My father was quiet when the transport medics arrived to take him to the care center. I had a hard time meeting his eyes. I stood next to his bed, holding his bag of belongings while the EMTs worked to move his bloated body to the transport gurney. I knew everything in the bags would have to be thrown out because of the MRSA but I couldn’t bring myself to set them down. I wanted to hold them. There were the sweatpants I’d just bought him—a size small, with an elastic pull string in the waist for when he bloated back up or got drained back down. There was his old blue and gray checked flannel, with the hole in the armpit and no button on the front pocket. Dad used to wear that shirt on weekends, and whenever he bent over his pack of cigarettes would slide out of that pocket. “God damn it,” he said every time.
The paramedics let me ride in the ambulance in the seat up by my father’s head. It was a short trip, but he dozed on the way. The EMT monitored his blood pressure closely. I looked down at my hand. There was a fleck of scab on my wrist. I panicked, and then realized I was still wearing gloves. Sitting behind him, I couldn’t see where we were going. At the clinic, the medic held the ambulance door open for me before going back for my father. When my father was rolled out he said, “Honey! You’re here!” He had no idea it’d been me sitting behind him the entire ride.
Lake Shores Care Center. I was surprised at how clean it was. I knew he was going to hate it. The hospital had heavily medicated him for the transport and I was hoping this would work in my favor.
Room 31, bed A was his. The male EMT asked Dad if he needed anything before he left. My father said, “Yes, a scotch on the rocks.”
The gentleman, who thus far I had liked, said, “I hear that. I can’t wait to go home and have a few myself.” I wanted to reach up and punch him right in the face, to throw Dad’s worthless bags of useless belongings right at him. I wanted to scream, You idiot! Can’t you see what’s going on here? But this is what normal people do. They go home and have a drink. What they don’t do is go home and have thirty drinks, never bothering with a glass.
“This sucks,” my father said. “Oh man, this sucks.”
“Dad.”
“No, this sucks. It smells like old people.”
“That’s because it’s full of old people.”
“Don’t start with me. You! Of all people! Wouldn’t even listen to me about this one god damned thing.”
A short, brisk woman in an eggplant suit walked in, flicking on all the lights from the wall as she did. “Mr. Hanni! Bobby! Good evening!”
My father snarled at her, “Don’t call me Bobby. I ain’t your Bobby, lady.”
She didn’t even flinch. “No problem! Mr. Hanni, I am going to borrow your daughter for a little bit, okay? We have a lot of work to do!” She looked at me, clenching my arm like we were pals, and
grinned, lifting her eyebrows and smiling at me like we were just going to have the most fun ever.
Back at the nurse’s station, she waved her hands toward a tray of sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread, cut into triangles and wrapped tightly in Saran Wrap. Thrown on top of one another, haphazardly, they looked disgusting. Everything was a shade of gray— the tray, the bread, the peanut butter a little too yellow.
“Oh. No, thank you.” I smiled, hoping to exude graciousness. She merely shrugged.
“Who is his power of attorney?”
Before today, no one had even asked me this question directly.
“Oh. I am.”
“Okay. We have some paperwork for you.” She waved again at a tiny little woman in a Hello Kitty smock. “This is Yumi and she will help get you started.”
Tiny Yumi asked me a thousand questions.
“Has he had a flu shot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Measles? Mumps?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
Yumi was distressed. She looked at me, at the papers, back at me. She frowned.
I shrugged.
“Oh. Do you want a flu shot?”
“Do I want a flu shot? Oh no, no I’m good.” I tried to make myself appear as healthy as possible, as though there was no way anyone would ever look at me and think, Oh geez that lady needs a flu shot.
“No, for Mr. Robert. You want one for him?”
I shook my head. The question seemed ridiculous.
“What about if he has a heart attack?”
“No resuscitation.”
Yumi mouthed, “Oh.”
“Okay.” She handed me a pen covered in purple ribbon, with a massive silk flower on top. “Sign here, here, and here.”
I read it again and wanted to change my mind. I wanted to put that stupid purple pen down and say no. No, I cannot do this. No, I want my mother, please. No, you do it, anyone else do it. I wanted my dad back. I wanted to call a time-out and then a do-over.
I signed it.
Three signatures later, we were done.
She looked at me with big brown watery eyes. “He is your father?”
“Yes. He is my father.”
She looked down.
It took me a moment to figure out what was happening. Yumi was crying. I looked around, wanting desperately for someone else to help her. Yumi looked down at my father’s file and shuffled all the papers around, stacking them together again and again.
She put her pen down and pinched the top of her nose. “I’m sorry. It’s just,” she waved her hands in front of her face like there was a bee in the room, “it’s just the hospice ones are really hard for me.”
And at that, I found myself doing the most hated thing. I rubbed her shoulder, I cocked my head to the side, and I said, “Ohhhhhhhh I knoooooooow.” I elongated my vowels. I openly used baby talk. I squinted my eyes and rubbed her back.
I, Jessica Lynn Danger, daughter of Mr. Robert Scott Hanni, was comforting his hospice nurse.
Wow! eBook
