The sun is peeking out from the clouds as Cooper pulls into the hospital parking lot, dyeing the sky a beautiful pinkish-yellow that tints the layers of snow on the lot. There is a wonderful sloshing sound that boots make on snow, evoking memories of the last few childhood snow days before it all melts away. The sound follows Cooper to the sliding glass doors of the emergency entrance.

It feels like he's dying.

It's a small hospital with a small waiting room, so his eyes find Blaine the second he steps in, asleep across three chairs. He walks over and sits down by his brother's head, drawing in a deep breath.

The nurse in scrubs at the reception desk glances over at him and mutters, "One sec, Cheryl," into her phone. "Are you Cooper Anderson?" she asks, tone gentle.

He nods.

"Sorry, Cheryl, gotta go," she says back into the phone, and hangs up. "Okay, come with me. No, leave him," she orders as Cooper reaches out to shake Blaine. "He just went to sleep an hour ago. No use in upsetting him until we get the rest of this sorted out."

"You can't just leave him in here," Cooper points out, gesturing towards the doors, which areopen to any passing ax murderer or pedophile.

"I'm paging a replacement," she explains. "Someone's got to watch the desk. Now come along."

She leads him through halls and halls. The hospital is relatively quiet, but a few people peer out of their room at Cooper as if trying to figure out what's wrong with him. The nurse's tennis shoes look at home on the tiled floor, but his boots are loud and make him feel self-conscious.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

Why are these hallways so long? Cooper wonders, but as the nurse's steps slow and veer towards a room, he wishes they were longer.

She scans a card and opens the door, motioning for him to go in first.

It's dark. There a few lights from equipment, but for a moment Cooper can't make out exactly what is in the room. She could be curled up happily on the bed, napping, sleeping a headache off. She could be fine.

The nurse flips the lights on.

She is not her. There is a sheet over the barest outline of a person, shielding Cooper from it, from everything. But the nurse is cruel and she rips the sheet away.

Her hair is splayed out haphazardly, dark spider webs across the white pillow. The skin has a weird tint, something not quite wrong, but very not alive. It is not her. It is not. His mother is blushing cheeks and hair pulled in a loose bun. Her smile is gentle and frail, but almost always present, especially when she looks at Cooper or Blaine. Here it is a grimace.

This isn't her, but when the nurse's voice floats through, asking if it is, he finds himself nodding.

"I need to hear you say it, dear."

"This is my mother."

"Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"How did it happen?" If there are details, more details, maybe he can find the flaw; see the reason why this is wrong, because it has to be.

The nurse nods, and begins rattling off the story like she'd been rehearsing it.

"Your brother woke up from a nightmare and went to go find your mother. When he knocked on her door, she didn't answer, so he let himself in and found her non-responsive. When he couldn't wake her up he ran downstairs and called 911. He was too afraid to go back upstairs, so he doesn't know she was dead yet."

The words are skimpy, but Cooper can see what happened in his mind, see Blaine knocking on the door, already crying, probably. He can see his brother running to jump in the bed, and when she doesn't wake he sees Blaine shaking her, yelling at her. And he can see his mother's body all alone upstairs while Blaine sobs downstairs in the kitchen.

"Your brother rode in the ambulance with her, and CPR was attempted in transit, but it very quickly became clear that she had been dead several hours. The paramedics did not inform your brother what had happened, and they placed me in charge of him when he got here. Due to her medical history on record, a stroke is suspected, but we'll need an autopsy to confirm. At this point, we had been attempting to contact your father for several hours, so we contacted you."

Cooper nods, though the part about her medical records isn't familiar.

"We moved her into this room, and we've continued to try and contact your father. We haven't been able to."
"Try his work phone," Cooper suggests and lists it off, looking anywhere but at his mother.

"Thank you," the nurse says. "Do you want a moment alone?"

Cooper nods, running his fingers through his hair and trying to keep his breathing even.

"Okay." The door slams shut behind her.

There is a moment when the sound startles Cooper out of breathing, and when he draws air back in, it is heaving, gasping. Then he falls to his knees.

Grief is a stranger to Cooper. He'd lost his grandma, his father's mother, when he was six, but she lived back in the Philippines and he'd only ever met her twice. Peering into the casket at the funeral had been surreal, because it was the most attention he'd ever paid her.

He had skipped Eliza's funeral, stayed at home with Blaine as their mother made an appearance. Her hair was out of its bun that day. She'd straightened it best she could, thrown an old black dress on it. As she walked towards the front door she doubled back and asked Cooper how her eye makeup looked.

"Fine," he'd responded, but what he really meant was 'No, you can't see the tear stains from the fight last night."

This hurts. There's an ache everywhere as Cooper sobs. He can't catch a breath, can't think about anything, and he just rocks back and forth on his knees, hands covering his face.

His mother is dead. How? How is she there one day, waiting for him at home, ready at the driveway to come and hug him when he drives down to visit, then not? She's supposed to always answer the home phone, but never her cell phone, because no matter how many time he reminds her to keep it on her she leaves it in the car. She's supposed to send him cookies and care packages like he's actually at college, not just bumming around.

Now she is cold, under a sheet five feet away, and nothing is warm except his tears, hot and salty on his cheeks like he's always hated.

* * *

When he comes back to himself, not really sure if he was asleep or just so deep in his grief that he lost his sense of being, the sun is now shining through the window brightly. He rolls back off his knees, wiping at his eyes and turning away from his mother's corpse.

When you walk off the stage, out of scene, you can leave emotions there, everything you just felt when you acted. Cooper likes to do that, leave all his emotions on the stage. As he stands up and walks out of the room, he tries to leave his grief in there with his mother.

It doesn't work. He knows that as he stumbles down the hall, legs tingling from being in the same position so long. There is something in his core, something motherless, and he's not a good enough actor to fool himself.

The hospital is a bit busier now, families beginning their visit, and he ignores them, just looking for the signs that lead to the emergency room. One little girl with a balloon, presumably for a patient, gives him a look that lets him know he must look like hell. He doesn't bother to fix his hair or straighten his thrown on t-shirt and basketball shorts.

The waiting room is a bit more crowded now. The nurse from before nods at him as he passes her desk, but does not put down her phone this time.

He crouches down beside Blaine and runs his fingers through the eleven-year-old's curly hair.

"Hey squirt," he whispers, "Wake up."

Blaine blinks slowly before sitting up and lunging for his brother, immediately asking questions.

"Is mom all right? Is dad here? What time is it?"

Cooper takes a minute to rub his hand up and down Blaine's back before pushing him away by the shoulders.

"We need to talk about something, Blaine, but you've got to promise me you're going to stay calm, okay. Can you try that?"

Blaine nods vigorously, biting his lip a bit.

"Blaine, do you remember what happened to Eliza?

"No," Blaine responds. Normally Cooper would sigh and try to get Blaine to cut the act, but this time he ignores it.

"Blaine, Mom isn't going to get better."

"What do you mean?" Blaine asks, but his eyes tell Cooper he already knows, already suspects.

"Mom's dead."

Sounds are vibrations, travelling through the air. Now of all moments, Cooper remembers a diagram in some middle school textbook, lines travelling from one person's mouth to another person's ear.

Words are really more complex than that. So are sounds, and the one Blaine makes isn't human. It's more universal than that, something beyond biology, beyond grief, so Cooper covers his ears and waits until it all goes away.