Dad

by William Wharton

  The attendants start with the lunchtime meal. It’s on Dad’s chart that he’s to be spoon-fed. A lovely, pale brown woman, with one brown, one almost green eye, settles down to the job. We crank up the bed; Dad’s wearing a restraining belt attached to his waist and wrists. She opens up the containers, talking to him all the time in a soft voice. She’s gotten his name from the chart but pronounces it “Mr. Truman.” I give her Dad’s pronunciation. She asks for his first name and starts feeding, calling him “Jack” to get his attention. Dad’s eyes are riveted on hers but he opens and closes his mouth when she touches his lips with the spoon and he’s swallowing.

  “That’s the way, Jacky, that’s a good boy; now let’s have some carrots.”

  She has a sweet voice and a lovely body. I wonder why she’s taken a job like this, what she feels about all these old people. I hope she can work up some commiseration for the people here, that it seems worthwhile.

  I stand on the other side, watching, trying to pick up pointers. She smiles at me between bites and we talk.

  She pushes some custard into Dad’s mouth.

  “You don’t have to hang around here if you don’t want; I can feed your daddy just fine; he’s no trouble at all.”

  “Is it all right if I watch?”

  She smiles a quick smile.

  “It’s perfectly OK with me if you want to watch. I don’t mind.”

  I talk to Dad as she feeds him. He pays no attention. His eyes are on the girl and he’s cooperating with the feeding. He begins opening his mouth for more food soon as he’s swallowed, even before she touches his lip with the spoon.

  I watch her. Her arms are full but not plump or fat; the white uniform is crisp and presses against her body. It’s a lightweight material so I can see the difference where the hem is turned up at the end of her sleeve compared to where the cloth is directly against her skin.

  When she’s finished, I ask if I can take Dad outside to sit on the patio.

  “I think that’d be real nice for him.”

  We take the restrainers off, get him tightly bundled up in his dressing robe and transfer him to a wheelchair along with his urine bottle. There’s a little holder for the bottle on the bottom, under the seat. He looks better sitting up; any stimulation is better than lying in bed, scared.

  I push him through the halls. He’s gotten into the habit of hanging his lower lip open; it’s so unlike him. One of Dad’s characteristics all his life has been a firm mouth and tight jaw. Now, with his lower jaw slack, his lip out in a pout and his head down, eyes peering from under eyebrows, he’s like Charles Laughton playing Captain Bligh. He doesn’t look like himself.

  Outside, I find a table with a sun umbrella and park Dad in the shade. I sit down in the sun beside him. I talk about how relaxing it is, how good the sun feels. I talk about the flowers, naming some of them. We sit there for almost an hour. I’m tending to run down, letting the dead calm of the place leak into me.

  Then he begins talking. First, he’s talking to himself, mumbling; his voice is so low, so rusty, I can’t catch anything. I lean close from behind not to distract him. His eyes and head are moving, tracking. He’s seeing something across the lawn, out the gate toward the overpass to the freeway. I lean closer.

  “You know, Ed; we ought to start picking them cucumbers.”

  He looks back at me, through me, looking for affirmation. I nod my head. I want to keep it going.

  “You’re right there, Jack; we’d better do that.”

  “The pickle factory’s payin’ seventy-five cents a barrel; now’s the time to sell.”

  “That’s right, Jack; do you think we can get them in tomorrow?”

  He looks at me closely. There’s more Wisconsin twang in his voice.

  “Don’t forget, Ed, we gotta help Dad muck out the barn tomorrow. Remember that.”

  “Yeah, that’s right, Jack. I forgot.”

  “But we can start soon’s we’re done, then get the last after milkin’. We can borrow the rig and haul ’em in Saturday.”

  “Good idea, Jack. We’ll do that.”

  He sits there, leaning forward, shaking his head, smiling. I wait but that’s it. Nothing I say can start it up again. When it begins to cool, I wheel Dad in and fix up his bed for him. The nurse helps. We work on either side of the bed, tucking and buckling restrainers. She says her name’s Alicia.

  I tell her mine’s the same as Dad’s. I tell her about living in Paris, about being an artist, about coming because Mom’s sick. I know it doesn’t sound real, not even to me anymore.

