The dim light of Larry’s hospital room seemed even more cloak-like well past midnight. The silence was absolute, despite the fact that a life was being saved right before John’s eyes.
He and Walt stood out of the way as a Hispanic woman dispassionately performed her job. She was compactly built, anywhere between forty and fifty-five years old depending on how much of her worn look came from hard living.
She performed her duties wordlessly, gently dabbing lotion into Larry’s arms and then opening Larry’s diaper. John recoiled at the lack of dignity afforded his father and at the unexpected sight of his gray, withered penis. He stirred to protest as she began wiping him, but Walt silenced him with a stern glare. This was the raw, clinical reality that Walt and the nurse knew. If John was really going to take this on, he had to accept it.
Before John could even bother to keep his eyes averted, the nurse slipped a new disposable diaper onto Larry with one seamless motion and began lotioning his ankles.
“Over time, bodies in this state train themselves to eliminate waste on a kind of schedule,” Walt whispered. “The biggest concern is pressure sores. Moisture increases the risk. The diapering has to be dealt with immediately.”
The nurse continued to apply lotion with firm but delicate motions, allowing the cream to absorb into the skin before carefully blotting away the excess. Larry’s skeletal frame offered no challenge for her as she lifted and cradled his body. There was almost a ritual to it, an anointing of the sick. She paid special attention to Larry’s heels, ankles, and elbows.
“Any bony area has to be watched closely—the back of the head, the base of the spine. Anywhere that is subjected to constant pressure,” Walt explained. “If the tissue does not get enough blood, it dies. Then infection sets in.”
She lightly massaged every inch of Larry’s body, then she effortlessly moved him into a different position. She exposed the incision around the IV tube in Larry’s stomach. She wiped away a small amount of leakage, and then she changed the supply bag that hung on a hook at the side of the bed.
“The only life support we supply is food and water,” Walt said. “He’s always managed to breathe on his own.
“If he gets a fever, we bring it down. If there’s an infection, we cure it. Gloria recognizes every fluctuation and knows what to do.”
John studied the nurse with fascination, then watched as she opened Larry’s mouth and held a small suction device in one hand while brushing his teeth with the other. The procedure struck John as even more invasive than the diapering process, and it made no sense. He turned to Walt uncomfortably.
“You don’t want to know the disease that would penetrate through the gum line if you didn’t brush regularly,” Walt explained. “It would be lethal for Larry.”
It was an arduous process; Gloria did the job with sullen precision. She then wiped Larry’s mouth and tucked in the corners of his sheets before neatly arranging her supplies. The used diaper went into her tattered handbag.
The entire treatment took about five minutes. Not once did Gloria meet John’s eyes or deviate in the slightest from her duties. She was like a spirit, moving among John and Walt in a detached universe she shared only with her mute patient.
As she went to make her exit, John impulsively met Gloria at the door.
“Thank you,” he said softly. What he witnessed moved him powerfully.
For the first time Gloria was pulled from her routine. She looked with concern to Walt, who smiled easily.
“Éste es Larry hijo de, Juan,” he said. Gloria’s sullen face registered a trace of surprise, then she nodded respectfully to Larry’s son.
“This is Gloria,” Walt said, completing the introductions.
John smiled gently, but the woman was eager to leave. John was an intrusion into a rigidly regimented course of action that did not welcome deviations. And there were secrets here that an outsider might bring down upon all of them.
Once the door closed, John turned on Walt for answers.
“Gloria has been with me for almost a year,” Walt explained matter-of-factly. “She’s a trained nurse, from El Salvador.”
“She’s illegal?” John asked. Walt nodded.
“She knows how to not be seen,” the old doctor said. “She’s been the least of my worries.”
John tried to process this. What he observed was eerie and beautiful, this choreographed ceremony to keep his father alive. But what it suggested boggled John’s mind.
“How often…?”
“Pressure sores should be addressed every two to three hours. I have pushed the limits by seeing it done about every four hours, with immediate treatment if there’s inflammation. But what you just observed still has to happen six times a day, every day. Around the clock.”
John was dumbstruck. “Jesus…”
“She’s here every night, at eleven, three, and six. I still try to be here during the day but as it’s become more than I can physically handle, Gloria has taken on more and more. She’s got an apartment a couple blocks away,” Walt said.
“What you just saw is the extent of the treatment. It’s simple, but it is relentless,” he continued. “You say your job allows you to work on your own schedule, maybe you could cover the day shift.
“You might need to work on your upper body strength, though. Larry looks like he’s wasted away to nothing, but manipulating him—several times a day—takes more strength than you’d think.”
John looked to his father. The miracle of him still being alive had become clearer.
“But I guarantee you that your marriage and your career will not survive if you try to do this full-time,” Walt said. “Right now, I am paying Gloria two hundred dollars a day. Cash.”
John gulped as he tried to do the math.
Walt pushed on.
“You can buy the nutrition drip at Walgreen’s. If he needs medication, Gloria gets it through the black market in Chicago. It’s quality medicine, but it’s expensive.”
John saw the price soaring. “But, it … It’s just going to be for a while.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Walt.
* * *
The insurmountable weight of it all sent John back to his father’s bedside. The nurturing perfumes of the lotion still hung in the air. John knew his father was clean and safe. Despite the atrophied contortion of his body, Larry seemed at peace. And John, despite it all, felt a kind of peace standing beside him.
“Go ahead,” Walt said softly as he approached the other side of the bed. “Ask him what you should do. I’ve been asking for years.”
The idea struck John as mawkish, but Walt’s nurturing smile encouraged him. John stepped closer and gently stroked his father’s gray, matted hair.
“How about it, Dad?” he murmured awkwardly. “You’re kinda leaving me with a lot to figure out.”
“See?” Walt smiled down on his friend. “He’s no help at all.”
Walt brought the blanket up to Larry’s chest, and then tenderly began manipulating the joints in the fingers of his left hand. “Your boy’s got a lot on his plate, old man. I’m trying to give him good advice, but you Husted men can be stubborn sons of bitches.”
John took his father’s other hand and began mirroring the massage procedure Walt administered. Walt feared that this physical connection was exactly the thing that would make it hard for John to let go, but he knew from years of experience that these simple intimacies with Larry had a powerful allure.
“Not too hard,” Walt tutored softly as John caringly kneaded his father’s hand. “We just want to keep the blood flowing. That’s it. Good.”