The Call

I missed the first three calls. When the fourth chorus of that gentle melody suffused through the dark, finally waking me, I didn’t have to check who was calling. I knew it would be him.

My brother messaged me the day before. A casual, nonchalant text bore substantial weight, saying something like, “Hey, yeah I’d have my ringer on tonight if I were you.” He always beats around the bush, incapable of saying he was worried outright.

“Good morning…hello. What’s going on? You okay?” I stammered.

“Jesus,” I thought, feeling foolish for my sleepy words. “Of course, he’s not okay. Nothing good happens at this hour.”

His pained voice doused me like a bucket of cold water, and I scrambled from the sheets.

“Yeah, I’m on the way.”

There’s a storm coming. Everyone’s been talking about it for days. It’s been ungodly cold recently, too, just priming us for a wintry downpour.

I always enjoyed walks on frigid nights—the colder, the better. They always seemed dreamy to me; the stillness of a freezing night always felt unnatural, as if the chill locked everything in its frosty embrace, still and silent until the thaw.

The reverie joined me in the car as I sped down the highway. The faintly illuminated side streets and barren parking lots washed in old yellow light distracted me. I felt like I was drifting through a dream. I hadn’t a heartbeat, lungs frozen; everything felt uncanny and surreal.

It wasn’t until I escaped the sleepy town that the moment became real.

I could feel the cold biting at my hands, hardly able to fully clench them around the icy steering wheel. Then came the thumping of my heart against my breastbone and an uneasiness bottoming my guts.

“What am I going to do?” I thought, “Is it too late to call an ambulance? He seemed fine the other day. I wonder if he has an infection. Did they mess something up? Did they slice something else? I knew we shouldn’t have taken him to that hospital.” This carousel spun through my skull. I had a childish desire to point a condemning finger at the culprit—as if that would help.

I heard the dogs barking as I walked to the front door. They rushed me, swirling around my feet and inspecting my scent. The musky smell of their dirty winter coats and urine engulfed the little house.

“Dad?”

I found him keeled over on the edge of his bed, fighting a painful contraction; his hands clutching his abdomen where the incision was.

Upon seeing him, my blood sank to the bottom of my boots, along with my stomach. I was shocked and helpless. At that moment, there was nothing I could do to ease the pain of my old man, I’d never felt more like a child. I’d never seen him, my own father, in such a painful, distressed state.

“What can I do?” I asked.

He held up a hand. He must have sensed my sudden stupefaction.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Help me get my boots on.”

I stooped to help. He’d managed to pull on his longjohns and a pair of dirty jeans. They smelled like dog. Everything in the house smelled of dog.

“It’s cold outside,” I stammered. I didn’t know what to say.

The old man winced again and rolled onto his side grabbing at his guts.

I reached out to him but pulled my arms back, then stood and rushed to the closet.

“Jackets in here?” my hands trembled as I yanked on the closet door and sifted through the hung clothing. The reek of dog hair fumed from the closet; I couldn’t escape that dank odor. I felt like I was going to be sick.

We struggled to get his sweater on. It was difficult for him to stretch his arms up and extend his torso without lashings of pain striking his guts. I could hardly feel the sweater in my hands, they felt like they were frozen, like they weren’t my hands at all.

We locked arms and I guided him towards the door. He’d lost weight; I could feel his bones prodding me as he leaned his diminishing figure against me. As we neared the door, the dogs swarmed us, and circling our legs they voiced their high-pitched whines. I cursed, kicking at them to clear the way.

“Don’t!” the old man growled, sending a chill down my back.

We were silent for a while in the car. He couldn’t lean back in the passenger seat. He stayed hunched over with his arms crossing his belly like he was trying to hold his innards in place. I was hesitant to speed, too afraid the rattling of the car and pulling momentum from rounding the curves would pain him.

“Go steady,” he said, gritting his teeth, crumbling further into the seat, and hissing as the pain flared through him.

“What is it? Or… what do you think? I thought you were fine yesterday?”

“Oh,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I dunno…”

“Did they mess up?” I blurted.

“I dunno. Infection, maybe.”

“What does it feel like?”

“It hurts!”

I snickered. I could see his big grin from the corner of my eye. It felt like I’d taken my first breath in an hour.

“I feel bad for pregnant women,” he groaned. “I’ve got so much pressure…” he couldn’t finish.

“Are you okay?” I looked over and we locked eyes. They’re deep blue, like mine, but they didn’t match the strain warping his countenance. His eyes were passive, forlorn as they awaited the coming uncertainty.

I darted my eyes back on the road. I could feel my nostrils twist, my chest tighten, and a scratchy pressure knotting in my throat. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to cry or throw up. It was cold in the car.  

