My Dying Mom Wants Me; Husband Forbids It

My dad called to say my mom was dying. He needed me to get to the hospital right away, to see her one last time.

I told my husband and started to rush out.

Instead he grabbed my arm and said, irritated, If she's about to die, then don't go. It's my dad's sixtieth birthday party today. You come back reeking of a dead person, how much bad luck is that?

The fury nearly made me pass out.

But my mind was on my mom, so I didn't fight with Bartholomew Donaldson.

I shot him one hard look and turned to go.

He yanked me back, rough about it, and shoved me down into the seat. "You're the eldest daughter-in-law. My dad's throwing a birthday banquet, and you're not there? Does that look right?"

"Is seeing your mom one last time really that important? If she's going to die, she'll die whether you're there or not. You're not a doctor. Don't go."

I cried and struggled, but I couldn't break free.

I slipped a message into my family group chat. "Come help me, please. Bartholomew's making me run his dad's birthday party and won't let me go to the hospital."

The group blew up instantly. "Has he lost his mind?"

"If he really pulls this, we'll turn his dad's birthday into a funeral!"

"..."

I lifted my head and looked at Bartholomew, tears streaming down my face. "I'm going to see my mom. If you dare stop me, my family won't let it go."

Bartholomew let out a cold laugh. "Who do you think you're scaring?"

"The dead make way for the living. You never heard that?"

"My dad's holding his birthday banquet here, and you're going to sneak off to go cry over a corpse? How's that going to sit with him?"

"You know better than anyone how much he cares about this."

"You leave a bad taste in his mouth today, that's you being an unfilial daughter-in-law."

Watching me keep crying, Bartholomew said viciously, "Stop it. Who exactly are you mourning?"

Carly Donaldson chimed in from beside him, put out. "You're really something, you know that?"

"It's my dad's birthday today, and you're sniffling and sobbing. Who are you trying to jinx?"

"If the relatives and friends saw this, what would they think?"

Bartholomew gave a cold snort too. "A grown woman, and not a shred of manners."

The two of them took turns sneering at me, and my heart had gone cold long ago.

From the day I married into the Donaldson family, I never had a single peaceful day.

Bartholomew lived with his parents, and there was an unmarried younger sister at home too.

Bartholomew had said, "You're the eldest daughter-in-law. From now on, you run the household."

It sounded nice. What it actually meant was that I did all the housework.

Three meals a day, I cooked for everyone.

Only after they'd finished eating could I steal a moment to swallow a few bites and fill my stomach.

Then I washed the dishes and scrubbed the pots.

Every time Bartholomew's parents came down with an ache or a fever and had to go to the hospital, I was the one who took time off to go with them.

By the end of the month, my pay would be docked so much that Bartholomew looked down on me for it.

His sister, Carly, I paid her college tuition.

She'd even go out with her classmates, run short on cash, and come straight to me, telling me to transfer her the money.

Even after Bartholomew lost his job, it was my dad who pulled strings to find him a new one.

Sometimes I felt like I hadn't married a man. I'd sold myself to them as their servant.

But it never crossed my mind that everything I gave would buy me not gratitude but the opposite, that they'd take me less and less seriously, until they stopped treating me like a person at all.

My mom was dying, and they wouldn't let me see her one last time. The reason, of all things, was that Bartholomew's father was having a birthday and they were afraid of bad luck.

It was absurd.

The thought of it made the tears fall harder.

Bartholomew pinched me, hard. "You want to cry, go cry in the back. Don't sit here putting on a sour face for everyone to see."

I raised my head slowly and looked at him. "If I don't make it to the hospital within half an hour, my family will come and take me out of here."

"Bartholomew, I'm not afraid of making an ugly scene. It's not my dad's birthday party today anyway. Think it over."

Bartholomew narrowed his eyes and said coldly, "Are you threatening me?"

I didn't hide it. I just nodded. "That's right. I'm threatening you."

Bartholomew sneered. "Go ahead and try."

"Let me make this crystal clear. You're staying here today. I don't care who shows up."

Just then someone came running from the kitchen. "We need more hands out here. There aren't enough people to carry the dishes."

Bartholomew hauled me to my feet. "Go. Go carry the dishes."

He shoved me all the way into the kitchen.

The Donaldsons had set out ten tables for the birthday banquet.

They'd hired cooks, but there still weren't enough hands.

So Bartholomew put me to work, running back and forth to help with everything.

Everyone else sat at the tables, eating, drinking, chatting.

I was soaked in sweat, my hands and feet aching, and not one person cared.

As if it were only right and proper that I should slave and suffer here.

Plate after plate came out scalding hot, and I loaded them onto a tray and gritted my teeth and carried them to every table.

