by Caisey Quinn
Moments and breaths measured, rushing us toward the end and reminding me that there isn’t a promise of tomorrow. We assume so much—take so much for granted. If I could break out from beneath the heavy weight of the shock, I’d launch myself into Gavin’s arms. I’d announce to my brother and anyone who would listen that I love him today, I loved him yesterday, and I will love him until machines count out my last heartbeats. But right now, with Papa looking frail and ten years older than I remember beneath a thin white sheet, it all feels selfish and indulgent. Loving, having love, being loved. Like any energy I spend on something as mundane as showering or eating is wasted when I could be focusing it on willing him to be okay.
So we sit, Dallas, Gavin, and I, in a lopsided triangle around Papa’s hospital bed with the beeping and CNN playing with black-and-white captions at the bottom of the flat-screen television in the corner of the ceiling because no one has bothered to change it or turn up the volume. There are only supposed to be two visitors at a time, but somehow Gavin works his charm and is allowed to stay, for which I am grateful. Nurses come in and nurses go out, asking us our names, introducing themselves, and taking Papa’s never-changing vitals.
Lunchtime comes and goes and no one comes to explain what’s going on. Dallas calls Mrs. Lawson and she cries and carries on about her cats and how they predicted a tragedy was coming.
“She found him near the mailbox, said he was on his back and gurgling fluids but nonresponsive. She called 911 and they tried to instruct her on how to perform CPR but she couldn’t clear the foam from his mouth.”
Dallas is relaying their conversation and I’m nodding because it’s all I can manage. He might as well be punching me in the stomach. It wouldn’t feel much different.
“It took the ambulance about twenty minutes to get there and the paramedics were still working on him when they pulled away. Mrs. Lawson said to keep her posted.”
More nodding.
I’m fighting off unconsciousness when a tired-looking blond man in a white coat steps into the already overcrowded room. Dallas has nodded off with his head on his fist and Gavin is slumped in his chair.
“Miss Lark?”
I stand, snapping to attention like a soldier caught napping on post. “Yes, sir.”
“Are you his daughter?”
“Granddaughter. He raised my brother and me after our parents died in a car accident.” I gesture to Dallas. I have no idea why I just blurted all of that out, but I’m functioning on autopilot, recalling information and reciting it on command.
He shakes my hand firmly and I notice his eyes are shot through with red and lined with heavy rings even though he’s probably only thirty or so “Dr. Paulsen. I wasn’t here when your grandfather was brought in—Dr. Rasheed was—but I oversaw all of his tests.”
“Tests?”
“Scans mostly. Your grandfather suffered a heart attack. We found a ninety percent blockage, and after several scans it appears that he currently has little to no brain activity. A neurologist will be in tomorrow to speak with you about the specifics of his results.”
That’s supposed to mean something—something permanent, but my sleep-deprived mind can’t determine what that is right away. I’m waiting to hear the part where he tells me the solution, the procedure or surgery or whatever that’s going to fix it, fix him.
Dr. Paulsen gives me a sympathetic smile that I’m too tired to return. A lump forms in my throat and drives tears to my eyes.
“So it’s bad?” My voice barely makes it out.
“It was a severe heart attack, and frankly, there’s no way to know for sure how long he went without oxygen.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning even if he wakes up, he will most likely remain brain dead.”
My mind immediately rejects this. I look over at my granddad and decide that he’s just tired, just sleeping extremely heavily. This man is wrong, and anyway, he never said that he was sorry and isn’t that what people say if something is really this bad?
Papa’s chest heaves up and down and I ignore the knowledge that the machine over his nose and mouth is forcing this to happen. He’s breathing. He’s alive. He’s not brain dead. The last conversation we had on the phone is not the last one we will ever have.
“I was supposed to make him meat loaf,” I choke out before the man marks some things on his chart and slides it loudly into the plastic slot at the foot of Papa’s bed.