The luminous sign of the Emergency Room beckoned salvation in the cold dark. I parked out front of the main door and spilled out of the car, rushing inside to grab a wheelchair. I struggled to get him seated, snapping my head around, expecting doctors and nurses to rush outside to our aid like on TV, but we received no help. We were alone, grunting great clouds into the frosty air as I fumbled him into the wheelchair.

I couldn’t feel my feet as I pushed him into the quiet building, he felt weightless in the chair. The mechanical doors squealed open and we entered the empty waiting room. The warm air, scented with chemical disinfectants, washed the chill from our skin.

I’m unsure what I expected having never been to an emergency room before. I felt foolish for expecting a dramatic rush of mangled souls and hurried doctors. A perpetual state of panic and high-stakes moments. It was silent other than the hum of the old lights above and the worn tires of the chair trying to grip the white tile. We were the only ones in the waiting room.

I wheeled him to the front desk. It was in a sectioned-off room that backdoored into the ER. A sheet of glass divided the receptionist from those seeking emergency asylum. The lady behind the pane hadn’t noticed us coming in. I think she had her feet up. She didn’t look up until we were directly in front of her.

“Hi. How can I help you?” she said. Her voice was as deadpan as her stare.

A spike of anger bolted through my core. “How can you help?” I thought, “We need a goddamn doctor. STAT! This place is as quiet and disturbing as a morgue. What did I wheel my father into? We need some help!”

Before I could voice my frustrations, my father spoke.

“I had surgery a few days ago…”

“Where did you have your surgery?” she interrupted.

“Here,” he said. He sensed my agitation and told me to park the car before someone stole it. I had left the engine running and the driver-side door open.

The reception desk was vacant and my father was hunched over in a convulsion of pain. I rushed over to him.

“You okay? Where the hell did she go?”

“Wheel me over there,” he said behind his teeth. “She said the door’s over there.”

“There’s no one here, why are we waiting?” He didn’t say anything. He was holding his guts in.

I wheeled him to the first row of empty chairs nearest the emergency door and sat beside him. He was still trying to deal with the pain.

“Do you need anything?”

“I’ll be okay in a minute.”

I looked away. Scanning the room, I found a small TV tucked away in a high corner of the waiting room. The weather channel was on, muted but with closed captioning. A couple of suits sat at a table, discussing the storm. They said the same thing as everyone else, or perhaps everyone had already seen the broadcast and just repeated what they heard others say.

It “caught us by surprise,” they said, and to “prepare the best you can, we won’t know how bad it is until it’s here.” “We’ll keep you posted on the hour, every hour.” Never anything certain. I don’t know if they get better ratings from fearmongering or if it’s best practice to tell everyone the worst, so they’re prepared for whatever happens.

“You think the storm will be as bad as they say?” I asked. He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, arms wrapped around his torso as he focused on his breathing.

I’d never seen him in so much pain before, never seen him so vulnerable. I can’t say I ever looked at the man and saw Superman, but I was disturbed by how human he seemed. It was like someone shattered a glass figurine you’d always loved in front of your eyes. Never able to disassociate your grand perception of that figurine away from the fact that it was just nothing more than a fragile object. The same as anything else. I sank back in my seat and felt tears saturate my eyes.

I couldn’t believe any of this was happening, but it was. It was neither a dream nor a television drama—a sobering dose of reality, and I felt I had failed miserably. How was I unable to help my own father? How could I let him suffer like this? This moment presented itself and I couldn’t handle it.

I glimpsed the television again. A massive pink swirl covered the Doppler radar, looking like a hurricane of sleet and snow barreling toward us.

It was then that it hit me. I remembered all the times my father was there for me. All the moments we shared, the meaningful and the minuscule—times we cherished, even moments he scolded me. When he was there to deliver hard truths and how he helped me through difficult times. He was always there when I needed him.

He was there as I am here. The roles had been reversed.

A calmness blossomed within and my ears reddened from my realized foolishness. I gave myself some grace and withdrew the self-lashings and self-criticisms. There was nothing more I could do than to be there for him. My failure wasn’t my lack of answers, I was failing because I retreated. I’d withdrawn from my fear of seeing him suffering and of losing him, only making it worse. He needed me to be there, not with the answers and remedies, but with support. He needed to lean on me, to face the anguish and uncertainty with someone you love. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid but fear can’t stop you from doing what needs to be done. He needed me to be a stable force and until that moment, I’d been cowering like a child.

The door swung half open and a lady staring down at a chart popped her head out from behind the door.

“Joel?” she called out.

I rose and pushed him to the nurse. I glanced up at the television one last time and the weatherman was emphatically swooshing his arms upward at the swirling pink mass on the Doppler. Based on the updated trajectory, the storm looked like it was surging northwards and going to miss us.

When we crossed the threshold into the wing, the nurse said:

“Hi. How are you feeling today?”

We laughed.