Spring 2010
credit: Sarah Ahmad
“There’s only a remote possibility that he’ll pull out of it.”
She coughed the phlegm from her throat. “How—how remote?”
“Your father’s going to die.“ A practiced hand on her shoulder. “But it’s really up to you. As next of kin, you’re the only one who can make the decision to terminate life support.”
“Oh, God.”
“I know this is difficult. I’ll leave you with the patient to consider it. And you don’t have to make a decision right now.”
“Thank you.” After he walked away, she snorted.
“God.” Aloud. There she goes calling on that rascal again. What was He going to do? Why was she crying anyway? What did she know about tears? She’s never lost a son. A brother, yes, but not a son and there’s a difference because I’ve done both. Our Terry would have been forty last month.
She could see the death in me if she looked. Not like Lucille, so stoic she hadn’t even told us she was sick. Maybe I should have noticed something, but maybe there was nothing to see. She looked and started crying again, just like all those other times when she didn’t have it together and I supported her when she and the kids had nothing. Despite myself, I wanted to wrap my spindly arms around her and whisper it’s only death.
While she cried, the youngest watched me from the foot of the bed. A tuft of his hair stuck out over the topmost rail and through the bars he stared into my blanks like he knew I was alive, like he knew I was watching him back. He was only four years old but there were things inside him beyond his years. The stark constellations in his eyes told me as much. His were the same as his great-grandfather’s had been, serious and determined, those eyes that had slain me before they were diluted with drink.
Then Tweedledee and Tweedledum pirouetted into the room empty-handed, their shirts stained with chocolate, vanilla and fudge. Ignored their crying mother. They hadn’t heard her or pretended not to.
“Can we go now?”
She nods, tired of thinking and just tired. “Go get the doctor, I need to talk to him.”
“Okay,” Toby sprouted.
“I’ll do it.” Ashley tried squeezing past, as usual.
“You can both do it. Just be quiet.”
The little one hadn’t moved.
The doctor trailed the cows wearily into the room.
She couldn’t brave the doctor’s eyes. “I don’t think I can do it. I can’t pull the plug on my own father.”
“I understand. Let’s go into my office and talk about it.”
“Okay. Come on, kids.”
“Aw.” Toby stomped his swollen feet. “When are we leaving?”
The little one stayed and nobody noticed.
As a prank once when I was barely a teenager, one night I had tied our horses in their stalls, weaving the rope between the planks so they couldn’t get out. Pa would be able to undo it come morning, but it would be a pain in the ass. But that tornado had come unexpectedly and made the barn shudder on fawn legs. Stuck and frustrated at the gates, Pa had had to choose either his own life or that of the horses’. We lost our prize geldings that night. Less than a year later, the farm was repossessed, and we had to move to the city. Pa got a job at a factory and died a broken alcoholic. He used to hit me when it got bad, but I took it because I deserved it even if he didn’t know why.
The youngest yanked all the cords from their sockets and then climbed onto the bed to see what happened, scaling it like monkey bars at the playground. Good boy. There was life in the Rathskin blood yet. He noticed something and crawled closer to my face. I knew what he saw. He pulled the tubes from my nose, and my body involuntarily shuddered. Ecstasy, my boy! Here we go! But that wasn’t enough and he knew it. He figured it out right away just like the genius he would grow up to be. He reached a paw. That’s it. There you go. He pinched my nostrils at last, man walking on the moon in the Sistine Chapel, and put the other hand over my mouth.
Sedation was a blessing.
All the Rathskin hope lie within you devil child, my little saint killer. Make me proud. Yes, that’s it, son, hold it tightly. Hold it—
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