Night Blindness

by Susan Strecker

  I got up. “Well, if we’re going to do it, it might as well be now.” I threw the soggy dough in a nearby garbage can. There was a brand-new metal roller coaster beyond the Ferris wheel, but my dad had insisted on the old wooden one. He still had pictures of Will, Ryder, and me crammed in one car, mouths open, arms up. When the wind blew, it made a low, moaning noise like the goalposts in our backyard. “What if you fall out and bonk your head?” I asked him while we walked toward it.

  “Maybe it will knock the tumor out through my mouth.” He tousled my hair. “Ever think of that?”

  I handed two tickets to a teenaged kid who might have been asleep if not for the fact that he was reciting the rules. “Keep your arms inside at all times. No standing. Do not raise the safety bar until the ride has ended.”

  My father folded the rest of our tickets like an accordion and stuffed them in his front pocket. “Ready?”

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that we shouldn’t be doing this. That somehow flying upside down was not the right thing for a man with cancer.

  We found a blue two-seater and pulled the safety bar over our laps. People were filling the cars around us. I leaned back. The air smelled of popcorn and sugar. Under the peeling blue was a layer of yellow paint, and I picked at it with my fingernail, wondering how old this thing was.

  “So what’s happening with those piano lessons?” my father asked while we waited. “You working on a concerto for your old man?”

  Before I could answer, the carnival music started, an odd mix of cymbals and saxophone, and the train of cars lurched forward. Kids behind us started screaming. “If they do that the whole time,” my dad said, talking close to my ear, “maybe they’ll blow out my eardrum and the tumor will come flying out.”

  The ride picked up speed, and then the car felt like it had dropped off the track as we headed straight down. For a few seconds, we were free-falling. I tried to watch my dad, but it was hard to focus.

  Just as we finished the first loop, I saw he had raised his hands over his head, and he was laughing so hard, his eyes had disappeared. While we started the slow crawl up the second loop, the people waiting in line got smaller. I held on to the side of the car. We dropped off another time, and I felt myself laughing hysterically when we went upside down.

  Finally, we slowed to a stop, and our safety bar unlocked. My elastic band had slipped, and my hair was wrapped around my neck. I combed it with my fingers. My dad tucked in his striped polo shirt, but he stayed in his seat. The robotic teenager was coming toward us, shooing people off the ride. “Dad, come on.”

  He held up two tickets. “One more time,” he said to the bored worker. I sat back in the seat. “One more crazy, screaming time,” he said, almost to himself.

  When we finally dismounted the ride, the world seemed tilted wrong on its axis. We had to hold on to each other, and as we headed off the hot tarmac, I felt like I was walking sideways, and all the rides and games were slanted at odd angles.

  “Okay,” I said, touching his hair. “What did this get you?” He cocked his head, as if he didn’t understand what I was asking. “You said before that everything’s a trade-off. What did a brain tumor get you?”

  He sat heavily at a picnic table. Taking off his glasses, he chewed on the end, squinting in the hot sun. “You,” he said. “This old broken brain brought you back to me.”

  And then his eyelids fluttered and his pupils disappeared. His eyes rolled into his head.

  “Dad?” I sat next to him. “Dad?” I said frantically.

  But he slumped against me, unconscious.

  12

  I tried to follow the ambulance to Yale, but I lost it on the I-91 interchange, and by the time I parked and got to the main entrance, the woman at the nurses’ station said they’d taken my dad upstairs. “Dr. Novak will be here as soon as she can.”

  I sat on one of those plastic ER waiting room chairs in that code red atmosphere and left messages for Jamie and Luke while berating myself for taking my father on a fucking roller coaster. Hadley kept calling, yapping about some new photographer he was going to bring over from Hungary. I felt as if Santa Fe, with its willowware blue skies and its hundred galleries, were on another planet. I couldn’t stop seeing my father’s eyes rolling up in his head. It didn’t make any sense. He seemed to be doing so well, always ready to water-ski or ride up and down the Merritt Parkway like a maniac.