  “How do you like working here?”

  She makes a face, shrugs, sighs.

  “It’s so depressing. I been working in different places like this for five years. You always lose; nobody gets better from being old.”

  She goes around to the end of the bed.

  “But when you’re alone and have a little girl, you gotta work, and jobs just aren’t all that easy to find. Here I can usually make my own hours, too. It ain’t so bad.”

  She looks at her watch; says she’s going off duty. The other nurse will feed Dad dinner. I ask if I can give her a lift anywhere. She looks at me quickly.

  “Thanks a lot, that’s nice, but Missus Kessler, the lady who runs this place, would blotch the ceiling if I went out with you.”

  She giggles, looks at the floor, shakes her head. I think she misunderstands.

  “It’s only I’m going home to check my mother, then come back here to help with Dad’s dinner. I thought maybe I could drop you off someplace.”

  She looks at me, cocks her head.

  “Man, you sure are nice to your folks. Nobody comes to see these people here. There’s some I know haven’t had a visitor or even a letter for years.”

  She turns, pauses at the door.

  “Even if you was black, Missus Kessler would make us a scene.”

  When I get home, everything’s OK. Billy’s slumped into Dad’s chair and they’re watching some show. I tell him I’ll be back soon as I feed Dad and he can take off for the night. Mother insists she’s perfectly all right and doesn’t need people baby-sitting her all the time.

  In back with Billy, I help clean things up. Billy says he doesn’t know how long he can take it. Mother’s bugging him about his hair, his bare feet, his uncut toenails, his pimples, his smells, his farts.

  He tells me a friend of his from Santa Cruz is coming down and is it all right if they stay in the back room. I tell him I’ll check with Mom. I feel it’s going to be hard. Probably his friend will also be barefoot, bearded and play the same damned twenty songs on the guitar. I won’t have much to say about how he acts around Mom, either. Things are getting away from me and I’m running down.

  The third day I go help Dad with his midday feeding. I find him tight and tense. His lips are quivering, he’s chattering madly and his eyes are flickering.

  I can’t get him to eat. It’s hard to get his mouth open; then, when we do, he bites down hard on the spoon. It’s the way it was when he had the Elavil.

  I ask Alicia if they’ve been giving him his blood-pressure pills, or maybe he should have some Valium; anything to get him off this crazy high. She gets his charts, comes back and shows them to me. There’s nothing about medication. Perpetual didn’t forward his medication records or his medicine!

  I go out and tell the head of the home to phone the hospital. I run to the car where there’s some Valium I just picked up for Mother; my cuff’s there, too, and I grab it. When I get back, Dad’s practically trying to fly away. He’s pulling at his straps, straining to get up, being jerked back again. He’s gritting his teeth and groaning.

  I work the cuff onto his arm and pump up. He’s two forty over one twenty. Alicia goes to get the RN.

  The RN whips out her own cuff, gets the same reading. I want her to give him some Valium, a sedative, something. He’s liable to stroke. But she’s afraid without a doctor; she’s waiting till the records get here from Perpetual.

&
nbsp; I charge out to the office phone and bulldoze my way through to Ethridge. The alarm must have gone out, because I get through fast. I tell Ethridge what’s happened.

  “That’s too bad, Mr. Tremont. We’ll get on that right away. The medical records are being forwarded.”

  The bastard’s still very arrogant, just the peasants getting in the way of the leaders with the great mission.

  “This is too much, Dr. Ethridge! Nobody’s giving my father proper care! What is it; are you all hoping for him to die to get him off your consciences?”

  “Come now, Mr. Tremont; let’s not be hysterical.”

  “God damn it, I’m not hysterical; I’m only trying to keep my father alive and I’m not getting much help from you or the rest of the Perpetual staff.”

  That does it. He blows his stack. He starts off very coldly identifying himself as a doctor of medicine committed to the Hippocratic oath. He rolls on self-righteously for about two minutes. I interrupt him.

  “Look, Dr. Ethridge, could you settle down long enough to prescribe for my father? He might well be dying while you’re telling me how great you are.”

