Death Benefits

by Sarah N. Harvey

  “Shame on you,” she says, but she’s obviously not particularly upset. I guess Arthur’s dick doesn’t rate very high on the grand scale of Emergency-room grossness. Arthur shrugs, as if to say, “What can you do?” and I swear she winks at him. What’s up with that? He’s just exposed himself in a public space, and the nurse is acting like he’s adorable.

  Five hours later, Arthur is finally admitted for overnight observation, and the mystery of the winking nurse is solved: she’s been a big fan of Arthur’s since the days when she played the cello in the National Youth Orchestra. By the time Arthur is settled in his room, Mom and I are exhausted. We don’t talk much on the ride home. When we get there, we go to our rooms and sleep. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired, even when I had mono.

  When I get up, it’s getting dark and Mom is sitting at the kitchen table in a baggy T-shirt and shorts, drinking tea and talking on the phone.

  “The doctors say it was likely something called a TIA. A Transient Ischemic Attack. A mini-stroke. Maybe not the first.”

  I grab a Diet Coke from the fridge and sit down at the table. Mom mouths “Marta” at me and says, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. He’s being seen by a specialist tomorrow. No, I don’t think they’re doing an MRI. He’s feeling pretty good now. They just want to watch him overnight. He would have left today if they’d let him. You know Arthur.”

  Mom rolls her eyes and puts the phone on Speaker. Marta’s shrill voice fills the room.

  “Is he getting the best doctors, Nina? And a private room? He can afford it, you know.”

  “I know,” Mom says. “There just aren’t any available right now.”

  “Oh, now, Nina. Surely that’s not true. You just have to be more assertive. What’s the hospital’s number? I’ll get Horst to call. You know how forceful he can be. Do they even realize who Arthur is?”

  Mom snorts green tea out her nose, and I pipe up, “Oh, yeah. They know.”

  “Rolly, is that you? Are you helping your mother? You’re the man of the house, you know. That’s what I always say to Horst. ‘Rolly’s the man of the house now.’”

  “Bad connection, Aunt Marta,” I say. “I can hardly hear you. We’ll have to call you back.” I press the End button and look over at Mom.

  “Talk about forceful,” she says. “Thanks, man of the house.”

  “You’re welcome. Is there anything to eat?”

  The hospital calls the next day and tells us to come and get Arthur. All his vital signs are good, so I offer to bring him home if Mom will drop me off at the hospital and give me money for a cab. She’s more than happy to fork over twenty bucks and head off to a landscaping job. I wish I could take the T-bird, but Mom still doesn’t know Arthur lets me drive it, and I don’t think this is the time to tell her. When I get to the hospital, he’s sitting by the elevator in a wheelchair. He’s wearing his bathrobe, and I realize he doesn’t have any other clothes. On his feet are some green paper booties, but he doesn’t seem to care.

  “Get me out of here.”

  “Nice to see you too, Arthur.” I wheel him down to the front doors, where a cab is waiting. When we get to his house and I help him in, he collapses into his chair, orders me to get him some ice cream and falls asleep before I can bring it to him. The curtains are still wide-open, and the chair and bucket he was using are still lying on the deck. He’s right. The windows are filthy. I fill the pail with soapy water, add a little vinegar and get to work. The sun is shining. A hot girl gave me her phone number. Arthur is asleep. I feel happier than I have since we moved here. I hum as I scrub the glass. Maybe the worst is over. For me. For Mom. For Arthur.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong. Arthur has three TIAs in less than three weeks and ends up in the hospital twice, lying for hours in the ER, waiting to be examined and discharged. By now I know the warning signs: dizziness, slurred speech, disorientation and an intense desire for ice cream, preferably chocolate. The third time it happens, in late July, instead of calling 9-1-1 right away, I help him into bed and check him every hour or so, which is all they ever do at the ER anyway. Going to the ER again isn’t part of my plan.

