Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  “My name is Tony. We met earlier, and here we are again.”

  Dad just blinks at him, clearly not remembering.

  “Can you move your legs for me?” Tony asks. “First the right, then the left. Good. Now, your hands. Can you touch your nose with your right hand? Your left?”

  Dad goes through the motions obediently, and Tony raises his eyes to mine. “I don’t think it’s a stroke or a heart attack. My guess is he’s dehydrated and probably hungry. Maybe he’s not been eating since your mom got sick. That ambulance coming, Marco?”

  “On its way. About ten minutes out.”

  “Don’t need an ambulance,” Dad says. “Help me up.”

  “You need to lie here and wait,” I tell him. “Do what the fireman tells you.”

  “He’s not a doctor. Let me up.”

  Dad’s voice sounds stronger, and he starts scrabbling at the floor, trying to push himself up to a sitting position.

  “I think it’s fine,” Tony says, and helps Dad sit up there on the floor. “Do you think you could drink a little water, Mr. Addington? Maybe take an aspirin? Just in case it is a stroke.” He looks at me. “Are there any aspirin in the house?”

  “I don’t know. I just got here.”

  “I’ll go look!” Elle says, and dashes off toward the kitchen. There’s a sound of running water, of slamming cupboard doors, and then she’s back with a small bottle and a glass of water.

  Dad looks at the outstretched hand holding the pill with a frown of concentration. His bleary eyes follow the hand up the arm to Elle’s shoulder and finally to her face.

  “Hey, there,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

  Elle is unfazed. “Getting you aspirin, Grandpa.”

  “You all think this little pill is going to fix what’s wrong with me?” He surveys our faces, and then his shoulders start to shake with dry, nails-on-a-chalkboard laughter. “That’s the first funny thing I’ve heard all week.”

  But he reaches for the pill, and we all wait patiently while his stiff, old-man fingers fumble to grasp it. Finally it’s in his mouth, and he’s swallowed half of the water in the glass.

  More sirens in the distance, drawing ever closer. More uniformed bodies stomping all over my mother’s floor with their boots on.

  Dad, who has always been a marshmallow in my mother’s hands, decides to reveal a latent streak of obstinacy.

  “You can all go home and go back to bed,” he says, with great dignity. “You are not putting me in that ambulance.”

  “Daddy . . . please.” My voice wobbles a little, a small betrayal that surprises me. I’m not given to tears. My hand goes to my throat, covering the lump that has been quietly accumulating since I walked into this house.

  He shakes his head. “You’re here. You can keep an eye on me.”

  I want to tell him I don’t have a caretaking bone in my body. I want to tell him I need to go see Mom. I want to tell him that parents are for leaning on, not the other way around. Not a single word is going to fit past the obstruction that has replaced my voice box.

  Tony, crouched on the floor, still supporting my father, takes off his fireman’s hat and lays it on the floor beside him. “Tell you what,” he says. “We let you off the hook with the ambulance, but you agree to let your daughter drive you up to the ER, just to get looked over. Can we make it a deal?”

  By the time Dad finally nods agreement, I’m dizzy and realize I’ve been holding my breath.

  The ambulance team turns around and tracks out of the house.

  So much for leaving Elle to sleep, but she doesn’t look like she needs it. She’s bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for action, as my mother would say. The thought that my mother might not say anything ever again flits through my consciousness, and I swat it away. I can’t go on functioning if I’m having those kinds of thoughts.

  The self-righteous fireman goes out to wait in the truck while Tony helps get Dad into a coat and shoes. We support him between the two of us and walk him out to the car, Elle opening and closing doors and acting as gofer.

  When we’re all settled in the rental, Tony knocks on my window.

  “You’ve got your hands full,” he says, when I roll it down. He hands me a phone number, scribbled on the back of a Walmart receipt. “If you need anything, unofficially, buzz me.”

  I nod. My smile muscles are in a state of paralysis and refuse to make even a token effort.