The doctor continues, oblivious to my meltdown. “We’ll keep an eye on his vitals and move him to avoid bedsores, but I have to be honest because it’s my job. There are some hard decisions in your future. For instance, you may have nurses asking you about a DNR and you may want to consider signing it.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“A DNR is a Do Not Resuscitate order. If you sign it, they’ll place a purple bracelet on him and a note in his chart so that should he go into cardiac arrest—as many patients in this condition do—they won’t put his body through the trauma of trying to bring him back. We’ll simply let him go.”
We’ll simply let him go. The words ring out in my mind as if he’d shouted them, when in reality he’s barely speaking above a whisper.
“I was supposed to make him meat loaf,” I say again, because I am stuck now, like a broken record with a hitch on the last conversation we had.
“Yes, well, I’ll let you speak with your family and if you or your brother have any questions, I’ll come by again tomorrow during morning rounds.” Another weary attempt at a smile and the universal head tilt of sympathy and he’s gone, leaving me alone to try to remember everything he just said and how to relay it to Dallas.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin says, startling me because I thought everyone was asleep.
“Not your fault,” I say, lowering myself into the chair I was practically becoming one with before the doctor came in.
“Get some sleep now, Bluebird. I heard enough to get the gist. I’ll explain it to Dallas when he wakes up.”
A tiny hopeful part of my brain, one that still believes in happily ever after despite a lifetime’s worth of evidence to the contrary, tells me that I’m already asleep. That this is a horrible nightmare I’m having and when I wake up, this will have all been my mind playing tricks on me and Papa is fine. So I let that part push me over the edge into unconsciousness where everything is okay.
Morning,” I hear someone say as I blink myself awake.
My attempt at returning the sentiment comes out muffled. Sunlight streams into a gray room with a white bed. An empty white bed.
“Where is he?” I’d stand but my legs are cramped and sore from being tucked beneath me.
“They took him down for some tests,” Dallas informs me. He looks as exhausted as I feel.
Gavin’s chair is empty. “Where’s—”
“I sent him to the house to check on things. I told him to man the fort and we’d call if we needed anything.”
I nod and attempt to swallow the desert that has taken up residence in my mouth.
“A neurologist whose name I couldn’t pronounce came in this morning. He told me what Gavin said the doctor told you yesterday, about the EEG.”
I see it, the severity of these results, in my brother’s slumped shoulders and slightly bowed head, but I’m not ready to discuss it.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Nearly sixteen hours. Dixie, you were past exhaustion. I know our schedule has been rough lately and maybe I’ve been pushing too hard. I was—”
“Stop. I’m fine. Tell me what else the doctor said. Anything new?”
Dallas leans forward in his chair, angling closer to me and giving me the same look Dr. Paulsen did. “Dix, I know this is hard and believe me, if anyone knows what a fighter Papa is, it’s me. But I think we need to discuss—”
“You want to sign the DNR,” I say, cutting him off because I knew he would think that was best the moment the doctor mentioned it.
The st
ubble-covered knot in the center of my brother’s neck jerks upward as he swallows. “I think Papa would hate this, hate having people turning him and wiping his ass. Seeing him lying there like that, knowing he’ll never be the same again, knowing the rest of his life will be like this, I can’t imagine why we’d want to prolong this. I think it’s what he would want.”
“He’ll be a marked man, Dallas. They’ll put this let-him-die bracelet on him and it just feels . . . wrong—like we’re giving up on him.” The words barely make it out over my raw throat and the boulder of emotion wedged in it.
Dallas’s eyes shine like the surface of a lake in the sun. I can’t remember ever seeing him cry. He won’t now, but if he blinked hard enough the tears would fall. “Okay. We won’t sign it then. Not until you’re ready.”
My brother doesn’t argue with me, which I appreciate because I don’t have the strength for a debate right now. And I know he’s right—Papa would be so angry knowing we’d let him lie there undignified this way. “I’m a veteran, for God’s sake,” he would tell us if he could. Dallas comes over and wraps his arms around me, holding me and whispering how much he loves me and how sorry he is that this happened over and over.
