Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  “What’s going on? What happened to my mother?”

  “She’s alive,” he says, but his tone doesn’t offer much hope that she’s going to stay that way. “The neighbor—Edna Carlton—called, after your father refused to let her speak with your mother. She states that she got worried when she didn’t see anybody enter or leave the house for the last three days. She states that your father appeared edgy and was unshaven and confused, which is not normal for him. There was dried blood on his shirt—”

  “That’s ridiculous. Edna Carlton is a busybody. Are you sure she’s not embellishing facts?”

  My father has never missed a shower or a shave in his entire life, or at least not for as long as I’ve known him. Partly because he’s neat and particular and partly because my mother would never permit it.

  My mother. Rushed off in an ambulance.

  Mendez and I suck in simultaneous deep breaths.

  “Your father presents as described. He neglected to lock the door. Mrs. Carlton, worried about your mother, entered the home when he did not respond to her knocks. She found your mother in bed, unconscious. She then called 911. Your mother is severely dehydrated. She has suffered a blow to the back of the head. There is blood on the kitchen floor.”

  I put my free hand on the counter behind me for balance.

  “Mom?” Elle asks. “What’s wrong?”

  I turn my back to the fear on her face, leaning my forehead against the kitchen cupboards, and make one last Hail Mary for denial. “She’s fine, right? Nothing a little IV fluid won’t fix?”

  “Is there somebody with you, Maisey? Maybe you should sit down.”

  I hate this voice, with its accented vowels and competent professional sympathy. I don’t want to hear anything he has to tell me, no matter what words he uses to say it.

  “I’m not alone. I don’t need to sit.”

  He clears his throat, and I press my forehead harder against the cabinet, feeling the edge press a line into my skin, focusing on the pain. Elle comes up behind me and takes my hand, the trembling that runs through my muscles transferring to hers, and I visualize this Officer Mendez person frozen into a block of carbonite, like Han Solo in Star Wars. But I am not Darth Vader or Jabba the Hutt or even an incompetent young Padawan. I lack even a glimmer of power, and Mendez keeps talking.

  “She’s in a coma,” he tells me. “Most likely from the blow to the back of her head. Your father is looking at domestic violence charges, along with criminal negligence and possibly others.”

  My breathing shifts from autopilot to a difficult obligation.

  “Mom?” Elle asks, tugging at me. She sounds younger, no longer her bossy self. I squeeze her hand, a reminder that I haven’t suddenly shifted into some alternate reality.

  “Listen, Officer. My father does a capture-and-release program for spiders and stinkbugs and mice that get lost in the cupboard. He would never hurt her. Maybe she fell. Or had a stroke or something.”

  “That will be for the judge—”

  “You said there was blood in the kitchen. Maybe she slipped. Hit her head on the counter. Did you ask him?”

  “We asked. That’s what he said, that she fell. He reported that after she fell, he did not call 911 because, I quote, ‘She wanted to die.’ He states that he then dragged her into the bedroom and up onto the bed.”

  “If that’s what he said, that’s what happened.”

  But none of this can be right. Elle lets go of my hand, and I feel myself on the edge of a long free fall.

  “Those are the charges we’re looking at,” Mendez says. “Domestic violence. Criminal negligence. He didn’t call for an ambulance. Three days, if your neighbor is right.”

  “Edna Carlton is old, in case you didn’t notice. Maybe she’s just confused—”

  “The blood in the kitchen is dry, as is the blood on your father’s shirt. There are flies. Nobody has picked up the paper from the porch for three days.”

  Elle shoves a chair into the back of my knees. I collapse into it.

  “To your knowledge, has he ever hit her?”

  “No. God, no. I told you—”

  “What about you, ma’am. Has he ever hit you?”

  The absurdity of my father hitting anybody, ever, sends my mind on a scavenger hunt through my childhood, seeking out instances. I meet my mother’s hand repeatedly—a smack on the butt, a tap on the cheek—but my father’s hands are always gentle.

