I don’t know her, but I would probably have the same reaction if someone were to throw something away of my father’s.
I’ve never attempted to paint before, but I do draw occasionally. I find myself standing up, walking toward the nurses’ station. I look down at the box full of various types of paints and brushes. “Can I—?”
The sentence doesn’t even finish leaving my mouth when the nurse shoves the box at me. “Please,” she says. “Take it. I don’t know what to do with it.”
I grab the supplies and walk them into my father’s room. I lay them down on the only available area of counter space. The rest of his hospital room is full of flowers and plants that have been delivered over the last couple of weeks. I should probably do something with them, but I still have hope that he’ll wake up soon and see them all.
After finding room for the art supplies, I walk to the chair next to my father’s bed and take a seat.
I watch him.
I watch him for hours, until I get so bored that I stand up and try to find something else to stare at. Sometimes I stare at the blank canvas on the desk. I don’t even know where to start, so I spend the entire next day dividing my attention between my father, the canvas, and the occasional walks I take around the hospital.
I don’t know how many more days of this I can take. It’s as if I can’t even properly grieve until I know he’s able to grieve with me. I hate that as soon as he wakes up—if he wakes up—I’ll more than likely have to go over every last detail of that night with him, when all I want to do is forget it.
“Never look at your phone, Owen,” he said.
“Watch the road,” my brother said from the backseat.
“Use your blinker. Hands at ten and two. Keep the radio off.”
I was completely new at driving, and every single direction that came out of their mouths reminded me of that. All but the one direction I wished they had given me the most. “Watch out for drunk drivers.”
We were hit from the passenger side, right when the light turned green and I made it out into the intersection. The wreck wasn’t my fault, but had I been more experienced, I would have known to look left and right first, even though the light gave me permission to move forward.
My brother and mother died on impact. My father remains in critical condition.
I’ve been broken since the moment it happened.
I spend the majority of my days and nights here, and the longer I sit, waiting for him to wake up, the lonelier it becomes. The visits from family and friends have stopped. I haven’t been to school in weeks, but that’s the least of my concerns. I just wait.
Wait for him to move. Wait for him to blink. Wait for him to speak.
Usually by the end of every day, I’m so exhausted from everything that’s not happening, I have to take a breather. For the first week or two, the evenings were the hardest part for me. Mostly because it meant another day where he showed no signs of improvement was coming to an end. But lately, the evenings have grown into something I actually look forward to.
And I have her to thank for that.
It might be her laugh, but I also think it’s the way she loves whomever it is she visits that makes me feel hopeful. She comes and visits him every evening from five to seven. Adam, I think is his name.
I notice that when she visits, his other family members leave the room. I assume Adam prefers it this way so he can get his alone time with her. I feel guilty sometimes, sitting out here in the hallway, propped up against the wall between his door and my father’s door. But there’s nowhere else I can go and feel the same way I do when I hear her voice.
His visits with her are the only time I ever hear him laugh. Or talk much, for that matter. I’ve heard enough conversations come from his room over the past few weeks to know what his fate is, so the fact that he’s able to laugh when he’s with her speaks volumes.
I think his imminent death is also what gives me a little bit of hope. I know that sounds morbid, but I assume Adam and I are around the same age, so I put myself in his shoes a lot when I start to feel sorry for myself. Would I rather be on my deathbed with a prognosis of only a few weeks to live, or would I rather be in the predicament I’m in?
Sometimes, on the really bad days, when I think about how I’ll never see my brother again, I think I’d rather be in Adam’s shoes.
But then there are moments when I hear how she speaks to him and the words she says to him, and I think, I’m lucky I’m not in his shoes. Because I still have a chance of being loved like that someday. And I feel bad for Adam, knowing the kind of love she has for him, and knowing that’s what he’s leaving behind. That has to be hard for him.
But that also means he was lucky enough to find her before his time was up. That has to make death a little more bearable, even if only by a fraction.
I return to the hallway and slide down to the floor, waiting for her laugh tonight, but it doesn’t come. I scoot closer to his door and further away from my father’s, wondering why tonight is different. Why tonight isn’t one of the happier visits.
“But I guess I’m also referring to our parents, for not understanding this,” I hear Adam say to her. “For not allowing me to have the one and only thing I want here with me.”
As soon as I realize that this is their good-bye, my heart breaks for her and it breaks for Adam, even though I don’t know either of them. I listen for a few more minutes until I hear him say, “Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows. Something I can keep for myself.”