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That made me smile. There was a long time when George didn’t have anything for himself. Not hobbies, not a loving wife to nudge him when she thought he committed a faux pas, not even a personality. I never would have pegged George for a hockey player, but like everything else he did, hegoaliedwith serious fervor.
“I’m sure this is nothing. They’ll wrap me up nice and tight. Don’t use my right hand much anyway.” I was looking at George while I was talking, but Bethany’s attention drew my focus to Dec. She was looking up at me, sharply at first, then she looked away, rubbing her lips together. What was that about?
“Mom, I can get an Uber.”
“Absolutely not,” Bethany told her daughter. “She’s got rehearsal, so we have to leave.” She hugged Decca, “Love you, Darlin’. See you tomorrow. Gus, I’m not hugging you with that bloody stump. You’ll get it all over my dress.”
She turned to leave, putting an arm around Sofia, but looked back at Decca over her shoulder. “How’d the lessons work out?” she asked.
Decca grunted.
“Talk to him,” Bethany sing-songed to Decca on her way out the door.
Decca grimaced, crossing her arms.
“Constantinos Smythe,” a woman came into the room with a wheelchair. “We’re ready for you in radiography.” Decca flopped the magazine onto the chair, helped me up, and grabbed the dilapidated canvas tote bag she used for a purse. It was probably her granny’s at some point, like just about everything else Decca used or owned. I doubted she’d gone shopping for anything in the past decade.
“I’ll meet you back here,” Decca said as I was rolled away. “I’m going to grab a coffee and find Raynie. I know how your mom likes to put a pot on whenever there’s a big deal happening. I’m sure she could use it now.”
I nodded. “I’m going to ask if they can swing me by Dad’s room.”
After X-rays, the nurse agreed to take me by Dad’s bed. The drape was drawn, but I could see between the crack. Mom in the guest chair, bent over her phone. Her reading glasses were at the tip of her nose but she squinted at what must have been some small text. Past her, Dad lay in bed, wrapped like a burrito in the thin white blanket, except for his feet in those compression booties that kicked on every so often to help circulation. He looked tired, he but wasn’t asleep. He was watching his wife, a contented smile on his face.
I didn’t know why I couldn’t bring myself to go into the room. I could blame it on not wanting to disrupt the intimacy of Dad’s moment, or wanting to let Dad rest after George and them had left. I could blame it on my hand and not wanting to concern my parents over my own trivial matter. Truthfully, none of those werewhy I couldn’t seem to make my hand reach up and pull back the curtain wide enough to pop my head in for a quick “Love you, Dad.”
It was because I didn’t want to go in there.
I didn’t want to see Dad like that, feeble and shriveled to half his former self. I didn’t want to see him hooked up to the tubes and monitors, yet another IV in his hand—even though I’d seen him much more medicalized during chemo treatments. I didn’t want to see that satisfied look on his face. The look of a life well lived and too-comfortable with its ending.
I wasn’t ready for it to end. I needed more time with him. I needed his few sparse but perfectly chosen words to tell me I gave a great sermon, or that I was being an asshole to Decca, or which car wax had the longest-lasting shine and where it was on sale. I needed those knowing looks he shot me when he knew before I did that I was itching to cause trouble.
Even when he couldn’t make a family meal, or a church service, or a holiday gathering because he had to run out on a house call, his presence was still with us. We were always okay with him being gone because the meals, the holidays, the services didn’t matter. He could celebrate when he came home.
Now, looking at him in this hospital bed, it was too easy to imagine a future where he would never come home again.
I backed away, the nurse looking at me warily, but she took my angry glance as a hint not to say anything. It only took a couple X-rays, a few hours, and layers of stitches to reconnect my severed tendon, until I realized I would not be playing hockey tomorrow night. There was no way all this bandaging could fit under a glove.
Decca was quiet most of the time, except for her calling out the many inaccuracies (and some accuracies) of theBonesepisodes we watched on the hospital room TV. I reclined in the tiny bed, my good hand behind my head, watching my wife roll her eyeswhenever they panned in with a wide shot of the theatrical autopsy room, or their 3-D tool that showed exactly what a victim looked like before she got all chopped up in the wood chipper.
“Who has the funding for that? Why don’t they turn some lights on? Oh! I had a case just like that. Wait… is that my case? No this show’s too old. My artist is the best of the best, but damn, I wish that technology existed in real life.”
On the ride home, I finally pushed her hard enough. I blamed the Oxycodone. “What are you supposed to talk to me about?”
“What do you mean?” She knew what I meant.
“Bethany said, ‘Talk to him.’ I assume she meant me. What are you supposed to talk to me about?”
She adjusted in her seat.
“Nothing. I forgot you have hockey.”
“I’m sure it’s not nothing. Hey, look, I can’t play anyway, right?” The emotionally mature man inside me winced. I’d meant that to sound casual, cool, so it wouldn’t come out like a dog panting after a bone she’d carried, which was how I felt.
Instead, it came out like I was only willing to give her the scraps of my attention.
I wanted to slurp those words back in as soon as they’d dribbled out of my mouth, but there was no coming back from that. I didn’t know what to do around this woman who was my wife, and with every step, I made a bigger hash of it.
Her lips pressed into a thin line and her hands choked the steering wheel.
