F. Paul Wilson - Gateways

He parked in a corner of the visitor lot next to some sad looking cacti and headed through the stifling late-afternoon heat toward the front door. An arthritic old man in the information kiosk gave him his father’s room number on the third floor.

Minutes later Jack was standing outside room 375. The door stood open. He could see the foot of the bed, the twin tents of the patient’s feet under the sheet. The rest was obscured by a privacy curtain. He sensed no movement in the room, no one there besides the patient.

The patient…his father…Dad.

Jack hesitated, advancing one foot across the threshold, then drawing it back.

What am I afraid of?

He knew. He’d been putting this off—not only his arrival, but thinking about this moment as well—since he’d started the trip. He didn’t want to see his father, his only surviving parent, laid out like a corpse. Alive sure, but only in the bodily sense. The man inside, the sharp-though-nerdy-middle-class mind, the lover of gin, sticky-sweet desserts, bad puns, and ugly Hawaiian shirts, was unavailable, walled off, on hold, maybe forever. He didn’t want to see him like that.

Yeah, well that’s just too damn bad for me, isn’t it, he thought as he stepped into the room and marched to the foot of the bed. And stared.

Jeez, what happened to him? Did he shrink?

He’d expected bruises and they were there in abundance: a bandage on the left side of his head, a purple goose egg on his forehead, and a pair of black eyes. What shocked him was how small his father looked in that bed. He’d never been a big man, maintaining a lean and rangy build even through middle age, but now he looked so flat and frail, like a miniature, two-dimensional caricature tucked into a bed-shaped envelope.

Besides the IV bag hanging over the bed, running into him, another bag hung below the mattress, catching the urine coming out of him. Spikes marched in an even progression along the glowing line on the cardiac monitor.

Maybe this wasn’t him. Jack looked for familiar features. He couldn’t see much of the mouth as it hung open behind the transparent green plastic of the oxygen mask. The skin was tanned more deeply than he’d ever remembered, but he recognized the age spots on his forehead, and the retreating gray hairline. His blue eyes were hidden behind closed lids, and his steel-rimmed glasses—the only time his father took off his glasses was to sleep, shower, or trade them for prescription sunglasses—were gone.

But yeah, this was him.

Jack felt acutely uncomfortable standing here, staring at his father. So helpless…

They’d seen very little of each other in the past fifteen years, and when they had, it was all Dad’s doing. His earliest memories of home were ones of playing catch in the backyard when he’d been all of five years old and the mitt was half the size of his torso, standing in a circle with his father and sister Kate and brother Tom, tossing the ball back and forth. Dad and Kate would underhand it to him so he could catch it; Tom always tried to make him miss.

His lasting, growing-up impressions were of a slim, quiet man who rarely raised his voice, but when he did, you listened; who rarely raised his hand, but when he did, a single, quick whack on the butt made you see the error of your ways. He’d worked as a CPA for Arthur Anderson, then moved—decades before the Enron scandal—to Price Waterhouse where he stayed until retirement.

He wasn’t a showy sort, never the life of the party, never had a flashy car—he liked Chevys—and never moved from the west Jersey house he and Mom had bought in the mid-fifties. Then, without warning, he’d up and sold it last fall and moved to Florida. He was a middle-class man with a middle-class income and middle-class mores. He hadn’t changed history and no one but the surviving members of his family and steadily diminishing circle of old friends would note or mourn his passing, yet Jack would remember him as a man who always could, as Joel McCrea had put it inRide the High Country , enter his house justified.

Jack stepped around to the left side of the bed, the one opposite the IV pole. He pulled up a chair, sat, and took his father’s hand. He listened to his breathing, slow and even. He felt he should say something but didn’t know what. He’d heard that some people in comas can hear what’s going on around them. It didn’t make much sense, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

“Hey, Dad. It’s me. Jack. If you can hear me, squeeze my hand, or move a finger. I—”

His father said something that sounded like “Brashee!” The word startled Jack.

“What’d you say, Dad? What’d you say?”

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a heavyset young woman in a white coat enter with a clipboard in her hand. She had a squat body, café au lait skin, short dark hair; a stethoscope was draped around her neck.

“Are you a relative?” she said.

“I’m his son. Are you his nurse?”

She smiled briefly—very briefly. “No, I’m his doctor.” She put out her hand. “Dr. Huerta. I was the neurologist on call when your father was brought to the ED last night.”

Jack shook her hand. “Jack. Just call me Jack.” He pointed to his father. “He just spoke!”

“Really? What did he say?”

“Sounded like ‘brashee.’”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“No.”

And then he thought, Maybe he heard my voice and was trying to say,Black sheep.

“He’s been vocalizing gibberish. It’s not unusual in his state.”

He studied Dr. Huerta for a few seconds. She didn’t look old enough to be in med school, let alone a specialist.

“Whatis his state? How’s he doing?”

“Not as well as we’d like. His coma score is seven.”

“Out of ten?”

She shook her head. “We use the Glasgow Coma Score here. The lowest, or worst score, is three. That’s deep coma. The best is fifteen. We go by eyes, verbalization, and movement. Your father scores a one on his eyes—they remain closed at all times—and a two on vocalization, which means he makes meaningless sounds like you just heard now and then.”

“That’s a total of three,” Jack said.

This wasn’t sounding too good.

“But his motor response is a four, meaning he withdraws from painful stimuli.”

“What kind of painful stimuli? I won’t be finding cigarette burns on his soles, will I?”

Dr. Huerta’s eyes widened. “Good heavens, no! What on earth do you think—?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Jeez, lady. Chill. “Just kidding.”

“I should hope so,” she said with an annoyed look. “We use a special pin to test motor responses. Your father’s score of four brings his total to seven. Not great, but it could be worse.” She checked her clip board. “His reflexes, however, are intact, his vitals are good, so are his labs. His brain MRI showed no stroke or subdural hemorrhage, and his LP was negative for blood.”

“LP?”

“Lumbar puncture. Spinal tap.”

“No blood. That’s good, right?”

She nodded. “No signs of intracranial bleeding. His heart’s been acting up, though.”

“Whoa,” Jack said, jolted by the remark. “His heart? He’s always had a good heart.”

“Well, he went into atrial fibrillation last night—that’s a chaotically irregular heartbeat—and again this morning. I called for a cardiology consult and Dr. Reston saw him. Both times your father converted back to normal rhythm spontaneously, but it does indicate some level of heart disease.”

“How bad is this atrial fibrillation?”

“The main worry is a clot forming in the left atrium and shooting up to the brain and causing a stroke.”

“Swell,” Jack said. “As if a coma isn’t bad enough.”