Home Is Burning

by Dan Marshall

  I finally broke the silence, wanting to say something that I thought best summed up the whole situation. “Hey, Greg?” I said.

  “Yeah?” he responded.

  “I want to tell you something,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “Anything. We’re brothers, after all,” he responded.

  I lifted up my leg and farted a top-ten-loudest-farts-of-my-life fart.

  Ppffumphhhhhhhhh.

  We laughed so hard we woke our dad up. We passed the test that night. We were ready to take him back home.

  WELCOME HOME

  After almost forty days, my dad was released from the University of Utah’s rehab facility and into our slippery, unprofessional hands.

  The house was about ready for him. The construction was finally coming to a close. I was happy to have it done for the obvious reasons, but it would also be nice to no longer have all the construction workers wandering in and out of the house while I tried to relax and watch HBO, like a good little rich kid. Having manly men around has always made me feel like a complete pussy.

  The last thing on the contractor’s to-do list was the elevator, which was, arguably, the most important, since my dad’s room was on the top level of our home. They were meant to finish it the day before my dad got home.

  I waited for the technicians and crew to arrive, but they didn’t. I called the elevator company, which was cleverly called the Elevator Company. After talking to a few middle-management guys, I finally got our project head on the phone.

  “Where are you guys? You were supposed to get this thing up and running today,” I said.

  “Yeah, sorry, Mr. Marshall. We had some scheduling issues, so we can’t make it out there until January,” the elevator guy said. That meant at least a couple more weeks.

  “January?” I screamed back, about ready to toss the phone through a window and cry myself to death.

  “Yeah. January. Scheduling issues,” he nonchalantly said back.

  “That’s not acceptable. My dad’s coming home from the hospital tomorrow. He has Lou Gehrig’s disease. That’s a pretty serious disease. He can’t walk long distances. He’s on a respirator. He’s been in the hospital more than a month. Our bills are piling up. We need this done today. This is an emergency. You’re not putting an elevator in some vacation rental. We need this fucking thing in there for medical reasons. Life and death. That sort of shit,” I frantically ranted.

  “Yeah. Well, sorry. It’s a scheduling issue. And I don’t appreciate you swearing at me,” he snapped back.

  “Well, I don’t fucking appreciate you making our horrible lives even more horrible, and blaming everything on a fucking calendar,” I yelled back, then clicked off the cell phone as emphatically as you can click off a cell phone. Bam. One of the remaining manly construction workers was eavesdropping. He gave me a nod of approval after my little outburst. Maybe I was transforming into a man.

  So, we were going to have to do this without the elevator. Oh well. At least it was almost Christmas. Maybe I’d have a chance to watch Elf.

  * * *

  We had set Tiffany’s old room up as my dad’s home hospital room. It was a big bedroom on the top level of our house, right in the center, and one of the few rooms that our piss-easy cats hadn’t yet destroyed. The medical supply people had actually done their jobs on time. So my dad’s new adjustable/retractable bed was all set up. We even had a little rack where we’d hang his respirator—his new set of lungs. All of the respirator supplies arrived in boxes: lots of tubes, humidifiers, extra trachs, sterilization supplies, gauze, bandages, etc. We organized them on Tiffany’s old trophy shelf next to ribbons she had won back when she had been an elite swimmer. Her childhood was now covered with the medical supplies that would keep our dad alive.

  With the help of Stana, we got the room looking good. Well, not good. But we got it looking like a home hospital room. We put an additional bed in there so whoever was on Daddy Duty could get some sleep. I stole my dad’s credit card out of his wallet—which was pretty easy since he was in the hospital and couldn’t move—and bought a flat-screen TV with a built-in DVD player for the room so he could watch movies or sports while he lay there dying. Might as well die in comfort, watching HDTV.

