Page 13 of Poison Wood

“Debby,” I say, moving toward her.

She looks up. Her normally perfect hair sits lopsided on the top of her head. Her blue eyes puffy and red. Debby was one of the casserole ladies who came by shortly after my mother died. She even beat Betty Ann Lovelace—who was rumored to read obits in order to find the new eligible bachelors in Riverbend—to the punch. But my father stayed a carefree bachelor for years until his path and Debby’s crossed again at a rodeo of all places.

“Oh honey,” she says.

My heart completely stops beating. Oh honey. Oh honey. No, no, no, no. “Debby,” I say again as my entire body shakes.

“He’s going to be okay,” she says as fresh tears start.

I release a sound that sounds more animal than human. My bones feel liquid, and I fall into the seat next to her. My hands shake as I cover my face and thank a god I stopped praying to decades ago. I take several deep breaths. “Holy fuck,” I whisper.

“Oh, hon. Not here,” Debby says, looking around at the empty waiting room.

“Debby, if there’s ever been a time and a place to use explicit language, it’s in the fucking ICU.”

She tilts her head and purses her lips in disapproval. Her language hasn’t been salted by years on a crime beat. She looks me up and down, and her face softens. “Rita, are you eating? You look too thin.”

Debby is built different from me. She is short and stocky and can carry a bale of hay by herself. I’m built like my mother, Lara-Leigh Meade, who was a tall reed of a woman who would rather clean paintbrushes with turpentine on a sunny day than saddle a horse. A perfectionist who said she totally understood why Leonardo da Vinci worked on theMona Lisauntil he died.

Ignoring Debby’s comment, I say, “How do I get back to see him?”

She fiddles with a stray hair by her ear. “Well, visiting hours are over. So ... you’ll have to wait until the morning.”

I roll my neck. After the harrowing hours of this day, that is not an acceptable answer. “I don’t think so,” I say.

“Now, Rita,” she says. “Don’t cause a scene.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to cause a scene. Unless they don’t let me in there. How do I get back to see him?” I repeat.

She points to the phone on the wall.

Thirty seconds later two large doors swish open, and I’m escorted into a small room by a nurse who looks as if she’s the accomplice in a bank heist. “A couple of minutes,” she whispers to me as she pulls back a curtain.

Years of crime scenes, bodies, visits to morgues, police photographs still couldn’t prepare me for this. My legs no longer feel strong enough to hold me up. My father, the man who broke horses in Abilene as a kid and filled a room with his height and loud laughter, looks ... fragile. Tubes connect him to machines. His skin is pale. None of this makes sense. He’s always been strong. He’s the one who taught me to be strong. I ease up to the side of the bed on legs that feel wobbly again. He doesn’t look so strong anymore. This is going to be new territory for us. I touch his arm. “Dad.”

He swallows; then his eyes flutter open.

“Hey there,” I say.

He swats at the oxygen tube under his nose.

“No, no. Leave that,” I say.

“Hey, kid,” he says, and it takes everything in me not to lose it.

“Hey, Dad.” I squeeze his hand. “You know, if you wanted me home so badly you could’ve just asked.”

He smiles. “What fun would that have been?”

The nurse clears her throat behind me. “Okay, Dad, I have to go, but I’ll be here in the morning. I’ll find out what the plan is. Then we’ll get you home as soon as we can and set up a new normal. I mean, some things are going to have to change. I need to—”

His fingers curl around my arm and squeeze, stopping my next words. His eyes are wide and suddenly quite clear. He swallows. “Leave it alone, Rita.”

Now it’s my turn to swallow. “Leave what alone, Dad?”

The nurse clears her throat again, and when I look back to my father, his eyes are shut. I touch his arm again. Still warm.

If I could, I’d curl up next to him and have him tell me stories of being a little boy in Abilene, Texas, with a six-shooter and homemade bullet holder, keeping baby skunks as pets.