  “Maisey?” The cop yanks me back to this moment.

  “No,” I say. “Never.”

  “Is your father . . . unbalanced . . . in any way?”

  “My father is the kindest, most gentle soul on the face of the planet, and I can’t believe you are even—”

  “What about dementia?”

  “What?”

  “Dementia. Alzheimer’s. Has he been having difficulty with memory? Sometimes there are mood swings, dramatic changes in personality—”

  “No. He does not have dementia. There are no mood swings. She fell. That’s the most direct—”

  “And he didn’t call an ambulance. Was there an advance directive, do you know? He claims these were her wishes, to not go to the hospital.”

  “No, I don’t know. If she made a directive, she never told me.”

  “And you’re sure he isn’t suffering from dementia?” Mendez persists.

  “No! No, he’s fine. We talked last week. He was perfectly lucid.”

  “Sometimes people with Alzheimer’s can hold it together for a while, at least for short stretches of time. When was the last time you were here, to observe him over an extended time period?”

  The words pull out the lynchpin of a towering pile of accumulated guilt that crashes around me and buries me to the ears. How would I know? I haven’t visited home in three years. I talk to my parents every week, but the calls are brief and superficial. If my father’s been slipping, I didn’t notice, but then I’ve not discussed anything more difficult than the weather and the Seahawks with him. As for my mother, she’d never submit to something so demeaning as Alzheimer’s, or allow anybody she loved to suffer from it.

  “You are the only immediate family member we have been able to locate. Is there another relative closer? You are in Kansas City, is that right?”

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m in Kansas City. No, I have no siblings and Mom has no living relatives. Dad’s only sister died over a year ago.”

  “So you don’t know of any terminal illness or advanced planning? Would she want to be on life support, if that’s required?”

  “No. I don’t know. She might not have told me.”

  An image flashes through my head: my mother lying senseless and helpless, stuck full of tubes like a semi-animate pincushion, my gentle father, suddenly red-eyed and hunchbacked, leaning over her with a bloody knife.

  “I’ll be on the next plane.”

  “Perfect. Please call the hospital. I can give you the number. Do you have something to write with?”

  I can’t be this person. I can’t make decisions between wheat, rye, and sourdough. How the hell am I going to sort out what to do with my parents?

  “Do you have a pen? Are you ready?” Officer Mendez is persistent.

  “Elle, get a pen.”

  She’s back in a heartbeat, writing down the numbers I repeat to her. Mendez hangs up.

  My world takes on an air of unreality. This is someone else’s smoke-filled kitchen. The tile pattern on the floor sucks me in to a geometric tangle of blue and tan and a bile-colored, putrid green. There are scratches bitten in to it by the legs of chairs.

  “Who puts tile like that on a floor?” I ask. “It’s beyond hideous.”

  “Mom.” Elle’s voice, taut with anxiety and frustration, draws my eyes. Now that I’m sitting, she’s taller than me. It’s wrong to be looking up at her like this; it changes the angles of her face, makes her look older.

  If I say any of the words out loud, it’s going to make what Mendez told me true. Just a
few more minutes is all I want, a little more time to sit here in a comfy cocoon of denial, but Elle won’t give me that. So I tell her. Not all of it. Just part of it, the part I can manage to get my mind around.

  “Grandma’s in the hospital. It’s serious. I need to go and help Grandpa.”

  This is the reframe of the century, and Elle is too smart to buy my story. “You were talking to the police.”

  “Grandpa’s a little . . . confused. They want to put him in the psychiatric ward. Or maybe jail.”

  Irrational laughter bubbles up at the image of Dad in jail. I doubt very much that my father has ever incurred so much as a parking ticket.

  “You’re scaring me,” Elle says.

  Her voice sounds far away, but these words are the key to whatever strength lies at the core of me. I am the parent. I am the responsible one.

  “I’m sorry. Don’t be scared.” I put my arms around her and rest my head against her chest. She grounds me, and I manage to get the deep breaths going, and with them my brain starts to function again in fits and starts of coherence, punctuated by long oceans of drifting memories and daydreamed fears.

