MY FIRST THOUGHT AS MS. Wilson hustled me into the intensive care room was, That’s not my father.
And then louder in my head. THAT’S NOT MY DAD!
The ride over to the hospital spun through my memory like a Ferris wheel cut loose to roll away from a fair.
Stoplights, blinkers.
Ms. Wilson staying within the speed limit but holding the steering wheel so tight her arms didn’t move.
Was Indri right? Does God get mad and punish you when you don’t keep your deals? Did all the stupid stuff I’ve ever done cancel out Dad’s luck and health?
Indri and Mac in the backseat, saying nothing at all.
Headlights from the car behind, Dr. Harper following us, with Avadelle riding shotgun.
Each time we went under a streetlight, I saw flickers of Indri’s tears and guilty expression. It’s not my dad, her eyes had told me. I’m so sorry, but it’s not my dad.
Indri and Mac didn’t come into the intensive care unit with us. They stayed outside the door with Dr. Harper and Avadelle while Ms. Wilson and I went inside.
It’s not Dad. My brain repeated what I had seen in Indri’s expression on the drive over.
My father was strong, with wooly hair and a woolier beard and big eyes and a bigger smile and so much energy he made rooms vibrate. He wore jeans and bandanas, and he smelled like gardens and spices.
This man in the white hospital gown lying on the big blue air mattress, he was motionless except for the rise and fall of his chest every time the machine next to his bed pumped and clicked. The stench of alcohol and rubber wrinkled my nose as I studied the big tube taped in his mouth, and the white squares taped to his head, and IV lines running into his arms. All his hair had been shaved, and his beard, too.
This bald, flat man couldn’t be my father. He seemed too small, and way too weak. Only, that was my mother, crying and kissing the man’s bald head, all along the awful-looking line of staples and bandages that started at his scalp and disappeared into the pillow. At the very top of his head, a metal probe stuck out of a wad of tape, like some horrible antenna.
“I should pull that out,” I said, and my voice sounded dry and cracked and like somebody else was talking. “It’s got to hurt.”
I walked forward, but Ms. Wilson held me back. I tried to pull away and she held on harder. Mom seemed to notice me then, and she let go of not Dad not Dad not Dad the man in the bed and came around to my side of the bed.
“Dani,” she whispered, but I wouldn’t look at her.
Ms. Wilson kept a tight grip on both my arms. My eyes had moved to the monitor hanging above the man’s bed. His blood pressure was sixty over thirty. Too low. His pulse—I didn’t have to take it to see it switch from thirty to twenty then shoot to one hundred and drop back to forty again. The machine showed all that to me every few seconds. His lips had a bluish color, and the machine breathing for him meant he probably couldn’t breathe right on his own.
A man in green scrubs came into the room, and I looked at him long enough to note the stethoscope and surgical mask hanging around his neck. He was bald too, but nobody had stapled a zipper into his head.
“Is this his daughter?” the man in scrubs asked.
“Yes,” my mother said in a voice too tiny to belong to a grown-up. “Dani, this is Dr. Albert.”
I glanced at him again, but my eyes went straight back to the man in the bed, and I couldn’t help mentally tracing the nose, the jawline, then looking down at his hands. Strong hands that dug and pulled and held and hugged and patted and weeded. Dirt crusted under every single fingernail—that’s excellent dirt, baby girl, I made it myself—and I knew they’d never be clean, and I knew Dad didn’t want them to be clean, because—it’s good dirt, Dani, and it means I’m working hard—that was garden dirt under his nails.
“Dad,” I whispered, and pain spiked so deep into my chest and belly that I opened my mouth and yelled without making any sound and stopped feeling like I was even wearing my own skin.
The real me floated up to the ceiling and looked down on the crowded room, where Mom held my dad’s shaved face in her hands and Ms. Wilson held my arms and the doctor said, “Dani, your father suffered a massive bleed on his brain. We tried to take the blood out, but there was too much, and it was too late.”
“We were asleep,” Mom said. “He started moving. Flailing in the bed . . . I thought it was a nightmare. . . .”
