"Oh, come on Hana. Please forgive me; it was not me, it was Sara. She was messing with me for a long time. Today she didn't go to school. She said she was sick. She came to our room while I was asleep..."
Hana, who could not stand another word, suddenly screamed which made the driver to drive faster while blowing the horn.
When finally in the hospital, very exhausted of spasmodic labor and bitter anguish, she was taken to the delivery room. She closed her eyes and imagined all her lost dreams. In that world of confusion, and rush, she was hearing unclear words and was trying to comprehend them. She understood that something was not right. She was ten days early, her water was broken a while back, doctor could not hear the baby's pulse, and she had no contraction anymore. She let her immobilized body to be carried and tossed, while her defensive volition was annihilating ; nevertheless, she had enough sense to grab the sheet and put it between her clenching teeth in that last glassy solitude. She thought: "I can never reach the sun rays as my dad did."
After inducing her for the rest of the day and then the entire night, in the morning they hastily took her back to the delivery room. The unendurable pain did not make her cry or scream, but to make a fist and run his nails into the palm of her hands. She stubbornly refused to do things they seemed normal at such time; and like everything else that she had done differently in her life, she bravely tried to act unlike other women at the similar situation. However, she shared only one special feeling with most mothers to be; she wanted her mother there with her. In that deadly moment, while the endless pain was taking the last of her amazingly boundless energy, she yearned for her mother's presence, the way she wanted to remember her, sane. She refused to have Hamid in the room with her, while when she was in the holding area, she had no choice. She vaguely remembered that her grandparents, her aunt and Behroz had come to see her the night before. She was happy to see them, but still she wanted her mother.
At five in the morning, when finally her bravery melted away by the last wave of the exhausting pain, and her scream was mixed by the melodious cry of a baby boy, she lastly relaxed her body from the long lassitude. In that moment of hallucination, caught between twilight and actuality, her entire entity changed vigorously. She looked at the bald, bloody, sticky, and wet baby on her wrinkled, empty stomach, who moved like a worm, and an unfamiliar sensation shook her. It was like a brand new sentiment, something beyond and above everything she knew. Surprisingly, a greater feeling brought a peculiar smile to her face- she was falling in love all over again with her mother. But when she remembered her insane mom in her solitary room, her smile changed and the furrow between her eyebrows deepened and tears began swimming in her eyes. For the first time, she understood why her mother lost her sanity.
Dallas-
Hana's immeasurable love for her sons becomes clear in the shadowy dusk of her mind after retrospection and reliving those expressive moments of her life. The sudden light gives her the answer she has searched for, and for the first time she knows exactly what her next step will be. She can not wait for her sons' return home because a subliminal fear horrifies her for changing her mind. She shudders with an astonishing impatience that time is not passing but turning backwards. Now that the greatest test in her life is about to come to conclusion, she shivers to stop her brain of thinking, so no other strong emotion can destroy this ultimate one.
When Farhad and Sam finally come home, she is so exhausted that she needs a strong support to motivated her to speak. Her sons can easily recognize their mother's despairing attempt and they decide to discover it in a gentle way.
"Mom, it seems that you have an answer for us." Farhad says while holding her hand.
She stares at these two tall, young, handsome, and strong men and remembers them as two needy babies, who could die without her. Their need now is a different type; and it seems to her that hey have changed places with her, as she did with her mother. The missing smile slowly brightens her face and while trying to hug them, she remembers her mother when for the first time she saw Farhad.
Tehran-
Farhad was three days old and looked so much like Hana's dad. Hana took her to her mother's room while she was frightened to let her hold her son. The insane woman looked at her first grandchild; and Hana noticed that her frenzied eyes changed unexpectedly to the way they had been before; and her strange behavior curtailed.
"Can I hold the baby?" Gol said as though her tone of voice resembled to someone just awakened from a long coma.
Hana handed Farhad to her. Gol sat on a chair while holding the baby. She looked at the baby for a long time and suddenly said:
"Van, Van, my Van is back. He's not dead."
Hana trembled. Her mother talked insensible; nevertheless, it did not seem like a mad woman's talk anymore.
"Are you okay, mom?"
"Yes, I am. My Van is back. Can I keep him while you're at work?"
Hana was not sure what to answer; but mom's kind eyes did not look like an insane woman anymore.
"Yes, mom, if you like!"
"Yes, I do, I do. I know he is your son, but he is my son, too. He is my Van."
Gol somehow superseded Farhad with her dead son; and that gave her a sense of vitality that no doctors in past one and half years could offer her. All those doctors had done, were over medicating her; and telling Hana that her mother would never be normal again. Hana had taken her mom to three specialist. All three at the beginning had wanted to put her in institution; but when they had faced Hana's angry resistance, they came up with cocktails of medicine that would make her sleep almost all the time. Hana intuitively knew that they should be some other cure for her mom, something out there that she did not know of it yet. But now with the birth of her son, Farhad, Hana believed that finally the cure was there. She was a mother again to her children and to her newly born grandson, Farhad, Van...
Dallas-
To Be Continued
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