A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

“I wouldn’t mind a square of chocolate,” he says.

I give him a whole bar. “Live it up.”

Bloated, belching French fries and pickle juice, and trailing the IV pole behind me, I take the trash down the hall and stuff it in a can on the other side of the floor. The nurses seem pleased at how well I’m getting around, dragging my sluggish side, sporting one gown worn forward, another worn in reverse, the chic way of shielding the butt.

We watch one of the cop shows on TV, and sometime between ten and eleven, he feels restless, uncomfortable, and buzzes the nurse asking for Maalox. They tell him there’s no order for Maalox on his chart. He asks if his papers have otherwise been updated.

“Yes,” she says.

“Good,” he says.

“Just because I lived earlier doesn’t mean I’m not dying now,” he reminds me.

Sometime after midnight, a frightful sound wakes me up. The roommate is pitched forward, eyes bugged out as if a terrifying nightmare has grabbed him. I buzz the nurse. “Hurry” is all I can say. Before they get there, he’s already slumped back in the bed, limp.

First one nurse comes and then a roomful and the red crash cart. They’re rushing, shouting, cracking vials of drugs, shooting him full of this and that. It’s brutal and terrifying, and at some point it’s clear that, despite how hard they’re trying, it’s not going to turn out for the best. After they’ve shocked him twice and his body literally bounced up off the bed — and while they’re still upon him like vultures — I walk out of the room. I pace, dragging my weak leg behind me, up and down the hall and finally back into the room, where I’m standing pressed into a corner when they “call it” at twelve-forty-eight. They cover him with a clean sheet and leave, taking their magic cart with them. There is debris everywhere, syringe parts, gauze, plastic bits. He lies under the sheet. I come closer, never having seen a body not breathing. The creases of the fresh sheet relax over him. I hold his hand, touch his face, his leg. His body is still warm, human, but vacant, the muscles dropping away from the bone, all tension dissipated. They leave us alone, and about an hour later, two security guards come with a gurney and take him away. Something about it, the here and gone of it all, is too strange.

The room still smells like French fries.

I need to talk. If I call the house, what will happen? Will the machine with Jane’s voice pick up? If I speak, if I beg, if I prattle on long enough, the dog minder may answer. If I bark, maybe Tessie will bark back. I want to call Tessie. Tessie and Jane.

I am about to dial when a nurse comes in to offer me a sleeping pill.

“It’s not easy,” she says.

I accept the pill. She pours water into my cup, not realizing she’s mixing it with Scotch. I say nothing and swallow it all, the sleeping pill, the Scotch.

She stays until I sleep.

In the morning, the bed next to mine is stripped, the floor washed, the debris swept away.

Not a word is said about the night before.

Midmorning, someone from the hospital comes with a plastic bag and cleans out his closet, his drawer, and asks me, “Is there anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t know? Like you were here all night with his stuff, maybe you took something?”

“There’s a bottle of Scotch; you want it, it’s yours,” I say. “But if you’re randomly accusing me of theft because I happened to be in the next bed — you are so far over the line. …”

“He may have had something else, like a watch, like a ring?”

“I have no idea what he did or didn’t have.”

The guy looks at me like he’s the hospital heavy, the goon squad sent to shake down patients.

“I don’t have to put up with this.” I lift the phone, dial “9” for an outside line and then “911.”

The guy fights me for the phone. “Give it a rest,” he says, grabbing the receiver and slamming it down.

A moment later, while the guy is still there, the phone rings, I answer. It’s the 911 operator calling back. I explain the situation. She tells me that because I hung up they have to send someone to make sure I’m not being held hostage, not being forced to give statements against my will. The goon squad is looking at me in disbelief. “You fuck,” he says. “You fucking fuck.”

“What are you going to do now, beat me up?”

He looks at me again, shaking his head. “You got no sense of humor,” he says, leaving.

An hour later, the cops arrive — thank God it wasn’t an actual emergency.

“You doin’ all right?” they ask me.

“As best as can be expected given the circumstances,” I say.

One of them gives me his card in case I continue to have trouble. “You’d be surprised,” he says, “the number of calls we get from people in hospitals, old-age homes, trapped in their children’s houses, elder abuse; it’s a problem.”

I never thought of myself as elder. A few minutes ago, I was a guy in the middle of his life; now, suddenly, I’m elder.

Today is a school day. I realize it when the nurse comes in and tears two pages off the calendar. “Sometimes we run late,” she says.

I phone the school and tell them that I’ve got to cancel class due to a death in the family.

It’s a relief when a volunteer from the physical-therapy department comes to get me.

In physical therapy I am given a walker — mine to keep — fitted with green tennis balls to make it slide easier. The physical therapist tells me it’s her job to get me ready for discharge. “Usually after an event such as yours, a person goes to rehab for a week or so, but with your insurance an open question, they’re not going to take you, so you’ll have to do it yourself at home. The good news is that in the grand scheme of things what happened to you is relatively minor.”

“Felt major to me,” I say.

“On a scale of one to ten, yours was a two,” she says. “Trust me, you got off easy.”

She tries to get me to play a game with buttons and zippers, which at first seems idiotic, but when I try I’m surprised at how my fingers no longer seem to belong to me. I try the buttons again, and finally she gives me another, larger set and this time I can do it. “Great,” I say, “so what am I supposed to do, have all my shirts retrofitted with clown buttons?”

“It’s a look,” the therapist says.

“Am I going to get better?” I ask. “Or is this the way it’s going to be?” Who thought getting dressed and walking up four stairs would be so difficult?

“Don’t panic. It takes time,” the therapist says.

After an hour of therapy I’m exhausted, and return to my room feeling very alone, with an open invitation to come back again in a couple of hours if I want to try again.

Lunch is waiting. Tomato-rice soup, the same tomato-rice soup I had in the cafeteria while waiting for news about Jane. I can’t help but think that if I eat it I will never get out of here, I will be in an endless loop of tomato soup and hospitals, and so I simply leave it.

A young woman comes into the room. “Papa?”

“You have the wrong room.”

“No,” she says, “I’ve been waiting. I was here and you were gone. I’m here for Bed A, but there’s no one in Bed A.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did he go home?”

I notice she is wearing a red scarf. “Where did you get that scarf?”