  A family friend had drawn a beautiful sketch of my dad running in the St. George Marathon. He had a smile on his face. He was happy. No respirator. No Lou Gehrig’s. The old Bob. It always depressed me a little because it reminded me what we had lost, how healthy my dad used to be. But Greg had gotten it framed, and we hung it behind his hospital bed along with all the participant medals he had received from running all his marathons. It was like a tribute to his former life as his new one started.

  * * *

  The house was looking pretty good, and we were feeling ready for him. Or so we thought. Then our neighbor Ralph showed up. He had been increasingly critical of the job we were doing managing my dad and the whole situation.

  “I feel like you guys are too stupid to figure out how to take care of your dad, especially now that he’s on a respirator,” Ralph said.

  “Hah, yeah, probably,” I said, ignoring him. Though he had been a big help with certain things like the doorbell, he was a bully when it came to getting our act together.

  “Fine, just ignore me,” Ralph said.

  “I know it looks like a mess from across the street, but we’ve really got it under control, Ralph,” I said.

  “Doesn’t look that way. You idiots don’t know what you’re doing,” Ralph said.

  Ralph was right. We didn’t know what we were doing. He seemed to represent the logical voice of reason from the outside—a voice that we needed but didn’t take seriously. We were sure that everything we were doing was right, mainly because we didn’t know if it was wrong. We were learning an unlearnable job on the fly.

  Right as we got his hospital room all set up, Ralph asked why we hadn’t just made our front dining room the hospital room. That way we wouldn’t have to get him up and down in the elevator in case it broke or was never installed. It was a great idea. We could just build a ramp up the front steps and that would be that. But we were too stubborn to listen to Ralph. We insisted that Tiffany’s room would work just fine.

  “Well, what about a generator? Do you idiots have a generator? We’re having the most severe winter in over twenty-five years. The power might go out, and since your dad’s on a respirator, that would be bad,” he explained to me as if I was a child. Salt Lake’s winters are always up and down. Some years, we’ll get a light winter in the valley where the snow never really sticks. Other times, it won’t stop snowing. So far, as Ralph mentioned, this winter was a severe one. Snow was piled two feet deep around our house. Our driveway was caked in ice. Icicles dangled from the rain gutters like knives about ready to drop through our skulls. This type of winter requires a little extra preparedness.

  “Oh, relax. I’m sure we won’t need a generator. My dad’s portable battery lasts, like, four hours. We’re golden.”

  Soon, Ralph handed me a list of things he thought we needed to grab at Home Depot: flashlights, lots of batteries, lots of extension cords (long and short), a generator, a surge protector, a couple of fans, a dry erase board, and a new doorbell to put at the end of my dad’s bed so he could alert us when he needed something. I set the list aside and said that I would eventually grab all the supplies.

  “All right, well, it’s your dad. Do what you want. Idiots,” said Ralph.

  I didn’t go to Home Depot. We had other things to worry about. Like Christmas! I closed the front door on Ralph and headed to my dad’s new TV to finally watch Elf. I kicked up my feet and sipped on my eggnog with an extra shot of whiskey, because why the fuck not?

  * * *

  We had initially decided that we wouldn’t do a big Christmas celebration that year. We wouldn’t get a tree or any presents. We’d just be thankful for all the gifts we’ve been blessed with. “I’m so thankful for Lou Gehrig’s disease and cancer, because
it’s taken my father and mother from me, made me quit my job, and is keeping me away from the girl I love. Cheers,” I imagined saying at Christmas dinner, the fire crackling behind me.

  However, my mom eventually decided the whole not-celebrating-Christmas thing was bullshit, and that it was a sign that the Lou Gehrig’s disease was winning. She had finally finished her chemo and was feeling better. Now she only had to go to the hospital every three weeks for IVIG blood infusions. The infusions helped her immune system and gave her some more energy so she could do things besides eat yogurt and sleep. The best part was that her chemo brain was starting to fade. She was definitely more with it and active. She started Christmas shopping a ton with Jessica. I think she liked the distraction, and it gave her a reason to get out of the house for a little while.

