itās wearing thin | noah & caleb
Sundays were a weird day for Noah. Visiting his mum had gotten easier as heād gotten older and heād learnt how to deal with it better. Some weeks it was almost entirely normal. Other weeks werenāt so great. But he made a point of not missing visiting her if he could avoid it. It wasnāt something that was spoken about when heād lived at home or when he visited his grandparents, mostly they ignored the fact that his mother even existed at all outside of the days when they visited her. She wasnāt even their daughter, they werenāt obliged to care about her, Noah supposed, so in a way he appreciated that his grandmother had gone with him each week until he was old enough to go on his own. His dad, he should have been the one going with him. But as far as Noah was aware, he rarely visited his wife. He did pay for everything, it was how they could afford to let her stay in the private hospital on the outskirts of Wellington. That was all he did.
This week wasnāt so great, but Noah knew it could have been a lot worse. He got the early bus in, so he could get their when visiting hours started, so it wasnāt so busy. He just preferred it that way. But before he even got into the visitorās room, the nurse who was leading him to where his mother was sat in her room, told him it probably wasnāt going to be a very long visit. Catatonia had been explained to him several times before, but behind all the confusing scientific terminology he only understood it as episodes where she was virtually unresponsive to everything and everyone. She just stared, unflinchingly from her bed, the only comfort was that she didnāt talk to him endlessly about delusions neither he nor anyone else could talk her out of. She didnāt lash out at him either, like the odd occasions when sheād mistaken him for his father, forgetting altogether that she had a son, and just knowing that her husband had left her in that hospital. Still, after the weird and, more often than not, frustrating time heād been having with Caleb, he might have liked to be able to talk to her properly that week, like he usually could. After changing the flowers in the vase she kept on her beside table, he only sat in the chair next to her bed for about five minutes, it was unlikely sheād emerge from the episode soon, heād been told, but five minutes couldnāt hurt.Ā
The long bus ride home didnāt do him any good, only sending him deeper into the unhappiness heād felt since heād step foot in his motherās room. He told himself it was alright, Wilhelm was out all day rehearsing, he could just go home and sleep the bad feeling off. Heād made himself a promise some years ago that he couldnāt just cry every time he didnāt like the way his mother was that week. He had to get used to it somehow, so mostly he ignored it when he could, falling into his grandparentsā routine as pretending she didnāt exist. As a child when people asked him why he lived with his grandparents he just told them his father worked away, which was mostly true, and that his motherĀ āwasnāt around anymoreā, which was a close to the truth he could get without telling the truth. Nowadays he just avoided the subject.Ā
The apartment was empty when he returned, as he had predicted, so he shrugged off his jacket, and flicked on the kettle, trying to ignore the way his eyes stung and his hands shook. Sighing he was about to pour the hot water into a mug when there was a knock at the door. Frowning he went to answer it, unsure about who it would be. There was a chance it was Bret, Wilhelmās best friend, but he probably would have known that he was at work right now. He swung open the door, ready to tell whoever it was that now wasnāt a good time, prepared to make up some lie that he was ill or tired. Those words never made it past his lips.
