How long now? I can’t really remember.

I would gladly sell a limb for a drink of water though. God I hate being so helpless. If I could move, even just a little it wouldn’t be so bad.

GAAAAA it’s so frustrating. I want to shout and scream and beat the walls, but I can’t, I don’t even have the energy to move my hands.

Think Joe, focus your mind or you will go mad. It’s the dehydrations kicking in. I remember when Mom volunteered at the hospital there were loads of medical books around the house.

I wonder can I remember the early symptoms of dehydration.

Oh I remember now, weakness, dizziness, cramping, headaches and sleepiness. Well I would seem to be pretty much a textbook case.

Its ridiculous how much we take a simple thing like water for granted. I swear if I ever got out of here I would find a tap, somewhere outside in the rain, and I’d lie down underneath it and let the water run into my mouth and all over my face. I’d just lie there for hours and hours…..

Mind you at the moment its not looking like I’m going anywhere.

Hey! There’s my old pal the spider, I can feel him crawling over my hand. How are ya buddy? Thought you’d gotten bored with my sentimental ravings.

Its funny, Mom volunteered at the hospital so that she could help others, and because we were growing up and she figured we didn’t need her around as much. I don’t think she realized at the time how much time she would be spending in the hospital as a worried mother, after Frank or I had managed to get yet another concussion, sprained wrist or bruised rib.

Sometimes I wonder why my mother married my Dad. I mean he wasn’t exactly the most attentive husband; it was work first and home second for a long time, until she brought him round and showed him that family came first.

And family always came first with her. I think that’s why we are so close; she spent so much time with us when we were younger. Mom hates TV and didn’t allow us to watch more than an hour at a time.

Instead we used to sit on the porch and read books, me, her, and Frank. We would each pick a character and read their lines. If the book was too difficult or too boring we would abandon it and make up our own story instead, using the characters from the book and putting them in bizarre scenarios.

She was interested in us, in our opinions and our games, and she talked to us. She told us where Dad was and what he was doing.

The best thing about her though is her sense of humor, it’s wicked! People always think that my Mom is reserved and quiet, but at home and amongst close friends she can have a room in stitches after five minutes. When Dad is there, it’s even better; they bounce off each other, throwing jokes back and forth.

She knows how to stand up for herself too. I remember one Christmas, about five years ago, Uncle Dan, an old uncle of Dads came to spend the holidays with us. He was about 70, slightly deaf and really old fashioned. He had an old walking stick with a metal tip that he used to point to the things he wanted.

He also used to tap the ground hard with it, TAP TAP TAP when he wanted to get our attention, which was about 100 times a day.

In the beginning Mom tried to be patient, but as the days wore on and he showed no sign of leaving she began to get increasingly frustrated. The tap tap tapping was driving us all insane.

Eventually, at about 8 o’clock that evening Mom had enough. She walked over, took the cane from Uncle Dan, and walked into the kitchen with it in. Frank and I thought she was going to throw it out the back door or something, but she returned twenty minutes later and handed the cane back to Uncle Dan.

Frank looked at the cane and then at me, and pointed to the end of it. Mom had sawed off the metal tip and tied on a rubber tip instead. Uncle Dan looked ready to explode with anger, and it was all that Frank and I could do to leave the room without laughing.

Mom never laughed, never said a word, but she had the look of a general who has just won a great battle. In fact she won the war; Uncle Dan went home the very next day.

The only thing about my mother that I’ve often wondered about is why she never discouraged us from pursuing detective work. She never stopped us from playing detective games as kids, never warned us away from reading spy stories.

When we started helping Dad out on cases she just asked us to be careful, and when she was sitting in the waiting room of the hospital waiting for us to be bandaged up she never once chided us for getting hurt, just hugged us and said she was glad that we were ok.

But Mom hates detective work. She has never made a secret of her dislike of Dads choice of career and now Franks and my career also; the danger that we get into in day after day, the associated danger for her, the growing list of vicious criminals who would love to get revenge on us.

Who wants to marry someone who is hardly ever there? Who wants to live a life where you jump every time the phone rings in case it is the police or the hospital telling her that her sons are injured or maybe even dead?

Who wants to sit on their front porch night after night praying that her son will be found alive and safe?

I guess the only explanation is that she loves us, and she loves Dad. If you love someone, truly love them I mean, then you’d do anything for them, go through any amount of pain.

Maybe that’s not a good thing, but that’s the way it is.

And I guess Mom knows too that we’d do anything to make sure she is happy, and we always will.

Now look, I’m crying again. I can’t afford to cry, I need all the moisture inside my body, not outside.

God, I’d say I’m some sight, sitting her in torn jeans and a sweatshirt, ropes everywhere, blindfold on my eyes, covered in dirt, crying for my Mom.

Hey, Mr Spider, why are you in such a hurry to leave, you’re tickling my hands running over them like that.

Hang on

Noise

I hear noise

Someone’s coming……