  “I need to book a flight. You’ll have to stay with your dad—”

  “No way.”

  “Elle.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “You are not. You have school.”

  She shrugs that off. “I can make up a week of work in, like, a day. You know I can. I’m coming.”

  “What about English?”

  “I’ll write Mrs. Wilson her stupid vacation thing and send it to her. Come on, Mom. It’s not like she’s going to fail me.”

  When Elle thinks she’s right, she’s as unshiftable as a block of granite, and I can tell by the particular firmness at the corners of her lips that this is one of those times.

  “Look, sweetheart, I’m going to be busy.”

  “Right. You’ll need help.” She’s no longer looking at me, her fingers tapping away at her phone. “We fly into Spokane, right? Wow. We could still catch an eight o’clock that would get us there by midnight. How long is the drive into Colville, again?”

  “Elle.”

  “Do you want to get a hotel or drive up that night? You’re gonna be awfully tired, although you can sleep on the plane.”

  “Elle. You can’t go.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  Because. That’s the best answer I’ve got, and it’s not an answer that has ever worked on this child. I have no logic-based reason to tell her no. She’s right about school. She can pull off straight As without any effort when she sets her mind to it. Even Mrs. Wilson, for all her unhappiness about Elle not following directions, won’t fail her.

  As for taking care of Elle, the reality is she’s more likely to take care of me.

  I don’t want to go through the heartbreak ahead. I don’t want Elle to go through it. So I offer her the only thing I’ve ever been able to offer her: the truth.

  “I want you to remember your grandparents the way you know them now. Grandma’s . . .” I choke on the words, take a breath, try again. “Grandma’s had a very serious accident. She’s in a coma. And Grandpa is apparently not himself, maybe getting senile. I don’t want you to see them that way.”

  Elle fixes me with what I call her old-soul look, an expression that encompasses compassion for me and wisdom far beyond what any sheltered child should have gathered in a short life.

  “I want to say good-bye,” she says. “I don’t care if it hurts.”

  This, as she knows, I can’t deny her, and she goes back to her search. “So you should grab these flights, quick. And book a hotel if you want one. We can rent a car at the airport and talk to my teachers tomorrow.”

  I cave. Leaving her with her father would be the right thing to do, maybe, but I want her with me. “We need to pack,” I tell her.

  “I’ll pack. Good thing yesterday was laundry day.”

  “Good thing. You know what else is a good thing?”

  She looks back at me over her shoulder, already halfway out of the room to complete her part of the mission. “What?”

  “You, Elle. You are the best thing, ever.”

  Chapter Three

  In the fifteen years he’s worked as a fireman and a paramedic, Tony has seen strange things, sad things, and outright disturbing things. He’s witnessed deaths accidental and purposeful, traumatic and peaceful. He’s played a part in so many dramas of tragedy and salvation that sometimes he thinks he’s seen everything, but then a case unexpectedly gets under his skin.

  Like this one.

  An old man, so frail in appearance that a tiny puff of wind might blow him over, sits on the bed beside a comatose woman, holding her hand. She lies motionless, pale as death, the only sign of life the painful rasping of her breath.

  On the dresser, a series of photographs shows them younger, animated. There are photos of the two of them, arms around each other, her head leaning on his shoulder. There are school portraits documenting the growth of a young girl into a woman and pictures of her together with her parents.

  Tony recognizes the daughter, but it takes a minute to bring back her name. Maisey. That’s it. He hadn’t known her well, but that cloud of red-gold curls is unforgettable. She’d been a year ahead of him in high school and moved in different circles. All AP classes and smart kids for her, while he had been relegated to basic and shop and didn’t really hang out with anybody.

  Not that he wasn’t plenty bright himself, only there were a couple of dark years in middle school where he didn’t care—about school or anything else—and he had to repeat seventh grade. It put him behind both academically and socially, and he’d always felt like he was scrabbling to dig out of a hole.

