His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  He looked away from his mother, saying nothing. White motes of dust floated in and out of the shafts of sunlight slanting through the window, becoming visible then invisible then visible then invisible. He remembered seeing dust like that in his grandparents’ house as a child, and he wondered when this had become an old person’s home.

  “They took me to emergency—Anaheim Memorial—and by the time they got my wrist all wrapped up, they already had your father in the psychiatric ward. I thought they might take him to jail, but I guess the police could tell that something was wrong with him—they probably deal with situations like this all the time—and they brought him to the hospital instead. I saw him for a few minutes and tried to talk to him, but he yelled at me. They asked if I wanted to stay with him, but I didn’t, so they found someone to drive me home.”

  Again, he wondered why she hadn’t called, why she’d gotten a pickup ride with some stranger rather than phone her son for help, but he knew she’d get mad at him if he dared ask. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

  “They transferred him to the VA hospital last night sometime,” she continued. “A doctor called to tell me. Your father’s there right now, under observation.”

  “Do they know what happened? Why he did that? Did he have, like, a stroke or something? Some kind of . . . attack?” Steve had no idea what he was talking about and was struggling to find a reason for his father’s behavior, something that could be labeled, quantified and eventually fixed.

  His mother was nodding. “The doctors do think he suffered a stroke, and I’d better warn you right now: He doesn’t make much sense when he talks. Something in his brain seems to have short-circuited. He thinks he’s talking normally, but he’s just saying nonsense.” A pained expression passed over her face. “It’s hard to listen to that. It’s . . . it’s hard.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why he attacked you.”

  “No. The violence . . . that’s something different. That’s why he’s under observation.”

  “And he’s at the VA hospital?”

  “Yes. In Long Beach. He’s been there before—you remember, for his heart attack—but I’m not sure how good the care is there. I don’t like that place. And after all of those VA scandals . . .”

  “Have you heard from them today?” Steve asked. “Is there any news?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you want me to call and find out his status?”

  “I’m the one with the broken wrist. He attacked me. Called me . . . called me . . . things I can’t even say.” Her mouth was set in a straight line, what he thought of as her prude line, and he tried to imagine what sort of obscenities his father might have used on her. He was not sure he had ever heard his father swear.

  “Sorry,” Steve said. He should have known that he wasn’t paying his mother’s problems the proper attention. Of course, she’d already told him she was fine, and she was safely back at home with a bandage on her wrist while his father had been involuntarily committed to a psych ward, but his mother had always been a self-centered woman, and there was no way to convince her that in the long run a broken bone was probably not as important as a stroke.

  They spent the next several minutes discussing her situation, although the conversation was weird and awkward because the two of them were not used to being alone together. Despite her plea for attention, she also kept insisting that she was all right, that he did not need to worry about her, so there really wasn’t anyplace for the discussion to go. He ended up asking her lamely if she needed any prescriptions picked up, or groceries, or help with the laundry or her carpets vacuumed.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  Steve looked at his watch. It was two o’clock already. Getting late. He stood. “I should probably go see Dad. Do you want to come with me?”

  His mother shook her head. “I can’t right now.” She looked scared, angry and embarrassed all at the same time.

  Steve nodded. His father had tried to kill her; it was understandable that her emotions would be conflicted.

  She didn’t have the phone number of the hospital, so he called Information, got it and dialed. He asked the operator to connect him to his father’s room, and the charge nurse, a man, answered and told him that his father was sleeping and still under observation. There were no new developments to report, but a doctor would be in later and Steve was welcome to come visit.

  He hung up the phone, looked again at his watch. He and Sherry had plans to go out tonight, and he wondered whether he could make it all the way to Long Beach and back before he was supposed to pick her up at six. Probably not, since he’d be traveling the freeways at rush hour, and he tried to decide whether it would be better to cancel their plans for this evening while he went out to visit his dad, or whether it would be more convenient for him to see Sherry tonight and go to the hospital in the morning.

  The mere fact that he had to think about it spoke volumes, and, shamed, he chose duty over pleasure, calling Sherry and telling her that he couldn’t make it because his father was in the hospital. She was more than understanding, even offering to come with him, but he lied, said he was already on the way there, told her he’d call her later and hung up. The last thing he wanted on this trip was company. He said good-bye to his mother, promised to call to see how she was doing once he got back home, and took off.

  The VA hospital in Long Beach was a multistoried rectangular building situated in the center of an enormous parking lot. It looked like one of those bureaucratic Soviet structures, all function, no form, and its drab coloration and dirty windows did not inspire confidence. Steve drove around the lot a few times before finding a place to park after a red Jeep unexpectedly backed out in front of him, providing an empty space. It was a long walk to the building, and he was almost run over by an asshole in a Hummer who sped through a narrow parking lot row at what had to be over fifty miles an hour, but he finally reached the entrance, and he stopped by the front desk to ask how to get to room 242, his father’s room. The unsmiling man behind the counter directed him to the second floor, pointing out the elevator at the far end of the nearly bare lobby. Steve rode up alone, and after a suspiciously creaky ride the scuffed paneled doors parted slowly, opening onto a wide corridor that seemed to travel the entire width of the building and ended far away in what appeared to be a jumble of patients and hospital staff.

