Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  “No,” I manage to whisper. “If she . . . if she dies, let her . . . don’t bring her back.”

  She pats my hand, approvingly. I’m a good girl again. I’ve complied. Inside, I’m screaming.

  No. Don’t let her die. Bring on all the tubes, all the machines, all the treatments. Whatever it takes. Don’t let her go away from me.

  Dr. Margoni pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. “Dr. York, the ER doc here this morning, says your father is dehydrated and exhausted. His blood sugars are way too high, and so is his blood pressure. I’d guess he was too distraught by your mother’s condition to eat or take his medicine. Dr. York would like to admit him. Is that a problem with you, Officer?”

  “Insufficient evidence to make an arrest,” Mendez says. He gives me a human smile, the kind that makes it hard to hate him, and leaves the room.

  A nurse bustles in, a guy this time. “So, we’re going to admit, then? Can I have your signature here?”

  He hands me a clipboard and a pen, talking all the while. I nod, numbly, staring at the papers he’s given me. All the words run together into a blur on the page, and I sign without any understanding of what it says.

  Dad’s eyes stay closed. For a fraction of an instant, I think he isn’t breathing, but then a low buzz, a snore, vibrates through his slack lips. The nurse puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes him, gently. “Mr. Addington. Walter.”

  Dad’s eyes fly open. “Where’s Leah?” He scrambles to sit up, arms and legs jerky and uncoordinated.

  “Take it easy, Walter,” the nurse says, pressing back on his shoulder.

  Dad’s eyes dart around the room and light on me. “Maisey. God. I have to find Leah.”

  “Easy,” I tell him. “We’ll find her in a minute.”

  He fumbles with the rails, trying to find the catch, but his hands are shaking, and his fingers are stiff. He rattles the railings and starts shouting. “Lower these goddamn rails and let me go.”

  Blood starts backing up the IV tube in his left arm. The contraption on his finger pops off. An alarm starts beeping.

  Dr. Margoni puts her hand over his clenched fist and looks directly into his wild eyes. “Walter, it’s Dr. Margoni. Leah is being taken care of. I promise.”

  “She’s dying. Oh God.” He gasps for breath. His right hand releases the railing and goes to his heart. His skin looks gray. “I can’t—she’s all I’ve got.”

  “Dad. Breathe. We’re not going to let her die. Okay? I don’t know what she made you promise, but I’m not going to let her die.”

  “I need to be with her,” he says. “Where is she? Leah? Leah!”

  “Daddy. Please. Lie back down.”

  The nurse pushes a button that sets off another alarm. I grab Dad’s left hand and try to pry it off the railing, wanting to hold it, wanting to salvage the IV, needing him to transition back from wild man to my calm and predictable father.

  A woman in scrubs runs in, followed by a man and another woman.

  “I’ll get the nitro,” one of them says.

  “Give him two milligrams of Ativan,” Dr. Margoni directs. “And let’s get him in restraints.”

  “On it!” One of the nurses bustles back out.

  “Walter. Mr. Addington. You need to calm down.”

  But Dad is beyond reason. He swings at Dr. Margoni, who just barely evades the blow. She wrestles Dad’s arm and starts wrapping it in a soft restraint that she ties to the bedrail.

  “Mr. Addington,” Dr. Margoni says again. “Listen to me.” Dad turns his head in her direction, and the nurse uses the distraction to pry his free hand from the bedrails and start wrapping it in the restraints.

  “You’ll hurt your heart. You need to calm down. Leah needs you to be calm, okay? She wants you to breathe and just wait here for her.”

  A nurse returns with a syringe and a plastic cup harboring three tiny little pills. She injects medication into his IV. Within minutes he stops fighting the restraints, his eyes drooping.

  “Open,” the nurse says, as if he’s a child. Dad opens his mouth, and she plants one tiny tablet under his tongue. “Nitroglycerin,” she explains to me. “For his heart.”

  Dad sighs. His eyelids drift closed.

  “Is he having a heart attack?” My hands are pressed over my own heart, feeling its pounding.

  Dr. Margoni smiles at me. “I don’t think so. He gets chest pain when his heart is stressed, like now. Nitro opens up the vessels.”

  I stare at the man tied to the bed, quiet now under the influence of the sedatives. If I hadn’t seen him take a swing at Dr. Margoni, I wouldn’t have believed him capable of it.

  The doctor seems to read my thoughts. “It’s amazing what even a small illness can do to the mental processes in an elderly adult. I suspect he’ll be much better tomorrow.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  Watching him like this is worse in some ways from what is going on with my mother.

  “You might take a look around to see if you can find an advance directive for either of your parents.”

  “Do I need an attorney?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea. For right now, though,” she says, “you and your daughter need to get some rest.”

