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“I have?”
“Yeah. Your last birthday. She was there.”
Chaz sighs, her shoulders dropping. “The nurse said I might have problems remembering things…”
“It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s not important.”
Becca enters the room, her father following behind her. I turn to them, the same time Chaz gasps. “Dan, what are you doing here?”
* * *
I find out from Becca that Dan is her birth grandfather—information provided by her dad who’s made an effort to openly ignore my presence. I sit with Chaz, he stands on the other side of the room, and Becca seems lost—floating between us.
We sit in silence, and we wait.
Dr. Richards arrives, introducing himself first to Chaz and then to the rest of us. She gets taken to a different room—a room only family members can access. And considering Chaz doesn’t realize she actually has family here, she goes it alone, something I try to fight. But she calms me quickly, tells me to stop acting like she’s on her deathbed. And so I sit in the room, the silence deafening, the walls closing in on me and I wait some more. Seconds. Minutes. Hours tick by.
Martin gets a phone call.
I get eight.
Becca’s now refusing to make eye contact with either of us.
Mom shows up, papers in hand, asking me to sign contracts to things I can’t even think about. She senses my mood, and now she’s part of the silence.
Part of the wait.
Tommy calls.
Becca smiles.
I don’t.
Because she’s too far away and I want her next to me. I want her in my arms and I want to go back to this morning when touching her didn’t seem like a crime.
Mom says, “Maybe just look at the contracts, Josh. Get your mind off things.”
“Stop.” It comes out harsh, but I don’t apologize. Right now, I don’t need her here as my manager, I need her here as my mom.
Dr. Richards returns, no Chaz in sight. “We need to talk.”
16
—Becca—
There’s a ringing in my ears so loud it almost drowns out Dr. Richards’s words. After what Josh had said, I was expecting the diagnosis. I guess I just hadn’t prepared myself for it. And definitely not to this extent.
Frontal Lobe Dementia.
The three words replay in my head, over and over, while the ringing gets louder and louder.
Apparently, the CT scans they’d done showed signs of multiple strokes, ones that went undetected, most likely taking course in Grams’s sleep. It could’ve been happening for months, but no one was around to see her decline. Dr. Richards continues to go through the results of the tests, speaking words that I’ve only read about since Josh mentioned dementia. My eyes sting, tears threatening to fall and I look over at my dad, a person who’s been there through my ups and downs over the past two years. I search for comfort, for relief, but what I see is nothing. Not a damn thing.
“So cure it!” Josh yells, fist thumping on Grams’s food tray.
I flinch at the sound, shocked at his response.
“Josh,” his mom reprimands.
“There’s currently no cure for dementia,” the doctor says, grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and sitting opposite me.
Josh’s fists ball, his jaw tense, and I close my eyes, preparing myself for a repeat of the anger I’d once witnessed. “So find one.”
A sob escapes in an unfamiliar sound. Sound. I made a sound.
I choke on a gasp, my eyes snapping open to see everyone watching me, their bodies frozen, their eyes as wide as mine. Josh is the first to move, first to alter the still image my eyes alone had captured. He stands quickly, pulling me into his embrace. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his hands stroking my hair. “It’s okay.” He repeats the same words, the occasional apology thrown in, while I stifle my cries into his chest. His heart pounds against my cheek, his body trembling. Then he pulls back, holding my face in his hands while wiping my tears with his thumbs. “Look at me, Becs,” he asks. So I do. Because right now, he’s all I know. All I have. “We’re going to get through this. You and me. Together, okay?”
I nod, choosing to believe his words—even if his words are lies.
He takes my hand and leads me to the chair he’d just vacated and squats next to me, his hands on mine hiding their trembles.
“I spoke with your grandmother, Becca,” Dr. Richards says. “I needed to have the conversation with her while she was still coherent. Because of her mental state, we had to discuss a power of attorney. Do you know what that means?”
