They May Not Mean To, But They Do(18)

“There you are, Aaron,” she said, holding his hand. “There you are.” She ran her other hand along the arm of first one guard, then the second, as if she could gather strength from them, Molly thought. Or for good luck, the way people stroke a talisman.

“You came to our rescue,” Joy said. “And on Thanksgiving!” She looked around at the gathering, the first security guard an African-American, the second a giant as pale as Putin, clearly Russian, both towering over the Bangladeshi taxi driver and over her, a Jewish lady, and her daughter, a lesbian lady.

“New York is so cosmopolitan,” she said as they wheeled Aaron in after more effusive thank-you’s. “Isn’t it, Aaron? We’ve always liked that. Aaron, do you want to be near the window while we wait? We can people-watch.”





10

Daniel went to the hospital at lunchtime. He ate a sandwich, a very old-fashioned sandwich, he noticed—bright white bread, a few slices of pink boiled ham, a slice of orange cheese, a piece of pale iceberg lettuce, mustard the vivid yellow of newborn baby poop. The sandwich was a little stale, but comforting, and he wanted to be comforted. His father, the man who sang sea shanties in stormy weather, the tall, skinny father who’d swung his son onto his shoulders as if he’d been a scarf, this man of his childhood was lying in a hospital bed looking like another man entirely. Except for the beard. But even that was uncharacteristically shaggy.

Daniel finished the sandwich in four enormous bites, then answered emails while his father slept. Monday, a workday after the Thanksgiving weekend, so much to catch up on at the office, but his boss said he should stay at the hospital all afternoon if he needed to, working from his phone. If his mother came in, he’d have to put the phone away. She had an aversion to his phone, he wasn’t sure why. He hoped she wouldn’t come to the hospital, and not just because of his cell phone. He had noticed for some time, months, how tired she was, and this episode with Aaron had really knocked her off her pins. He looked at his father, at the gray beard and disheveled gray hair, the big hawk nose. He turned off his phone.

“Dad,” he whispered.

His father twitched, but didn’t wake up. His breathing was loud. Sinister red lights blinked above him accompanied by beeps like strangled birdcalls. It was too familiar, the beeping and blinking and labored breathing. Daniel stood up quickly, ready to make for the door.

Aaron opened his eyes.

“You’ll be fine, Daniel,” he said, reaching out a stringy arm and taking Daniel’s hand.

“Me?” Daniel smiled and sat down. “How about you?”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Hospital.”

“Don’t worry, now. You’ll be out of here in no time.” Aaron heard the word “hospital,” saw Daniel, and put the two together. They had, after all, been a pair, an intimate pair, Daniel and hospital.

“Thank you, Dad. Thank you for worrying about me. But I’m okay. That was thirty-five years ago. Remember that? Bad times.”

Aaron nodded. “Terrible.”

You were not much help, Daniel thought, in spite of himself. He’d convinced himself he’d put it all behind him, the worst year of his life, the year he was eighteen and developed osteonecrosis out of the blue, a year of searing pain, conflicting diagnoses, the year he couldn’t walk, the year he spent in the hospital. His mother had practically moved into his hospital room to look after him. His father had not visited much. He was preoccupied, planning another business, squandering whatever was left of his own father’s money. And he didn’t like hospitals.

No one likes hospitals, Daniel thought now.

Maybe, Daniel’s mother had said, maybe it’s just too painful for him to visit. You mean he’s too weak? Daniel answered. Yes, said his mother. Yes, I guess that is what I mean. But someone weak can love you, and he does.

“That was a long time ago,” Daniel said. “This time, it’s you we have to look after. Are you comfortable, Dad?”

“Who knows.”

“Well, you, presumably.”

“Don’t believe everything they tell you,” Aaron said.

For a weak man, he was physically strong. His hand still held Daniel’s, and Daniel felt the grip tighten.

“Dad?”

Aaron moaned.

“Pain?”

Aaron moaned again. He couldn’t speak. He looked pleadingly at his son.

When the nurse arrived, she tipped a pill into Aaron’s mouth from a small, pleated paper cup. “Now drink up,” she said, handing him a plastic cup of water.

Aaron looked at her with wide-open eyes—eyes full of fright. Did she notice? Daniel wondered.

“It will help the pain,” Daniel said.

The moans got louder, a crescendo of misery. Daniel thought he had never heard anyone in such misery.

His father’s face seemed to shrink with the pain, his eyes growing wider, fearful, his ears standing out from his head like little elbows.

“Dad, I wish I could do something for you.”

The moaning stopped. “You got a stick of gum?”

Daniel put his head in his hands. He waited a few seconds, breathing deeply. “Dad,” he said when he looked up, “how is the pain now?”

“Nobody tells me anything,” his father muttered, then drifted off into a robust, drugged sleep, snoring deeply.