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As I pull into the parking lot of Trinitas Medical Center tension begins to twang through me. I haven’t been to a hospital since my father died. When I step through the automatic doors and breathe in that awful smell of antiseptic and illness, it all comes back in a sickening rush: the evenings I spent by his bed, watching the sun sink slowly outside as the room became lost in shadows; the persistent beep of all the monitors he was hooked up to, and the way people were always coming in and out – nurses, cleaners, aides to deliver the meals he never ate. The trays stacked up on the side, with their little plastic-covered dishes of canned peaches or chicken noodle soup, everything untouched.
Doctors hardly ever came; once a day, if that, managing to seem both important and disinterested. My father stirring occasionally, his eyelids fluttering as he smiled at me, saying something nonsensical because of the morphine he was getting through an IV. Or coming out with something astonishingly lucid that stole my breath before I could speak, because I knew it was all slipping away and I absolutely could not stand it.
It felt as if his life was being played out reel by reel in his mind, for he’d mention things from all over – his first job, when I was a baby, meeting Mom at UConn, the last movie we saw together, just two months earlier. Garbled snapshots that faded before I could look at them properly, and I longed to hold onto them. He was imparting his history to me, giving it like a final gift, offered in fragments and sighs, and I couldn’t even keep it.
It went on that way for a week and then the doctor told me quite matter-of-factly that Dad had no more than twenty-four hours; his body was shutting down, his organs starting to fail. It felt as if the doctor had slapped me in the face and then smiled. In reality he’d given me a sorrowful look and then left before I could ask him any questions, before I could even think.
I spent all those hours – it turned out to be sixteen – sitting by my father’s bed, holding his hand, my fingers sliding over the loose skin and frail bones, savoring that last connection even as I tensed with both hope and fear every time his eyes flickered open. Holding his hand was all I had to offer, my final gift to him.
The morning of the day he died, my father opened his eyes and looked around, blinking slowly, and then he focused on me and, in a croaky voice, asked what time it was.
‘Why?’ I asked lightly, my throat aching with the knowledge that I’d already lost so much, and there was only more to lose. ‘Do you have somewhere to be, Dad?’
My father smiled faintly, and his fingers squeezed mine. I wanted to cling to him, but I was afraid of hurting him. ‘I have a train to catch,’ he joked, and then his eyes closed again. Those were the last words he spoke.
The next few hours were an endless agony, both painful and profound. Doctors say it’s painless, the gentle slip into death, and maybe it was, for him. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t know how much he could feel, how much he could think, and that ignorance tortured me. Was he hurting? Was he scared? Could he hear me, when I spoke in a wavering voice, and told him I loved him, that I was there? How much of him was actually left? No doctor can tell you any of those answers.
Those hours stretched on and on, while he sunk deeper into unconsciousness and his breathing became more and more labored, the slow, ragged draw and tear making me tense every time. I lost more of him with each passing moment and I almost wished that he would just die, simply to end the misery for both of us, but then when he took that last, shuddering breath, when his body went totally still and everything was suddenly, totally silent, I realized I hadn’t wanted that at all. At all.
I sat there for a full minute, holding his hand, feeling how it was already becoming cool.
A dead body looks dead very quickly, so don’t give me any of this ‘He looked as if he was asleep’ shit. My father was gone. All it had taken was a second; he was there, and then he wasn’t. He absolutely wasn’t, and I realized that even lying in a bed with his eyes closed and his hand limp in mine, his every breath so painfully labored, he’d been there. He’d been alive, and I wanted that back so much it felt as if I would not be able to get through the next minute, never mind the rest of my life.
I went to get the nurse, walking as if I were outside my body, observing everything from a distance that had opened up in myself, a gaping sinkhole that was sucking everything in – my breath, my thoughts, my very self. I watched while they draped a sheet over his body and unplugged all the machines and somehow that made it so much worse, like packing up after a show or a vacation, the nurses so brisk and efficient, just another dead body to them. I didn’t even like their sympathetic smiles, because they had no idea. Tonight they were going to go home and watch The X Factor.
And so I walked out of the room; I signed the paperwork, avoiding everyone’s compassionate yet impersonal gazes, and then I left the hosp
ital. I don’t even remember the next few days; I went to work because to stay home felt like torture, but I can’t remember what I did or said or felt. Eventually I felt myself come back into focus, but I knew I’d never be the same. I’m missing something, I always will be, and a baby won’t plug that hole in my heart. I’m not looking for that. If anything, I’m looking for a way to pay my father’s love forward.
Now I’m in a hospital again, and I feel sick. As I walk through the lobby an aide rolls a stretcher past, and I hear the beep beep beep of some kind of monitor and a visceral reaction goes through me, a full body shudder. I’m not sure I can do this.
But I keep walking, one foot in front of the other, because I want to find Heather. I want to see my baby on that screen. And then I come to the maternity unit with its ultrasound ward and the expectant mothers with their hands laced across their big bellies, and the room is so cheerful, I almost forget I’m in a hospital at all.
Heather is already there, clutching her bag on her lap. She looks tired and a bit forlorn, but she smiles hesitantly when she sees me. ‘Grace. Hi.’
‘Hi.’ I sit down next to her, give her a quick smile although I’m already feeling awkward.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask, which feels like a fairly safe opener.
‘Like I really have to pee.’ Heather gives an embarrassed grimace.
‘Oh?’ I glance around for a bathroom sign. Surely there has to be one? ‘Do you want to go to the ladies’? I’ll listen out if they call your name.’
‘Oh, no.’ Heather lets out a little laugh. ‘I can’t. I mean, you have to have a full bladder for the ultrasound. So they can see the baby on the screen.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I think I knew that, somewhere in my subconscious stores of trivia. I feel like I should have known that, considering. I should have done more research.
Heather looks at me curiously, obviously wondering at my ignorance. ‘Did you try to get pregnant yourself? Before you decided to adopt?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ I decide to be honest, just as we were out in the street. I think that’s what Heather wants, too.
‘Why not?’
‘Well, as you know, there’s no potential father in the picture,’ I say with a little, awkward laugh. ‘And I didn’t really feel like going the whole turkey-baster route.’ Which is true. Plus I couldn’t take the time off work, which sounds heartless, so I decide to keep that part to myself.
Heather smiles a little. ‘That sounds like something Kevin would say.’
‘Oh?’ I’m surprised by the mention of her husband. I don’t know anything about him besides his injury but I get the sense that he can be difficult and unpleasant. ‘He didn’t want to come today?’