  I’m meeting Dani, the girl from Arthur’s party, later. We’re going for a bike ride and maybe to the beach. I called her the week after the gala, and we’ve hung out a couple of times. I really like her, even though she’s better than me at a lot of things. Most things, really. School, sports, music. She’s not perfect though. For instance, she has an irrational fear of bugs—all bugs. Even ladybugs, if you can believe it. And butterflies. And she’s kind of impatient sometimes. You don’t want to be waiting in a lineup with her. She sighs and fidgets and rolls her eyes. She also hates vanilla ice cream and hockey. But that’s about the worst of it. Anyway, going for a bike ride is the next step toward a real date, so no way do I want to be stuck at the hospital, waiting for Mom to get off work. I’m sure Arthur will be okay. He always is.

  Because I need to be able to hear Arthur if he calls, I spend the day in the second bedroom, going though the photo albums. I’m looking at some pictures of Aunt Marta when she was a little girl when I hear him yell, “No!” He sounds more surprised than upset, so I figure he must be talking in his sleep and I go back to the photo album. I’ve reached the Coralee years and I wonder why Aunt Marta never talks about her. Maybe Marta can’t forgive her for disappearing, if that’s really what she did. You’d get kind of a complex, I guess, if first your mother died and then your stepmother abandoned you.

  When I get up to check on Arthur again, it’s almost time for me to meet Dani, but it doesn’t seem right to leave him alone. He’s pretty out of it. I text her and tell her I might have to bail on the bike ride. I hope she isn’t pissed. My limited experience with girls is a) they hate being stood up, and b) they always assume guys are lying, even when they have no evidence. Nothing I can do about that now. Dani hardly knows me. I’ve told her about Arthur, but not in any detail. Don’t want to scare her off. I step into Arthur’s room and I can tell right away that something is really wrong. He is gray and sweaty again, and one side of his face is twisted into a grimace. He opens one eye as I approach the bed. One hand reaches for me and pulls me down close to his face. When he speaks, his voice is so hoarse and slurred I can’t make out the words. I’m pretty sure he’s had another stroke— a big one this time. The one all the doctors warned us about. If he dies, I might as well have murdered him. If I’d called 9-1-1 earlier in the day, he would have been at the hospital when the big one happened. They might have been able to prevent it. It’s my fault. All because I wanted to go for a bike ride with a girl. I stand beside him, my mouth suddenly dry, my hands sweaty. What was it he’d said? I’ d be better off dead. Did he really mean it? If he really wanted to die, would calling 9-1-1 now be wrong? And wouldn’t we all be better off if he was dead? I shudder and fumble in my pocket for my phone.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Arthur. I’m gonna call Nina. It’s gonna be okay.”

  He groans as I call 9-1-1 and then Mom.

  While we wait for the ambulance, he whispers something, but I can’t make out the words. I lean closer even though he smells really bad. I think he may have pissed himself. He speaks again. It sounds like “Kill me.” Or maybe “You killed me.” It’s either a command or an accusation. I feel as if I’ve stuck my finger in a light socket—buzzed and disoriented and paralyzed. Have I killed him? Would I? Should I? If someone wants to die, which is worse—the accidental or the intentional? How can I even ask that question? My stomach heaves, and I have to swallow hard to keep from puking.

  When the ambulance finally arrives, the paramedics confirm that he’s had a full-blown stroke.

  “Good thing you were here,” one of them says. Oh yeah, right, I think. I almost blurt out something about not calling soon enough, but instead I just watch dumbly as they bundle Arthur up and lift him into the ambulance. I climb in and sit next to him. As we drive away from the house, sirens blaring and lights flashing, he speaks again, two words, his vo
ice almost a gargle. This time I know what he’s saying: “Kill me.”

  Twelve

  Time both slows down and speeds up after Arthur goes into the hospital. When I’m away from him, the summer seems to be zooming by in a blur of bike rides, trips to the gym and hanging out with Dani. When I’m with him, time creeps along like a slug on a damp dark trail.

  Being with Arthur is more painful than any bed of nails, but I need to do penance, to atone. For not calling 9-1-1 sooner. For calling 9-1-1 when I did. For wishing him dead. For trying to keep him alive. It’s my hair shirt, my whip, my karma. And yeah, I know I’m getting my dogmas mixed up. I’ve drawn the line at two of the most common forms of penance though: fasting and celibacy. I can’t fast because I figure I need my strength to bike the ten miles out to the hospital a few times a week, and I can’t take a vow of celibacy in case, well, in case I have a chance with Dani. She thinks it’s sweet that I care so much about my grandfather. She’d probably hate me if she knew the truth.