  There’s silence. I’m expecting another “hang up.”

  “I’m informing you now, officially, Mr. Tremont that I am no longer your father’s doctor. I disassociate myself from his case. I shall make arrangements for another doctor to be assigned.”

  I shout back before he can hang up.

  “You’re already disassociated, Dr. Ethridge! And don’t bother looking for another doctor, I’ll find one myself!

  “I’m warning you now, officially, that you’d better check if your malpractice policies are paid up because you’re going to need them! It was your direct responsibility to have those records forwarded and you are definitely in tort!”

  I hang up. Mrs. Kessler is staring at me, her lips pulled tight together. She doesn’t want trouble. She wants to keep her relationship with Perpetual. It’s all in her eyes, in her mouth.

  I say to myself, “Now what have you done, fool? God! How does this help?”

  I go into Dad’s room, tell Alicia not to watch, and pop ten milligrams of Valium into Dad’s mouth. He chews it but swallows.

  I sit there holding his hands and wait. He gradually subsides. I keep the cuff on and take his pressure every five minutes or so. It slowly goes down to one eighty over a hundred. He drifts into sleep and I take it off.

  I’m stinking with nervous perspiration. I hate to leave but I have things to do. I need to find a new doctor at Perpetual or, if I have to, change hospitals altogether.

  I go home to Mother’s. Tom, Billy’s friend, has arrived; terrific timing. He’s everything I expected, only Jewish and quiet. He has even more pimples than Billy and wants to be a psychologist.

  Mother’s having fits. She’s not running a flophouse and so forth. It seems Tom came in, dropped his backpack on the floor at the door while Billy and Tom hugged each other.

  Do I think Billy’s queer? You never know with those hippies. They’ve got everything all mixed up. I’m hardly listening.

  First things first. I take Billy and Tom out back. I suggest they’ll be more comfortable camping on the forty acres in Topanga. Billy’s worried about leaving me alone with Mom. I assure him it’ll be all right. Maybe he can come down once in a while to spell me for an afternoon or an evening. I tell him he can take my motorcycle up if he wants.

  Tom has a tent and sleeping bags in the back of his car. I’m wishing I could go with them.

  I use the phone in the bedroom. I call some medical friends. One’s the head of medicine at GWU. I give him a brief rundown of what’s happened and ask if he knows anyone he can recommend here at Perpetual. He doesn’t know anybody. He does know somebody at Wadsworth General and suggests I call her. Her name is Dr. Smith. She’s in internal medicine and urology. He says I can use his name.

  I make another call to a neurosurgeon friend in Cincinnati. Max listens to the whole story. He tells me just what neurological procedures should be followed. He volunteers to fly out if it gets desperate.

  I call Dr. Smith at Wadsworth. I give the name of my friend at GWU and review the problem. She’s very sympathetic and says she’ll ask around for someone good in the area and phone back within the half hour.

  After fifteen minutes fending off Mother, the phone rings. Mom picks it up before I get to it.

  “It’s a woman for you, Jacky.”

  It’s Dr. Smith. She’s found a good man named Dr. Adam Chad at Perpetual. He’s young but everybody recommends him highly. I thank her and promise I’ll forward her best to Jens at GWU. I hang up, take a deep breath and phone Perpetual. I ask for Dr. Chad. His secretary says he’ll call me back.

  I go out and tell Mother I’ve canned Ethridge.

  “But, Jacky, Daddy’ll have a fit. You know how much he liked Dr. Ethridge. Why, he’s been Daddy’s doctor for almost fifteen years.”

  You never know with Mom. I explain what happened at the convalescent home. I tell her I’m convinced Dad has not been getting the kind of treatment he needs. I admit I’ve just made two long-distance phone calls consulting doctor friends and now have the name of a good doctor at Perpetual.

  Mother wants to know what Dr. Ethridge did, what he said. I tell her I accused him of just letting Dad die and not really trying. This fits her prejudice, so now she’s with me. The phone rings.

  It’s Dr. Chad. I explain who I am and that my father is a patient in a Perpetual convalescent extension home. I mention how highly recommended he is by Dr. Smith. I ask if he’ll add Dad to his case load.

