Page 57 - WTP XII #3

The timer beeped. Juliet squeezed liquid morphine onto his gums. A bright red droplet fell onto a towel beside him, leaving a vivid stain on the white terry cloth. Roxanne dipped the green sponge-on-a-stick in water and swabbed his dry lips.
We leaned close, listening for breath. If he sensed the intrusion into his personal space, he gave no sign.
After a cursory tap, tap, tap at the front door, his favorite caregiver swept into the room, fluffy blonde hair a bright halo around her pretty face. She came to father’s side, took his hand in hers.
“Hey handsome. How you doing?”
For the first time since our arrival, Father’s eyes flut- tered open, focused on her face, lit up with life.
“It’s you.”
She squeezed his hand. “Yep, it’s me, sweetie. I came to say goodbye.” She kissed his cheek. He didn’t gri- mace or turn away.
She blew Dad a kiss from the doorway. His gaze tracked her golden image until she disappeared down the darkened hallway.
The moment she was gone, he closed his eyes. The pull and wheeze of his breath the only sign the heart still beat, the lungs still inflated and deflated. Muscle memory perhaps. The subconscious, lizard brain car- rying on without him, a watch winding down.
Those were his final words. It’s you. For the pretty caregiver who’d been with him for a year.
She was easy company, uncomplicated, and un-nu- anced. Unlike me, and perhaps every other woman
in his life, awaiting affirmation, acknowledgment, something. On sunny days she pushed his wheelchair through the neighborhood. She took him on a last visit to the beach, Dad wrapped in a blanket against the brisk ocean air. They had clam chowder at a diner overlooking the ocean. She took his shoes off so he could feel the sand between his toes.
“What’s not to like,” I can hear him say.
I was alone with him when Dad became a body. My sisters had returned to their families, planning to return in the morning. His wife had retreated to their bedroom to rest. I remember thinking that I really should wake her as seconds turned to minutes. Yet
I waited. I stroked his hand, his cheek—as I could
“Inow concede my efforts on my father’s
behalf—none of which I would have dared under- take while he was alive— were driven by my own long suppressed hopes and dreams of being a writer, a creative person in my own right, as much as they were by the need to celebrate my father.”
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