It was cool, the air chilled just below the level of comfort. All was quiet with the exception of the muted hum of the air conditioner. The halls were empty, devoid of people, the pastel walls giving them a seriousness that was reflected by the harsh glow of the overhanging florescent lights.

It was like a tomb, quiet and eerie. Soft bleeps from the monitors could be heard when passing a door, the occasional respirator giving a hissing accompaniment. Bright green, red, and yellow lights blinked in tandem, marking each passing breath and heartbeat.

One set of echoing footsteps broke through the grave silence. It rang down one hall, turned, then headed for another. The tread was heavy, yet quiet, as they made their way over to a certain room.

Nikki never liked the CCU and being here at three in the morning was not making it any better.

She had been rudely awoken half an hour earlier by the stark ringing of the phone. Her mind had blanked out when she had gotten the call, her body frozen in shock. Rachel had been the one thing that had pulled her out of her rut.

Now, she was standing in front of a large window that gave her a view of a woman connected, kept alive, by a myriad of machines and tubes.

"Excuse me." a nurse in a starched white uniform appeared at her side. "Are you related to the patient?"
"My mother." Nikki said, almost as if she didn't believe it herself.

The nurse left her alone, returning to her post.

Nikki leaned her forehead against the cold glass, fogging it with a long exhale. She gathered her courage and entered the room. Her steps were hesitant, unsure as she reached the bedside. Once there, she sank into the hard, uncomfortable plastic chair that was customary hospital issue.

Never in her life did she think this would happen. Not once in all of the thirty six years that she had been on earth. Nikki leaned on her elbows, propping her chin on her upturned palm. Her jiggling heel tapped in a strange syncopation to the bleeping of the EKG machine and the hissing of the respirator.

Her mother's brown eyes were taped shut. Even then, Nikki could feel the heat of that look that was customary of her mother. Her face was pale, her hair fanning out on the flat pillow. The lines around her eyes and mouth were smoothed, giving her mother a youthful look she thought she had lost.

Nikki reached a tentative hand over and released the guardrail. She laid a shaking hand on the cool, smaller one. Her voice was low and just as unsteady as she spoke to the woman laying on the rough white sheets.

"Hey Mom." Nikki blinked to clear her blurred vision, fighting to keep the tears from falling. "First time I've gotten to talk to you without being interrupted."

The woman was silent, unmoving, unaware of her daughter seated beside her bed.

"You probably wouldn't want me here if you were awake. I probably wouldn't have even known if Daddy hadn't called me. So, I'm sitting here, wishing you and I were elsewhere."

Nikki swallowed hard several times, her other hand clenched tight in a fist.

"I know we never agreed on anything and we never got along all that well, especially when I was a teenager."

"You were always so eager to shut me in a square that was the image of the perfect daughter. The perfect daughter that I never was. The daughter that my sister is."

Another swallow and a long shaky breath.

"I don't know what to feel, what to think. I feel like I couldn't give you a second thought, and yet I want to be here to know that you're really okay. I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I want to be at home with Rachel, asleep in our bed, and yet, I'm here, talking to you."

A rush of memories brought another bout of tears to Nikki's eyes. She let them fall unhindered this time, her thumb gently stroking the thin, slack hand of her mother's.

"You would always tell me that you were given an unfair hand in life, having you sisters turn on you, your parents never there for you and having polio cripple you again. Just like you told me that we, Alex, Melissa and me? we were your hope. We would be the one way that you would get the last laugh."

"You always said that we would replace the life that you had lost. We would be the reason that you could turn your nose up at all the people who had wronged you."

"I never really listened to those lectures. I would always be thinking of something else as you went on and on about us all getting our Ph.Ds and large salaries. I hated those three hour long lectures, hated those times when you called me from my haven to tell me the same thing over and over again. I drew a picture of you as a parrot once. What I wouldn't give for you to be yelling at me again."

Nikki sniffed, biting her bottom lip.

"The disappointment on your face when I went into the police academy instead of UCLA was like a slap across the face. I knew that you would never forgive me for that, but I never expected you to throw me out."

"When I finally made that promotion to Captain, I was so ready to tell everyone, so eager and happy to tell you and Daddy. Daddy ended up being the only person that I told."

"Then, I met Rachel and I really wanted Daddy to meet her, even if you wouldn't. When you showed up at Alex's house that Christmas, I was so shocked, I almost keeled over. I could have killed and kissed Alex at the same time for inviting you over without telling you that I would be there."
The respirator hissed, deafening in the silence of Nikki's pause.

