As I near him, I smell the ammonia punch of urine. The front of his faded blue cotton pajama bottoms are soaked with it.
His thinning, copper-and-gray hair is matted and damp. His silver beard has grown in even more since he was admitted to the hospital, but it is unkempt and patchy. His jowly cheeks sag, in particular the left one.
My chest tightens at the sight of him like this. I grew up seeing a man with an immutable pride. That he’s been reduced to this, even temporarily, blunts some of the anger I feel toward him for his disregard of me all these years.
I hunker down beside him and put my hand on the rounded hump of his shoulder. He shakes off my touch as if I’m diseased.
“Do I look like I want your help?” His voice is hoarse, some of his words slurred.
“No, Pop. I don’t imagine you want my help. But it looks like you need it.”
“Linda!” He bellows for my mother as if I’m not in the room. “Goddamn it, did you call him?”
She comes to the open doorway, panic in her face. “Is everything all right?”
I nod, telling myself to treat this situation like I would if he were an injured comrade. No emotion, taking nothing that is said or done personally. “We’re fine,” I reassure my mom. “I’ve got this, I promise.”
Once she’s retreated back to the living room with Evelyn, I turn a flat look on my dad. “You’re scaringMom. You need to take things slow for a while. Do it for her, at least.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do.”
“Someone has to. You obviously don’t want to listen to your doctors or Mom.”
He glowers up at me, those narrowed, light hazel eyes shooting pure venom. “I want you to leave.”
“I will,” I tell him tonelessly. “First, I need to get you cleaned up and back in bed.”
He grumbles but starts to move. I take him under the arm and try to support him, but it’s clear that my once formidable father can’t even stand up right now.
He sags back down to the floor on a grunted exhalation. From the other end of the hallway, I can hear Evelyn’s soft voice talking to my mother.
My father hears her too. “Who’s out there?”
“Her name is Evelyn. She’s with me.”
I’m not sure how to introduce her to my parents. To call her my girlfriend after only a couple of weeks feels abrupt, and yet the affection I hold for her in my heart makes the term seem inadequate.
No label I’d give her right now is significant enough to describe what she means to me.
Not that it matters to my father right now. He curses tightly. “Christ, you brought an audience with you? You think I’m some goddamn sideshow?”
I ignore his rancor. God knows, I’m experienced enough at dealing with it that it no longer intimidates me. It hasn’t since I was a boy.
“Come on, old man. Stow your pride for a minute and let’s get this done.”
I heft him up to his feet and quickly place my shoulder under his arm. I walk him into the bathroomand sit him down on the closed toilet seat. There is a metal bar running waist-high along the wall now, an update installed sometime after he had the stroke.
“Hold on to the rail,” I order him, shocked to see him comply. He slumps there, looking haggard and beaten down. “Where do you keep your clean underwear and pajamas?”
He jerks his hand in the direction of the bedroom bureau. I go there and retrieve what I need. As I walk back into the bathroom, he is struggling with the buttons of his pajama top.
“I’ll get that.”
He drops his arms and I unfasten the shirt and push it off his rounded shoulders and the spongy muscles of his once powerful biceps. He watches me work on him, rage simmering in his eyes even though I can see that he’s losing steam.
“I’ll bet you like seeing me like this,” he remarks weakly. His breath wheezes out of him on a bitter chuckle. “I’ll bet you couldn’t wait to see me lying in there unable to do a damn thing for myself. Like some pitiful, lame—”
He stops himself from saying the rest, but I hear it anyway. “Like me, Pop?”
