Work Text:
Day 1
Mary doesn’t know how she came to be hunched over the toilet bowl. She doesn’t remember feeling the urge to throw up the small amount of food she’d managed to consume in the last day, but here she is. She can hardly get a breath in between wretching, which has turned into dry heaving that she can’t seem to stop. There’s a shadow over her, and as she finally manages to lean back, small arms catch her and she realizes that it’s Missy who was holding her hair back and now is holding her, and it’s Sheldon who, gloves and mask firmly in place, is standing over both of them with a box of Kleenex in one hand and the bottle of TUMS in the other. Through the haze, she can almost hear the sound of her own whimpered cries, but she can’t seem to stop those, either.
Day 2
She can feel her hair being pulled on, but it takes her a bit before she realizes that the pulling is actually brushing and that someone is brushing her hair. It takes her even longer to put together that said somebody is her mother, but she doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it. She has no idea how long she’s been out, but apparently long enough that her hair needs to be brushed and she hasn’t done it.
Day 3
Pastor Jeff tries to visit. Georgie promptly sends him away. Pastor Rob tries too, and this time, it’s Missy who blocks the front door. Mary wouldn’t know any of this except that Sheldon has decided his current mission is keeping her informed of everything that goes on in the house. She lets him talk. The few things that she catches in the brief moments of clarity between the hours of haze give her something to ruminate on other than the emptiness beside her in bed.
Day 4
They say they’ll wait until she’s feeling a little more up to it before having the funeral. Internally, she scoffs. When the hell will she be more “up to” having her husband’s funeral? She’s sure like to know. Anyway, it makes no sense to put it off and postpone the inevitable. They have the funeral that weekend. Mary delivers a eulogy. She doesn’t remember most of it.
Day 5
It takes her much too long to realize she’s no longer in her own bed and instead in a hospital bed. Dehydration , they’ll tell her later. She hadn’t been truly eating or drinking in a week. All she knows is that she’s cold, and there aren’t enough blankets on this bed, and it smells like sterile hospital and not like George and now her pajamas smell the same way and she’ll never get the George smell back.
Day 6
It is nearly a week post-everything going to crap that Mary finally ventures out of the bedroom on her own fruition. The house is empty… thank God, nobody to mark this “momentous” occasion. She makes it to the kitchen before her eyes land on the family portrait hanging on the wall that she had seen for years as she was cooking, and there was George, and…
She’s back in her room before anyone gets home.
Day 7
There were so many casseroles. Too many, in Mary’s opinion. She was still perfectly capable of cooking. Or… well, she would be if her brain was able to focus on a singular task for more than five seconds. Stocking-footed, she pulls her cardigan around her nightgown a little tighter to combat the ever-present chill inside of her. There are seven casserole dishes lined up on the counter, each covered in tinfoil and each cover signed with some cliche “prayin’ for ya’” message.
When the kids come back that evening, they don’t comment on the seven shattered casserole dishes with their contents smeared all over the kitchen. None of the church ladies ask for their dishes back.
Day 8
She knows the kids are struggling, and really, it shouldn’t surprise her. Their father is dead, their mother more absent than present these days. She never imagined herself as an absent mother… she grew up with an absent mother and never wanted to do that to her children… but it would be a whole lot easier if she could get herself to get out of bed. If she could break herself out of this haze.
She hears her own mother tell Georgie that he has to step up as the man of the house, and she hates that, but she doesn’t say anything. She is handed a carefully arranged and prepared tray of food… mostly soup and bread and other things she may be able to stomach… by Missy, who she overhears asking Georgie whether black dress clothes should be washed with the colored load or the white load. She never hears the answer, but she knows that her baby girl is doing the cooking and the laundry and she hates herself for letting that happen because the last time Missy had to do that Mary was out of the country and not just wallowing a shut bedroom door away. She hears Sheldon just outside said shut door begging his Meemaw to let him ask his mom a question about college, which is ironic because she never went, and she hears her mother quietly tell him that his mom needs to rest, and she hates herself even more. She even hears CeCe crying and Mandy struggling the next room over with baby-related problems Mary knows how to fix, but she doesn’t get up. She wraps herself in one of his crewnecks that she salvaged from the closet a few days ago and she lets herself retreat into her head… retreat to a time when things weren’t so complicated and they were all around the dinner table together and she was… complete.