once again.

"It's all right, Mom," she whispered gently to the woman on the gurney. "Now I know you are in there. I'll find you again. I promise. I can be patient."

As the young couple clung to one another they watched the most important woman in their lives being wheeled away for yet another test. Somehow they already knew the prognosis wasn't likely to change. Dementia, Alzheimer's or just Senility; it didn't matter what they called it. A new chapter was about to open in the life of Daisy Breen.