  She also decided to mobilize her friends to help her out. She advertised it to everyone as “Bob’s Last Christmas,” and asked if people could find it in their hearts to help make it extra special. Everyone decided they could. A group of friends put up a huge tree and decorated it with colorful lights and sparkling ornaments. Neighbors put up lights on our outside trees and fence, and brought over Christmas cookies and gingerbread houses in addition to the lasagnas. Stana made a special batch of Christmas potato salad with extra potatoes. The house looked good. It was all Christmas-ed out. My dad was ready to come home.

  * * *

  An ambulance picked my dad up at the hospital to bring him home. I went along for the ride. I looked for the “bro” dude, but he wasn’t there. I imagined him railing lines of coke and hitting on chicks at the mall, it being Christmastime and all.

  The ambulance arrived at our house. I told them all about the elevator. “Those fuckers at the Elevator Company—stupid name, by the way—didn’t do their stupid job, so we’ll have to go in through the front door. What dicks, right?”

  “Not a problem,” one of the paramedics said, brushing it off. “We’ve got a transfer board anyway. Plus, we wouldn’t all fit in the elevator.”

  Fuck. I wish I hadn’t made that piece of shit at the Elevator Company feel bad for not getting the job done if we weren’t going to even use the elevator. Poor guy was just trying to get through life like the rest of us.

  The paramedics got my dad onto the transfer board and started carrying him in. There were a million things that could have gone wrong. I pictured one of the medics tripping over a cat and flinging my dad’s limp body onto the Christmas tree. A branch would yank the trach out of his throat, sending blood and spit all over the family portraits in the living room. The respirator would fly through the air and nail my mom on the top of her bald head. She’d fall to the floor like a sack of cancerous potatoes. Something at some point would spark a fire—maybe the Christmas lights. Everything would go up in flames. We’d try to get my limp dad and unconscious mom out of there, but it would be too late. We’d get out and save ourselves, but everything would be lost. All our pictures. All our memories. All our Christmas presents. All our parents. We’d look at the smoking house from the outside and say something like, “Looks like this won’t be a very merry Christmas for us.” Ralph would pop over and watch the house burn with us. “I told you idiots so,” he’d say. Then we’d do something depressing, like eat Christmas dinner at Denny’s and talk about how our parents were dead now.

  However, nobody tripped on anything. I watched my dad’s face as he was carried in. He looked around at the tree and all the decorations in awe—like a little boy experiencing Christmas for the first time. It was crazy to me that only a year ago we were all circled around the tree in our silly pajamas planning for the Lou Gehrig’s disease. And now my crippled dad was being carried past it, hooked to a fucking breathing machine. The paramedics continued hauling my dad through our house and up to his new room. They carried him past his favorite spot at the kitchen table, where he would always read the paper and drink his coffee. Past a wall of photos of him and his loving family during happier times: on vacation in Hawaii, skiing at Deer Valley, sitting poolside in Palm Desert. Past the master bedroom, where he and his wife had slept side by side over the years. He smiled. He was glad to be home, glad to be anywhere besides that hospital.

  We got him settled into his new room. He looked around.

  “Let’s hope the cats don’t start pissing all over this room, too,” I said as I put a pillow beneath his head, already getting to work as his new home health nurse.

  His cuff was deflated so he could speak. “I like the TV,” he said.

  “Yeah, I bought that. Well, you bought it. I stole your credit card,” I said.

  I noticed he was checking out all the medical supplies and gear that made it look like he was still in the hospital room.

  “Sorry it looks like a hospital room. I know you just came from one,” I said.

  “No. It’s fine. It’s good to be back home,” he said and smiled.

  “It’s good to have you back. Place wasn’t the same without you.”

