‘How exactly are we going to explain this to Mum?’ I sighed, blowing on my coffee to cool it down – partly because it was hot and partly to deter the waitress who was heading towards us with a fresh pot.
‘I don’t know,’ my brother Marcus shook his head, leaning backwards and slinging his arm over the back of the booth. ‘But we do need to tell her, and soon.’
‘How soon?’ I frowned. ‘I thought we still had time before the disability service provider needed to step in?’
Marcus shook his head slowly. ‘I had a chat with Mum’s doctor last night, and… it’s worse than she let on. Worse than what we even assumed once we figured she wasn’t telling us anything.’
‘Damn,’ I said quietly, slumping back in my chair. ‘So she’s…’
‘“Declining quickly”,’ Marcus sighed. ‘Is how the doctor phrased it.’
‘She didn’t give you any more details?’
‘Who, Mum? Of course not. I can practically hear her scratching us out of the will right now just for having this conversation.’
‘The doctor,’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘Nah, she was pretty cagey. I don’t even know if she was allowed to tell me what she told me.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I growled. ‘We’re her family, we need to know what’s happening to our… we need to know what’s happening.’
‘Hey,’ Marcus said softly, reaching across the table to gently wrest a fork from my white-knuckle grip. ‘It’s all gonna be alright, little brother. Just take a deep breath.’
I did as I was told, feeling the nervous buzzing inside of my bones slowly recede a little bit. I nodded my thanks to him and he smiled, placing the fork back in front of me.
‘Way I see it, all we have left to do is find the best company in the Adelaide region to handle support coordination for a disabled person, and then we do what we’ve been doing for years now.’
‘What’s that?’ I mumbled over my too-cold coffee.
‘We ask for help,’ Marcus said. ‘It’s all we can do, in the end.’
‘All we can do,’ I agreed.
We clinked coffee cups in support.