Disappointment has settled – mixed with fear – into the space below my sternum.

Into the body I’m so unsure of.

It’s a selfish sentiment, driven, I fear, by a desire to be free.

To move, unfettered by fear….by the constant thought of what I might lose:

The joy of her beside me, feet up on the dashboard, reading maps, picking songs. Riding shotgun all the way to California.

The confidence that things will ever be the same again.

The unconscious certainty that my heart won’t attack at any moment. Won’t stop. Won’t break.

These things… are not what they should be. Not an ever present empathy for her pain.

An unwavering attention placed upon the importance of recovery. And the quick assertion that we’ve got months. All the time she needs.

I should be. But I am not.

So easy going.

I want her back.

Want her to look at me through a mother’s eyes and not from the frightened face of a child.

It’ll be alright, I say. Take her hand. Kiss her forehead. Rub her feet. Feed her pills.

But what do I know?

Underneath it all I’m just that little girl. The same one who crawled onto her mommy’s blue sheeted hospital bed over a decade ago now. Lay her cheek across the blankets and listened for the sound of stomach stitches. Fingered IV tubes. Called for extra ice cream.

The little girl who asked, does this hurt mommy? And received in reply a smile and a no. A white lie. The kind that parents give to children, hoping to guard small hearts from worry and fear.