Page 10

Nicole

When I woke up at nine o’clock in the morning, later than I’d ever woken up since becoming a mother, I checked my phone, and there was a text from Kyle:

Glad you made it safe.

He hadn’t texted to ask about my dad, which bothered me. I’d given him the general rundown of my dad’s symptoms and figured he’d be as invested in the medical mystery as I was. The girls must have had him distracted; he could not mentally multitask like I could.

I’m worried about my dad. Taking him to the ER today.

I am not above adding my own passive-aggressive periods to text messages.

I headed downstairs and found my dad and Merry in the kitchen, having their morning coffee.

Merry had the crossword in front of her, and my dad had the newspaper, both wearing reading glasses that they probably got in a multipack from Costco.

It all looked so normal that I forgot anything was wrong.

“Good morning,” I said, with more energy than I’d had in months (years, maybe) due to the uninterrupted nine hours of sleep.

“Good morning, dear,” Merry said.

“Nikki, what are you doing here?” my dad asked, genuinely dumbstruck. It was the genuineness of it that made my heart contract. His memory, at least his short-term memory, seemed to be really and truly gone.

“I got in last night, Dad,” I said.

“You did?”

He didn’t seem bothered by his forgetfulness, more in awe of it, like Golly, would you look at that?

“You were tired,” I said, making excuses for him because it seemed like the kindest thing I could do.

“You’re going to the doctor today,” Merry said to him.

“The doctor? For what?”

I reminded him of the memory issues, the walking issues. He seemed upset, but then quickly moved on:

“You want some eggs?” he asked, starting to stand from his chair.

Merry and I went to him, told him to please sit.

“I can make my own eggs, Dad,” I said. “You just relax.”

My phone buzzed with a text. Kyle.

The ER? I hope everything is Ok .

Wasn’t it obvious that things were not okay at all? I decided to change the subject and focus on what I really needed from him—care of the girls.

Did you brush Grace’s molars really well?

I asked this not only because my father was a dentist and it’s ingrained in me to care about such things, but also because Grace has hypoplasia, which means her teeth enamel is weak and she is prone to cavities.

The dentist asked if she’d been sick a lot as a baby, as that can be related to the development of this particular dental calamity.

She was in day care, so of course she was sick a lot as a baby.

As I spiraled into feeling guilty about this, the dentist, who must have seen the worry on my face, said, “Oh, Mama, don’t feel bad.

” My dad said the same—“Don’t feel bad, Nic.

” But I did. And I still do. Grace has already had two cavities, one the dentist described as “craterous.” She will need either a crown or a root canal once she’s old enough to, as the dentist put it, “withstand the procedure.”

Kyle responded:

Yes.

It would have made me feel better if he’d elaborated—and he must have known this—but he did not.

I fantasized about him praising me: I really had no idea how intense this teeth-brushing thing is!

All those cheese puffs really do get stuck in there, don’t they?

I always thought you were overreacting, but no!

Thank you for caring for our daughters’ teeth up to this point! I am forever in your debt!!

Then I laughed at myself.

“Maybe I should come to the hospital,” Merry said to me.

“The hospital?” my dad said.

“Merry, just let me take him. We’ll be fine.”

“Make sure you tell the doctors about how he fell and possibly hit his head,” she said, talking about him as if he weren’t right next to her.

“Huh?” my dad said.

I beat three eggs in a bowl and then poured them into the hot, oiled pan.

“I will.”

“Who hit his head?” my dad asked.

“You did, Rob.”

Merry was turning all her concern and fear into frustration—a magic trick of self-preservation.

“I did?” he said. “When?”

She stood up and took her breakfast dishes and mug to the sink, muttering something under her breath.

“Mer, why don’t you go ... do something?” I said.

I tried to think of something to suggest she do, but struggled to come up with anything she enjoyed. She read books. She browsed atrocities on the internet. She gardened occasionally.

“You’re sure I shouldn’t come?” she asked.

“Just stay here. Try to take it easy. If he’s admitted, you’ll be at the hospital all the time.”

“You think they’ll admit him?” she asked me, her eyes pleading with me to be omniscient.

“I don’t know, but probably.”

