Page 46

Nicole

Elijah is waiting for me at the park, leaning against a light post, the hood of a jacket pulled over his head.

“Hey, you,” he says when he sees me coming. He holds out his arms, welcoming me into an embrace that I happily receive.

It’s not a typical hug with a five-second duration.

It is an encapsulation. His body seems to absorb mine, along with all the troubles it contains within.

I do not want to let go. Thirty seconds pass, a minute.

I wait for the muscles in his arms to relax as he pulls away, but they remain tight and tense, committed to holding me for however long I need, possibly forever.

I cry, not about my dad but about the fact that I have someone in my life who is willing to hold me like this, someone who is honored to hold me like this.

“Thank you,” I mumble into his ear. My lips settle on the warm skin of his neck.

“You don’t need to thank me.”

“Yes I do. If I didn’t, it would be like saying that this type of thing is normal—driving to a random park at night, shivering in the cold, giving whatever bodily warmth you have to someone else.”

“It’s my pleasure,” he says.

I am the one to release his hold, to drop my arms at my side, because I sense he never will.

Kyle will never hold me like this, with such generosity of spirit.

It’s just not in his relational wheelhouse.

We adapt to the partners we have, adjust expectations so diligently that we forget what we even desire.

He bends down to retrieve a folded blanket at his feet, holds it out to me.

“I brought the warmest one I have,” he says.

I shake it out onto the grass; then I lie flat, staring at the black sky. It is too cloudy to see any stars tonight—typical for Daly City. He lies next to me, takes my hand in his, his thumb stroking each of my knuckles.

“He’s really dying,” I say.

He squeezes my hand.

“I’m sorry.”

“Have you ever seen someone dying?”

“Nope.”

“It’s terrible.”

“I can only imagine.”

I appreciate that he says that instead of “I can’t imagine.” I hate when people say “I can’t imagine” in response to someone’s tragedy. You can imagine, I want to say. You just don’t want to.

“Nobody talks about this, the process of it. People just die behind closed doors, and the rest of the world thinks it’s this neat, tidy experience. But it’s fucking brutal.”

He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes my hand again.

“And I guess I have it easy in that this disease is so fast moving. Some people watch someone die over the course of months, years.”

“I don’t think you have it easy. I imagine your mind can’t even catch up with reality most days.”

“There you go again—saying the exact right thing. It’s like you’re in my brain,” I say.

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m part of a special government program investigating mind-reading technology.”

“Well, if that’s the case, the program is a booming success.”

Neither of us says anything for a few minutes.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks.

“You’re doing it.”

Here I am, with this real connection with this person who was supposed to be just a fling, a one-night departure from my real life. It doesn’t make any sense. Or rather, it makes as much sense as a one-in-a-million brain disease.

“My life is a mess,” I tell him.

“Everyone’s life is a mess.”

“Maybe, but mine is egregiously messy.”

My real name isn’t Katrina.

I’m married. I’m going to get a divorce. For you.

I have a pregnancy test in my purse. I have a fantasy that I’m carrying your baby.

The confessions sit poised on the tip of my tongue.

I am too afraid of the response, too afraid of his shock and horror, too afraid of his abandonment. My psyche cannot handle Elijah exiting my life right now. The confessions will have to wait.

“I don’t mind your mess,” he says.

That’s because you only know the half of it.

“You are a unicorn of a human being.”

He turns his face toward mine, kisses my cheek. “So are you.”

We stay cuddled on the blanket for an hour before I say, “I should get back.” I’ve been keeping an eye on my phone, terrified to get a text from Merry that says, Where are you?

It’s time. I would tell her I was just out for a walk.

She wouldn’t ask questions or even care.

But I would hate myself if I missed his last breath, if I wasn’t there with him then.

Elijah takes my hands, helps me stand. Then he picks up the blanket, folds it, stuffs it under his arm.

“I’ll wait to hear from you,” he says. “Just know I’m thinking of you during all this. Constantly.”

I rest my forehead against his chest, then turn my head so my ear is pressed against him. I can hear his heart beating, a slow, steady, relaxed beat.

“It’s just so weird. I won’t have a dad soon.”

He kisses the top of my head. “You’ll always have a dad.”

