He reached for her hand. “Or maybe watching you enjoy a carefree summer while you fell in love was what kept me out of the hospital in the first place.”
Though he didn’t say as much, she knew he didn’t expect to live much longer, and she tried to imagine life without him.
If she hadn’t come to stay with him, if she hadn’t given him a chance, it might have been easier to let him go. But she had, and nothing about what was happening was going to be easy. In the eerie quiet, she was able to hear his labored breathing, and she noticed again how much weight he’d lost. She wondered whether he would live until Christmas, or even long enough for her to visit again.
She was alone and her father was dying, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked him. He hadn’t slept long, maybe ten minutes, before he’d rolled to her.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Will you have to stay in the hospital?”
It was the one question she’d been afraid to ask. While he’d dozed, she’d held his hand, imagining that he would never leave this place. That he’d spend the rest of his life in this room that smelled of disinfectant, surrounded by nurses who were no more than strangers.
“No,” he said. “I’ll probably be home in a few days.” He smiled. “At least I hope so.”
She squeezed his hand. “And then what? Once we’re gone?”
He thought about it. “I suppose I’d like to see the window completed. And finish the song I started. I still think there’s something… special there.”
She scooted her chair closer. “I mean who’s going to make sure you’re okay?”
He didn’t answer right away but tried to sit up a little in the bed. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “And if I need something, I can call Pastor Harris. He lives only a couple of blocks away.”
She tried to imagine Pastor Harris, with his burned hands and his cane, trying to aid her father if he needed help getting into the car. He seemed to know what she was thinking.
“Like I said, I’ll be okay,” he murmured. “I’ve known this was coming, and if worse comes to worst, there’s a hospice associated with the hospital.”
She didn’t want to imagine him there, either. “A hospice?”
“It’s not as bad as you think. I’ve been there.”
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. And I went back again last week. They’ll be ready for me whenever I need it.”
Yet another thing she didn’t know, yet another secret revealed. Yet another truth portending the inevitable. Her stomach roiled, nausea settling in.
“But you’d rather be at home, wouldn’t you?”
“I will be,” he said.
“Until you can’t?”
His expression was almost too sad to bear. “Until I can’t.”
She left her father’s room, heading for the cafeteria. It was time, her dad said, for him to talk to Jonah.
She was dazed as she walked the corridors. It was almost midnight now, but the emergency room was as busy as always. She passed by rooms, most of them with open doors, and saw crying children accompanied by anxious parents and a woman who couldn’t stop vomiting. Nurses bustled around the main station, reaching for charts or loading up carts. It amazed her that so many people could be sick this late at night, yet she knew that most of them would be gone by tomorrow. Her dad, on the other hand, was scheduled to be moved to a room upstairs; they were only waiting for the paperwork to go through.
She weaved through the crowded waiting room toward a door that led to the main area of the hospital lobby and the cafeteria. As the door swung shut behind her, the noise level dropped. She could hear the sound of her footfalls, could almost hear herself thinking, and as she moved, she felt waves of exhaustion and nausea coursing through her. This was the place where sick people came; this was the place where people came to die, and she knew her father would see this place again.
She could barely swallow as she reached the cafeteria. She rubbed her gritty, swollen eyes, promising herself that she was going to keep it together. The grill was closed at this hour, but there were vending machines on the far wall, and a couple of nurses sat in the corner, sipping coffee. Jonah and Will were seated at a table near the door, and Will looked up as she approached. On the table stood a half-empty bottle of water and milk and a packet of cookies for Jonah. Jonah turned around to look at her.
“That took you long enough,” he said. “What’s going on? Is Dad okay?”
“He’s doing better,” she said. “But he wants to talk to you.”
“About what?” He put down his cookie. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”
“No, nothing like that. He wants to tell you what’s going on.”
“Why can’t you tell me?” He sounded anxious, and Ronnie felt her heart contract with dread.
“Because he wants to talk to you alone. Like he did with me. I’ll walk you over there and wait outside the door, okay?”
He got up from his seat and headed for the door, leaving her to trail after him. “Cool,” he said as he passed her, and Ronnie suddenly wanted to run away. But she had to stay with Jonah.
Will continued to sit, unmoving, his eyes fixed on Ronnie.
“Give me a second, okay?” she called to Jonah.
Will stood up from the table, looking frightened for her. He knows, she suddenly thought. Somehow he already knows.
“Can you wait for us?” Ronnie began. “I know you probably-”
“Of course I’ll wait,” he said quietly. “I’ll be right here for as long as you need me.”
Relief rushed through her, and she gave him a grateful look, then turned and followed Jonah. They pushed open the door and headed into the otherwise empty corridor, toward the hustle and bustle of the emergency room.
No one close to her had ever died. Though her dad’s parents had died and she remembered attending the funerals, she’d never known them well. They weren’t the kind of grandparents that visited. They were strangers in a way, and even after they’d passed away, she’d never remembered missing them.
About the closest she’d ever come to something like this was when Amy Childress, her seventh-grade history teacher, was killed in a traffic accident the summer after Ronnie had finished taking her class. She’d heard about it first from Kayla, and she remembered feeling less sad than shocked, if only because Amy was so young. Ms. Childress was still in her twenties and had been teaching only a few years, and Ronnie remembered how surreal it had felt. She was always so friendly; she was one of the few teachers Ronnie ever had that used to laugh aloud in class. When she returned to school in the fall, she wasn’t sure what to expect. How did people react to something like this? What did the other teachers think? She walked the halls that day, searching for signs of anything different, but aside from a small plaque that had been mounted on the wall near the principal’s office, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Teachers taught their classes and socialized in the lounge; she saw Mrs. Taylor and Mr. Burns-two of the teachers Ms. Childress often ate lunch with-smiling and laughing as they walked down the halls.
She remembered that it bothered her. Granted, the accident had occurred over the summer and people had already mourned, but when she went by Ms. Childress’s classroom and saw that it was now being used to teach science, she realized she was angry, not only that Ms. Childress had died, but that her memory had been erased so entirely in such a short period of time.
She didn’t want that to happen to her dad. She didn’t want him forgotten in a matter of weeks-he was good man, a good father, and he deserved more than that.
Thinking along those lines made her realize something else, too: She’d never really known her dad when he was healthy. She’d last spent time with him when she was a freshman in high school. Now, she was technically an adult, old enough to vote or join the army, and over the summer, he’d harbored his secret. Who would he have been had he not known what was happening to him? Who was he, really?