  I’m about to object. I need to check on Mom. And there’s no way I can leave Dad like this, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. But then I look at Elle, who has retreated into the visitor’s chair, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms wrapped around them. Tears pour silently down both cheeks.

  Shit.

  I am in over my head. This is an understatement. I am miles below the surface, in the deepest, darkest canyon of the ocean floor, and I’m not in some special little diver bell contraption, either.

  The EKG nurse has the wires all hooked up, and a reassuring, steady beeping fills the room.

  Dad has already passed out cold. Whatever was in that syringe, I want some. Only, of course, I have to go on being responsible and get Elle to bed and, horror of horrors, call on Greg for legal advice.

  Chapter Seven

  As it turns out, I don’t need to call Greg. Two minutes into the drive home from the hospital, he calls me.

  “What’s going on?” he demands—barks, really, like a drill sergeant with a whole new batch of green recruits.

  “Hello to you, too.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  “I’m not asking you to be glued to the phone. I’m asking that you let me know that you—and my daughter—arrived safely. That your plane landed, that you made the drive okay, whether everybody is still alive. It’s noon already, and I assume your plane landed at midnight. I’ve been worried sick.”

  Now I feel guilty, on top of everything else, and that makes me stabby. His voice is loud enough that I know Elle can hear him. I hate fighting in front of her.

  “Elle is fine. If you were so worried, why didn’t you call her cell phone?”

  “I did. Straight to voicemail.”

  “I turned it off,” Elle says in a small voice. “In the hospital. Like the sign said.”

  “Here.” I hand her the phone. “You tell him.”

  Washington State has laws about driving and talking. Besides, I’m exhausted and distracted, and there are deer in Colville. There are also a lot of intersections without so much as a yield sign. It would be fantastic if Elle and I crashed and ended up in the hospital. Maybe we could have a group room for the whole family.

  “You should cut Mom some slack.” Elle is lecturing her father. “What with the fire, and the police, and both Grandma and Grandpa in the hospital—I’m not sure, it got sort of complicated—okay, here she is.”

  She holds out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

  The explanation is unnecessary. I can hear him shouting without putting that phone anywhere close to my ear. “Let me talk to your mother.”

  I can totally understand why he’s throwing a fit. At the same time, I don�
�t want to cope with him right now. As if it’s operating independently of my oversight, my thumb gets decisive all on its own and presses the disconnect button.

  Silence invades the car. My hand drops to my side, still white-knuckled around the phone.

  “You hung up on Dad.”

  “I’m driving.”

  “I still can’t believe you did that.”

  I can’t believe it, either. I don’t think I’ve ever hung up on anybody in my life. Greg will not take this well.

  Elle starts to giggle.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

  For some unknown and incomprehensible reason, my words add fuel to her hilarity. The giggle grows into trills of delicious laughter. She used to laugh like this when she was a baby, a sound of pure, astonished delight, untroubled by thoughts of who might be listening or whether the stimulus was worth the response.

  It’s contagious.

  When Elle’s phone rings, we’re both laughing so hard the tears are pouring down our cheeks.

  “It’s Dad,” she says, looking at the caller ID. A snorting noise comes out of her nose, like a pig, and that sets her off again.

  I picture Greg’s sternest courtroom face, the one he uses to admonish the jury. This elicits a snort from me, which sets Elle off again, just as she’s composed enough to say hello. I can hear the voice of frustration on the other end.

  “Hello? Elle! Hello? Let me speak to your mother.”

  Elle straightens her face to serious. She takes a breath and busts out laughing again.

  “I can’t.” She holds the phone out to me.

  I’m not sure I can, either, but years of following Greg’s directions sobers me enough to pull the car over to the side of the street and answer. My hello is breathless and a little strangled. Greg is not amused.

  “What the hell is so freaking funny?”

  Elle presses both hands over her nose and mouth to stifle her laughter, staring at me with wide eyes and raised brows. I shift my body away from her to look out the window and take a breath.

  “Damn it, Maisey. Explain.”

  “Nothing is funny. Not a single thing. Either that or everything is funny—the whole great, wide, absurd universe. At the moment, we are unsure.”

  “Maisey.”

  “It’s a laughter experiment? Therapy. One of my counselors was into it.”

  He’s breathing heavily through his nose. I recognize the sound. I’ve heard it in the courtroom. I’ve heard it in the bedroom. It’s the sound of a fight brewing. I know the words that are going to come out of his mouth next, and I say them for him. “I’m serious, Maisey. This is serious. When are you going to grow up?”

  And now I’ve gone too far. The silence on the other end of the line is deafening. Elle has stopped laughing.

  “You are going to put Elle on a plane—”

  “Listen, Greg. She’s fine. I’m sorry. I need some legal advice.”

  More silence. A heavy sigh. “What have you gone and done?”

  “Me? Nothing. It’s Dad.”

  “Walter? How could Walter be in legal trouble?”