He offers to drive me home, but I insist on walking. He doesn’t push. The house is quiet when I get back, except for the sound of the oxygen machine. I close the door quietly behind me, go to my room, and get into bed in an attempt to trick my body into sleeping. It doesn’t work.

When I see daybreak outside the window, I go downstairs. The overnight hospice nurse is sitting in a chair at Dad’s bedside, holding his wrist in her hand, taking his pulse.

“Hi,” I whisper. “How is he?”

“He’s comfortable.”

We exchange names. Hers is Tianna.

“His respirations are fast—about thirty per minute.”

I have no idea how fast that is, have never considered the pace of my own respirations, another bodily function I have taken for granted.

“I want to start giving him Ativan to help with any panicky feeling he may get from breathing so fast,” she says. “I’ll need his wife to approve first.”

Just as she says that, Merry walks in, the bags under her eyes even more pronounced than yesterday. She’s wearing a robe, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she’s hugging herself.

“What do you need my approval for?”

Tianna explains the Ativan. Merry agrees.

We follow Tianna’s instructions—bring a shot glass from the kitchen.

It says “Acapulco” on it, something Merry says they got on a cruise.

Tianna shows us how to dissolve the pills in three drops of water in the glass.

Then she sucks up the murky liquid with a syringe and places it in my dad’s mouth.

She massages his throat to help the medicine go down.

It takes a few minutes, but she manages to empty the syringe.

“You can give that to him every hour. I’ll put a note in his chart for the next nurse.”

She places a hand against his forehead. “He’s a bit warm.”

She takes his temperature—99.8.

“It’s common for patients to spike a fever.” She hands us two blue latex gloves. “Take these and fill them with ice cubes.”

I do as she says. She ties off the gloves and places the makeshift ice packs against his cheeks.

“You can also fill gloves with water and place them in the freezer.”

This Tianna has all kinds of tricks. She’s also balled up some of Dad’s socks and placed them in his hands to keep him from clenching his fists shut so tightly.

We spend much of the day sitting and waiting.

I watch his chest rise and fall, wondering with each breath if it will be his last. Blood starts to pool in his calves.

His nail beds start to turn purple. His blood pressure hovers around sixty over forty, his heart rate around one hundred.

Merry records his vitals every hour, filling up lines in a notebook that she’s designated for this purpose.

I know why she’s doing it—for some sense of control, however illusory.

I remember when I was in labor with Grace and I did the same, recording each contraction in a notebook—the time it occurred, the duration, the pain level.

It was something to occupy my brain on the verge of this monumental event that I couldn’t begin to process.

When Tianna’s shift ends, Nurse Becky comes.

She turns my dad on his side to inspect the pressure sore on his tailbone.

I saw it yesterday when the nurse was changing his diaper; it was purple-red and angry.

In just twenty-four hours, it has worsened considerably.

It is a crater of black. One quick glance, and my stomach clenches.

I cannot look again. Becky replaces a bandage with a sigh.

“Should I turn his head?” I ask.

His left ear is black from the pressure of his lying on his side for two days.

“You don’t need to,” she says. “It’s fine.”

I imagine her thoughts: He is dying. He will be dead soon. The state of his ear is inconsequential.

We continue to give him water via the sponge lollipops.

It helps us feel like we are caring for him, doing something important.

It is all we can do, besides sitting with him, placing our hands on his body.

But this, the placing of hands, is more for our own benefit than his.

I will my hands to remember the feel of him, though this current version of his body is so unlike the one I grew up touching and holding.

Kyle texts to check in, and I tell him what the hospice people continue to tell me:

It could be any time ...

Him: You doing ok?

I can’t remember the last time Kyle inquired about how I was doing. I can’t remember the last time he showed interest in my mental state, my thoughts, my feelings.

I’m hanging in there. It’s all so surreal

Him: Ya

He tells me the girls are fine. He got them Happy Meals for dinner.

Don’t worry—I’ll remember to brush their teeth

Bless him for not making me ask.

Thank you. I hope they go easy on you at bedtime

Him: They will. They know I can’t handle them like you can

I want to say I can’t handle them either! You just have to try harder! But I don’t want to get into it, so I just say:

I’ll text tomorrow. Night.