The longer I stand staring at the door, the more I think this is all some kind of sick joke. When I step inside the room in front of me, it’ll be empty, or someone else’s dad will be lying on the bed in front of me, and they’ll have to call some other college kid and tell them the terrible news.
Tomorrow this will all be a distant memory, something we all laugh about.Do you remember that time we thought you were dead? Ha...We’ll find humor in it somewhere. Mom forgot the pecans for Thanksgiving dinner, and they went out together to get them.
They’re at the store, not dead in hospital beds.
They can’t be.
I need to put this whole thing to bed. I need to confirm the man on the other side of this door isn’t my dad so we can go home, eat turkey, and watch football.
The door’s barely cracked open when the glint of my grandpa’s Rolex catches my eye, resting on the bed outside the sheet pulled up to the man’s chin. My stomach sinks. As I get closer, Dad’s smell invades my nose, Old Spice and just a hint of spearmint mixed with the chemicals of the hospital.
By the time I’m standing next to the bed there’s no denying the man lying pale and still on the bed in front of me is a version of my father. A sheet covers the worst of his injuries, but his skin’s already mottled in places, and they’ve stitched up pieces of his face and neck.
The chill in my body is bone-deep, settling deep inside my soul. Will I ever be able to warm myself up again?
The faint coppery tang in the air reminds me he was fatally injured, and for a split second morbid curiosity makes me want to lift the sheet. But I don’t want to see, I don’t want to remember Dad any way other than how I’ve known him. This memory of him lying here on the bed with his possessions folded next to him on the counter is enough trauma for one lifetime.
I reach out to touch his face but stop myself. If he’s warm will I believe he’s really gone? If he’s cold will it break me inside just a bit more?
Should have asked Penelope to come in with me. She’d at least make sure I kept breathing around this thick tightness growing in my chest.
The longer I stand here, the more uncomfortable I get, my skin pricks with sweat, my chest compresses with shock and grief, and my mind races with a million questions like I’m trying to hold on to reality.
I don’t need to wonder if their affairs were in order, Dad made sure that his hefty paychecks went to practical things like paying off their mortgage and cars and at least once a year they showed me where their “death folder” lives. It’s the file they have of all their details, everything I’d need when they passed away, peacefully, in their sleep at ninety years old.
The only comfort I can grasp, as I stand staring at my father’s dead body, is that at least they are going together.
Unless something drastic changes upstairs, Mom will go with him. It’s what they both would have wanted. Dad used to joke that he’d need to marry someone else a week after Mom died because he wouldn’t be able to cope by himself. And Mom used to say she’d die of a broken heart if she ever lost Dad.
This way they can go forward into whatever’s next, whatever afterlife might exist, together. A sob clogs my throat, and I grab the rail of the bed as everything sways.
But what about me?
The shard of burning grief that slices through my chest makes me suck in a ragged breath. The practical stuff is all taken care of, sure a lot of shit will take time to sort out, but... what about me?
The familiar spark of panic ignites, and fissures of anxiety and dread spread through my whole body.
I can’t stay here, I can’t stand staring at Dad waiting for him to wake up. They said I could take my time in here, but someone else probably needs the room, it’s the nature of a busy ER, right? Someone always needs the space. And Dad would be so pissed if he knew he was holding back resources from someone else.
An odd thought, one of many that flits through my mind as I stand staring at the man who made me, the man who raised me and wonder what other life lessons he had in store for me in the coming years.
He wasn’t done being my dad.
I sniff, swiping at the tears now streaming down my face, my grip tightening on the bed as my legs weaken.
Sure, he taught me to pee standing up, how not to piss Mom off by putting the seat down and wiping any stray droplets from tired or drunk aiming. He taught me to shave and drive and cook French toast because it’s Mom’s favorite and every Mother’s Day he risked the fire department being called out to the house to make it for her.
Was.
Itwasher favorite.
Fuck.
No more French toast. No more Mother’s Day. No more Thanksgiving.
What even goes into her cranberry stuffing?
Another sob.