At first Bartholomew kept watching me, but once he saw me carrying dishes like an obedient little thing, he relaxed and went off to drink and swap boasts with the others.

I took the chance to slip out of the Donaldson house, hailed an Uber, and headed straight for the hospital.

As for the Donaldsons' banquet... they could do whatever they wanted with it.

When I reached the ward, my father was waiting for me, his eyes rimmed red.

He was the only one at my mother's side.

He said in a low voice, "Your mother took a bad turn very fast. Everyone else is still on the way. I don't know if they'll make it in time."

I nodded, holding back tears.

There was no time to tell him about Bartholomew. I threw myself down at my mother's bedside.

She lay there, worn to skin and bone, and the sight of her sent the tears streaming down my face.

She seemed to have already slipped into a coma.

I held her hand and called to her softly. "Mom. Mom..."

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

They were dull, wandering blankly over everything around her.

But the moment they caught on me, a spark came back into them.

With great effort she reached out and gently stroked my head. "Charlene. You came."

I bent down so she wouldn't have to lift her arm so far.

My mother said quietly, "I'm all right. Don't you worry. Everyone goes through this in the end, sickness and dying, all of it."

"As long as you're doing well, I can rest easy."

At that I broke down and sobbed out loud.

It had always been this way, since I was small. However much she suffered, however much she was wronged, she never dwelled on it.

She only ever cared whether I was doing well, whether I was happy.

She was the person who loved me most in this world.

And now she was leaving too.

My mother drew a breath and asked in a low voice, "You and Bartholomew, you're doing fine?"

I couldn't bear to let her go carrying that worry, so I lied. "We're doing fine."

She nodded faintly. "Good. That's good."

But right then, a hand seized me by the hair and dragged me down to the floor.

I struggled up and saw that it was Bartholomew.

He'd come with a pack of the younger Donaldsons.

Right there at my mother's bedside, he slapped me across the face without a word. "It's my father's birthday. What are you crying for?"

"I told you not to come see some dying woman, and you had to come anyway. Who exactly are you inviting bad luck onto, huh?"

My father rounded on Bartholomew with a roar. "Get out of here."

Bartholomew acted as if he hadn't heard a word, still trying to hit me.

Right then, the alarm on my mother's monitor went off.

Her heart rate and blood pressure were plummeting.

Doctors rushed into the room.

I stared at Bartholomew, sick with grief and rage. "You want my mother to die with regret, don't you? I hate you."

My anger didn't touch him at all.

He motioned to the men he'd brought, and they closed in to drag me out.

I sobbed and screamed, "I'm not going back. I'm staying with my mother."

Bartholomew snapped, impatient. "What good does staying do? You think you can lend her some of your years?"

"Come back with me right now. Stop wasting time here."

I clawed at him like a madwoman, biting down anywhere I could reach.

He grabbed me by the collar, drew back his hand, and slapped me hard across the face.

"Have I spoiled you rotten all these years?" he spat at me.

Blood ran from my nose and mouth.

Carly, my husband's sister, kicked me too, her voice sour with irritation. "You married into our family, so you follow our family's rules."

Then the room went eerily quiet.

I turned to look. My mother's heartbeat had already flatlined.

My father walked over slowly and said in a low voice, "She's gone. She went crying."

Bartholomew said, "Good. She's dead, you've had your last look, now come back with me."

My father's face went ashen as he shouted at him, "Are you even human? Is that any way for a person to talk?"

"Bartholomew, you're an animal! You don't have a shred of humanity in you."

Bartholomew frowned. "Which part of what I said was wrong?"

"You have to be a good child to both sides, right? This side's done, so isn't it my father's turn now?"

"And besides, all our relatives are here today, and Charlene, the eldest daughter-in-law, is the one who slipped off."

"How does that look? People who don't know better would think we'd had a fight."

He said to me in a commanding tone, "Come back with me now."

"And once we're at the party, don't you dare bring up your mother's death. It's bad luck!"

My father, shaking with fury, swung his hand and slapped Bartholomew.

Beside him, Carly cursed at once. "You old wretch, what do you think you're doing?"

She swung her foot at my father.

I threw myself in front of him.

But Carly shoved me hard, and I went down, my head striking the hospital bed. The pain tore a stifled cry out of me.

My father, furious and frantic, clutched his chest and crumpled.

His heart condition had struck.

I scrambled to him. "Dad, Dad..."

A doctor a few steps away ran over to treat him.

Bartholomew blocked the doctor, his voice cold. "We're not treating him."

Shock and rage broke over me and I screamed, "What did you say? What gives you the right? That's my father. Get out of the way."

Bartholomew said, slow and low, "Charlene, you come back with me right now."

"Otherwise I'll stand right here, and there'll be no saving your father."