Chapter Twenty-Eight
Penny
I awoke with a start in the middle of the night. It was early Monday morning, about three or four in the morning. I had fallen asleep in a chair next to my dad’s bed, and now I was too stiff to move. As I turned around and reached for my phone on the windowsill next to the geraniums, I felt a sharp pain in my neck and sides. The overhead lights shone brightly and hurt my eyes.
But I was awake now, and there was no getting back to sleep no matter how hard I tried. Instead, I would probably sit there for the next three or four hours shifting uncomfortably and feeling irritable. I was too tired to drive home. I didn’t want to risk falling asleep at the wheel and swerving off the road or, God forbid, running into someone.
At least Dad seemed to be sleeping soundly; he had only awoken once since my arrival at the hospital the day before, and then only for a few hours. We had talked for a bit, and I had read to him from Anne of Green Gables until he nodded off.
I scanned back through my recent texts wondering if maybe I had missed a text from Darren. There were none. He hadn’t texted or called since I had left his house. He seemed irritated when I told him my dad was in the hospital, as if making out should have taken precedence over a medical emergency. Sorry, my dad’s cancer isn’t convenient for you, I imagined myself saying. Maybe find another girlfriend who would wait until after sex to go visit her ailing parent.
In the back of my mind, I think I knew I was just being cranky and irritable. Darren wasn’t really that selfish… was he? In any case, I would almost certainly feel better after I had gotten a couple more hours’ sleep. Things had a way of looking better in the light of morning.
***
When I awoke at around 8:00am, I had a text from Darren. He said he hadn’t heard from me in a while and wanted to know how I was doing. I was still debating whether I should text him back or what I would say when Dad stirred and turned toward me.
“Hey, pumpkin,” he said sleepily. “You doing okay?”
I didn’t want him to worry about me, so I told a half-truth. “I’ll be fine. What I really want to know is how you’re doing.”
Dad scoffed and waved a hand in the air dismissively as if the question itself was ridiculous. “Don’t worry about your old man. Like I said, I’m not in my twenties anymore, and you can’t expect me to be in peak physical condition. As long as I’ve got you and the nurses here to look after me, I’ll be fine.”
His tone wasn’t exactly reassuring. I had the distinct impression that he was underplaying the amount of pain he was in so that I wouldn’t worry. For a moment, my irritation at Darren faded away into nothing as I came over and took his hand.
He smiled with a contented air as I stroked the back of his head. “I never did ask you yesterday how you and the boy are doing.”
“We’ll be fine in a bit. Every relationship has troubles when it starts out, right? Didn’t you and Mom used to quarrel when you were first dating?”
“We did—mostly over money. I remember about a month into our marriage she went out and bought a three-hundred dollar mattress as a surprise gift for us. She thought I would be pleased, but I yelled at her because I didn’t think we could afford it. We barely had that much money in savings. I told her if we were going to buy a mattress, it ought to be second-hand from a thrift store or garage sale. She said that was a white trash way of thinking and she wasn’t going to sleep on a mattress that somebody else had already slept on. Of course, I got offended because I thought she was insulting my family—she had always had more money than me, a fact which caused me no end of embarrassment.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, continuing to stroke his hair. As a girl, these stories had often bored me, but lately, I could listen for hours without interruption.
“Anyway, we argued for a bit, and then I stormed out into the rain. I came back a few hours later carrying a new headboard for the bed. While out driving, I had done some thinking and decided I liked the mattress after all.”
“How did Mom react?”
“She was pleased, of course. We spent the rest of the night putting the bed together, then sat down with ice cream and watched Night Court. Looking back on it, I can’t believe we ever fought over something as silly as a mattress. If I had known how things were going to end, I might not have let my anger get the best of me so often. I would do anything to have her back now, recklessly spending our money on things we don’t need and can’t really afford.”
“You did need a mattress, though,” I reminded him. “And not a cheap, second-rate mattress, but a quality mattress that would last you twenty years or more.” Seeing the glint of pride in his eyes, I added, “Sorry, did I sound just like Mom just then?”
“You did,” he said, nuzzling my hand. “But it’s okay.”
I sat down and read to him from the last few chapters of Anne of Green Gables, and had just reached the part where Gilbert gives up his teaching position, when the door opened, and Doctor Rendell came into the room.
“How are you both doing?” he asked, brisk and quietly cheerful. Walking over to the nightstand by the bed, he picked up a box of tissues in both hands. Something in his manner made me uneasy, and I began to feel a sense of dread in my belly without knowing why.
“I’ve been better, but I’ll get over it,” I said. “Dad?”
“About as good as can be expected. What’s the prognosis?”
“Well, that’s actually what I came to talk to you about,” he said in a grave tone. Instantly my mouth dried, my stomach disappearing. He had something to tell us. We weren’t going to like it, and we couldn’t avoid it.
Spreading his arms wide in a gesture of welcoming, Doctor Rendell said, “I’m afraid I have some very serious news…”
But I only heard about half of the conversation that followed, as Rendell explained that the cancer had progressed and that there wasn’t much more we could do except to make Dad “comfortable,” as he put it. As if we were just finding the right chair for him to sit in, rather than making preparations for his imminent death.
Dad nodded amiably, and only a faint trickle of tears formed at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, that all sounds good. Yes, of course.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “I think we would both like that.” From the tone of his voice, you’d have thought they were just having a friendly chat.
It was like being in the path of a tornado, standing motionless and glass-eyed as you watched it barreling toward you in slow motion. I asked myself again and again, as I had been asking myself for months, whether this could have been avoided. But no, this wasn’t that kind of cancer. There was no change in his lifestyle or diet that could have prevented it. It was an accident of nature, titanic and unavoidable.
With a dazed feeling, I walked out into the hall and called Darren. The phone rang four times before going to his voicemail. Frustrated, I tried calling him again with the same result.
This wasn’t the response I had wanted. I was tired and scared, and nothing in my life was going right. And I just wanted to hear a reassuring voice on the other end of the phone telling me I would pull through this. Even though I knew I wouldn’t. Even though my dad was facing the worst crisis of his life and there was no hope of survival.
“Please, pick up the phone!” I whispered in desperation, near tears, as the phone went to voicemail for the third time. I seldom cursed, but I felt a strong desire to curse at that moment.
There was an empty chair at the end of the hallway. I walked toward it and sank down, burying my head in my hands, numb with shock. I kept trying to find a way to make it be okay, but there were none. Maybe the prognosis was mistaken. Maybe Dad was stronger than they thought. Maybe he’d prove them all wrong.
But I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Fear—fear of the unknown—twisted my insides into knots, making me want to vomit.
Dad was texting me, wanting to know where I had gone, but I couldn’t go back just yet. There would be some hard conversations ahead, and I wasn’t ready to have them. Doctor Rendell had given him a few days at best, and then what? He was dying, and all the medical specialists and cancer surgeons in the world couldn’t stop it.