You awake from your nap to the sound of murmuring voices mixed with the sound of beeps and whirls. That’s not unusual. Even if you’ve never heard these sounds before. Your mum is always doing things when she puts you down for your naps.

She vacuums down the hall a lot. The loud sound of the engine and the thump as it runs into the sideboards has put you to sleep and woken you up more times than you can count. Literally. You can only count to twenty. Mum thinks that’s a big deal. It’s all of your fingers and toes. You think it’s a big deal too. But the whirls and beeps surrounding you now don’t sound like the vacuum with the funny face stickers and the long nose.

Sometimes mum has friends over. They laugh in the kitchen, ignoring their phones, clinking glasses together and scraping plates of yucky tasting snacks. Maybe it’s one of their phones trying to get their attention? Or the sounds could be coming from the TV playing quietly in the front room with the shows you’re not allowed to watch. Mum does the boring grownup things while you sleep. She saves the fun stuff for when you’re awake.

“Are you hungry?” a man asks.

His voice is too close. He’s not on the tv. He’s in the room. Nearby, but distant. You’re surprised by his voice. Mum doesn’t usually have men over. Not since dad went away.

Your stomach pangs at the thought of food. Maybe a little bit about dad too. You don’t talk about him anymore. You’re not sure why. Except it makes mum sad. You don’t like to make mum sad. So, you stopped asking about dad.

“No, thanks,” a woman says, her voice so close to you, you can feel her breath on your hand.

Now that you think about your hand, it feels warm, like when mum holds it at the crossings when you’re waiting for the little green man made of lights to show you it’s safe. Mum is always holding your hand, keeping you close when there’s other people around. You like it. You tuck in close to her leg, hiding your body behind her, peeking your head around her hip to watch the world go by. It feels a little less big when you’re snuggled against her, your hand in hers. 

You want your mum to be holding your hand now. You know it’s not your mum. The hand is too big, and the grip is wrong. It’s too careful. Like how you were taught to hold the baby kittens that live next door. The hand holding yours is gentle and scared. Mum is gentle, but she isn’t scared. She knows how hard she can hold onto you.

“Are you sure? When was the last time you ate? You must be hungry.”

The knot in your stomach tightens. You are hungry. You’re always hungry when you first wake up. Or when you’re going to sleep. Or when you’re awake. Really, you’re just always hungry. Mum says it’s because you’re growing up so fast you need food to keep up. She tickles you when she says that. You usually giggle with your first bite of food under her fingers and fond smile. You want your mum.

“I don’t…I’m not sure? The plane, I guess? I’m not hungry. Thanks though,” the woman says with a funny sounding voice. The words are too hard and solid, like they’re catching on the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t sound like mum, all lyrical and soft. She might sound a little like dad, but you can’t really remember what he sounds like. Not when he wasn’t shouting. You can remember what he sounded like then. 

You want your mum.

“I would advise that you try and eat something.”

“I’m really okay. Thank you.”

You’re having a hard time opening your eyes. The sleep feels clinging. Like that time you got gum stuck in your hair and mum had to use ice cubes on it until they melted and dribbled down your back and made you sneeze. You squirm a little at the memory.

“I think I should insist—”

“Orla?” the woman asks, cutting over the speaking man.

You finally pry your eyes open at the sound of your name. There’s too much white light. It hurts. You squish your eyes closed, whimpering at the unexpected pain, snuggling into the scratchy pillow.

That’s wrong. Your pillow is never scratchy.

Mum always dries your pillowcase, sheets, and blankets in the little tumble dryer in the kitchen. She hangs everything else out to dry. The clothes and towels are scratchy from the sun, but not your bedding. Mum always makes sure those are soft. Your pillow shouldn’t be scratchy. “Where’s mum? I want my mum.”

They don’t answer you. They don’t speak to each other either.

Your eyes come back open, peeking into the bright lights. “I want my mum,” you repeat. Your voice sounds funny. Like when you’re sick and mum makes you drink hot water with honey and lemon in it to sooth your throat instead of the cough drops you like because they taste like sugar and the fake cherry flavor they put in popsicles.

“Orla. Your mum, um,” the woman holding your hand pauses, her eyes lowering from yours to the blanket near your chin. She seems to be having trouble swallowing too.

You squint at her through the pain in your head. You recognize her now. Mum held up pictures of her, teaching you her name. Rory like a lion’s roar. That’s her name. Rory is your bug. You’re her nice.

You’ve never met her before. She lives on the other side of the world. Too far to visit. Mum showed you on the big paper map in the kitchen where Bug Rory lives. You put a pin in a little dot and stringed it to where you and mum live in Ireland. It’s the longest string on the map.