  The air stank of vomit and medicine, cleaning fluids and feces. Steve gagged as he made his way down the corridor, but the nurses and orderlies he passed must have become immune to the stench, because they didn’t seem to notice it. Cupping a hand over his nose, he tried to breathe only through his mouth. To his sides were darkened rooms filled with multiple beds that looked the way he imagined prison infirmaries did. A patient rolled toward him in a wheelchair, a man with no legs and a bandage over one eye. Steve looked straight ahead, not wanting to stare, then thought that the man might be offended because he was so obviously avoiding eye contact. He glanced down, ready to smile, but the man glared at him and sped by.

  “I need my meds!” someone screamed from a room to the left. The terrible cry was filled with more pain than Steve could imagine, but none of the hospital workers made any attempt to address the man’s needs or even placate him. “I need my meds!” he screamed again.

  This was where they’d transferred his father?

  Steve was not happy about that. He also felt a little bit nervous about seeing his dad. His father had had a stroke, and his mother had made it clear that the old man was not speaking coherently, but that was not the scenario he pictured in his mind. All Steve could think of was that he was going to get blamed for this situation, that by the time he arrived, his father would have snapped back to normal and would loudly berate him for allowing the transfer from Anaheim Memorial. In fact, Steve was already mentally composing a response to such criticism when he reached room 242.

  He’d seen no sign indicating that he had entered the psych ward,
and at first he thought there’d been a mistake, that his father had been placed in the wrong department. The men he’d seen here were all physically injured, and his dad was supposed to be under psychiatric observation. Then he realized that in a VA hospital, most of the patients with mental problems probably had physical injuries as well. This whole floor was probably the psych ward.

  He stood for a moment outside the room, gathering his courage, then peeked inside. The room was semi-private, which meant that while there were two beds in there besides his father’s, it was not one of those barracks-style spaces he’d passed on the way. His father’s area was closest to the door, and though the lights within were so dim that they were nearly nonexistent, enough illumination bled in from the corridor to show him that his dad was not just in a hospital bed but strapped to it. The old man’s eyes were closed, he was breathing deeply, and the fact that he was asleep gave Steve the courage to go into the room. Walking to the opposite side of the bed, he drew the privacy curtain that separated his father’s section from those of the other two patients.

  The smell in here was even worse than in the corridor, so overpowering that Steve was forced to pinch his nostrils shut. One of the other two patients had to have some serious bowel problems.

  “I need my meds!” the man down the hall continued to yell. Another patient, farther away, howled like a wolf.

  His father’s room was silent save for the bubbling of a machine on the other side of the pulled curtain. In repose, Steve noted objectively, his dad seemed so thin, drawn and impossibly pale that he appeared to be dead. He’d been strapped down, no doubt, to keep him from hurting or attacking someone else, but the presence of the straps only added to the impression that his prone, sheeted body was that of a corpse.

  This is what he’ll look like after he dies, Steve thought.

  He knew he should feel sad or upset or . . . something. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel anything. He wanted to, but he didn’t. He felt guilty about that. He tried to rationalize it, telling himself it was a case of reaping what you sowed, because even on his best days, his father had been a hard and unforgiving man, and it had always been obvious that he felt his only son had turned out to be a major disappointment. But that excuse didn’t fly. Steve was an adult, not a child, and it was up to him to take responsibility for his feelings, his behavior and his actions.

  Actually, he did feel something when he looked down at his dad. Relief. Relief that his father was not awake or coherent enough to lecture and harangue him.

  He felt guilty for that, too.

  Steve stared at the figure on the bed. His father had always been immaculately groomed, but now his thin hair was wild and uncombed and there was white stubble on his cheeks and chin. He looked like a derelict, and Steve found the sight disturbing. He didn’t want his dad to look this way.

  There was a chair against the wall next to the door, but he didn’t feel like sitting down, so he stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. Was his father sedated? Was he going to remain asleep? If he did wake up, what would Steve say to him? What he really wanted was to talk to a person in charge and find out how his father was doing, but he could not find even a nurse, let alone a doctor, and he had to walk halfway down the hall to locate a distracted-looking man in scrubs who promised to send someone back to speak with him.

  Steve returned to the room, holding his nose against the stench. It wasn’t just the I-need-my-meds guy who was screaming, he noticed. There was a whole host of voices wailing and crying out, and he wasn’t sure whether they had just started up or he hadn’t noticed them before because he’d been too distracted. He heard them now, though, and thought that even if a patient wasn’t crazy when he came in here, he soon would be after listening to that day after day.

  He sat down in the chair, waiting. The physical appearance of the hospital had not given him confidence, and Steve expected to meet with a harried, overworked, elderly man long past the point of caring, but the white-coated doctor who introduced himself with a firm handshake and a smile seemed not only competent but kind.