  As I turn the key and start the engine, my mind runs through a list of disorders that might be causing my facial paralysis.

  Bell’s palsy.

  MS.

  Lou Gehrig’s.

  Parkinson’s.

  Brain cancer.

  How about grief and shock, Maisey? Have you considered these as possibilities? Questions start bubbling to the surface, and the first one spills out, even though Dad’s face is a blank that should have warned me off.

  “What really happened to Mom?” I ask him.

  His head turns toward me, slow and creaky, like an automaton in need of new batteries. His eyes are blank. He doesn’t answer.

  “Dad. What happened to Mom?”

  He blinks three times, rapidly, his electronic wiring on the fritz, and then his eyes light, and he sees me—me—again.

  “She fell.”

  “Three days ago, the police said.”

  I wait for him to contradict the absurdity of this, to clearly and unequivocally tell me that Edna Carlton is full of bull hockey and the police have lost their minds.

  But he just swallows and doesn’t answer.

  “Dad!”

  “She didn’t want to go to the hospital.” His eyes go dark again, and he stares not at me, but past me, out into the night.

  It takes Elle and me both to get him out of the car and into the ER reception area. Fortunately, the staff are not only expecting us, but know the story already. We don’t even have time to sit in registration before the doors open and a tech comes out to get us.

  Somebody fetches snacks for Elle and me from the staff room. Homemade cookies. Crackers and cheese. A cup of real coffee with half-and-half. I can’t choke down food, but the coffee is a lifesaver.

  “I heard your mom is up in ICU,” the tech says, his voice comfortingly matter-of-fact. “If you want to go see her, we’ll start working up Walter here. It will take a bit, and we can call you when we know anything.”

  Dad doesn’t seem to even hear. He lies on the exam table where they put him, staring up at the ceiling. His expression is blank. He looks old and fragile, and my heart feels swollen and sick. Feverish.

  “I’ll stay with Grandpa,” Elle says.

  At the sound of her voice, he turns his head, and the blankness in his eyes dissipates a little. “What are you doing here?” he asks, as he did at the house. As if he’s only just seen her for the first time.

  “Waiting,” Elle tells him. I hesitate. She’s only a child, and he’s so terribly lost. Elle makes a shooing gesture at me with her hands, and I step out of the door and head upstairs, leaving pieces of myself behind all the way, like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  Chapter Five

  A curtain is drawn around my mother’s bed.

  At first glance she seems to be sleeping. But I’ve seen her sleep before, and this is different, a terrible absence rather than slumber. She looks smaller than I remember. Her body, always thin, seems insubstantial, barely a bolster-size bump beneath the hospital blanket and sheets. One arm lies on top of the covers. An IV tube connects to the back of her hand. On the inside of her elbow a bruise blossoms, probably from a blood draw. I find myself wanting to cover it. A sleeve. A Band-Aid.

  Lacking that, I cover the blemish with my own hand, startled at the heat of her skin.

  The room smells like disinfectant. It reminds me of scraped knees and the sting of hydrogen peroxide and my mother’s voice telling me I am brave, I am strong, I can handle this temporary pain.

  But I am not brave, and I have never been strong e
nough to carry the weight of my mother’s ambitions and expectations, to bear the brunt of her obsessive love.

  Since my earliest memories, Mom was in control of everything. She ran the house with precision. Calendars, schedules, lists, and more lists. Routine was her religion. When I came home from school, she allowed me a half hour of homemade cookies and milk to sweeten what I came to think of as interrogation about the school day. What did I learn? Who were my friends? What could I do better or smarter tomorrow? This was followed by homework, from first grade on up. If I had no homework, she gave me some.

  “You’re smart, Maisey. You have opportunities. But that will get you nowhere without discipline.”

  My father came home every day at 5:15. If he was a minute late, she got restless. At two minutes, she was pacing. At 5:20 she’d be looking out windows and standing on the porch. The advent of cell phones was God’s great gift, and she embraced them with fervor. To this day, when my cell phone rings and I answer, I expect to hear her voice demanding, “Where are you? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Where are you?” I whisper now, sitting by her bedside. “Do you know what time it is?”