  And it was nice having him back home. He was the glue that kept this family together, the pulse that kept our collective hearts beating. No matter what differences the rest of us had, we were bonded by our unconditional love for our dad. His room instantly became the hub of all social activity in the house, the new hangout spot. Friends and neighbors stopped by all the time to visit again. His closest pals came over with some beers and drank with him, though my dad, of course, had to stick to the Promote. The dogs ran in and out of the room, wagging their tails so hard that it looked like they were going to fly off, happy that the house was full of life again. Fuck, even the cats would come and nap in his hospital bed with him, syncing their purrs with the respirator.

  Stana said it best: “Daddy is now makin’ home happy again.”

  Jessica and Chelsea hadn’t spent much time up at the hospital because they had school, but once my dad was home, they finally got to hang with him. Chelsea would bring her homework up to the room and do her math at the base of his bed. She’d even ask my dad the occasional question by holding the book up to his face. He’d try to answer, but she couldn’t understand him very well with his new trach voice. Jessica didn’t do homework. She was barely hanging on at school. Instead, she would plop down on the bed next to my dad’s and watch HDTV with him.

  But having him back wasn’t all fun and games. Caring for him was a real drag. A respiratory nurse, a physical therapist, and a speech therapist would stop by once a month, but other than that, everything was our responsibility. He constantly had to be rotated in bed. He needed to be fed three times a day and suctioned about twenty. He was always pissing. And he shit twice a day—once in the morning and once just before bed. The worst part was that one of us had to sleep next to him every night in case something went wrong with the respirator. My mom was still recovering, so it was on Greg and me. No more sitting in the hot tub and sleeping in until noon. No more chatting about fucking Daniel Day-Lewis. Daddy Duty was very much back on.

  We duct-taped his doorbell to the base of his bed so his strongest foot could ring it. We’d usually get him to sleep around eleven and doze off ourselves around midnight. It was pretty surreal to me that I was sleeping next to my dying father instead of Abby. He would wake an average of five times a night and ring his bell. When he’d ring it, it was usually for a pee or to be rotated in bed. But sometimes the respirator would go off.

  “BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Wake the fuck up so your dad doesn’t die,” it would say.

  “Fuck you, respirator,” we’d say back. I instantly hated the respirator, even though it was keeping Dad alive and giving us more time with our pal. It was always going off. It was like that annoying friend who never knows when to shut their fucking mouth. The beeping usually meant that my dad needed to be suctioned. We’d fire up the suction machine and plunge the little plastic tube into his throat to suck up all the mucus. It was a horrible way to wake up. I’ve never had to care for a crying baby, but I’m sure this experience wasn’t much different.

&
nbsp; Regardless, it was still nice to have our dad back home.

  * * *

  During the first week, I was feeling pretty great about the job we were doing: My respirator skills were improving, minimizing the number of times it would beep uncontrollably. We were rotating my dad in bed so he didn’t get bedsores and die. We were doing all of his physical therapy exercises. To top it off, we even placed the commode next to his bed and learned how to transfer him onto it so he didn’t have to shit his diaper. My dad seemed comfortable and happy.

  But then we had a massive snowstorm, and, of course, the power went out. It was pitch black in the house.

  “BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Fucking do something or your dad will die,” the respirator shouted. It was freaking out because it needed to be connected to a power source.

  “Please, just relax, respirator. We’re doing our best. We care so much about our dad and don’t want him to die either,” we said.

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure about that. You seem to be fucking up constantly. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP,” it said back.

  Using the light from my cell phone, I was able to connect a backup battery to the respirator. The respirator relaxed.

  “I’m cool for the time being, but don’t keep fucking up,” it said.

  I called the power company, and they said it could be up to eight hours before the power would come back on. Shit! The backup battery only lasted four. We’d be fucked in four hours. Completely fucked. We’d either have to use a manual Ambu breathing bag to pump breaths of air into him until the power came back on, or he’d die. I searched the house for a flashlight, but all I found was Ralph’s list of things I should’ve already picked up at Home Depot, which included a flashlight. I was about to call the fire department to send over some paramedics. My dad would probably be taken back into the hospital. He’d be removed from his home once again. But, just then, there was a firm knock on the door. I answered it. It was Ralph.