"When you found out that Rachel and I were getting married, you were so angry. You told me that all those years, all the blood, sweat, and tears that you had shed on my part were for nothing, wasted on me. You told me that I was born in vain, that my life was a waste of flesh? your flesh."

"Rachel was so angry when she found out that I wasn't crying at our wedding reception because of our ceremony. She just didn't understand what I felt when her parents walked her down that aisle while the seats that were planned for family were half empty. I didn't tell her about the dark cloud that always followed me around when we were planning our wedding and hung over me on our honeymoon. She couldn't understand."

"When not even Daddy showed up, or Melissa, or Alex, there was this emptiness in me that was a hundred times bigger than the one I had felt that hot summer afternoon that I had come out to you at the Nob Hill Foods parking lot near our condo about my sexuality."

"Back then, there was a little ray of hope that I held on to, that somehow, someway, we would be alright. That you would love me and forgive me for being who I was. At our wedding, that little ray of hope was gone, vanished into the vast abyss that separated you and me. I stopped trying to snatch it again."

Nikki took a deep breath, trying to drown out the chaotic rush of memories.

"I thought that Rachel was insane when she invited you and Daddy over for Thanksgiving. Never in my life did I imagine that you would agree to come. I felt like throwing up when the doorbell rang and I opened the door to find you standing there. That dinner was the worst and the best in all those years that we had parted. I kept thinking that you were with me, sitting at the same table, in the same house with me and Rachel, eating and talking with us. Even when you were silent and glaring, even when you snapped at me, even when you were arguing with Rachel, I felt like we were going to be okay because we were together."

"We never saw each other again after that, one once. That little light that had popped up disappeared just as quickly. I hated you then, hated you for not loving me, hated you for not being my mother."

"Every time Rachel's parents came over or I had lunch with my friends and their parents, I would get this unsettling feeling in my stomach. I felt like I was alone, that everyone's parents except mine were there. Just like the way that I felt when none of you showed up for my junior high graduation or when you were always late to pick me up from elementary school because you had business to tend to."

Nikki sighed and shook her head. "After a few years, I stopped caring. I buried you and Daddy in the deepest, darkest corner of my mind and heart. I never wanted to have anything to do with you again."

"I was doing great, pretending that I didn't care until I got that call for Daddy half an hour ago."

Nikki wiped the tears from her face, listening to the sounds that meant her mother was alive.

"I'm sorry that I was never the girl, daughter, or woman that you wanted me to be. I'm sorry that I let you down. I sorry that you think you failed to raise me right, in the light of your dreams and my future."

"I'm not sorry that I turned out how I am today. I'm not sorry for loving a woman. I'm not sorry for not being the perfect wife to the perfect husband."

Nikki stood and pulled out a thin, square velvet box from the pocket of her leather trench coat. She stared at it for a moment before slipping it under her mother's fully functional hand.

"You always said that you've always wanted a complete diamond set. If I couldn't make one of your dreams come true, at least I can make one of your wishes come true."

"You'll probably never understand why I married Rachel, seeing as you were never in love with Daddy. You'll never understand why I choose her over all of you."

"You may not want to see me ever again, but you're still my mother and as crazy as it seems, I still love you. I think I tried hard enough to hang on to you while you simply had simply let go., so this time, I'll wait. My door will always be open to you. You know where I live."

Nikki let out a frustrated sigh, her hand raking through her black hair.

"I probably wouldn't have the courage to talk you if you were awake. You probably can't hear me anyway."

She leaned over and kissed her mother's smooth forehead. One last look and she was gone. Rachel would be sitting there in the waiting room for her. Her mother would get well and they would never see or speak to each other again. Nikki's ties with her family would gradually crumple and disappear. She would mourn that, telling her father and her siblings that she was there for them always, even if they didn't want her. Perhaps, she hoped, her family would come to see her daughter, the daughter that was growing in Rachel, their daughter, if not her.

Nikki walked out of the CCU without ever looking back or a pause in her step. Her footsteps echoed softly throughout the pastel painted halls as the harsh florescent lights turned her black hair into shades of mahogany.

A tear trickled out of the corner of an eye as a hand untouched by either polio or post polio syndrome clenched tight around the black velvet box.

The monitors bleeped and the occasional respirator hissed at the passing of each door. The halls were desolate, barren of anyone with the exception of the cleaning crew.

Nikki ignored the tears and tried the push away the ache that was gnawing at her chest, Rachel would be angry that she had cut herself on her keys, the keys that were still clenched tight in her fist. She would bandage them up and scold her. Somehow, someway, it would be like her mother scolding her, and yet not.

The double doors silently swung shut behind her, leaving the tomblike quietness undisturbed.