  “I’m glad you could come,” Dr. Curtis said after the introductions had been made. “I understand that your mother does not wish to become involved at this time, but it’s important to explain to a responsible family member exactly what your father’s condition is. Decisions have to be made, and I want everyone involved to be as informed as possible.” He consulted a chart that he’d taken from a hook above the bed. “We thought at first that your father was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, because that was the initial diagnosis we received from the admitting hospital. But his symptoms don’t correspond with Alzheime ’s, and we’ve had time to conduct some additional tests.”

  “I thought he had a stroke,” Steve said.

  “Oh, he has. Or rather, he’s had a series of strokes, as a CAT scan showed us. But in addition to that, your father appears to be suffering from dementia.”

  It was as if a great weight had suddenly settled in Steve’s stomach. Dementia. He was aware only of the common meaning of the word, not the specific medical definition, but even without that knowledge he could tell that it was serious, and any hopes he’d harbored that a quick cure or solution for his father’s condition could be found faded quickly.

  “Dementia’s kind of a catchall phrase used to describe a host of brain disorders,” the doctor continued. “What your father is suffering from, specifically, is frontotemporal dementia, what is sometimes referred to as Pick’s Disease. This is characterized by frontal dysexecutive syndrome, in which the patient suffers behavioral abnormalities, most often apathy or aggression. Obviously, your father’s symptoms involve the latter. Patients with the disease also suffer from semantic dementia, which means that the verbal memory is impaired. In your father ’s instance, he is unable to remember the meaning of words. He knows words, but does not associate them with their definitions. In effect, his brain chooses words at random in order to communicate, and more often than not, those words will have nothing at all to do with the thought he is attempting to express.”

  Steve was confused. “Has this been going on for a while? It seems like it just happened all of a sudden.”

  “I have no doubt that there have been symptoms for quite some time, although apparently they went unnoticed. Granted, the symptoms could have been mild. Perhaps he became irritated at things more quickly than normal, or found himself getting annoyed or angry at something that before he would have shrugged off.”

  His father had always been angry, Steve thought. He’d never shrugged anything off.

  “He also may have had a difficult time finding the right word to express a thought while speaking, or perhaps he inadvertently called one object by the name of another. Your mother would probably have been in a position to notice these changes more than anyone else, although oftentimes the slide is so gradual and the symptoms exhibited so infrequently that they are overlooked.”

  “So was it the stroke . . . ?”

  The doctor nodded. “The stroke undoubtedly accelerated the degeneration. But this would have happened with or without the stroke.”

  Steve took a deep breath. Time for the big question. “Is there any way to stop it, anything that can be done?”

  “There are treatments,” the doctor said, “but there is no cure. We will be putting your father on medication that will help us manage his symptoms, but I need to stress that there’s no way to stop or reverse the effects of the disease. The steps we’re taking will, at best, only slow its progression.”

  Steve knew that they should get a second opinion—and he was going to suggest to his mother that she do so—but he wasn’t one of those guys who was going to go out, do his own research and become an expert on mental illness. For one thing, he had no doubt that his father was violent, a danger to himself and others. There was definitely something wrong with him, and he needed to be in a hospital environment. He also trusted Dr. Curtis, although for no reason other than gut instinct. The man se
emed knowledgeable and competent, and Steve believed he knew what he was talking about.

  With a jerk and a start, his father awoke. He strained against the straps holding him down, and his neck craned about, eyes bulging in his head. He tried kicking his feet, but the restraints offered little give, and the end result was an odd vibration at the foot of the metal hospital bed.

  “Dad?” Steve said.

  “No!” His father looked at him with undisguised anger—but also with confusion. It was clear that he was furious at Steve, but it was just as clear that he had no idea who his son was.

  There was a sense of liberation in that. The fact that his father didn’t recognize him and might not remember this encounter for more than a minute didn’t free him from responsibility, but it did protect him from repercussions, and the fear Steve had had of his father lecturing him, blaming him for his being here, evaporated. But as he looked into the blankness of the old man’s gaze, there was also a sense of regret, of opportunities lost and missed. Now even if he made something of his life, became a great writer or discovered the cure for cancer or, hell, just won the lottery, his father would never know. His chance to change his father’s perception of him, to redeem himself in his dad’s eyes, was gone, and Steve felt more than a little cheated by that.

  “Pens!” the old man screamed. “Pencils!”

  “You’re seeing both primary symptoms at once here,” the doctor said softly. “The aggression and inappropriate emotion as well as the affected semantic memory.”

  “Pencils!”

  “Does he think he’s saying something we can understand?” Steve asked.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. And that makes him frustrated, which triggers even more aggression.”

  Steve stepped closer. In a movie, this would be the moment where he’d put his hand on his father’s. But their family wasn’t like that. Instead, he tried to smile. “It’s me, Dad.”

  “Steve?” Clarity suddenly returned to his father’s gaze. Taking in his surroundings, his eyes met those of his son, and he said beseechingly, “Why am I here? What happened? Where’s your mother?”