The last of the crowd is finally gone, and she eagerly approaches the bridge. The little green river has rippled out to glass. The food sticks to her palm, and she imagines a scattering of flakes from her gentle, Lady Bountiful hand, the grateful fish swimming near with beauty and tranquillity, taking nourishment from her, then swimming off and away with content grace. But the moment her foot hits red wood there’s a wet flapping, a swell. The water turns orange and yellow, turns spotted black and white, turns garish, comes alive with writhe. She steps up fully on the bridge and looks down; there are a dozen of them, more, rushing the water at a stress, cramming together and up at her. They are large fish, the size of dachshunds. They cram together in a thrashing mass. It’s horribly untranquil, unbeautiful. Their black eyes are fierce. Their open mouths are stretched open hard, surging, breaking the surface by inches. If fish could scream, there would be screams. She remembers a gaping, pulsing mouth like that. She remembers a sharp hook pierced clean through, off fishing with her uncle that time, the two of them, the celebration of her first silvery-in-the-air catch flashing to horror, becoming a cold little fish caught by its hooked mouth, screaming, the special treat of a day at the lake turned ugly and twisting and wet in her hand.
She opens her fist; the brown crumbles drop down into throats but the lurching mouth rings don’t stop. A glowing red fish with yellow-ring’d black eyes leaps up, angry. There’s an insidious turmoil from the rest. She swipes the last of the food from her sweaty hand and stumbles backwardly off the bridge. She turns to run when she hits the regular footpath, bordered by smooth stones and beds of combed sand.
HE IS HANGING On, the desk nurse tells her. Probably for you.
She doesn’t know how to respond to this. It feels like both tribute and blame.
You can tell him it’s okay, a nurse’s aide tells her, quietly, when they are alone with her uncle. Let him know he doesn’t have to hang on for you. You can tell him he can let go.
But that never works, she thinks.
She pats her uncle’s hand, the one uncomplicated by an IV. It is dry, liver-spotted, the ridged nails extending just beyond the spatulate tips. His eyes flicker open at her touch, the lids then droop closed. One doctor has told her it’s mere reflex, this reaction; a nurse has insisted he sees her, logs her in, that her familial presence is oxygenating or strength-maintaining, the thing that inspires his heroic endurance. Even if he does see her, she wonders, would he know her? And what would he say to her, now?
The nurse’s aide is combing her uncle’s strands of hair into neat rows across his scalp. They do a nice job of keeping him tidy, she has noticed. They talk about dignity. A dignified, peaceful end, that’s what they promise. In kind, sepulchral tones. No discussion of actual timeframe, though, no guarantees there.
Would you like to do this? the nurse’s aide asks, offering an instrument. It is a pair of nail clippers, shiny and mean. Sometimes the family likes to do this kind of thing, he tells her, Sometimes it’s comforting. If you want to.
She takes the nail clippers from him. It seems undignified to manicure herself right now, here. No, she realizes. This is so I can tend to him. Do it to him, for him. She takes a deep breath, tries not to look at the clock on the wall. She tries not to look horrified. She picks up her uncle’s hand, the one she already patted, had finished with. This is not her job.
Let go, she wishes. Let go, let go. Go.
But the aide, dissatisfied with the tidiness of the first parting, is still arranging her uncle’s rust-and-gray hair, carefully raking new rows. Humming an indistinguishable tune under his breath while not leaving. A bulge in his mouth shifts cheeks, and she realizes he is sucking on one of her hard candies. He has that swollen midwestern look, skin shiny and pink and stretched taut, the aspect of a ceramic piggy bank. She feels people in the health industry should not allow themselves to grow to such proportions. They are in a position of authority; they should set a healthy, positive example. Her uncle, while withering, is still huge to her, like when she was little. She pictures him in the oven, skewered, his fat bubbling then dripping to a sizzle. She starts with his thumb, his large, unfrail thumb. She takes it in her fist and feels how the skin is loose now around the bone. She remembers his powerful hands on her shoulders. She remembers his hands thrusting a wet bait worm onto a hook. Beeps from the heart machine above her uncle’s head accelerate; she watches the little neon spikes multiply briefly across the screen, then slow to normal. Is this a reflex? she wonders. A body’s natural response to stimuli? Or does he know it’s her, does he recognize the familiar, familial feel of her hand? She grips him harder, to hold the thumb shaft steady, and catches the edge of dry yellow nail in the clipper’s jaws. She hesitates, tells herself it’s just a ridge of dried protein, a bit of human glut, it is nothing to fear. She tells herself this is the least she can do. Her mouth is dry; she wishes for a sweet hard candy in her mouth.
I don’t want to hurt him, she murmurs to the aide. Really.
Oh, you won’t, the aide assures. Besides, his voice drops to discreet, wafts butterscotch at her, He is so doped up anyway. You just go on. It’s a nice thing to do. He steps back, admiring his own work. He adjusts a reddish hair. The humming begins again, as if a small insect has flown into the room.
She snips at the excess nail, careful not to cut skin, working her way across. The nail is tough; the clipper squeezing takes more force than she would have thought, and it grows slippery in her sweating hand. She tries to swallow. A jagged yellow moon of nail finally drops to the white sheet.
There you go! the aide encourages, That’s it. He puts the comb away in a wicker basket of toiletries. He wipes a bit of moisture from her uncle’s loose mouth with a tissue, tosses it in the wastebin by the sink.
I like to involve the family, he says. I think it brings a good feeling.
Yes, she says.
He washes his hands, gathers his things, his basket, adjusts the blood pressure cuff hanging in a wire bin attached to the wall. He tugs the plastic liner from the wastebin, hefts the small bag of trash. I’ll be back! he announces cheerily as he leaves. The insect hum goes with him down the hall, grows fainter then gone.
She hurries to finish, finger, finger, finger. She pauses to wipe her hand on her sweater. It seems to be taking a long time, and her morning fifteen minutes are almost over. More clippings drop to the sheet. Almost done. She doesn’t want the aide to return to find she didn’t finish her job; she doesn’t want to be there when he returns. What’s next, Q-tips to swab his ears, wipe crust from his eyes, a shave? Ointment on weeping bedsores? No, she isn’t going to be hooked in like that. She pushes toward the end, her hand aching. The last clipping falls; the sheet is littered with them. She puts the instrument down on the Formica table arm that swings across the bed. She gathers up the hard, sharp moons in her sweaty palm; there is nowhere to leave them, the wastebin liner has not been replaced. She puts the clippings in her sweater pocket, next to a hard candy. She wants desperately to scrub her hands but doesn’t want to be caught exhibiting such distaste. She hurries away, down the disinfected hospital hall, before she is spotted and asked to do anything else.