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She rubs her eyes with her fingertips.
I climb the steps onto the porch and pull her into a hug. She’s stiff though. She doesn’t lean into me, she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t do anything. She just stands there.
“C’mon.” I pull the screen door wide and usher her inside.
The place is small, cramped, old, a little musty smelling.
We’re in a small foyer and straight ahead to the left is a family room and dining room combination. To the right is an eat-in kitchen. In the middle is a narrow stairway going straight up.
I follow her into the kitchen where the kettle is whistling on the avocado-colored stove.
“You want some coffee? Instant. My father doesn’t have a coffee maker. Didn’t. Didn’t have…”
“Hey, why don’t you sit. I’ll make you one. Talk to me.”
“I’ve had enough coffee. More than enough.” She says this bitterly.
I turn the dial on the stove to off and move the screaming kettle to the next burner.
She sits at the little table, sticking her palms between her knees, shoulders slumping.
“Talk to me. What happened?”
She blinks a couple times.
I wait, seeing she needs patience here. The look on her face hurts. It feels like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
“I came back last night,” she says softly, like she doesn’t want anyone to hear, “and he was face-down on the rug in front of his chair. My mom used to say he’d probably die in that chair. And it looks like he did. But he f-fell out.” She makes a choking sound that I think might turn into tears, but it doesn’t happen.
She stares into the void like she can still see him the way she found him. I move closer and squat, putting my hands on her shoulders. She looks up at me and her pretty eyes are bloodshot.
“You’ve been up all night.”
She nods slowly. “It took time for them to come get him and take him to the… the…” she lets that hang. “I called you after they left.”
I pull her up into my arms and tip her chin up.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
No tears, just a vacant expression. She’s been through trauma. It hasn’t hit her fully yet. She stares at my face blankly, blinking slowly for a minute before she shrugs.
“They took so long to come and I just… I just sat here at this table drinking cup after cup of crappy coffee.”
“You should’ve called me,” I say, cupping her jaw.
She frowns and backs away from me, staring at me like she can’t figure something out.
She shivers. Her teeth chatter.
“You need sleep,” I say, taking a step closer and touching her face. She’s cold.
She shakes her head, but doesn’t back away this time.
“Try.”
“I have so much to do. I have to talk to the doctor and see about telling Shane. I called and I’m waiting for the doctor to call me back. I don’t even know if I should tell him…until he’s stronger. I told him – Dad, I mean – I told him I had to be here because the first week there’s a big chance of another stroke. And we got past that week. I asked him to tell me how he was feeling and he just kept saying he was fine and bitching me out when I tried to stop him from doing things his doctor told him not to do. But I knew he wasn’t fine. He kept holding his head, like he had headaches. He kept lying when I would ask. I could tell he wasn’t feeling good, that he was ignoring that. He tried to kick me out like… four times while I was here and I refused to leave. I even yelled at him a couple times. I’ve never yelled at him.”
“Baby…”
“Except… then I went out again yesterday, because he was being crabby and I wanted to go to my writing workshop and it was only a couple hours, then Raven wanted to go for coffee and Andrew showed and… I only stayed for half an hour but what if I was here instead of out for coffee with people?”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I sat here day after day with him and he barely spoke to me. He’d just stare at that TV. Or tell me to leave. And it’s been over a week, so I thought… I thought that… I didn’t think going out for a few hours that he’d be gone when I came back. He even insisted he was going back to work Monday. He just… he had no intentions of changing a single thing about his lifestyle to make sure he didn’t kill himself. He kept smoking, kept drinking, kept eating garbage food just coated in salt, and…”
“It’s okay. Come on. Let’s sit down.”
“I can’t. I have to call his job.”
“I’ll do that. What’s the number?”