Ms. Wilson let go of me and went over to Mom. Mom leaned in to Ms. Wilson and closed her eyes. I couldn’t close mine. All I could do was stare at Dad from the ceiling it is him oh God that’s my father that’s my dad as the doctor came up with things like, catastrophic and no chance for meaningful recovery and explained how the bottom part of my father’s brain got crushed from all the weight on top and it was probably due to his blood pressure and maybe genetics and how he didn’t get good health care growing up and his age and possibly dehydration from working in the sun all day and everything faded in and out because none of that mattered because it’s Dad it’s Dad in that bed and he’s not moving, Dad please move please move please open your eyes and the doctor said, “Your father’s advanced directives were very clear about how we should proceed in the case of cessation of brain functions, but your mother asked us to wait until you got here.”
He gestured to the machines.
After that, he kept talking, and Mom talked, and I think I nodded or shook my head, but it was all just noise.
The click-hiss of that machine breathing for Dad took up all my awareness as it kept moving and kept moving and kept moving until click-hiss—click—
It stopped.
The doctor pulled the taped lines away from my father’s head, and took out his IVs, then took out that tube in his mouth. He even reached up and pulled out the antenna, and patted down the bandage around that spot. After he cleared everything away, the doctor stepped back and left the room.
I saw all this from way up on the ceiling, but then I dropped down from the ceiling, tumbling into my body like jumping off a high dive, but it hurt and I didn’t want to be there and my mouth tasted like throw-up please, please let me go back to the ceiling again let me just fly away I can’t do this I can’t stand this I can’t I can’t I can’t.
My eyes darted to the monitor over Dad’s head, but the doctor had switched that off too. There were no numbers. There was no light on the screen at all.
I felt like I had been turned to concrete and plastered in place, but Ms. Wilson came back to my side of the bed and gently moved me forward. She picked up my hand and put it on my father’s arm. Habit made my fingers move to his wrist, to that spot where I always checked Grandma’s pulse. All the hospice teaching came back to me then, and the pamphlets I’d read, and yes, this was it, those imminent signs I had been looking for every day, every few hours, with my dying grandmother, but no, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be Grandma. It was Grandma’s secrets I had been trying to learn, so I could help her find peace. Her, not Dad. It wasn’t supposed to be Dad who died. How could it be Dad?
Tell them you love them. Tell them it’s okay to go. Tell them you’ll be okay. Forgive them, and let them forgive you.
No.
It wasn’t okay for Dad to go. I wouldn’t be okay. I’d never forgive him. I’d never forgive God or anybody else.
Dad’s chest moved, then stopped, and stopped, and stopped, and moved again. The skin under my fingertips felt warm, but the pulse raced, then slowed, raced, then slowed, then went away and came back.
Tell him you love him.
I leaned forward and kissed Dad’s cheek.
His chest moved up and down, but barely. Up close to his nose and mouth, I heard a faint rattling sound, like Dad had fallen into a well and gone underwater, and he was trying to cough, but he couldn’t.
I kissed his eyelids.
They tasted like Vaseline. He smelled like antiseptic and hospitals.
Death comes too early—or too late. I hated death. It stole things it had no business touching. If death was a person I’d beat it and stab it and smother it and I wouldn’t care if I went to prison for the rest of my life. Sunshine Hospice lied to us. You can never really prepare for death. You can’t be ready for it.
Dad’s mouth came open, and he breathed really fast.
Fish out of water, my brain supplied, straight from the hospice pamphlets I wished I had never read, because if I hadn’t read those words, I wouldn’t have known. I could have pretended for a few minutes or a few seconds that this wasn’t happening, that it wouldn’t happen, that a miracle might be waiting, and my father would sit up and shake himself off and grin at me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in his ear, thinking about how I’d ticked him off and let him down these last few weeks, chasing hard after things that happened in the past, and how none of that mattered now, did it? It didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered.
What was the last thing I said to Dad?
I couldn’t remember.
Did I tell him I loved him?
I started to cry. Mom was close to me, beside me, and she was touching my hair and Dad’s head, and she cried too. Dad breathed fast and stopped. He breathed fast and stopped. The underwater sound got worse. I kissed him again, and his cheek felt cool.
He waved at me from the garden. He said, “I love you, baby girl.”
“I love you, Marcus,” Mom said. Then she repeated it over and over and over again.
Breathe-stop. Breathe-stop.
“You’re the best, Dad.” I pressed my face into his. “I love you so much. I’m right here with you, and I love you, and I’ll always love you.”
I wanted to believe he heard every word.
Maybe he did.
Maybe my whispers echoed in his heart and his soul, and they went with him to keep forever and forever, because as I said them, as I touched his face with mine and held his hand and cried with my mother, we watched Dad breathe for the very last time.