Ray Of Sunshine

Chapter 49: Angel

Everything after that phone call from Tina was a blur.

I got to the hospital as quick as I could, but I was too late. The doctors took my mom in for heart surgery, but she had a cardiac arrest on the operating table. They tried to save her, but they couldn't.

When the doctor told me, I just didn't believe him. I told him he got it wrong, and that he needed to go back in there and save her... I didn't want to accept it. None of it felt real to me. It was like I was in a nightmare, and I tried pinching myself so hard to wake myself up, but I wasn't sleeping. I kept shouting at the doctor to do his job. I kept shouting she isn't dead, but no one was listening to me.

She can't be dead. I didn't even get to see her one last time...

Tina tried to calm me down, and Ashton was in tears. I held him, and said everything was going to be ok. Holding him at that moment felt like I was 6 years old again, and he was a baby. It's always been just us, and now it really is just us.

I'm numb, in denial, and confused.

I don't even remember leaving the hospital, but me and Ashton end up going to Tina's house, and then some how I go to Michael's. Suddenly I'm sat in the kitchen, staring in to space.

Then it hits me. Warmth crawls up my neck, and I burst in to tears from the realization that my mom is dead, my mom is gone... I don't have a father, and now I don't have a mother.

I shake and cry so much, that I begin to feel sick and lose my breath. I feel like I'm suffocating.

"Vanessa?!" I hear Michael's worried voice.

I can't see anything because I'm in such a state. I feel his hand on my shoulder, but I'm a blubbering mess.

"Ness, look at me." He frowns, holding the side of my face.

I try catching my breath, and run my hands through my hair.

"She's... dead." I cough through my sobbing.

His face drops, and his eyes gloss over with tears as he grabs me and pulls me in to him. He holds on to me tightly, and I cry my eyes out.

"She had another heart attack, and I didn't get to see her." I weep. "I'm never going to see her again. She's gone."

Michael strokes and kisses my head, trying his best to comfort me.

"Why did she have to go?"

Michael pulls away to look at me. He holds my face and wipes my tears away. A tear rolls down his cheek, and he swallows before speaking.

"She's not in pain anymore Ness."

"But I should have been there! I've always been there for her, and looked after her." I shake my head. "I should have done something."

"And she knows that." Michael frowns. "But there was nothing you could do."

"I should have done more." I shake my head.

"You done all that you could; you always have done. Don't think like that Ness because all it will do is make you feel worse." He frowns, wiping the wetness from my cheeks.

The tears just keep falling though. I look down as my bottom lip trembles.

"I can't even afford a funeral for her. Cremation is less expensive, but I don't want her body burnt. I don't want a pile of ash to remember her by."

"Vanessa." Michael shakes his head, taking hold of my hands. "It's too soon to be thinking about that."

"But I have to think about it! What am I going to do?" I cry, shaking my head.