Stolen Time
It’s a few hours before we get home. I feel really bad about falling asleep when they were nice enough to leave early and drive through the wee hours of the night just to bring me back, but I just can’t help it. Crying always leaves me feeling exhausted.
“Thanks,” I tell Ryleigh as I unload my bag from the Jeep.
She gets out and comes around the side. Her long blonde hair whips me in the face as she pulls me into a hug. The blonde locks remind me so much of Teagan that it sends a pang right through my chest.
“Don’t give up on them,” she tells me. “They’re being grade A assholes right now and I want to throat punch every last one of them, but they’ll come around.”
I nod, even though I have absolutely no intention of doing it. She smiles at me, and my heart breaks a little more as I watch her drive away. Pretty soon she’ll see what they do, and I’ll lose my best friend too.
Feeling fucking shitty, I sneak into the trailer. The last thing I want to do is wake up Gramps and have to explain why I’m back early. I doubt I could even come up with something good to tell him without breaking down into a stupid sobbing mess again. Dropping my bag on the floor, I fall face first into my bed that smells like home. It’s funny how just a few months ago the smell made me want to puke, and now it’s all the comfort I need to lull me back into sleep.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Loud beating on the front door has me jumping up with my heart about to burst out of my chest. Glancing at the clock on the dresser I see that it’s only six. I’ve only been asleep for a couple hours. The little bit of sleep that I managed to get was just not enough and add that to the fact that I just lost about five years of my life being scared like that, let’s just say I’m not all fucking rainbows and cupcakes when I throw the door open hard enough to slam against the side of the trailer.
“Damn girl, what happened to you?” Robert asks.
“None of your business. What do you want this early on a Sunday?” I snap.
He rubs the back of his neck like he’s nervous, “Lia said she saw you come in late this morning and I wanted to come over to explain before you found out by yourself.”
If I wasn’t fully awake before, I am now, “Explain what Robert?”
“Can we go inside?” he asks.
At my breaking point, I yell, “Explain what Robert?!”
“I come by yesterday to check on your Gramps,” he starts. Whatever he says next is lost as I take off towards Gramps room. Opening the door is like being electrocuted and not being able to move.
Robert comes up from behind me, “Like I was saying, he’s at the hospital Kendall. They say he had some sort of stroke, and on top of the cancer, it isn’t looking hopeful.”
All I hear is that he’s still alive, “Why didn’t you call me?”
He throws his hands up in the air, “Hey, I tried that number that you left. It kept saying that you weren’t accepting calls. Maybe you didn’t have service up there or something.”
Thankfully I fell asleep in my clothes, so all I need to do is throw on my shoes and grab my wallet and keys. Robert is still standing in the middle of the living room when I come out of mine fully dressed and ready to run out the door.
I throw on my leather jacket, “I’m going to the hospital.”
He nods, and we walk out, “Don’t forget to lock your door and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry kiddo.”
Doing as he reminds me, I grind out, “He’s not dead Robert.”
When I make it to the hospital, it takes me forty-five minutes just to find him. It’s not a big building, but the nurses tried giving me shit about letting me in to see him. I’m getting ready to throw one of the biggest fits of my life when a nurse walks by that recognizes me. She’s one of the ones that was always here when we brought Nana for her chemo. Vouching for me, she leads me down to the ICU and explains what she knows as we walk, “He was brought in last night. It was a severe stroke. There’s no telling how long he sat there before his friend found him. As of right now, he’s unresponsive.”
We make it to the room and she stops me before I can go inside, “It’s Kendall, right? Listen, I’m not going to lie to you. It was bad. There is a very low chance that he’s going to pull out of this and if he does, he’ll need lots of hospice care. He won’t be the same.”
Fat tears roll down my face and there’s no stopping them. I thank her the best that I can and steel my nerves to walk into his room. Even the best of circumstances couldn’t have prepared me for what I see. Gramps looks as pale as the white wall behind him and has all kinds of tubes running into and out of his body. I go over and take his hand into mine, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there Gramps. It’s my fault.”
My chest hurts so bad that I feel like I’m having a heart attack and my breath comes out in short gasps. It’s the only sound in the room other than the steady beat of his heart on the machine. I don’t know how long it takes to get myself calmed down, but when I do eventually manage, I make a promise to him that I’m not leaving him again. Not for anything. I find a chair in the corner of the room and pull it up next to his bed and take his hand in mine.
That chair becomes my home for the next several weeks. Never once does Gramps wake up, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. For the first couple of days, I talk to him nonstop about anything and everything, but mostly about Nana. I try to keep my selfish reasons for wanting him to stay with me out of the conversations both for his benefit and mine. Thinking too much on losing the one person left that cares about me is too much. I can’t imagine a life without Gramps. After a week or so, I stop talking. If I don’t, all of those fears and emotions are going to start leaking into my words.
His doctor is really nice, but never has any different news. Each day is too much like the last and I feel as if I’m being dragged further and further into the black void of nothing that is just waiting to swallow me up.
