When I got back home, the house seemed like the shell of something that had previously held our happy lives. My muddy gardening clothes lay in a clump on the floor. How different the world looked when I’d slipped those on earlier that day, when my head was filled with plans for my tomato plants.
What I didn’t know—what I wasn’t told until many weeks later—was what happened at the hospital just as I was falling asleep at home.
Around two o’clock that morning, Andy was still awake in Ann’s room. It was dark and quiet, except for the whoosh of the ventilator. The machine almost sounded like it was explaining how it was doing the heavy work of living for Ann. Innnnn. Ouuuut. Innnnn. Ouuuuut. Andy stood over Ann’s bed, just looking at her.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m here.”
He paused and listened to the ventilator, a poor and inadequate substitute for Ann’s voice. He didn’t really expect her to respond, but he was surprised at how desperate he felt when she didn’t.
“If you can move or say anything, go ahead,” he encouraged softly.
Innnnn. Ouuuut. The machine whirred.
“It’s okay,” he added. “I know it probably hurts a lot.”
He stood there without saying a word, feeling the desperation of the situation settling on him.
Then, amazingly, he heard something beyond the ambient nighttime sounds of the hospital.
Forgive him.
He didn’t stop to wonder where this was coming from. He knew. He’d heard the voice for nineteen years. It belonged to the same girl who had only mastered five words—none of which was Mama—when she was two years old. It was the same voice that belonged to the girl who called trees “ghees” and cats “gats” when she was three. It belonged to the girl who required speech therapy until she finally conquered the “f” sound. The little girl who one day triumphantly announced, “Daddy, listen: ‘The farmer chased the fox over the fence!” It belonged to the same girl who would later ask to borrow the car and a few dollars for a soda at the bookstore.
Her lips weren’t moving, but he heard that voice just as clearly as he’d heard it when she asked him to make her and Conor dinner for their picnic.
Forgive him.
“No,” he said aloud. “I’m not going to do that.” How could she ask such a thing? How could she expect him to even consider forgiving the person who changed our lives forever?
Dad, this is what you need to do. You need to forgive.
“He did something terrible, Ann,” he said. “I won’t forgive him.”
Dad, you need to forgive Conor.
“No way.”
You need to.
“I won’t.”
Had someone walked by the room, they would’ve wondered why Andy was arguing with a comatose person. It was a real discussion—one that any father and daughter would have over more trivial topics and in happier circumstances.
After about twenty minutes, he realized it was a back and forth he couldn’t win. Ann would never relent.
“Okay,” he said in exasperation. The girls always got what they wanted in the end, and this exchange would be no different.
After all, what father can refuse his daughter?
“I’ll try.”