  Her breathing is loud in the room, loud enough to cover the whirr of the IV pump. It rasps and rattles in her chest.

  A nurse comes in, checks the IV, straightens the sheet over my mother’s thin chest. Her eyes pass over me and away, like I’m wearing an invisibility cloak. I can see that she doesn’t want to engage, but I need information.

  “Is this normal? Her breathing? And she feels hot to me.”

  My questions hit the nurse right between the shoulder blades. Her body turns to face me, stiff, like it’s all one piece and none of the joints move on their own.

  “None of this is normal.” Her jaw is as locked as the rest of her, and the eyes suddenly leveled on me are ice-cold.

  I stare back at her, bewildered by her clear hostility. “Can we do anything about it? I mean, should she be on oxygen or something? Is she getting antibiotics?”

  “She’s dying,” the nurse says. “Do you really want to prolong the process?”

  Her words connect squarely with my solar plexus and knock all the breath out of me. She’s right, of course. The doctor I talked to on the phone yesterday was much kinder and did not use blunt words. But the message was the same.

  My mother is leaving me.

  The room door opens wider and another nurse comes in. This one is older and heavy with her years, her breasts and hips straining the bounds of her scrubs. She lays a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Can you answer the light in 205? I’ve got this.”

  Nurse One looks like her face is going to crack under the strain of holding back whatever it is she wants to say, but she pivots and stalks out of the room.

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper at her retreating back.

  “She’s young,” the new nurse says, as if that explains everything. “She’s offended by death and it makes her angry. You must be Maisey. I’m so glad you’re here.” Her voice is warm and welcoming. She actually sounds glad.

  It’s a good thing somebody is. I sure as hell am not.

  Nurse Two frowns as she listens to my mother’s breathing. She pulls a thermometer out of her pocket, and her frown deepens as she runs it across my mother’s forehead.

  “It’s 102.6. And her oxygen level is dropping.”

  “Can’t we do something?”

  “We took an X-ray. I’m afraid she’s acquired pneumonia. It’s a common complication in people who are unconscious for any length of time.”

  She lowers herself into the folding chair directly beside mine, so close that her shoulder, her thigh, press against me. Normally I would pull away from the contact, but her bulky warmth feels good, comforting. We sit there, side by side, listening to my mother’s terrible breathing.

  “Is she suffering?” I whisper the words.

  “Oh, honey, no. Very peaceful. She’s deeply asleep.” She pats my hand. “It’s not really my place, but I’m going to bring this up now, since the doctor isn’t here. When the ambulance picked her up, your father told them she wanted to be allowed to die. But he seemed a little confused, so now I’m asking you. If she should . . . stop breathing . . . do you want us to resuscitate her? CPR? A breathing machine?”

  Panic. My feet and hands go ice-cold. My feverish heart wants to escape my rib cage and go scuttling out the door and out of the hospital.

  “I know it’s difficult,” the nurse says. “What would your mother want?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, but of course this is a lie.

  My mother would want to make her own decisions—to be in control of this situation and tell her body and everyone else in the room what to do. That’s what she would want.

  “According to the ambulance team, your father said Leah put together an advance directive in which she specified all of this.”

  Warm relief comes flooding in. I don’t have to make decisions, after all. My mother came through, planning it all out in advance. Of course. That’s exactly what she would do.

  “Well, good. Then do whatever the directive tells you.”

  The nurse sighs. Maybe out of frustration with me, or the whole situation. “They tell me he wasn’t able to find the directive. So we have only his word for it, and he’s apparently in no state to be making decisions.”

  “Because he’s a little confused?”

  “Mental Health was out to see him yesterday evening, after your mother came here. They didn’t call you?”

  “Maybe they missed me. I was traveling.”