Christmas and New Year’s comes and goes without any change. Never once do I hear from Ryleigh or any of the guys. It’s not all too shocking considering I left my phone somewhere at home and didn’t bother to ask Robert to bring it to me when he brought my bag of clothes from my room. There’s nothing that I have to say to any of them anyways, even if they have tried. Which, I doubt.
I’m surprised when Mrs. Carpenter stops by one day somewhere in the third week. She says she come to check on me when I didn’t show up back at school. I listen to her sympathies and her lecture on not falling behind or dropping out. Wordlessly promising, I agree to do all of my school work if she brings it to me at the end of the week. I’ll have to go back to take all of my tests, but at least this will keep me from having to repeat my senior year if I miss too much work, or so she says. I don’t really care, but I know what Gramps would want me to do. He’d smack me silly if I even thought about not finishing school. So, when she brings me the stuff, I do it without complaint.
It’s in the middle of one of those assignments that Gramps’ doctor walks in with an older guy in a suit right on his heels, “Kendall, this is your grandfather’s attorney, Mr. Bishop. He wanted to talk to you about a few things today.”
I just stare at them and Mr. Bishop shifts, looks at the doctor, and clears his throat, “Ms. Davis, your grandfather came in to see me a few months ago. He wanted to go ahead and file a will and set up some other precautionary measures just in case something like this was to happen.” I still don’t respond, and this seems to make him even more nervous.
He shifts again, “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I just now heard about your grandfather being hospitalized. There are some forms that I need you to look over with me and sign.”
He walks over and sets a packet of paperwork down in front of me, and then looks over his shoulder at the doctor, almost as if asking for help.
The doc looks at me sadly as he comes over to me and squats down to put us on the same level, “Kendall. Your grandfather signed a do not resuscitate order at the same time that he filed his will with Mr. Bishop.” My confusion must show on my face, because he reaches out and takes my hand, “What that means is, were he to fall ill and have to be placed on life support, there’s a specified time frame to keep him on it, then we have to take him off. If he passes when he comes off of it, we can’t try to revive him.”
I shake my head and tears fall down my face. Gramps wouldn’t do that. Closing my eyes, I feel in my heart that I’m wrong. We went through this with Nana and it was absolute torture to him. He wouldn’t want me to watch him the way that we had to watch Nana go. I want to fight it and tell them that they are wrong, or that he wasn’t in his right mind to sign that paper, but all the fight I have left inside of me is gone, and I know that I’d be in the wrong. Still, I hold my hand out for the paper.
Mr. Bishop reaches into the packet and pulls out a thin white paper. It’s crazy to think that something so small could carry so much weight. Looking it over, I see that what they have said is true. Gramps had it written in for three days, and we’ve already bypassed that by far. I guess I should consider myself lucky that I got in the stolen time with him that I have. It damn sure doesn’t help the pain in my chest go away.
“Kendall, would you like some time to say goodbye?” the doc asks.
Of course I don’t. Saying goodbye makes it final and I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that. This is harder than the accident. Gramps was there every step of the way after. I’ll have no one now. I’ll be alone from here on out. I’m not letting anyone in again. All they do is leave in the end. One way or another, they always leave.
He stands and places his hand on Mr. Bishop’s shoulder, “Let’s go get some coffee.” I watch their retreating backs in a trance.
Getting up, I go to Gramps’ side. The nurses weren’t too quiet a few weeks ago, and I heard them saying that he’s officially been declared brain dead. He wouldn’t be able to hear me even if I were to talk to him. It doesn’t stop me from leaning down and pressing my lips against his head just like the last time before I left. My tears leave streaks down his face that I have to wipe away with my hand.
I know how much pain you were in, and I only want to keep you here for selfish reasons. When you see Nana, tell her that I love her and that I miss her. I’m going to miss you so much Gramps. You’ve always been there and always had my back, even when I made stupid decisions. I’m going to survive this for you, and I don’t care what I have to do, I will make you proud to have claimed me as yours. You can rest now Gramps and not be in pain anymore. I love you.
Even though I don’t say the words out loud, it makes me feel better having thought them. Maybe somewhere, in some other universe, he hears them. I sit on the edge of his bed and hold his hand until the doctor and Mr. Bishop come back.
“Ms. Davis, I’m going to leave this packet with you. I have the originals at my office,” Mr. Bishop says. “I don’t expect you’ll want to go through the whole thing right now, but I left your grandfather’s life insurance information on the top. I labeled the one that you’ll need to take to the funeral home with you.”
I know what’s about to happen, but his lawyer attitude comes off as unsympathetic. I can’t think about anything other than the fact that Gramps will no longer be here. When the tears start flowing, the doctor pushes Mr. Bishop out the door and a nurse takes his place.
“Kendall, are you ready?” he asks.
How am I supposed to be ready for this? No, I’m not ready. I’d give anything to have Gramps open his eyes and look at me.
He takes my silence as an ok and motions for the nurse to flip the switch on the ventilator. They remove the tube running into Gramps’ mouth. His heart gives it one last oorah and then stops all together. In the silence, the doctor reads a time from his watch before patting me on the shoulder and walking out.
With Gramps’ hand in mine, I sit with him until the very last second that I can.