“Your mother is still holding on.” I was searching for the right words. “She is comfortable.”
“Thank you for the update,” he said briefly, before hanging up. He was a doctor himself, familiar with the process of dying. I took a slow breath; there was a knot in my throat when I swallowed.
Under my scrubs, my breasts were heavy and aching, like a stomachache only higher up. It had been 3 hours since I had pumped. There was no putting aside the tragedy of a mother dying without her son—that would stay with me forever. But for these moments I was not only an intern navigating the tragedies of COVID-19, I was also the mother of a baby who depended on me.