Ask (798 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 4 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by tlozoot (View user info) at 2004-09-19 23:16:24 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
It was war. Dad was fighting a war as well as anyone.
Dad was a strong man and would go down fighting, as I should have known. Frankly, I would have liked to see it end—I couldn't have imagined that he'd hold out this long, and I doubt he could have, either.
His livelihood as a physician aged him beyond his years. He treated the sickliest people and did all he could to help them, but was very much opposed to seeing them kept alive past their time, as families so often insisted. Yet there he was: machines and all keeping his lungs, heart, and kidneys going. The smell, the sound of the machines, and most of all, the sterility... it made me sick. This was not poetic justice.
It occurred to me that dad spent most of his adult life in rooms like this, and the 100-hour weeks sent him back here. If he had taught me one thing, it was not to consider a career in medicine.
It was harder than I thought, seeing this man go.
He had long since stopped talking or eating solid food; as a result, we visited him less and less frequently. So you can imagine my surprise when, peacefully reading this February afternoon, he raised his arm and put it, crooked, on the bed railing. Startled, I put down my book and cautiously moved to his bedside. Dad's eyelids fluttered; he beckoned for me to come over with one long, thin, knobby, old finger. I knelt by his bed. My heart speeded up—I had certainly not expected to have any actual contact with Dad during this visit.
"Son..." But that was all he could get out before shutting his eyes again and taking a rattling breath. I was confused at first—he's never called me son. What did I expect? I buzzed for a nurse—maybe one could help him talk? Several minutes passed with no nurse, so I buzzed again. It was another fifteen minutes before one came.
"Dr. Greenwald, eh?" I was a once again surprised to hear the nurse address my father as he did. She grinned. "Yeah, he used to do rounds on this ward. Great guy." Dad stirred, perhaps in acknowledgment. Yeah, Dad was so great you were moved to promptly check on him when I called. I didn't speak immediately.
"So, uh, he talked to me. But he called me 'Son,' and he's never called me that." The corners of the nurse's mouth grew a little heavier. Now Dad seemed agitated, or at least as agitated as he could be, lying in his deathbed. He turned his head a bit to one side, then the other, let out a faint grunt, took in another rattling breath and finally lay still again. His eyes opened. Somehow it seemed as if this action took great effort on his part.
"Dad," I probed, "is there something you want to ask me?"
"Mom..." I straightened up a bit. Huh? "Brianna..." That was his mom's name. His mom died years ago, shortly after I was born. It became my younger sister's middle name, and she adopted it as her given name in high school.
I forced a soft chuckle. "She died long ago, Dad. It's been over 20 years." Dad was not happy. I was not happy. I was talking to him as I would a child, and I hate children.
The nurse let out a small forced laugh and quickly stopped, before I turned around to look daggers at her. This was not funny.
What did I expect? Was I waiting for him to jump out of bed and start singing (think "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory")? The man is old and crazy and he's just going to die soon. I couldn't think straight. I wanted my father back, but he wasn't going to come back—I had lost him. Lost him to his job, the cancer, the treatment... he was always so strong, worked so hard, that here and now I still was in denial—
"Joe..." The nurse brought me out of my trance. I jumped. The nurse murmured an apology. No worry—I've always been jumpy. It ruins in the family, as Dad would say. "Yeah?" I sounded like my father.
"He's on quite a bit of medication." The nurse's voice now sounded distant. "You know, to ease the pain." I hate medication. So did my father. "I gotta say, talking like that is a bit unusual, even on this ward," the nurse continued with a chuckle, "but I assure you we've checked all the windows." He shot me a wink.
Goddammit. I hate when people wink at me. Especially in a hospital—they're practicing medicine, not selling me a used car.
I looked at my father. What was left of him? Fluid traveled through his body and over his dead organs, facilitated by machines. Thousands of dollars of insurance money went who knows where, and for what?
I'm losing it. That's it. I'm losing it. He's getting to me.
My dad's illness had sapped the strength of all his loved ones, but we weren't capable of loving him in this state. He quite deservingly fit the description of "vegetable". His cancer was slowly killing every one of us.
"Nurse, I'd like to have a few minutes alone with Dad," I said rather dismissively. She got the point and left.
"Now Dad, it's my turn to ask you something. If you know what I'm saying, just make any sign at all, any sign." I expected to choke up. Something told me I should have, but I felt no emotion. Instead, I felt a sense of urgency. I'm such a hardass... always have been.
He didn't move. Of course.
"You're going to make it, OK? You're going to get better, right? You're going to win the fight and be out of this place? You know that, right?" My eyes, dry. My voice, unchanged. I felt nothing towards this man now. I checked the door... locked. My mind was set.
I rudely yanked the pillow out from under my father's sleeping head. No reaction still. The pillow must have felt cold against his face, and with the oxygen line removed, he suffocated quickly and painlessly. Once I had placed the pillow and oxygen line back, fixing his sheets, he looked entirely unchanged. Not moving, no color, no life.
As I left the ward, I flashed the nurse a smile and a thank you. The buzzing from my father's room would be ignored, I knew. Alarms went off all the time and the nurses were apathetic. I'd be apathetic too, spending 8 hours a day on that floor.
I drove home directly, but when I came to my street, drove straight past my house. I wasn't ready yet.
It was after another 2 hours of driving around that I had come to grips with myself and was ready to face the barrage of messages on my answering machine. But I couldn't do it. I deleted them without listening.
I didn't kill my father. He was already dead.
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Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2009-07-15 08:40:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Gneiss.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-06-19 19:19:55 EDT (#)
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Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-01-16 13:26:48 EST (#)
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You beat me! You bastard!
Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 12:22:51 EST (#)
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