‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’: when a child becomes the rescuer

“What? Your mother is bleeding?”

“Breathing!” I screamed through tears. Why couldn’t Nan understand? Was she pretending to be deaf? Time was running out. Nan was no use. I hung up and called triple zero, hooking one finger at a time on the dial. I dialled twice, terrified the first two zeros had failed to go through. I needed to do it perfectly.

The call connected to a woman’s calm, clear voice. I took in every word of the woman’s instructions for CPR. Jumping onto the bed, I did as I’d been told: pinched Mum’s nose, blew into her mouth, pumped her chest with my hands. I exhaled into her dry mouth as hard as I could, like they did on Baywatch. Her head felt like a ripe melon in my small hands.

After the first puff, Mum’s body convulsed. Her throat gurgled, a sign that my attempts were working, my stale air circulating in her lungs. I blew a few more times, but my breaths were meagre. I staggered off the bed. “I can’t do it!” I wailed to the woman on the phone.

“The ambulance is on its way,” she said.

Soon, red flashes were illuminating the end of the street like a lighthouse beacon cutting through the darkness. Two large ambulance officers entered our narrow hallway, lugging medical kits and strange devices. While the adults took charge, I hovered as far from Mum as I could. I heard the men exchanging instructions and pumping air into her mouth.

I wanted to scream and shout and run away. My world was shaking in a cataclysm, my rage clamouring for an outlet, but there was no vent.

My father arrived in his white Camry. He’d been attending a Cambodian wedding reception, celebrating with friends. He burst through the front door. By the time he reached Mum, the paramedics were about to leave.

“There’s not much we can do here – we have to get her to the hospital,” one of them said to Dad. My father didn’t sweep me into his arms or ask if I was okay. Instead, he was spluttering, “She is sick. My wife is sick.”

Mum’s older brother, Uncle Johnny, lived with Nan Ruby and, after my phone call, he’d come straight over on his pushbike. He minded me while Dad sat by Mum’s bed in the intensive care unit. Back in my room, I cried into my pillow, exhausted and numb. In the darkness, I put my hands together and prayed. “Please, God, help Mum and Dad, me and the rest of the family pull through. Oh God, please.”

The following day, Dad took me to see Mum in the hospital. I approached her bed cautiously. Tubes and cords came out of her body, an apparatus helped her breathe, and a machine beeped beside her. She was more machine than woman. “Why are her fingers so fat?” I asked, touching her hand, which was smooth and bloated like a rubber glove engorged with water. I put my hand on hers. “Can she hear me?” “Yes, she can hear you,” somebody said.

Dad explained that Mum had suffered an inflammation of the heart. Myocarditis, the Victorian coroner would later conclude – a heart attack. I sat quietly on a stool and stared at the machine woman as the rest of the hospital hummed around us.

I wanted to scream and shout and run away. My world was shaking in a cataclysm, my rage clamouring for an outlet, but there was no vent.

Later the doctors explained that Mum was brain dead. The only thing keeping her “alive” was the life-support machine. Dad told me she might be brain damaged if she woke up, and we’d have to care for her for the rest of our lives: “She wouldn’t be the same Mummy, without any quality of life.” He was left to decide whether to flick the switch on his wife of 19 years.

Six days passed. Without any signs of recovery, the machine woman was turned off, and Mum was gone. She was 44.

Jason Om’s memoir, All Mixed Up (ABC Books, $35), is out Wednesday. He will discuss his book at Readings Emporium Melbourne (April 5), Avid Reader Brisbane (April 13) and Sydney Writers’ Festival (May 19).

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