Rushed(57)

“April? Is that you dear?” Mom calls back, coming into view from the bedroom area. She's barely here today, and my heart sinks. “Where have you been young lady? I've been worried sick that you crashed your bike on the way home from school!”

Bike? I haven't ridden a bike for school since . . . well, ever. I've never ridden a bike to school, I always lived so close to school that until high school, I walked almost every day, even in the winter. Where is Mom's head today? “Mom, I can really use your help right now. What's that smell?”

“Oh, your father got a little bit of firewater in him, and you know how he is when that happens,” Mom says, and I have to suppress the wince that I feel at her words. As her Alzheimer's has progressed, Mom's use of language sometimes goes crude, something that I've heard isn't all that uncommon. I still don't like it though. It makes her seem . . . ugly. And she is anything but ugly.

“Where is he, Mom?”

“He's sleeping in that strange daybed of his,” Mom says, pointing toward the back.

“Mom . . . can't you smell it?” I add, heading toward the bedroom. “It reeks in here.”

“You must have stepped in something outside, honey. Because there's nothing wrong in here.”

Mom wanders off to the kitchen area, and I go into the bedroom, where I find Dad in his bed, the smell coming from him. I open the window and try to get some fresh air in here before really looking at him. He's wasting away, so thin and skeletal I think I could pick him up in my arms if I wanted to, and the reek of the cancer and the wet sheets underneath him makes me tear up. “Daddy . . .”

He stirs, but his eyes don't open. I swallow my tears and my gorge and lift his body up one half at a time, working the sheets out from underneath him. I have about half of it all out when the called nurse arrives. He takes a deep breath, then exhales. “Oh hell.”

“Yeah, oh hell. I thought I was paying for better care than this.”

“Miss Gray,” the nurse says, obviously figuring out who I am, “apologies. We were just here an hour ago, bringing the afternoon meal for your mother. It's in the fridge, I did it myself. At the time, your father was . . . clean.”

I exhale sharply and nod. They may be checking on a regular basis, but with the way he is . . . “I understand. Can you set up round-the-clock monitoring?”

The nurse nods as he unsnaps the underpants that Dad is wearing and slips them out from under him. “Of course. The doctors had thought that it might be time to talk to you about that anyway, they were going to call you this evening, I think.”

“Well, later on I'd like to talk to them personally,” I tell him. “Something has to be better than this.”

We finish cleaning up Dad, and before leaving, the nurse checks on Mom, who's having a conversation with the television it sounds like, thinking that Kelly Ripa is her high school classmate.

I look at Dad in his fresh underpants, continence pants now I see, and his robe that hangs like a shroud on his frame. “Daddy?” I whisper, laying my hand on his forehead. It's cold and dry, the skin flaky under my fingers, but I keep it there. “It's me. April. Ziigwan. I . . . Daddy, I need your help.”

He stirs somewhat, but his eyes never open, and his mouth tightens, the pain must be so much even with the drugs they have him on. I watch, knowing that perhaps this is it, this is the end, and if it is I will not shirk my duty. His chest catches once, and I wonder if it’s the end, but he breathes again, exhaling the dark, black smell of his cancer into the air, dropping deeper into his sleep which I guess is more a coma than anything else. There's no answers here. Instead I kiss his forehead before leaning my head against his. “It's okay. Rest, and I'll make it. I love you.”

Dad smiles slightly in his sleep, and I stroke his hair, brushing the few strands that come off onto my hands away onto the carpet. Turning for now, I go out into the living room, where Mom's daze is even deeper, but at least she's talking coherently. “Oh, hello.”

“Hello,” I reply, just going with it. I can see it in her eyes, she doesn't recognize me at all. “How are you today, Marie?”

“I hope my daughter gets here soon, she's late. Do you know April?”

I nod and take the one of the other chairs. “I'm sure she'll be here soon. In the meantime, can I ask you for some advice?”

“I don't know . . . some days I feel like I can barely think straight, but I'll try,” Mom says. I can tell in her voice that somewhere inside her, she knows what is happening, even if it's only peripherally. “What's going on?”

“My boyfriend got a new job offer,” I say, leaving out names. Mom doesn't need to be confused. “It's far away from here though, and while the money's great, I don't know if I can go with him. My . . . my parents aren't in good health.”

Mom rocks back in her chair, and I notice that she's using a chair that is actually meant for rocking. I hadn't noticed that before. “This boyfriend. Do you love him?”

I nod, wiping at my eyes. “I do. But I love my parents too. How can I choose?”

Mom thinks about it a bit, then hums. “Do you know that Adam and I almost never got married?”

I blink, surprised. I'd never heard about this before. “Really? How?”