  “Jensen.” I saw the red pumps first, and then Dale was standing over me. Her lips were tight, and it made me think she was going to give me bad news. When I stood, her eyes took me in the same way the shrink at boarding school used to, as if she expected me to talk first. Finally, she said, “Your dad had a vasovagal episode.” She said it slowly, breaking down each syllable.

  “Any guesses what caused his blood pressure to drop?” I might as well have said, I know what vasovagal means, you dumb cow. I loved the Internet.

  She straightened her necklace so a tiny gold stethoscope faced front. “Most likely, he’s dehydrated and run down from the radiation.” Her pumps looked brand-new. I thought it was odd, a doctor wearing red pumps, but that was Dale—something about her was a little off. “We’ll give him some fluids overnight and see how he is tomorrow. I’m off for thirty-six hours, but I’ll check on him from home. Dr. Weiss is on call until I get back.”

  I should have thanked her, but I had an overwhelming desire to punch her in the head. It was guilt, I knew; it was the feeling that she could somehow tell I had just taken my dad on a double-loop roller coaster. Twice. I’d fed him fried dough and cream soda in the hot sun, and for the entire month I had been riding in sports cars with him, when I should have been putting him to bed with a cold pack on his head. But he was persuasive. He was fun. And Dale probably did not understand fun.

  “He’s in room two thirty-six,” she said, touching my arm in an unexpectedly kind way. When she moved aside, I saw him, or someone who looked just like him, the ER doctor from the night Will died. He was standing at the nurses’ station, writing on a chart, and when our eyes met, he hesitated before turning away. It took me a minute to recognize him, and later I would not really know if it was him or not. He still had the full beard, but his face had the puttied look of people who don’t age well. And then he was gone, down the hall.

  I pushed open the door to my dad’s room. The shades were pulled and a vinyl couch, cracked and worn, was under the window. “Hey, Dad.” I sat on the edge of his bed. “Do you feel okay?” His eyes were unfocused, cloudy. I rested my palm on his forehead. He jumped at my touch, then settled, his eyelids fluttering like a child fighting sleep. I felt his body relax as he drifted off. The door opened and a nurse came in. She had spiky blond hair.

  “I’m Lusana,” she said. “What happened here?”

  “I’m not sure.” I took him on a roller coaster and probably killed him.

  “I need access to this side of the bed.” She rolled a metal cart over.

  Feeling the hot sting of tears, I turned away, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and stood at the window. Outside, shadows from the hospital stretched across the street. I didn’t wait for Jamie to say hello. “Didn’t you get my messages?” The nurse tucked the blanket around my dad’s feet.

  “She needs more liner on her bottom lip,” Jamie said into the background. “Not too shiny, people. Jensen”—her voice was softer now—“what happened, darling? I saw you called, but we were in the middle of the shoot with the Moscow girl, and I—”

  “Daddy passed out earlier. He’s in the hospital.”

  I heard her gasp, and a male voice in the background asked if she was okay. “Close the door,” she said to someone. The nurse pressed a few buttons on a monitor. “Is he okay?”

  I don’t fucking know. “I think so.”

  “My God, how did it happen?”

  Lusana left. I sat on the cracked couch and tucked my knees to my chin. “We were at Caller’s Island, riding the roller coaster, and—”

  “You what?
Jensen.” She said my name like she was trying to wipe off a stain.

  “The ride didn’t do it.” I couldn’t keep the defensiveness out of my voice. “And anyway, he’s been begging me to go for weeks.”

  “Piers,” she said, as if I weren’t on the line. “I have to go. Something’s happened to Sterling.” I could hear her calling to her photographer. “Alkalina can step down now. She was magnificent.”

  “Don’t bother coming tonight.” I glanced at the bed. “Daddy’s sleeping.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m coming.”

  “Don’t. It’ll be a hassle after visiting hours. Just come in the morning. Dale said it was his blood pressure, that it can happen during radiation.”

  “If you think—” But before she could finish, I said, “Can you bring his supplements and meds with you in the morning?”

  “Oh, honey.” She sounded strung out by the request. “There are so many. Do I bring all of them or—”

  “They’re dated and sorted in plastic bags in the pantry.” When I closed my eyes, my lids stung. “Just grab the bunch marked for this week.”