  When Arthur was first admitted, he was in acute care; now he’s in the geriatric rehab ward. In the days right after the stroke, Mom had almost hourly consultations with the doctors and nurses, who told her that I saved Arthur’s life by calling 9-1-1 right away. I know better. So does Arthur. I’m waiting for him to tell the world what a selfish little shit I am, how I stood beside him with my phone in my hand and had a philosophical debate with myself before calling for help. Although how he would know that is beyond me. Some kind of old-person superpower, maybe.

  One day, while I’m sitting in Arthur’s room watching him sleep, I start thinking—worrying, really—about what to do next. Maybe it’s not too late to take off in the T-bird. Arthur won’t care, and if I’m going to go, I need to go soon. School’s about to start. If I stay here, I’ll have to make new friends, buy new clothes, maybe grow my hair a bit. If I go back to Nova Scotia, I’ll have to find a crappy place to stay and work at a shitty job after school and on weekends. I probably won’t even have time to hang out with my friends. Peaches will find another guy. Hell, she probably already has. It won’t be the same.

  Suddenly Arthur speaks. “I never went to university, you know.” It’s like he’s reading my mind, which is pretty freaky. He struggles to sit up and swats me away when I try to help him get all his pillows into place. It’s painful to watch him drag his withered body into a sitting position, but I understand why he wants to do it himself. I remember feeling that way when I was a little kid and Mom was always trying to help me. Tying your own shoelaces, sitting up in bed—it’s not so different. It’s all about independence. Or the illusion of independence anyway.

  I sit down and wait for him to speak again. When he doesn’t, I nudge his foot and say, “How come?”

  “How come what?”

  “How come you never went to university?”

  “No time,” he grunts. “Everyone said I should concentrate on my music. But they were wrong.”

  “Yeah? You did all right.”

  “It was only one thing. And when it was gone—there was nothing left.” He holds up his twisted hands. “Less than nothing.”

  “How would going to university have changed that?” I ask. “What would you have studied?”

  His answer takes me by surprise. I would have guessed English or philosophy, but he says, “Physics.” It’s so out in left field that I laugh.

  “Physics? You would have studied physics? Why?”

  He glares at me and says, “It doesn’t matter now. I educated myself but it wasn’t the same. I memorized poetry, read all the classics, taught myself French and Italian, read every book about physics I could get my hands on, but I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. All anyone ever wanted from me was my music, so I gave them that. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “It can’t have been so wrong,” I say. “You’re famous.” And rich, but I don’t say that out loud.

  “It wasn’t enough. Don’t make the same mistake.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll go to university. I promise.” I was planning to anyway, so I’m not even lying.

  “What will you study?” he asks. He’s never taken this much interest in anything about me, except maybe my sex life, or lack of it, so I think about it a bit before I answer.

  “Math.” The minute I say it, I know it’s true. I love math. Always have. It makes sense to me.

  “Math, eh? Music’s all about math, did you know that?”

  I shake my head.

  “There’s a book,” he says. “Emblems of Mind. You should read it.”

  “Okay,” I say again. His eyes are closing and he’s slipping sideways on his pillows. I help him lie down. This time he doesn’t push me away.

  “When’s Arthur coming home?” I ask Mom as we drive to the hospital for what seems like the thousandth time. It’s been almost three weeks since his stroke, and I’ve logged a lot of hours at the hospital. I no longer wake up every day and think, Today’s the day I take the T-bird and head East. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but I’ve started thinking of Victoria as home.

  “Home?” Mom sighs. “I have no idea. Maybe never.”

  “Never?” It hasn’t really occurred to me that Arthur won’t get better, that he won’t sit in front of his TV and yell at the news anchors on CNN. That he won’t yell at me.

  “He needs so much care,” Mom says. “He won’t be able to manage on his own.”

  “So what will happen to him?”

  “I’m looking at long-term care facilities.”