  He asks who Dad’s doctor is now. I tell him Dr. Santana recently operated but Dr. Ethridge is his regular doctor. I tell how I’ve already spoken to Dr. Ethridge and he’s in agreement with the change.

  Chad won’t commit himself but says he’ll look at my father’s record and check with Dr. Ethridge. That’s OK with me; Ethridge’ll yammer but he’ll be glad to get off the case.

  I sit down at the typewriter in the middle bedroom. I normally use an electric at home and it takes awhile adjusting to pounding the keys of this old, stand-up Underwood. I think best on the end of a broom, second best on the end of a brush and third best at a typewriter.

  I try to put it all together, all that’s happened to Dad, all that I’ve noticed. Then I retype the whole thing to make some logical sense. It goes to ten pages single-space. It helps, just getting it out and looking at it.

  I call up a friend from UCLA student days. Now he has his own practice in Santa Monica. I make an appointment to see him.

  I think about calling Joan but decide against it. I’m not ready for any calm advice or the reasonable approach.

  The next day I go for my appointment with Scotty, my lawyer-ex-art-student friend. He’s gotten fatter, grayer; looks old. I imagine I look old to him—Archie Bunker without hair. Time is a bitch. Mother keeps saying “old age isn’t for sissies”; middle age isn’t either. None of it is.

  Scotty goes over what I’ve written. He asks some questions and takes a few notes. He peers up at me when he finishes and bounces the papers against the desk.

  “It looks like a malpractice suit to me, Jack; but I’m not an expert. Perpetual is a big outfit and has some tough lawyers. Also, they have control of the records; doctors will lie like hell to protect themselves. This is an in-house situation, none of them are going to testify against each other.”

  I’m feeling he’s giving me the brush-off, but he goes on.

  “Still, it looks as if they’re vulnerable.”

  He gives me a lawyer’s cool stare, razor smile. God, think! They can do this even to an ex-art major.

  “Look, Jack, two of the best malpractice lawyers in the country operate right out of Santa Monica here. Both doctors, both lawyers; husband-wife team. They don’t lose. If they’ll take your case, you’ll win.”

  That sounds more like it; I’m tuned to fight.

  “How do I get in touch with these people?”

/>   Scotty phones and makes an appointment right there, now. I thank him. He won’t take anything.

  “Save it for Knight & Knight, Jack; you’ll need it.”

  The Knight & Knight offices are in a dark brown glass professional building on Wilshire and it’s a huge suite. I’m ushered past a row of secretaries, through ankle-deep rugs, past solid mahogany walls covered with first-class decorative paintings.

  In the inner office, the pair of them look like an ad for yachting clothes tucked behind those enormous black leather-topped desks.

  We shake hands and I give them the résumé. She sits and he stands to read over her shoulder. These are California beautiful people. I’d hate like hell to have them on the other side. They look lethal, smooth and invulnerable.

  She finishes first, looks at me through her tan, through sea-crushed eyes.

  “What is it you actually want, Mr. Tremont?”

  This seems like the dumbest question in the world. Then I realize it is the question and I haven’t thought it through; I’ve been too mad to think. I’m slow responding.

  “Well. First I want my father to stay in the hospital where he can get the kind of care he needs.”

  She stares at me, calm as a hunter. Her husband looks up now. They glance at each other. Now he speaks.

  “There’s a suit here but it would be a long and hard one. We’ve entered into litigation with Perpetual eight times so far and won each time; the first three, in court; the last five, settlements. They’d probably settle out of court with this, mostly on our track record.”

  His wife looks up; they thin-smile at each other, bridge partners with all the trumps. She takes over again. It’s like one of those mind-reading acts where the wiggle of a fingernail or an eyelash tells your Social Security number and how much money you have in your left pants pocket.

  “We can assure you, you will get good care for your father; you’ll be able to request and receive any treatment necessary. Is that what you want?”

  I quickly write off a half-million-dollar settlement; it could pollute my mother, me and our descendants for generations. I couldn’t live with it either; Perpetual’s wrong but not that wrong. I hear myself say it out loud.