  I think guiltily of the phone in my purse. When I pulled it out to call the hospital, there were five missed calls. Four from Greg. One from an unknown number. I didn’t listen to any of the messages.

  “Mental Health can’t determine competence in the legal sense. Only whether individuals with mental disorders are dangerous to themselves or others. They felt your father was okay to stay home by himself for a few hours until you got here. But no, he didn’t do well on the mental status test.”

  The words sink in, slowly, punctuated by Mom’s rasping breaths. Words and breath grate on my skin, threatening to uncover a nerve center I can’t afford to expose.

  “You don’t understand. I can’t make decisions like this. I don’t do decisions.”

  The nurse pats my hand again. “So hard, so hard. In part because your mother is so young. Let’s hope you have a few hours to think about it. But you should know that with the extent of the bleeding in her brain, she won’t be coming back. If she lives, she won’t be the woman you know her to be.”

  With that, she heaves herself up out of the chair with a grunt. “This hip,” she says. “It’s going to be the death of me. You just sit here and think on things. I need to get back to work.”

  And she leaves me alone with my mother’s loud breathing and a litany of guilt.

  Mom wanted me to be rich and successful, to carve some sort of mark in the world instead of skating over the surface. I should have been a real journalist, preferably the sort of perfectly coiffed woman who could smile at the cameras from behind the desk of a major news corporation and intelligently interview world leaders. Not a fly-by-night lightweight skipping from job to job at small newspapers and supplementing her income taking Santa photos at the mall during Christmas.

  I should have visited more often. I should have known my father was declining. I should have been there the minute my mother fell ill.

  I have failed her every which way from Sunday, and now maybe I have to decide whether she’s going to live or die.

  The very last hope I have of redeeming myself is making the right decision now.

  I lean forward and bury my face in the cool sheet, trying to let the tension go out of my spine and shoulders, but they feel about as pliable as a sheet of particleboard. My eyes still refuse to close. I try to focus on the decision I’m supposed to be making, marshaling lists of pros and cons to the idea of life support
, but my brain hops around from my father’s bizarre behavior and fainting spell to my mother unconscious here beside me.

  My cell phone buzzes, and I check the text messages with dread, but it’s only Elle.

  elle: vampires here for grandpa’s blood

  maisey: the lab, you mean?

  elle: don’t be so boring. this one is totally a bloodsucker. he doesn’t sparkle but I bet he’s a hundred years old anyway

  elle: IV started. gpa wants to go home

  maisey: tell him to stay put. Do I need to come down there?

  elle: he’s sleeping now. i’m bored. cn i come up?

  maisey: gma’s also sleeping. I’m also bored. Stay put. Both of you.

  A surge of irrational anger hits me. How dare my father disintegrate like this! He is supposed to be taking care of my mother. Why didn’t he call me? Where is the advance directive he was talking about?

  Why the hell was he burning papers in the fireplace?

  My cell is almost out of battery. I stare at the missed calls alert and think about listening to the messages but just tuck the phone back in my purse. Not now.

  The clock on the white wall across from me says 8:00 a.m., which puts me over 24 hours without sleep. My eyes have reached a whole new level of dry. Mummified. Stiff. Desiccated. The salt from my tears has served only to suck out more moisture.

  When the phone dings again, the screen blurs in and out of focus, and I blink five times and squint in order to see.

  elle: Mom?

  elle: There’s a cop here.

  elle: Mom?

  Chapter Six

  I skip the elevator and take the stairs, adrenaline pushing me to run faster, faster. My brain has helpfully supplied me with an image of my father in handcuffs and Elle weeping, a dramatic musical score playing in the background. But when I reach the ER bay, Dad is snoring on the gurney. IV tubing snakes from a pump into the back of his hand.

  Elle is wide-eyed and a little breathless, but it looks more like excitement than fear.

  An officer stands on the other side of the bed. His pleasant face is counterbalanced by a duty belt bristling with a holstered gun and a Taser.