FATHER

I am sitting in a hospital hallway, waiting, as always. I’m sipping bitter coffee, knowing full well how much pain it’s going to cause me later, but drinking it anyway. It makes me feel a little more green, like the glow of my surroundings. Or maybe it just makes me feel something physically, since at the moment I’m numb.

I’m watching a woman walk down the hall with a small child. The only way I can tell they’re together is that the woman makes her steps small to walk along with the child. She moves slowly, arms crossed, staring out into space, giving me the impression that if the wall disappeared she wouldn’t register the absence. The child walks next to her, obviously having a more difficult time with walking than she does. His feet are turned in, as is one of his arms, tucked into his chest like a broken wing. He ambles forward, making noises, with his head at a left angle and rolling, his tongue constantly moving in his open mouth, and his eyes straining to stay in one place. Every once in a while he stops and howls, then continues forward. The woman continues in her daydream, stopping when he stops, never looking down or grabbing his hand. They get to the end of the hall and turn around again, the boy working forward, and the woman accompanying him. She seems aware that this walking must be done and that she, for some reason, has to do it. The child, though, keeps moving forward in fits and starts. I want him to relax and not work so hard, but without the effort it’s clear he wouldn’t move at all.

I’ve spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms, never comfortable, and wanting to protect every part of my body as if someone were going to attack me and try to take out an organ or try to fix something that doesn’t seem broken. I’m waiting for my Father to wake up. He sleeps a lot here, I suppose for lack of anything else to do. His disease has attacked his brain now, if I understand correctly, and he has no remaining motor skills. I flew out here to see him in this government hospital that always looks like it’s running out of money. He could be here for years, in this same state of decomposition. What I’m waiting for — his waking up — isn’t really waking up, just opening his eyes. And this building is definitely an end, not just a pit stop on the journey. He’s younger than most I see here. Most of the patients are put here by their families, or are here because they don’t have a family.

I look at them and see a map of what might happen to me if I’m not careful. I see someone with one tooth and I remind myself to vehemently brush and floss every day. I see someone with a colostomy bag and I berate myself for drinking coffee, eating spicy food. The one thing I never worry about though, and I suppose I should, is that I’ll end up like my Father, in a bed at the age of fifty, never to move again. I think about getting another cup of coffee with lightener, but decide against it.

All of the times I’ve been in a hospital blur in my head. I remember two particular moments as if they’re one. My brother and I have been been taken to see him by our Mother, but we’re unable to go in, so I end up reading outside — Highlights magazine — and coloring. In the next, I’m standing in my Father’s hospital room, being reminded by him to bring his razor. Frightened because I don’t know where it is, but am of course being spoken to as if I should know, as if it’s plain as the grey on the tile floor. By that time, my parents had been divorced, and I think I am twelve. My brother and I are there, waiting to hear what else he needs to make his stay comfortable, knowing that if we don’t give it to him he’ll get angry. My brother deals with all this in his own way. He’s going to be moving out of the house and in with his girlfriend as soon as he can. I don’t blame him. I know I have an indeterminate amount of time ahead of waiting on my Father, of not knowing if he’ll yell next or be nice to me because he wants me to do something. Maybe I’m afraid to see him today because I think he’ll ask me a question I can’t answer. More than likely I’ll ask questions about him he can’t answer, since he can’t speak. Questions like, “How are you?” Questions I don’t even want the answer to.

The nurse walks by and snaps me out of my reverie. I look at her hopefully, because I should. She shakes her head no. He hasn’t been sleeping well lately, so we don’t want to wake him. I can understand that, it takes me an epic amount of time to fall asleep, generally reciting all the day’s problems and things to worry about for the next. But still it’s hard for me to muster pity, probably because he always wanted it so much. His pain was the center of our world.

I pick up a Highlights magazine and try to remember why I found it so entertaining. Games, some bizarre character with an odd-shaped head. I like to think of myself as having been a very mature child.

A very attractive doctor walks by and smiles at me. As I watch him walk away, an old woman in a pink doily sweater looks directly at me and smiles, but I don’t think it’s me she sees.

I’ve tired of waiting. I flag down the nurse, who looks as if she is having a long night. “Tell him I stopped by,” I say, “I’ve got some people to get home to. I just can’t….” She nods in understanding, which is what I expect of her. She, I’m sure, has a well of forgiveness for all of the excuses she hears, but knowing it’s rote doesn’t remove its power. I wave to the old lady in the pink sweater, who giggles, waves, and smiles a hazy smile, and hastily retreat to the stale air outside.

Once outside I sit for a moment in my rented car, with my head resting on the steering wheel, knowing all I am accomplishing is condensation on the windows. I could go back in, explain to the nurse I’ve changed my mind and called everyone who was waiting for me and told them I’d be late. Just a little lie. I’d be a good son to her then. The right step taken. Then I could sit a little longer in the beige green room, waiting to talk at someone who can’t speak.

If you begin feeling burden by obligation with a friend, there is a way to let it go gracefully. First, you just don’t call, then they don’t call. Perhaps you trade messages for a while when you know the other won’t be there to answer the phone. Then you gradually quit calling or returning calls. Mutual disinterest. I suppose that is heartless and cruel, but in some relationships you wonder at what purpose is being served. Perhaps in a former life you were in the others’ shoes. Perhaps you were the cold, angry, strange, unpredictable one and you have to pay penance for what you did. Or maybe you don’t deserve this at all.

I try to bang that thought in to my head with the steering wheel. It certainly is refreshing to feel something, in that vacuum cleaner weather, in that new vacuumed car, in that vacuum of feelings about my Father. Feel it bang through my sinuses, down to my teeth. I stop and itch my forehead.

I look up and see an orange siren through the wet windshield and imagine this whole place catching fire. But try as I may, there is no way to make the image of my Father leave with it. I imagine him turning to stone in the flames, solidifying with the heat. Lying in the ruins like a millenniums-old Egyptian effigy, eroding only a little every few thousand years with the wind and the rain.

I open the car door, putting my foot on the ground, hearing the annoying ding ding of the car warning system. “Watch out! The doors open! Your keys are in the ignition! What are you going to do now, you moron! We can’t wait forever!” I look down at the ground. I hate these socks. I’ve always hated them.

I look up through the crack of the open door, squinting in the mist that’s now started to spit from the sky, trying to decide whether to go back in or not. There’s some sad smell of wet burnt wood, and I can see the sirens moving around on the top of an ambulance with, thankfully, no sound. I shut the car door and pull in my wet foot. I’ll go back to the hotel for now, and try to find some way to pass the evening. He’s not going anywhere.