  “Nursing homes, you mean.”

  “They don’t call them that anymore.”

  “But that’s what they are.”

  “Some of them are very good. Quite homey. Lots of opportunities for socializing.”

  “Arthur will hate that,” I say.

  “I know, Rolly,” Mom says. “Believe me, I know.”

  We ride the rest of the way in silence, and when we get to the hospital, Mom goes off to have a meeting with Arthur’s team, which consists of a geriatrician, a dietitian, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist and a social worker. According to Arthur, they are all, with the exception of the speech therapist, incompetent cretins. According to Mom, they are patient, hard-working health care professionals who only have Arthur’s best interests at heart. From my limited observation, they’re somewhere in between, depending on the day and Arthur’s mood. Arthur is right though. The exception is Lars, the speech therapist, who looks like a middle-aged Norse god—handsome but a bit beat-up, what with all that cold weather and warfare and human sacrifice. Mom says he looks like Nick Nolte circa 1990, “when he was hot.” Which must mean she thinks Lars is hot, which is weird and maybe, I don’t know, vaguely unethical. He is part of Arthur’s “team,” after all. Lars doesn’t take any shit from anyone, Arthur included. If you want to learn to talk again, Lars is your guy. If you don’t, well, step aside.

  Arthur bonded with Lars immediately and his speech is improving rapidly. The slur has almost disappeared, and he doesn’t have nearly as much trouble finding the right words for things. He’s forgotten some stuff, like my nickname (which is good) and his kids’ names (which is bad), but Mom takes it all in stride. Aunt Marta doesn’t. She told Mom a while ago that she won’t come to visit until Arthur remembers her name. Mom called her a word I’ve never heard her use before, and they haven’t talked since.

  I stop at the hospital coffee shop to pick up a coffee and a chocolate-glazed donut for Arthur. That’s our ritual: I bring coffee so Arthur can complain that it’s not a café au lait. Once in a while I go to Starbucks and get him a latte, but he still bitches at me.

  Today when I get there, he’s waiting for me by the elevator in his wheelchair.

  “What took you so long?” he growls.

  “Good to see you too,” I reply. “Where do you want to go? Your room? The lounge?”

  “Home.”

  I don’t know what to say. I have no idea
when he’s getting out, but I’m pretty sure he won’t be going home. He’s like a baby that’s learning to walk: he can only go about ten steps before he starts to topple over. “I brought you a donut and coffee. Let’s go to the lounge. Maybe watch some TV.” I start to wheel him away from the elevator, hoping that he’ll be distracted by the possibility of a Little House rerun.

  “I want to sleep in my own bed,” he says. “The noise here is unbearable. The lights are always on. Someone’s always poking at me or asking me questions.”

  “At least you’ve got a private room now,” I remind him. “Remember that dude you shared with when you first came? What was his name?”

  “Chuck,” Arthur says. “His name was Chuck Callahan and he had never heard of Mozart. And he snored like a chain saw going through a sequoia.”

  Why does he remember Chuck’s name, but not my mom’s? It doesn’t seem fair. And where does a word like sequoia come from when he often can’t remember simple words like milk or book. I know it’s something to do with how the stroke damaged his brain, but it still freaks me out. I mean, we’re all walking around with this amazing, delicate spongy thing inside our skulls, and we totally take for granted that the wires won’t get crossed—until they do, and it’s too late.

  “His family brought food in buckets,” Arthur continues. “Chicken. What kind of people eat food out of buckets? Like pigs at a trough. The smell was disgusting.”

  “That’s why they call it pigging out. You oughtta try it sometime,” I say. “It’s good. I’ll bring you some. Fatten you up.”

  We turn into the lounge, where two old ladies are playing a card game, and an old man has fallen asleep on the flowered couch. The TV is on, but it’s muted. Oprah’s audience is crying again. One of the old ladies looks up and smiles at Arthur.

  She has bright blue eyes, and she’s wearing hot pink lipstick with fingernails to match. A multicolored scarf is tied in her white curls. From the neck down, she is standard-issue geriatric-ward patient, female variety: fluffy pink robe, slippers to match, walker at her side.