One night at around 2am the youngest daughter got a call from the husband asking her to go back to the hospital. She could hear her mom screaming in the background so she quickly got dressed and headed back to the hospital.

Her mom was still yelling when she arrived at the hospital. She was yelling that she was thirsty and wanted water. The nurses were around her trying to calm her down, but nothing was working. She leaned over the hospital bed and got her mom's attention. She asked her mom what was wrong to which she answered that she needed water.

At this time the mom wasn't allowed to drink any liquids anymore. Since she was spending most of her days asleep the doctors were worried that she would get pneumonia since she could no longer swallow all that well. All they were allowing her was a sponge to suck on to keep her mouth wet. They'd tried giving her her sponge, but that wasn't enough for the mom and she was yelling for actual water.

She was scared and crying for water. How was she supposed to not give her mom the one thing she wanted? Why were they depriving a woman that was already dying of the only thing she asked for lately? The daughter didn't understand. After her mom begged her for water once again the daughter grabbed and empty cup and ran to get her mom some water. Both the husband and nurses tried to stop her from lifting up the mom and putting the straw to her lips to allow her a few sips.

The daughter yelled at them to stop, that she was going to give her mom what she was asking for. She continued saying that it wasn't like her mom was strong enough to drink the whole damn cup, that she just wanted to feel a little bit of water go down her throat. She promised to keep her mom in an upright position after she was done drinking to help it not sit in her lungs.

After just a couple of sips her mom began to calm down. The nurses gave the mom a dose of anxiety medication so she would continue to stay calm and rest.

All it took was a couple of sips of water to get her mom to rest. There was no need to completely deprive her of the only thing she asked for. After sitting with her mom until she was asleep the daughter moved to a bigger chair and tried to get a little rest. There was no way that she was going to leave, she was going to stay to make sure everything stayed calm.

After that night the husband said their mom was like that a lot of the nights so the family talked to her doctors about adding a anxiety medication into rotation so that if it was needed they could just ask for it, otherwise they would have to wait until they got a hold of her doctor and it approved. This way it would be easier for everyone. Even with it being added it was only to be used as needed not an everyday medication.

Even though the children all went home at night they always went to the hospital every morning and kept up with all the medication their mother would get while they were gone. It became clear that after they left multiple units of anxiety medication was being given under the guise of helping her sleep. Needing help to sleep wasn’t something the mother needed help with, all she did was sleep. It didn't make sense to them at all.

The first thing the daughter's would do when they got to the hospital was look at the board and ask the nurses what medications the mother had been given at night and in the mornings before they returned.

They hated to think that the husband was having the nurses give their mother more medication than she needed so that he wouldn't have to bother with her so he could sleep through the night. But that was exactly where their minds went. This was on point with all that he'd been doing lately. He was tired, yes they all knew that, they were all tired at this point, but being exhausted wasn't an excuse to drug someone up so you don't have to deal with them. Hopefully they were wrong.

It was a sad thought but it was one that was looking to be true. When more than one dose of anxiety medication was given in a night the daughter's would ask the husband why she was given so much medicine to which he’d say she had anxiety and that she was breathing funny. If the daughters questioned their mother's treatments further the husband would get upset and immediately get defensive. The tears he'd been able to perfect dropped on queue and he'd say that they didn't know what he had to go through and if they didn't like how he was doing things they could stay the night and he’d gladly go home. That he was tired of all this already.

At this point in their moms hospital stay everything was always an argument from him when anything was questioned, but that didn’t stop the daughters, if they thought something was off with their mother's treatment they would for sure question it. And getting doped up on Xanax when they weren't around was definitely a concern for them.

Everyday brought change with the mom's care. One day they were preparing to let their mom pass in the hospital and the next day they were being told she was a strong woman and they would have to take her home to pass.

Her family knew what was really going on with the hospital and it made them angry. The hospital just wanted to kick them out to get another person in the bed to charge them more money. The thing that the hospital wasn't aware of was that the mom's youngest daughter was a fighter. She never let anyone push her family around. She got that trait from her mother. Anytime the nurses or doctors were sent in to explain that the mom would have to be released she'd ask to speak to the head of the hospital. There was no way that they were going to kick her dying mom out of the bed where she was resting comfortably.

This happened twice during the moms stay and twice the daughter told them their mother was going no where. They had a history and noted complaints with this hospital being negligent when caring for their mom and every time they tried to release their mom the daughter had bullet points of all their history with the hospital and lawsuits were threatened. Each time the hospital backed down. The daughter didn't care how mean or rude she looked, no one was going to treat her mom like she was nothing, like she didn't have insurance and was a nuisance.

They all knew that their mom would probably be more comfortable being at home, but she needed so much care and honestly they weren't sure they could give her the proper care she needed alone at home. She still had her stomach wound from her last surgery that hadn't been successful and the drainage tube that they had to put in to make sure there wasn't a blockage. And with her cancer and her body deteriorating her wound refused to heal and she was leaking bodily fluid around the clock which had to be cleaned almost hourly at one point. Her whole family was afraid that if taken home her care would suffer because of them and they wanted her to be as comfortable as she could since she could no longer voice to them how she was feeling.

One afternoon when their mom's doctor went to see her she told the family that there was a procedure they could do to help with the mom's leakage. She was leaking from her 10' incision and from around the tube that was placed in her belly. After discussing the procedure with the family they decided to get it done. They wanted to do anything they could to make their mom comfortable. They were told the procedure would stop the heavy leakage which would be better for the moms skin and make her less uncomfortable. It would also help with infection.

The procedure didn't take long at all. They wheeled the mom in and out of the blue the mom woke up, she hadn't really woken up or talked to them in a while. She cried and screamed and asked for her son. He ran up to her and she wrapped her arms around his neck and asked him to please take care of her husband. She repeatedly asked him to promise her he'd take care of him when she was gone. The son cried and cried and yelled that yes he would, he promised her he would do what she asked of him.

That was one of the most heartbreaking scenes everyone had to witness. Their mom quieted down in seconds and once again slept. She would not wake up anymore. It must have been important to her to get that last wish out.

That last wish would end up almost destroying the son's life. He would take that last promise he made to her to his heart and he would be there for her husband even when he felt it was wrong and even when it put stress and strain on his family. He would even push his family away when the husband would later on talk negatively about his sisters. The husband would use that last promise to try and manipulate the son into doing what he wanted him to do and it was disgusting. The son wouldn't even be able to grieve properly because he felt the need to keep his promise to his mom even though he felt that the husband was an awful man who couldn't be trusted. Once the husbands biggest betrayal was exposed he finally felt free enough to cut ties with the husband. There was finally no doubt in his mind that the mom wouldn't want him to keep pushing his sanity to the side for a man that ended up a disgrace. (You'll hear more about that later.)

Continue to Chapter 13 - A Moment Alone