  He’d envied Maisey a little. Had thought her life must be easier than his.

  But appearances, as Tony knows all too well, can be deceiving.

  In this case, the shrill-voiced neighbor tells a tale very different from that of the happy family photos: one of late-night arguments and a disruption of routine. Three days, she says, since the woman, Leah Addington, has left the house.

  The blood on the kitchen floor, black and tacky, and the flies buzzing around the remains of something unrecognizable in a frying pan on the stove corroborate her insinuations.

  The blood in the kitchen triggers inevitable flashes of memory, and Tony braces himself, knowing they will pass, as they always do.

  His mother on her knees, a bruise darkening on her cheek.

  His father’s hand raised. His voice shouting curses and insults.

  The sound of blows, of weeping.

  Cara’s voice brings him back to the moment. “Sir,” she is saying to the man. “Sir! We’re here to treat your wife.”

  The old man blinks at the intrusion of strangers into his private world.

  “Who are you?”

  It ought to be pretty obvious, given their uniforms and the stretcher, but the old guy doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders.

  “Ambulance,” Tony explains. “Your neighbor called 911. I understand your wife is ill.”

  The old man’s face remains blank, uncomprehending. He blinks again, then turns away and pats the woman’s hand.

  “It’s all right, Leah,” he murmurs. “I won’t let them take you.”

  Cara, ten years younger than Tony and new to the job, raises her eyebrows in a question and looks to him for guidance. Tony draws a deep breath and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The room stinks. A laundry hamper by the bed is filled with soiled towels. A trash can overflows with incontinence pads.

  “It’s all right,” the old man says again. He runs his free hand through his hair and then over his eyes. “She’s dying. Here. This is where she wants to die.” His words are slow, heavy.

  “How long has she been ill?” Tony asks, circling around to the far side of the bed.

  The old man follows him with his eyes, lips moving soundlessly, as if counting. “I don’t know,” he whisper
s. “I’ve lost the count. Leah, how many days?”

  The woman in the bed is clearly not going to answer. Her rasping breath pauses for a moment, as if she’s listening, waiting, and Tony’s adrenaline flares, ready to start the resuscitation protocol. But then she sighs and begins again, each breath labored and difficult.

  “Sir,” Tony says, “is there an advance directive somewhere? Did she write up her wishes of what she wanted?”

  The old man’s face clears. For the first time, his eyes focus. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. How could I forget a thing like that? She made it. We both signed it.”

  Relief flows through Tony, warm as sunshine. Maybe this woman wasn’t shoved or hit or neglected. Maybe she has cancer or some other incurable disease. If she has written up her end-of-life wishes, then this lost old man is exactly what he seems, the loving guardian of his wife’s last hours.

  The relief fades as rapidly as it came.

  “I don’t know where she put it,” the old man mutters. “She told me. I don’t remember. I looked and looked . . .”

  “I’ll check the fridge,” Cara says, and vanishes down the hall. The refrigerator is a common place for people to leave medical information—advance directives, last wishes, contact numbers. Tony already checked it with his peripheral vision on their way past: fridge magnets, photos. Nothing that looked like an advance directive.

  But Cara is right to have a more thorough look. Tony’s grateful—the last thing he wants to do is spend more time in that kitchen.

  A siren wails in the distance, coming closer. That will be the cops, and he’s grateful for that, too.

  As long as he lives, he will never shake the memory of the time he helped resuscitate a woman only to discover later that she was a hospice patient, dying of terminal cancer. If an advance directive can’t be found for Leah, the cops can be the ones to make the call about whether to take her into protective custody for treatment or not.

  “I looked.” The old man’s voice rises in frustration. “I looked in all the places. Nothing.”

  “Is there someone we could call? Your daughter, maybe? Maisey, right?”

  Reaching out, slowly, so as not to agitate the old man, Tony rests his hand on the woman’s forehead. Her skin is dry and hot with fever.