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“What does that mean, exactly?” she asked him. “Is he okay?”
“It was a mild heart attack, though not as mild as last time. He’s responding to a clot-dissolving agent, but he isn’t out of the woods. I’m not pleased to see him back here. He has to take it easy, Jen. We have talked about this.”
Bobby looked like he was going to explode. “When did you talk about this? Mom, how did you not tell us that Dad had a heart attack?”
“We didn’t want to worry you,” she said.
Finn stood behind his brother. “Why?” Finn said.
“Yeah, why?” Bobby said.
Bobby was yelling now, full-on yelling.
They both were.
My mother turned toward them, her voice the loudest of all. “We thought you’d overreact! Imagine that. We thought you’d make it about your own fear as opposed to, you know, what your father would need to actually get past it.”
They both got quiet. Everyone got quiet, and the entire waiting room turned to look at my mother: the Ford family and Ben and Margaret and Jacob and an array of midnight strangers, crowding around. Everyone looked at my mother, who was done with all the nonsense, demanding that the rest of her family be done too.
“Now it’s time for you to keep your father safe. To keep each other safe. Like you all didn’t forget how.” She moved toward the doctor. “So what does this mean for Dan?”
The doctor looked back and forth between my brothers to see if they were going to interrupt.
“He’s resting now. We’ll know more tomorrow, but you should get some rest.”
Jacob looked down as if it was his fault.
“So he’s going to be okay?” Finn said.
My mother caught his eye, trying to calm him.
“What you’re saying means he’s going to be okay?” Bobby said.
“It means we watch him until tomorrow. Run a few more tests. But assuming he is fine, he can go home then. Though he’s going to have to take it easy. His body is not going to give him another warning call.”
Bobby laughed. “Sure. That won’t be an issue at all.”
My mother put her hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “Bobby . . .”
“What? Dad has never taken it easy. Ever.”
The doctor turned and looked at him. Serious. “Until today.”
My mother nodded and turned to us so we’d hear it, what she was saying in her silence, that it was time for everyone to think differently about our father. “Can we see him?”
“He said you had a long enough day and you should go home. I think that would be wise. Dan is groggy and could use his rest, and Jen, you need your rest too. He’s right. You can see him first thing in the morning.”
My mother nodded. “Sure. Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.”
She turned to me and squeezed my hand.
Then she walked right past the doctor, toward her husband.
Sebastopol, California. 2009
Jen was furious with him and she was right to be. They were spending a month in Big Sur, in a beautiful house, large windows looking out over the ocean. She had told him what she needed. She needed a change and she had said that she’d go on her own. But he had insisted that he go with her.
That part was fine, but he wasn’t really here. He knew that was what she was furious about. If he was going to barely be here with her, why had he come at all?