  “Oh, Jensen, what on earth would we do without you? Tell your father I love him.”

  After we hung up, an orderly rolled in a cot stacked with linens and pillows and told me Dr. Novak had said I was welcome to stay the night. I was glad I didn’t have to sleep on the couch, since it was about three feet too short. When he left, I lay on the cot, pulled the papery blanket to my shoulders, and studied my father. His breathing was even, the skin around his eyes relaxed, and the monitor lights seemed to be traveling in a calm trajectory. I thought of him at the kitchen table that morning, putting checks in the donation envelopes that came from various organizations asking for money. Jamie said he’d been giving away money like mad since the economy had gone downhill. But I wondered if, being close to death, you start to understand what is really important. It was quiet in there, and I felt suddenly drowsy from the sun and from worrying and from that long race to the hospital.

  I dreamed I was with Ryder on the baseball field, where we used to go to kiss on weekend nights. In the dream, we were in the dugouts. The bleachers were full of people, and we were trying to hide from them. I could feel Ryder’s lips; he was kissing my neck, trying to soothe me, but I was panicked someone would see us. I couldn’t get loose. I patted my thighs and realized I was missing my legs—they were just stumps. But when I opened my mouth to tell him to find them, nothing came out. I woke in semidarkness, and it took me a minute to understand I’d been asleep. The cold terror of the dream was still with me.

  The room was quiet except for the monitors. I could hear the soft rhythm of my father’s breathing. I thought of the first time I’d ever kissed Ryder. Late August, right before sophomore year, alone in the house, watching some Tom Hanks movie on HBO. Will had gone out with Eva Sibley, and my parents had driven to Yankee Stadium. When Ryder showed up, I was embarrassed that I was by myself on a Saturday night, but he seemed to know I was there alone and asked me to go for a drive. We’d headed up to Hamilton the back way, skirting town, not talking. Something was already screaming between us.

  A bootleg of the Phish show he’d been to the summer before was playing, and when we stopped at the baseball diamond “Swept Away” was on. He said he liked to go there at night, when no one was around. It was the first time I’d been out alone with him, and he talked about how much he wanted to be a pediatrician. He loved kids, and kids loved him.

  He was the only boy I knew who baby-sat, and I usually teased him about it, but while we walked out to the middle of the field, I felt that charge between us. It had been so intense that summer, I’d sometimes checked the mirror to see if I had visibly changed. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off me since school ended, tickling me in the kitchen, pretending to want the candy bar I was eating so he could grab my wrist, tackling me in the yard when we played football. His hot breath made my heart beat faster; his touch did something frightening to my pulse.

  He’d had a blanket in the trunk of his mom’s Peugeot. “Stargazing,” he’d said when he laid it out on the empty field. Back then, before Will died, I could actually see in the dark, could see every star clearly. He kicked off his shoes. I remembered the tan marks from where he’d worn flip-flops all season. The late summer honeysuckle was still blooming. The stars were out by the thousands, and even as we lay there on our backs and he said the constellations aloud, their names ringing with a kind of poetry, “Pegasus and Lynx, Sextans and Tucana,” I’d known it would happen, but when he lifted up on his elbow and I saw Ryder Anderson, the boy I’d known since I was nine years old, above me, felt his lips on mine, it was as though someone had shocked me. I couldn’t reckon myself with that wild girl who rose up inside, asking for more, wanting him. I felt drunk from the smell of clover and cut grass, his mouth and his hands. And then my shirt was off, and Ryder was on top of me, trying to catch his breath. When I told him I couldn’t, not then, not yet, he stopped, and for one ugly second, I worried that maybe he didn’t want me. But he kissed me gently on the lips and whispered that I was worth waiting for. “A hundred years,” he said.

  After that first kiss, I couldn’t stop replaying that night in my mind. I kept waiting for the phone to ring, couldn’t quit wondering how we could keep it a secret from everyone, most of all Will, who had made Ryder promise he’d never date me. “Never my sister, man. Anyone but her.” Even then I didn’t understand what Will’s problem was. His sister and his best friend should have made him happy. It’d always been the three of us. But maybe if Ryder and I were suddenly a couple, he’d feel left out.

