Room 14

I let out a scream so savage my children froze. As I hugged my foot, writhing on the floor mat at the base of the stairs, my younger daughter resumed her mermaid play in the next room. When I was finally able to mouth the word “ICE” to my one child capable of empathy, she raced dutifully to the kitchen as if released from a hypnotic spell.  I glared at the rogue toddler boot that precipitated my fall. Black rubber boot on black tile.  It seemed to mock me, motionless and unscathed.

Later, with my mom sandwiched between the two girls on the couch, I hobbled out to my car clutching my dad’s foam-handled quad cane for support. I drove to the ER solemnly, my left foot already numb from the ice.

It was the same drive I made two months before when I had gotten that text from my mom at 11:30am on a Monday morning – Dad is dying. I had flown out the door, one arm threaded through my sagging coat, and shifted the car into reverse. I cut through side-streets and careened through stop signs with the faintest tap of the breaks.  Another text came through. You may not make it. I accelerated and glared at the digital clock as if it were an hourglass - that my stare alone might hold back the trickle of sand.

Eight minutes later, I catapulted into the ER waiting room, flushed and breathless, spitting out my dad’s name at the registration desk. A security guard escorted me through the automatic double doors into a make-shift waiting room. My hands pulsed.  I paced anxiously. Let me be on time. Let me be on time.  Someone finally came to lead me down the far hallway. I have no recollection of who this person was – whether it was a he or a she, a nurse or a custodian. I was solely focused on getting to him.

Standing in front of Room 14, I bit my lip and pulled back the grey curtain. He was lying there, unconscious, but still breathing.  Audible and strained. His mouth was agape, eyes closed. My mom turned her head toward me, tear-streaked and tender. We touched and folded over dad as if sealing an envelope.  

This visit was different, of course. I ambled into the ER waiting room, hopping on one foot like a deranged kangaroo. Even the crazies looked up. I settled into a vinyl chair with a puddle of coffee spilled underneath and read my book. After a half hour, I pulled the ice pack out from under my sock and placed it down on the seat next to me.  When they finally called me, I was wheeled down the main hall and over to the left. I inhaled sharply.  I knew what room lie just ahead.  

They apologized. All beds were full - I’d have to settle for a gurney in the hallway. I crawled onto the cot, my back square to Room 14, the 100-square-foot windowless void where they take patients with a DNR to die. It is a room that doesn’t require a view.

I twisted my torso, my neck craning to steal a glance behind me. Dimness pooled underneath the drawn curtain. Behind it, my dad’s last breath had commingled with the air, dispersing molecules and microbes onto the safety rail, the monitors, the tile floor, onto that very curtain.

An X-Ray technician arrived soon after to take images of my foot. When she deposited me back to my hallway, I asked her to pivot the gurney around. She eyed me strangely, but I didn’t explain. Room 14 was both a beacon and a betrayal. The thick industrial curtain, rippling along its track, entranced me. My dad had been behind it.  Alive. Just 50 some days before.  I couldn’t tear away my gaze. Its proximity was all-consuming, stripping my sadness down to the studs, demanding intensity like staring a cobra in the eye.  I was raw. I was broken. I was simultaneously healing.

A radiologist walked toward me and cleared her throat. Hairline fracture. Six weeks in a boot. I watched her mouth move. Working on your discharge papers. Discharge.  The nurse fitted me into a walking cast and placed crutches under my arms. When it was time to leave, I glanced at the room and my legs twitched as if snared on a fish hook.  I was leaving him again. Like I did in January, when we finally willed ourselves to gather our coats, our purses, our tissues and open the curtain – his body still warm, his face already sallow.  I exited down the ramp on crutches and steered my car out of the parking lot before I had to pull over and sob. A $250 co-pay and I was going home. My dad never made it out.  

The morning after I wrote my dad’s eulogy, my wise and wonderful friend in St. Louis gave me permission to go on eulogizing him. That I didn’t have to encapsulate my grief or say goodbye with one succinct memorial.  A week after. A month after. A year after. They would all be different.  What I didn’t expect was that I would keep knowing him.  That I would continue to learn things after his absence. I considered him already summarized in my head, a tapestry of childhood anecdotes and memories that for whatever reason were the moments I retained.

    

And yet, I am discovering him in artifacts. In stories shared by those who knew him even longer than me. I am excavating him in basement boxes of souvenirs and old papers. In class rings and certificates. Amidst his keepsakes, my mom discovered a letter, dated 1970, from a New York modeling agency who had seen my dad’s football picture and wanted to photograph him. He never pursued it or told anyone, but here was that letter, saved amongst his treasures, a secret that likely amused and emboldened him. I found myself wishing I could tease him.

In another pile, I came across a hand-written note on the back of a white envelope, scrawled by his mother when my dad was in high school: “You must be hungry after practice. There are strawberries for you in the kitchen. Love, Mother.”  I never knew my grandmother or had glimpsed her handwriting. She died before I was born. I traced my fingers over the long, loopy curves of her penmanship.  It was a simple note. Why he kept it, I’ll never know, but those strawberries seized me. They were his favorites. Not the winter ones with their hollowed cores, but the ones that drip sweetness when you take your first bite. I would often bring a Tupperware full to the hospital, sliced and dusted in sugar to disguise their off-season tartness. Even when his appetite had waned toward the end, he would eat every one. His mother knew. 

Since my accident, I put on my compression sock each morning and fasten my broken foot into a bulky black boot. It is meant to contain it, to keep it stagnant, in place. But, every night, I feel its throbbing ache.  And so, I settle myself in our living room chair, prop my foot up on the ottoman and unravel my bandages. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I sit and listen to the creaks in the house, the chatter of my girls upstairs. My dad’s cane waits loyally by my side. I wonder if I will miss it after I heal.  For now, I stretch my foot out and wait. It seems all it wants is some time to breathe.