His last three words spin in my head as I park in the parking lot and check in with the hospital staff. The hospice is still part of the hospital property, and as I make my way through the normal area toward the long term hospice care, I can't help my fingers from trembling. I didn't call ahead, Mom and Dad don't know I'm coming, and with what Tyler has in front of him, I need them more than ever to be able to help me out. I only hope that Mom and Dad are feeling good today, I haven't heard from Dad since I visited with Tyler.
“You're sure of the way?” the nurse who checks me in asks. She's new, or at least I haven't seen her before, so I can understand.
“Yes, I've been here before. Thanks.”
The hospice area has plenty of staff around, but I have to admit it's somewhat idyllic of a setting for someone living out their final days. Each small unit is a one-bedroom place, with low door jambs, wide halls and doors for wheelchairs, and all sorts of other little adjustments to allow people to feel somewhat at peace in their difficult times. There's even a little tree outside the door to Mom and Dad's place, a block of connected houses that look kinda like a wing of a motel on the outside.
I knock on the door, but there's no answer, so I open it carefully and immediately pull back at the musty odor. It smells like piss, and I'm pretty sure that someone has wet sheets. “Shit,” I mutter to myself, hitting the nurse chime button inside the front door. They'll have someone down here soon enough. “Mom? Dad?”
“April? Is that you dear?” Mom calls back, coming into view from the bedroom area. She's barely here today, and my heart sinks. “Where have you been young lady? I've been worried sick that you crashed your bike on the way home from school!”
Bike? I haven't ridden a bike for school since . . . well, ever. I've never ridden a bike to school, I always lived so close to school that until high school, I walked almost every day, even in the winter. Where is Mom's head today? “Mom, I can really use your help right now. What's that smell?”
“Oh, your father got a little bit of firewater in him, and you know how he is when that happens,” Mom says, and I have to suppress the wince that I feel at her words. As her Alzheimer's has progressed, Mom's use of language sometimes goes crude, something that I've heard isn't all that uncommon. I still don't like it though. It makes her seem . . . ugly. And she is anything but ugly.
“Where is he, Mom?”
“He's sleeping in that strange daybed of his,” Mom says, pointing toward the back.
“Mom . . . can't you smell it?” I add, heading toward the bedroom. “It reeks in here.”
“You must have stepped in something outside, honey. Because there's nothing wrong in here.”
Mom wanders off to the kitchen area, and I go into the bedroom, where I find Dad in his bed, the smell coming from him. I open the window and try to get some fresh air in here before really looking at him. He's wasting away, so thin and skeletal I think I could pick him up in my arms if I wanted to, and the reek of the cancer and the wet sheets underneath him makes me tear up. “Daddy . . .”
He stirs, but his eyes don't open. I swallow my tears and my gorge and lift his body up one half at a time, working the sheets out from underneath him. I have about half of it all out when the called nurse arrives. He takes a deep breath, then exhales. “Oh hell.”
“Yeah, oh hell. I thought I was paying for better care than this.”
“Miss Gray,” the nurse says, obviously figuring out who I am, “apologies. We were just here an hour ago, bringing the afternoon meal for your mother. It's in the fridge, I did it myself. At the time, your father was . . . clean.”
I exhale sharply and nod. They may be checking on a regular basis, but with the way he is . . . “I understand. Can you set up round-the-clock monitoring?”
The nurse nods as he unsnaps the underpants that Dad is wearing and slips them out from under him. “Of course. The doctors had thought that it might be time to talk to you about that anyway, they were going to call you this evening, I think.”
“Well, later on I'd like to talk to them personally,” I tell him. “Something has to be better than this.”
We finish cleaning up Dad, and before leaving, the nurse checks on Mom, who's having a conversation with the television it sounds like, thinking that Kelly Ripa is her high school classmate.
I look at Dad in his fresh underpants, continence pants now I see, and his robe that hangs like a shroud on his frame. “Daddy?” I whisper, laying my hand on his forehead. It's cold and dry, the skin flaky under my fingers, but I keep it there. “It's me. April. Ziigwan. I . . . Daddy, I need your help.”
He stirs somewhat, but his eyes never open, and his mouth tightens, the pain must be so much even with the drugs they have him on. I watch, knowing that perhaps this is it, this is the end, and if it is I will not shirk my duty. His chest catches once, and I wonder if it’s the end, but he breathes again, exhaling the dark, black smell of his cancer into the air, dropping deeper into his sleep which I guess is more a coma than anything else. There's no answers here. Instead I kiss his forehead before leaning my head against his. “It's okay. Rest, and I'll make it. I love you.”