  My dad was calling for me. I pushed off the scratchy blanket, slid off the cot, and sat next to him. “Hey, Dad.” In the thick glow from the lights outside, his skin was gray. I reached over to feel his forehead, but he batted my hand away.

  “Where’s the dog?” he asked irritably.

  “What dog?”

  “The goddamn dog.” He pushed himself up and slapped around the table until he found his glasses. “Help me off the couch and get me a flashlight.”

  Fuck. “Dad,” I said as evenly as I could. “You’re in the hospital.” I straightened his glasses. “Your blood pressure was too low.”

  “Take a look around.” He swung his legs to the floor. “Are there trophy cases in hospitals?” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “Now get me his leash.” I’d never heard him use that voice before.

  When I reached over to find the nurse’s call button, he swiped my hand away and grabbed a water bottle off the bedside table, ripping the IV out of his arm. He still had a running back’s physique, all muscle, no fat. “Dad!” But then he was flying across the room in that little johnny, and the door slammed shut behind him.

  Outside, I found him shuffling down the brightly lit hallway, aiming the water bottle like a flashlight. “Bailey,” he was yelling, frantically. “Bailey!”

  The nurses at the station were in action, and a doctor who looked about fifteen was calling out, “We need a restraint out here, stat.”

  “Bailey?” he kept calling.

  “We’ll find him in the morning.” I had finally gotten a hold of his hand, but he turned on me with a strange, almost violent expression. A sheet of fear sliced through me, and then he did something that in all my years of knowing my father, he had never done: He pushed me. I fell sideways, but when I tried to get my footing, I stumbled on a crash cart and smacked my head, hard, while I was going down. Tiny bursts of light exploded in my eyes.

  “Bailey!”

  When I got my vision back, I saw the young doctor leaning over me. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  I touched my forehead. It was warm and sticky. I pointed down the hall. “Can you just get my dad? He’s hallucinating.” My father was zigzagging toward the elevators, his johnny open, so the world could see his backside. Lusana was following him with a wheelchair, and two fat men in scrubs were trying to hold him.

  “Don’
t hurt him,” I called, but my voice was thin.

  “Calm down there, buddy. You’re all right.” One of them put his arms around him in a bear hug. Lusana pushed the wheelchair under him and, surprisingly, my dad went limp, slumping like an old man.

  I tried to stand, but my balance was all wrong and blood was running down the side of my face, so I sat against the cool concrete wall and watched them wheel him down the hall toward his room. The doctor opened the door, and they all went inside. I wanted to get up, but my legs were too sluggish. I closed my eyes and thought of that dream where my legs were stumps. Someone came on the intercom, and when I opened my eyes, another nurse was running past me into his room.

  After a while, the doctor came out with a cold, wet towel. “Put this on the laceration and press hard.” He smelled like rubbing alcohol.

  I took the towel. “I’m fine.” I closed my eyes, waiting for my stomach to settle. “What’s happening with my dad?” My head hurt when I pressed on it.

  “The nurses are with him, and his doctor will be along momentarily. You’re not fine.” My head throbbed with the pressure. “You’ll probably need sutures.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I felt like asking him if he was old enough to drive.

  After a few minutes, he managed to get me up and lead me to a small room with two couches and a kitchenette, where I lay on a vinyl love seat. “I’m in the middle of rounds, but as soon as I can, I’ll stitch your head. In the meantime, don’t get up.”

  I lay on the couch with my knees draped over the armrest and held the soaked cloth to my forehead. If I could just sleep, I thought the pain would subside, but it was so bright in that room; the lights hurt my eyes even when I closed them. Minutes later, the door squeaked open.

  “Jenny.” Ryder was standing over me with a surgical mask around his neck. He took the towel off my head, and his eyes searched the wound. “What the hell happened?”

  “Bar fight,” I said lamely. “You should see the other guy.” A clock on the microwave said it was just after one in the morning.