The bug sends gifts sometimes. Mostly just money on mum’s phone so that mum can buy you the presents you’ll like. Mum hands you the phone on your birthday and Christmas to talk to the bug. She doesn’t say much. You say even less. Bug Rory always tells you she loves you and then you hand the phone back to your mum. They don’t talk long either.

Maybe the bug isn’t good at talking? Maybe that’s why she’s fixing your blanket with her left hand, her right hand still holding yours too softly. She keeps sniffing instead of saying anything.

“Bug Rory?” you ask, balling your hand into a little fist inside of her hand.

The bug’s eyes shoot up from their inspection of your blanket, locking onto yours. She has two different colored eyes. Brown and blue. Left and right. It’s your favorite thing about her picture at home. You look at it all the time.

You thought it was broken for a long time. Both your eyes are green, just like mum’s. You think dad had blue eyes. Dark like the night right after the sun goes down. Most of your friends have brown eyes. You’ve never met anyone that has two different ones.

You giggled all afternoon when mum finally explained that the picture of your bug wasn’t broken, that that was really what Bug Rory’s eyes looked like. It’s even better in person. Her eyes are bright, shimmering with water that catches the lights of the little room with the pale curtain hanging down the center of it. They almost seem to glow. Golden brown like an eagle and deep blue like the sky. She looks sad. Sadder than mum gets.

“Yeah, little one?” Bug Rory asks softly. The sadness of her eyes scares you.

“I want my mum,” you whisper.

“I know,” she says. She squeezes your hand. Her eagle in the sky eyes look up at the man in the green clothes standing near the curtain. She frowns at him, then looks back at you, a smile on her lips that makes her look even sadder. “Your mum is sleeping right now.”

Mum doesn’t sleep a lot. Not on purpose. Sometimes she falls asleep when she’s reading to you. Sometimes you wake her up. If you’re on the big squishy sofa in front of the tv. You don’t wake her up when she’s in your small bed. You snuggle in against her, burying your face into her soft jumpers as her voice trails off and the book lowers onto her stomach and her mouth makes an O shape instead of words. Sometimes she spends all night in your bed like that. Those are your favorite nights.

Most nights she sleeps in her own room under the big feather blanket. She leaves the door open for you in case you have a bad dream. She doesn’t get mad if you wake her up. Mum gets up, gives you a glass of water, carries you back to bed, sings you to sleep. If you had a really bad dream, mum pulls you into bed with her, rubbing your back and whispering happy made-up stories in your ear until you wake up in the morning upside down, your feet on her pillow as she makes breakfast in the kitchen. Mum makes everything better. 

“Wake her up,” you tell the bug.

“I can’t.”

“It’s okay. Mum lets me wake her up when I’m scared. She doesn’t get mad.”

Bug Rory wipes at her face. The water in her eyes have turned to tears. She clears her throat. “I know she doesn’t, little one. She loves you. Your mum loves you so much.”

You know your mum loves you. You’ve never doubted that for a second. Love and mum are the same word to you. You don’t understand why the bug is telling you that. It scares you. “Go get her. Please, Bug Rory. Go wake mum up.”

The bug looks like she’s in pain. Mum used to look like that when dad yelled. You curl away from the look, clinging to the scratchy pillow. “I want mum.”

“I know, little one. I know.”

You’re starting to get mad at the bug. Why won’t she go get mum?

It’s then that the man moves over to the side of your bed. You glare at him. He smiles. He asks for permission to shine a torch in your eyes and press a cold metal necklace to your chest and back so he can listen to your heart and lungs. Bug Rory nods at you over his shoulder telling you it will be okay. He promises to give you a lollipop when he’s done.

“Is it cherry?”

He chuckles at your question. Searches through his big pockets until he finds one. “Yup.”

“Can I see mum afterwards?”

The man, you remember is called a doctor, looks at the bug then back at you. “As soon as we can.”

“Why not now?” you demand.

“She’s sleeping.”

“Wake her up.”

“We can’t right now. Your mum was in an accident. Do you know what that means?”

You nod. Of course, you know what that means. You know there are lots of types of accidents. When you break things, not on purpose because you trip or something slips out of your hands, mum says it’s okay because it was just an accident. If you wet the bed, which almost never happens anymore, mum wipes away your tears, puts you in the warm bath with your toys, changes your sheets and tells you it was just an accident. Accidents happen, mum says like they’re not important. Why is the man talking like it’s important?

Bug Rory squeezes your hand. “It was a car accident,” she adds. “Can you…do you remember that?”

