...well, this is a new one.

Yesterday my mother went out to a parent/teacher meeting at Ian’s school, mostly OK save for flu. She came back doubled over and clutching her stomach and asking Ian(he was closest at the time)to call 999.

I went in the ambulance with her to the hospital, and I’m not sure why. Duty, maybe. Curiosity. Probably some of it was that I wanted to get out of the house and away from Ian, too. I didn’t feel upset the way I would if someone I loved was sick. I haven’t loved my mother for years…if I ever did in the first place. You need a personality to be capable of love, and as soon as mine developed it was in opposition to my mother’s. Opposing personalities can be reconciled, but…not in this case. There’s just too much bad blood between us for me to ever think of her with affection.

On the other hand, I DEFINITELY wasn’t gloating. I didn’t feel good about it at all.

I wasn’t sure what to feel, really. I felt blank inside. And vaguely panicked. Slow-motion panic. I didn’t scream or shout. I’d been reading Tales of Symphonia fics online the previous night; somewhere at the back of my mind I thought about blank-faced ‘angels’ with their souls locked up, and the famous Aurion poker face. I always thought that face was a trick; something he, and others I know, had learned how to do in order to conceal their emotions. Now I wonder whether sometimes stuff happened that they didn’t know how to deal with, didn’t know what to feel about…so they just went blank. I was wearing that face.

Symphonia also made me think of the Orchestra, and thinking of the Orchestra made me think of other Packs, and I wanted very badly to be with a Pack just then-somewhere warm and noisy with lots of friendly people. I wanted to see long-time rivals bicker and long-time lovers snuggle.(These are sometimes the same people of course, and sometimes they even do both at once…)I didn’t want to actually talk to anyone, though. Just sort of sit there and be warmed by other peoples’ normal lives-or what passes for normal life, in a Pack. A good, accustomed weirdness. In a way I would have preferred to be with the Orchestra than with my own Pack or with the Emblem Packs. People in those Packs know me well, they’d want to talk to me and involve me in things. The Orchestra are friendly but they aren’t so close to me, and they have their own problems right now with a couple of unexpected and troublesome visitors to host. They’d probably let me sit down someplace, and just carry on whatever they were doing around me. That was about all I felt up to, really.

I didn’t talk to my spirits. My mind had sort of shut down. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, even if they were in my head, even if they were parts of me.

I wonder what the paramedics and the folk at the hospital thought of me. The blank-faced teenager who sat very still and stared at the wall, or read a book silently.

Though, a lot of people in the Accident and Emergency waiting room were quiet…everyone was, actually, save one babe-in-arms. Maybe that’s normal. I got a chocolate bar and some terrible tea from a vending machine. I felt very cold, physically and mentally; the tea and chocolate helped a bit, but not much.

Before my grandparents picked me up and took me home again, I found out what was the problem, at least. A urine infection-probably. The weird thing is, though, my mother didn’t display any of the usual symptoms of urine infection. And I’ve had urine infections before, and they were annoying and painful, but they didn’t leave me doubled over and shaking uncontrollably. The healerfolk think it’s possibly something to do with her recently having had a coil fitted.(The thought of those things has always freaked me out a bit. I suppose I shouldn’t comment on methods of contraception, since I’ve never had a reason to use any of them; still, there’s something creepy about fitting metal semi-permanently into your reproductive organs. And what about TSS?)

She’s staying in the hospital overnight, at least; don’t know when she’ll be back, though the doctor said it will be okay, it’s not life-threatening.

I also feel annoyed at how useless I was. Of course, I’m not healer trained, and I did all I could in the situation, and professionals were there who had the thing in hand, and it’s not like I ran out and left her in trouble, but still. Something real happened here for once-a genuine emergency-and I was useless. It makes me feel ineffectual, resentful and annoyed. Also annoyed at myself FOR feeling like that, when it’s so pointless.

*sighs*

I hope I never have to go through this again…though, with my mother getting older, odds are I probably will. Or something along these lines, anyway.