“Who’s going to the hospital?” my dad asked from the table.

“Don’t worry about it, Dad.”

Merry looked hesitant. I don’t think she wanted to go with us. I think she just didn’t trust me to do things correctly. It occurred to me that Kyle must feel toward me how I feel toward my stepmother, and this was deeply unsettling.

“Okay,” she said, finally, as if after serious thought. Then: “I’m going to take a shower.”

“That sounds great.”

With that, she went upstairs, and I went to the table for my dad’s dishes.

“Dad, I’m parked right out front, okay? I’m going to drive you to the doctor.”

I didn’t want to say hospital or ER because I figured that would freak him out. I resolved to talk to him the way I would talk to Grace and Liv.

“The doctor?” he said.

“Yes.”

He was perplexed, but he didn’t resist when I encouraged him to stand.

I hooked his elbow into mine, and we made our way to the front door.

He put more of his weight into me than I expected him to, admitting with his body that he needed me probably more than he wanted to.

He had at least sixty pounds on me, and I worried what would happen if we both went down.

“You okay?” I said to him, but also to myself.

“Yep,” he said, still with joy in his voice.

It took about fifteen minutes for us to shuffle to the car, but once I helped lower him into the passenger’s seat and buckled him, I exhaled with relief.

“Thanks for driving me,” he said when we were on our way.

“No problem. I’ll take any opportunity to hang out with you.”

A few minutes later, he said it again: “Thanks for driving me.”

I repeated what I’d said before, and it was clear he had no recollection of it.

“Traffic’s pretty light for a Monday,” he said.

“Dad, it’s Saturday.”

“It is?”

“It is.”

“Are you just going to park your car at the airport?” he asked.

I tried to make sense of what he was saying but could not.

“At the airport?”

“Yeah, are you just parking your car there? Or wait, are you just dropping me off at the airport? I can’t remember if you’re going with us to Maui.”

Up until I left home for college, we did an annual trip to Maui, the three of us. He and Merry still went. The last time they’d gone was six months earlier.

“We’re not going to Maui, Dad.”

I felt my heart seize, as if in preparation for shattering.

“We’re not?” he asked. “Then why are we going to the airport?”

“We’re not going to the airport,” I said. “We’re going to the doctor, remember?”

I knew he didn’t remember, but I said it anyway. It seemed respectful, like alerting him to the fact that we’d discussed this already.

“Oh, right,” he said, playing along.

A few minutes after that: “Hey, thanks for driving me.”

He was confused when we pulled into the parking lot for the UCSF Emergency Department. He was confused when we checked in, me explaining his symptoms to the intake person while a nurse took his vitals.

“I’m going to get a wheelchair,” the nurse said, immediately noticing that he was a fall risk.

We helped him lower into the wheelchair, and he had the most clueless smile on his face.

I wheeled him to the triage room. A resident assessed him and said they’d run a CT scan.

“Even if things look normal,” he said, “it’s likely we’ll admit him.”

His symptoms were that strange, I guessed, that worrisome. I texted Merry, gave her the update. She sent a frown-face emoji, which was odd—I didn’t think she knew how to use emojis. I tried to assure her:

This is good news. They’ll get to the bottom of it

From the triage room, they took us to another room, got my dad into a hospital gown, and had him sit in a bed.

I sat in a chair next to him, and they pulled a curtain closed behind us.

On the other side of the curtain, a woman moaned and talked to whoever was with her in another language.

I couldn’t understand what she was saying at all, but I understood her pain and desperation all too well.

“Is Mom still in the waiting room?” my dad asked.

“Mom?”

He just looked at me expectantly.

“Merry?” I said. “She’s not here.”

He gave me a half smile and squinted his eyes. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not. She stayed home, remember?”

He shook his head in disbelief at himself and his failing brain. They took him for his CT scan, and when he returned, he promptly fell asleep.

Over the course of the next several hours, various people came to take blood—so much blood—and check his vitals.

Between proddings, he slept while I scrolled through more photos of the girls and perused Instagram, looking at photos of other people’s fun weekends, cursing their apparent bliss.

Kyle hadn’t texted to check in. Merry had texted to check in too many times.