You shake your head. Nothing happened in the car. You remember being in it. It’s, now that you think about it, the last thing you remember before waking up in this bright room with the curtain and the beeps and whirls that won’t stop beeping and whirling.

Mum was singing to the music she likes. You don’t like her music. You love mum singing though. You didn’t ask her to change to another song. It made you happy to hear her sing. It made you sleepy too.

You remember watching the rolling green hills passing, the same vibrant green of mum’s eyes, your head leaning on the edge of your car seat. Mum asked if you were tired. You shook your head, trying to lift it up, but your head drifted back down. Your eyes stayed on the green outside the window, your eyelids slowly drooping shut as mum went back to singing.

You don’t remember making it home. You don’t remember leaving the car. You don’t know how you got to this little room with your bug at your bedside instead of your mum.

“That’s okay. You don’t need to remember,” Bug Rory assures with another squeeze of her hand over yours.

The doctor nods agreeing with the bug, but he folds his arms over his chest, his face frowning even though he’s smiling softly at you. “Your mum got hurt in the accident. She hit her head really hard. She hasn’t woken up yet.”

You look at the bug. She isn’t being so gentle with your hand anymore. Her grip has gone very tight. It hurts a little. You don’t pull away.

“Then wake her up,” you say, your voice almost as whiny as it is raspy.

You don’t understand what the problem is. Mum wakes you up when you’re sick. She makes you take your medicine before she lets you go back to sleep. Why can’t the doctor do that?

“Wake her up,” you repeat stubbornly.

“We can’t. We are trying.”

Something big and cold and terrifying clutches at your heart.

The bug asks something you don’t hear. The doctor nods. Bug Rory crawls into your bed, pulling you into her lap, cradling you to her chest. She’s not as soft as mum. Her shirt smells, it has cold buttons that press at your neck and cheek.

But her arms are strong and tight around your little body. She’s warm. You start sobbing into her shoulder. She doesn’t sing like mum does. She shushes soothingly, whispering “it’s okay,” over and over. It doesn't help. She doesn’t pull away.

You cry until you fall asleep again, whimpering for mum with every other breath. Bug Rory doesn’t let go. You wake up in her arms. Her mouth doesn’t make an O shape. Her lips are pressed firmly together in sleep, her arms still locked around you, her chin resting on the top of your head. You want your mum.

Bug Rory wakes up at your quite pleadings. She apologizes for falling asleep. You don’t know how long its been, but its dark outside the window and the white lights have been turned off overhead.

“Come on little one, let’s get ourselves cleaned up.”

She helps you to the bathroom. Cleans your face with a cloth that is far too rough, but her touch is gentle so it ends up tickling more than anything. You want to laugh. Your heart hurts too much to even smile.

Bug Rory pulls some clothes out of a bag under the chair she’d been sitting in when you first woke up. She changes into a shirt without buttons. She offers a t-shirt to you that is far too big, then drapes a white hoodie over the top of it, rolling the sleeves up so far they look like swim floaties on your wrists.

You think you look ridiculous. Mum would never dress you like this. You also think the clothes smell good and they’re soft and warm, so you don’t complain when the bug picks you up with one strong arm, settling you on her hip. She slings the bag over her other shoulder, shifts you a bit for a better grip and leaves the room like maybe she’s not supposed to be doing any of this.

Halfway down the hall, she turns to you, pressing a finger to her lips, saying “Shh…”

You weren’t saying anything. You nod anyway.

The bug goes out a door into a lift and then down a very long hall with lots of turns until she brings you to a closed door. There’s a little narrow rectangle window she peeks in. She frowns inside, then looks at you with a sad smile.

“We’re going to wait out here until she wakes up. Or until we get in trouble and have to go back to your room. Is that okay?”

You nod quickly.

“Perfect.” She drops her bag to the side of the door. Shifts you to the other hip and starts pacing in long slow strides, back and forth between the two doors either side of the closed door mum is sleeping behind.

She paces like the lions at the zoo.

The women in blue clothes give her funny looks as they walk past the two of you. Bug Rory ignores them. They let her keep pacing. You snuggle into her side.

You drift in and out of sleep. Waking up cradled against her chest in both arms, back on her hip, once half slung over her shoulder, and twice curled in her lap as she sat beside her bag of clothes.

The women in blue clothes change faces. The bright lights get turned back on in the halls. Bug Rory goes back to pacing. She only leaves mum’s door to take you to the bathroom and buy you food out of the vending machines. Then you pace together, holding the bug’s hand, waiting for the little green man to tell you it’s safe.

“She’s awake,” the doctor says two days later.

You run past the open door.

“Mum!”

“Hey, baby,” mum says, her voice raspy, but still lyrical, soft and full of love.

Everything is okay again.