Page 104 of Here We Go Again

Dr. Rutherford clears her throat. “That’s not how power of attorney works.”

“You need to have the liquid removed from your lungs, you fussy little fuck!”

“No, I don’t!”

Rosemary keeps rubbing her temples like they’re Dorothy’s ruby slippers, and eventually, they’ll take her away from all this death and fighting. They’ve been having this argument off and on for the last three days. It’s always the same: Dr. Rutherford tells Joe he needs to have the fluid removed from his lungs using a procedure called thoracentesis. Joe demands to be checked out of the hospital instead. Logan yells at him.

“Joe,please.” Rosemary finally drops her hands away from her face. “Please. Don’t put this on us. If you don’t have the thoracentesis procedure, the end is going to come quick. And it’s going to be painful. Please don’t put us in the position to watch you suffer.”

“I’m not going to suffer. They’ll give me the good end-of-life drugs. I’ll be as high as a fucking kite, just like I planned.”

“And what about Maine?” she asks.

“We’re still going to Maine,” he says confidently.

“I don’t recommend traveling to Maine in your condition, Joseph….”

“I’m sorry, Doc, but I have to,” he says in a barely there whisper. That’s the thing about the yelling. It never lasts for too long. Eitherthe pain gets to be too much, or the meds kick in and he falls asleep, or his oxygen levels drop and they switch into life-saving mode instead.

The end is going to quickly come no matter what they do.

“I’ll have home hospice when I get to Bar Harbor,” Joe barters with the doctor. “Remy has already arranged everything.” He licks his dry lips. On instinct, Logan grabs his water bottle and holds the bendy straw to his mouth. Logan’s screaming never lasts long, either. It always dissolves into this: caring for Joe the best she can. It makes Rosemary’s heart hurt.

“You promised me, girls,” Joe croaks. “You promised me you wouldn’t let me die in beige.”

Rosemary turns to look at Logan, and Logan looks back at her, and Rosemary feels the same rush in her gut. The desire to hold and be held. “Fine,” Logan finally says, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fine. No beige, old man. A promise is a promise.”

“I’m not getting the procedure,” Joe says, one last time. “And I want to be discharged.”

Dr. Rutherford clears her throat. “There are just a few things I’d like to go over with you in the hall, then.” The doctor directs this statement to Rosemary, but Logan steps in.

“Let’s step outside,” Logan says, and she looks at Rosemary one last time before they leave. Rosemary is so grateful to be spared another conversation about the logistics of death, she almost weeps.

“I need to call home hospice back,” Remy says, pulling out his phone, and then he’s gone too and it’s just her and Joe.

“You understand, don’t you? Why I don’t want this procedure?”

She sits down on the edge of his bed. “I do.”

“Thank you, Rosie,” Joe croaks. “Thank you.”

She can’t accept his thanks for letting him die, so she just sits there in silence, staring at his beige blanket.

Joe suddenly shifts in bed. “I have something I’ve been meaning to give to you.” He points a finger at a manila envelope sitting onone of the chairs by the window. It wasn’t there before; Remy must have brought it from the house. She climbs off the bed to fetch it. It’s heavy in her hands, nothing but the word “Rosemary” scrawled across the front in Joe’s loopy script.

She returns to the bed. “What is this, Joe?”

He shakes his head. “Just open it.”

So, she does. A huge stack of papers slide out into her hands.

No, not just papers. Her papers. Her writing. Newspaper articles and essays and poems she sent him during undergrad. Short stories and random chapters of almost-books. He kept it all. All of her words gathered together in a neat little stack. It’s like a box where a mother might keep every macaroni necklace and handmade Mother’s Day card. She doesn’t know if she should be flattered or slightly terrified she has a dying stalker.

“Joe…,” she says hesitantly. “What is all this?”

“You think it’s weird I kept it all these years,” he surmises simply by studying her expression, and Rosemary isn’t terrified at all. No one knows her better than Joe. “But I was always so proud of you and your brilliant work, Rosie. You reminded me so much of myself. That love of words. That passion and care. You loved writing, my girl.”

She stares down at the stack. He kept her work because he wasproud.Years of considering Joe a replacement father, and she never once wondered if he might see her the same way: as a replacement daughter, a token from the path in life he didn’t choose.