Whisper Me This(13)

“My name is Tony. We met earlier, and here we are again.”

Dad just blinks at him, clearly not remembering.

“Can you move your legs for me?” Tony asks. “First the right, then the left. Good. Now, your hands. Can you touch your nose with your right hand? Your left?”

Dad goes through the motions obediently, and Tony raises his eyes to mine. “I don’t think it’s a stroke or a heart attack. My guess is he’s dehydrated and probably hungry. Maybe he’s not been eating since your mom got sick. That ambulance coming, Marco?”

“On its way. About ten minutes out.”

“Don’t need an ambulance,” Dad says. “Help me up.”

“You need to lie here and wait,” I tell him. “Do what the fireman tells you.”

“He’s not a doctor. Let me up.”

Dad’s voice sounds stronger, and he starts scrabbling at the floor, trying to push himself up to a sitting position.

“I think it’s fine,” Tony says, and helps Dad sit up there on the floor. “Do you think you could drink a little water, Mr. Addington? Maybe take an aspirin? Just in case it is a stroke.” He looks at me. “Are there any aspirin in the house?”

“I don’t know. I just got here.”

“I’ll go look!” Elle says, and dashes off toward the kitchen. There’s a sound of running water, of slamming cupboard doors, and then she’s back with a small bottle and a glass of water.

Dad looks at the outstretched hand holding the pill with a frown of concentration. His bleary eyes follow the hand up the arm to Elle’s shoulder and finally to her face.

“Hey, there,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

Elle is unfazed. “Getting you aspirin, Grandpa.”

“You all think this little pill is going to fix what’s wrong with me?” He surveys our faces, and then his shoulders start to shake with dry, nails-on-a-chalkboard laughter. “That’s the first funny thing I’ve heard all week.”

But he reaches for the pill, and we all wait patiently while his stiff, old-man fingers fumble to grasp it. Finally it’s in his mouth, and he’s swallowed half of the water in the glass.

More sirens in the distance, drawing ever closer. More uniformed bodies stomping all over my mother’s floor with their boots on.

Dad, who has always been a marshmallow in my mother’s hands, decides to reveal a latent streak of obstinacy.

“You can all go home and go back to bed,” he says, with great dignity. “You are not putting me in that ambulance.”

“Daddy . . . please.” My voice wobbles a little, a small betrayal that surprises me. I’m not given to tears. My hand goes to my throat, covering the lump that has been quietly accumulating since I walked into this house.

He shakes his head. “You’re here. You can keep an eye on me.”

I want to tell him I don’t have a caretaking bone in my body. I want to tell him I need to go see Mom. I want to tell him that parents are for leaning on, not the other way around. Not a single word is going to fit past the obstruction that has replaced my voice box.

Tony, crouched on the floor, still supporting my father, takes off his fireman’s hat and lays it on the floor beside him. “Tell you what,” he says. “We let you off the hook with the ambulance, but you agree to let your daughter drive you up to the ER, just to get looked over. Can we make it a deal?”

By the time Dad finally nods agreement, I’m dizzy and realize I’ve been holding my breath.

The ambulance team turns around and tracks out of the house.

So much for leaving Elle to sleep, but she doesn’t look like she needs it. She’s bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for action, as my mother would say. The thought that my mother might not say anything ever again flits through my consciousness, and I swat it away. I can’t go on functioning if I’m having those kinds of thoughts.

The self-righteous fireman goes out to wait in the truck while Tony helps get Dad into a coat and shoes. We support him between the two of us and walk him out to the car, Elle opening and closing doors and acting as gofer.

When we’re all settled in the rental, Tony knocks on my window.

“You’ve got your hands full,” he says, when I roll it down. He hands me a phone number, scribbled on the back of a Walmart receipt. “If you need anything, unofficially, buzz me.”

I nod. My smile muscles are in a state of paralysis and refuse to make even a token effort.

As I turn the key and start the engine, my mind runs through a list of disorders that might be causing my facial paralysis.

Bell’s palsy.

MS.

Lou Gehrig’s.

Parkinson’s.

Brain cancer.

How about grief and shock, Maisey? Have you considered these as possibilities? Questions start bubbling to the surface, and the first one spills out, even though Dad’s face is a blank that should have warned me off.

“What really happened to Mom?” I ask him.

His head turns toward me, slow and creaky, like an automaton in need of new batteries. His eyes are blank. He doesn’t answer.

“Dad. What happened to Mom?”

He blinks three times, rapidly, his electronic wiring on the fritz, and then his eyes light, and he sees me—me—again.