“I was supposed to make him meat loaf,” I say, because it’s all I can say. It’s all I have left, the hope that he’ll wake up and I’ll get to make him meat loaf and life will continue on as it is supposed to.
Four days pass before Dallas puts his foot down and tells me to go the hell home or he is checking me into the psych ward. He’s not kidding. I heard him telling Gavin he has twenty-four hours to figure out a way to get me home or he’s scheduling an evaluation here at the hospital.
I haven’t really eaten anything substantial and I haven’t showered. I look like the scary movie version of myself and I know it—I see it in the mirror when I use the tiny bathroom attached to Papa’s room.
“Just for one night, Bluebird. Come home, take a shower, eat an actual meal, and get a good night’s rest in your own bed. Then I’ll bring you right back here,” Gavin promises me day after day.
He and Dallas have been rotating shifts, and seeing how desperate they both seem to get me home, I realize they haven’t been coming to watch over Papa. They’ve been coming to keep an eye on me.
I’ve brushed his thinning silver hair, trimmed his fingernails, and shaved his jaw. Papa’s eyelids flicker from time to time, mostly when I’m telling him about Austin, and when we’re alone, about Gavin. Aside from that, not much has changed. I’ve played Oz twice and so far no one in the hospital has complained. After the first time, I thought Papa squeezed my hand but the doctors both said that was just a muscle reflex and didn’t mean anything.
When a nurse comes in and begins asking me all kinds of questions about myself—have I eaten, can she get me something to eat, do I ever think about hurting myself—I know she isn’t just making conversation. Dallas is worried about me and he finally consulted a professional.
When she leaves, I look over at Gavin, who is the current watchdog on shift. He’s snoring softly in the chair beside me. I lean on his shoulder, letting my head fall onto it and wrapping my arms around his. He slides his hand in mine and gives me a gentle squeeze.
“Okay,” I tell him quietly. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 29
FOR SOME REASON, I EXPECTED THE HOUSE TO BE MUSTY, LAYERS of dust accumulating on coffee tables and furniture like the abandoned ones you see in movies. But it isn’t. The pale yellow curtains are open and even the weathered wooden floors are swept. The house is neat and tidy. Warm. Lived in. Dallas and Gavin have been taking good care of it.
I run my hand along the edge of the buttercream and blue floral-patterned couch, stirring memories of my childhood. That couch has been so many things to the three of us over the years. A protective shield during hide-and-seek, a safe base during games of tag, and where I sat tucked between my grandparents while we played board games in the years before we finally begged enough until they bought a television set.
It’s been someone’s bed recently. There is a blanket and pillow stacked neatly on one end of it. Gavin, I assume. Dallas would probably sleep in his old room, but Gavin always slept on the couch when he spent the night.
I hear Gavin turn on the shower and assume it’s for him, but while I stand staring at the old Wurlitzer where Nana taught me and Dallas to play, Gavin reappears in the doorway. My fingers drift over a few keys just heavily enough to make faint sounds. C, D, E. The first three notes I learned to play. I can still hear Nana’s voice.
“C, D, E, Dixie Leigh. One, two, three.”
“Shower’s ready for you, babe. Hand me those clothes and I’ll throw them in the wash.”
Looking down, I realize I don’t even remember putting on the jeans and T-shirt I’m wearing. Without argument or putting up a fight about being a grown woman, I strip my clothes off and hand them over. Gavin disappears down the hall and I make my way to the bathroom. The room is filled with steam from the steady rush of hot water. I’m grateful that I can’t see my reflection through the thick layer of condensation gathered on the mirror.
Bracing my arms against the wall once I’ve stepped inside, I let the water sear the past few weeks from my skin. I’ve been carrying it all for so long and I can’t anymore. I wash quickly, thinking about the many things I’ll say to Papa if he wakes up. For one, I’m never leaving again. I can get a job in town and settle for playing music on the back porch for him every night. For two, I’m going to yell at him for not taking better care of himself. And then I’m going to sit and listen until he has told me every single thing he knows about music and life. Every day with him was a lesson, and there was so much more I wanted to learn.
