MY MOM GRABBED MY HAND AND WHISPERED A NAME I’D NEVER HEARD BEFORE
The frantic beeping of the monitor was the only sound as the nurse’s eyes widened at the screen. I knew something was wrong. The air was thick with the sterile scent of disinfectant and a metallic tang. My mother lay still, pale against the stark white sheets.
The doctor finally came in, grim-faced. “She keeps muttering ‘Eleanor’ and ‘the old house’,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “Do those names mean anything to you?” I just shook my head, my throat tight. He moved on, leaving me alone with the silence.
Hours later, the harsh overhead hospital lights made everything look washed out and cold. Mom’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused, and she reached out, grip surprisingly strong on my wrist. “Don’t tell him, darling,” she whispered, her voice raspy. “Don’t ever let him find out about Amelia.”
I pulled back, confused, as the monitor beeped erratically, louder this time. Amelia? Who was Amelia? I didn’t have a sister named Amelia. My heart hammered, a cold dread seeping in.
Just then, a nurse rushed in, asking, “Who’s listed as her emergency contact for Room 312?”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…”Room 312 is her room,” I mumbled, my voice thick with unshed tears, pointing towards my mother. “I’m her emergency contact. I’m her daughter, Maya.”
The nurse nodded curtly, her focus already shifting back to the monitors and the doctor who was now joined by another, both huddled over my mother. My whispered question about Amelia was lost in the sudden flurry of medical activity. They were working on her, adjusting tubes, calling out numbers I didn’t understand. I was ushered gently out of the way, a bystander again, my mind still snagged on that name. *Amelia*.
I retreated to the sterile waiting area just outside the room, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights a dull counterpoint to the chaos inside. My mother’s purse lay on the small table next to the empty chair where I’d been sitting. On impulse, I picked it up. She hated anyone going through her things, but something compelled me now. I needed answers, needed to make sense of the names tumbling from her lips. Eleanor. The old house. Amelia.
My fingers fumbled with the clasp. Inside, beyond the usual jumble of tissues, keys, and lipstick, I found a small, worn leather compartment I’d never noticed before. It was hidden in a fold of the lining. I pulled it open.
Inside, nestled amongst faded plastic cards, was a single, fragile photograph. The edges were soft with age, the colours muted. It showed a young woman, unmistakably my mother, standing in front of a large, slightly dilapidated house with a wide porch. Next to her was an older woman, her arm linked through my mother’s. And standing between them, a small girl, maybe four or five, with bright, curious eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose. Her eyes… they were eerily familiar.
My heart stopped. On the back of the photo, written in my mother’s elegant, but slightly shaky handwriting, were three words:
*Eleanor. Oakwood Manor. My Amelia.*
Oakwood Manor. The old house. Eleanor, the older woman in the photo. And Amelia… the little girl.
I stared at the picture, the hospital sounds fading away. A wave of nausea washed over me. The little girl in the picture. She had my mother’s smile. And her eyes… they were identical to my own.
A memory surfaced, fragmented and hazy – a hushed phone call Mom had taken late one night years ago, her voice tight, mentioning ‘Eleanor’ and ‘a mistake’. Another time, a sudden trip she’d taken alone, saying it was ‘family business’. I’d never pressed, accepting my mother’s quiet reticence as just part of who she was.
‘Don’t tell him, darling. Don’t ever let him find out about Amelia.’ ‘Him’ must be my father.
Amelia wasn’t a sister I didn’t know *about*. Amelia was a sister I *never knew*. An older sister. The age of the photo suggested she would have been born years before my parents even met.
The weight of the secret pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating. My mother, this quiet, seemingly straightforward woman, had carried this immense truth alone for decades. Who was Amelia now? Had she died? Had she been given away? Was Eleanor part of the secret, helping her hide it?
I looked back towards the room where my mother lay, still critical, surrounded by beeping machines. The frantic beeping had lessened slightly, settling into a more rhythmic pattern. The doctors were still there, but the immediate panic seemed to have subsided.
I clutched the photo, my fingers trembling. I didn’t have all the answers, not yet. I didn’t know Amelia’s story, or why my mother had kept her a secret from my father, from *me*. But I knew enough to understand the haunted look that sometimes crossed her face, the moments of unexplained sorrow. Eleanor. Oakwood Manor. My sister, Amelia. The pieces of a hidden life, whispered on the edge of death, were beginning to fall into place. I sank into the chair, the worn photograph a stark contrast to the sterile hospital environment, and waited. Waited for my mother to hopefully awaken, or perhaps, waited for the quiet certainty of a truth I now knew I had to uncover.