Some tiny section in the landscape of my mind realizes that if Papa passes, he’ll finally be with Nana, which is where he’s wanted to be all along. He won’t have to sit alone in this house anymore, missing her. They were quite a pair—a team, they used to say. There’s no denying he’s been half the man he used to be since she died.
I step out of the shower and wrap the towel around me that Gavin must have set out. Sweeping the moisture from the mirror with my hand, I stare at my reflection. Papa would be ashamed of me, wasting away, grieving as if he were already gone.
He didn’t let Dallas or me spend a single moment moping when we found out Nana was sick. He sat us down and told us to make sure every single day of the rest of her life was filled with laughter and happiness—that we didn’t mope or cry or feel sorry for ourselves. We did the best we could—holding our tears until we were allowed to release them at her funeral six months later. Even Papa couldn’t deny us that. His eyes were wet as well that day and he didn’t meet me outside for my lesson for a month. But I kept going out there, same as always, until one morning he joined me after his coffee.
“You’re pretty like a flower and tough like a weed, Dixie-girl,” he said before imparting a few pointers about relaxing my hands during a piece I was learning to play by Pachelbel.
Looking in the mirror, I don’t know about the flower part, but tough I can definitely work with. I owe it to him to be tougher than I have been.
After I slip into a clean pair of well-worn striped pajama pants and a tank top, I run a comb through my wet hair and meet Gavin in the kitchen.
Seeing him standing there, making macaroni and cheese on the stovetop from a blue box—my favorite—I’m torn between wanting to kiss him and wanting to kick him out. Dallas had to cancel two shows already this week and I know Gavin needs the money. I can take care of Papa. They should go. The words form on my tongue but I don’t say them, not yet. Instead I smile and sit at the table, where he hands me a heaping plate of macaroni and a glass of sweet tea.
“There’s no way I can eat all of this. Is this the whole box?”
“Nah, just half.” Gavin sits across from me with his own plate, dousing it in hot sauce before he digs in.
For a moment, all I do is watch him, sipping m
y tea and appreciating that he’s here with me.
“Shit. My bad. We’re at your grandparents’ house. Did you want to say a blessing?”
I can’t help it. I start laughing. Gavin looks seriously concerned as he swallows a mouthful of pasta.
“I think we’ll be okay. God knows I’m a little distracted.”
Gavin grins back and points his fork at me. “Okay, then. Eat.”
I do as I’m told, and we laugh about Nana and how mad she’d get if one of us snuck a bite before the blessing.
“Swear I thought that woman had a direct line to the Lord. I told her once that God had no use for me and I was damned anyway since my parents weren’t married when I was born and my mom didn’t even know who my father was.”
I stab another forkful of cheesy noodles. “Oh yeah? What’d she say to that?”
Gavin swallows and wipes his mouth with a paper towel before answering. “She said, ‘Noah was a drunk, Jacob was a liar, Moses had a stutter, and Lazarus was dead. God can use whoever he wants to use—bastards and all.’”
I stifle a burst of shocked laughter by covering my mouth, because that was such a Nana thing to say. “She had an answer for everything.”
“Reminds me of someone else I know.”
I drop my fork on my plate and point to myself. “Me?”
Gavin arches his eyebrows and cocks his head to the side. “Yeah, you.”
“I wish,” I mutter under my breath before returning my attention to my food. I don’t have an answer for anything. I don’t have an answer for how to make Papa better, or what to do about the band while we’re dealing with this, or even how to tell my brother that I am deeply in love with his best friend and I always have been.
“Tired?” Gavin asks when I stand to rinse my plate and yawn.
“A little. Think I’ll turn in early so that we can get back to the hospital first thing in the morning. Thanks for dinner.”