  I ignore the fact that Greg has no problem at all believing I’ve stepped into trouble with the law and explain all about the criminal negligence charge, Mom’s broken bones, and Dad’s confused behavior. I refuse to use the word dementia, although it’s taken up prime real estate in my brain. It squats there, an ugly blot of a word, spelled out in capital letters, in Gothic font, dark and threatening.

  The legal problem distracts Greg from my irresponsible behavior, and his tone shifts to a dispassionate, intellectual consideration, as if I’m a client and not his crazy baby mama. “I’d suggest that you get a psych eval done ASAP.”

  “I’m fine. Really. Just a little tension-breaking laughter—”

  “On your father, Maisey. Focus.”

  “But he’s not rational at all right now, Greg. Fighting restraints, trying to climb over the rails of a stretcher—”

  “That’s the point, Maisey. We want him to be confused.”

  “We do?”

  “If you can prove he didn’t have the capacity to know right from wrong, that would be helpful. Also, if your mom really did fill out an advance directive, then we can argue that he was just following her wishes. Maybe it was ill-advised to keep her at home for so long, but if he was confused and unable to make decisions, then they can’t convict him of anything. See if you can get a dementia diagnosis.”

  I want to smack my forehead with the phone. Greg has unleashed the monster by speaking its name out loud.

  “Maisey?”

  My throat feels too tight to squeeze words through, but I manage, although I sound squeaky. “I’m here.”

  “Action plan. I’ll make it simple enough for even you to follow. Although maybe you should write this down.”

  “Okay. Writing.”

  In reality, I’m not writing anything.

  Greg’s reminder that I’m incapable of focused, goal-directed activity has triggered my obstinate streak, and in this moment I’m not about to do anything he tells me.

  “Are you ready?” he asks. “Do you even have a pen?”

  “Just give me the fucking plan, Greg. I’m not completely stupid.”

  “I hope you are not swearing in front of our daughter. First, find the advance directive if there is one. Second, find a psychologist to do psych testing.”

  “The mental health guy did a mini mental status exam on him already.”

  Greg sighs, his superior, do-I-really-have-to-explain-this sigh. “A mini mental status test isn’t going to be sufficient to prove that he’s not competent. You need a battery of tests. Administered by a psychologist. You got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “Write it down. Psychologist, not psychiatrist. There’s a difference. Third, call me the minute cops start talking to either you or Walter. The very minute. Okay? No more free interviews. I’d think you’d know better than that by now.”

  His scolding showers over me in a familiar pitter-patter. I don’t need to hear the individual words. I know the message, which generally boils down to “all the ways Maisey has screwed up again.” I set the phone in my lap and pull back out onto the street, waiting for the change of intonation that signals he’s moved on.

  “Maisey? Maisey! Let me talk to Elle.”

  I pass the phone over. Elle talks for a few minutes. “Dad says to tell you to remember to charge your cell phone,” she says when she hangs up.

  Words that I resent all the more because he’s right. This is a thing I would never have remembered.

  My parents’ house is a much bigger problem than I am prepared to deal with.

  It’s empty, for starters. Not the sort of emptiness you get when people are gone for a couple of hours on a trip to town. It’s the same echoing emptiness I felt sitting beside my mother’s bed and realizing that whatever it is that makes her my mother is missing. Every noise we make, from turning the key in the lock to wiping our feet on the doormat and obediently removing our shoes in response to the little wooden sign that says Shoes that remain by the door will be blessed, seems like an intrusion.

  In case the desire for blessing might be missing in some rogue human breast, there’s a picture of a tiny black demon with a pitchfork eyeing the tempting buttocks of a cartoon man who is walking into a house with shoes still on his feet.

  If the curse exists, my friendly fireman and a whole slew of ambulance and legal personnel are in for some pitchfork jabs. The new carpet that Mom is so proud of is trampled with muddy footprints and ashes. I stick my head into the kitchen with some thought of finding Elle something to eat and draw it right back, like a startled turtle. More footprints. A dried pool of blood by the island. A buzz of flies, busy with a frying pan on the stove. The stink of something rotten.

  “Not hungry,” Elle says from behind me.

  My stomach squeezes in on itself, pushing a wave of nausea up my throat, and I back away, breathing thro
ugh my mouth.

  “You didn’t eat breakfast,” I tell her. It comes out as “You diddun ead breagfasd,” and she does that snort-laugh thing, and again we’re giggling, only this time even through the insane laughter, I can feel a noose tightening around my throat.

  “Too tired to eat,” she says. “Also, ewww. What was in that frying pan, besides flies?”

  I don’t want to know. But I know damn well I’m the one who is going to have to clean it up. First, I tuck Elle into bed. My old bed. It doesn’t look like my room anymore, and I’m glad of that. Mom has repurposed it. Impersonal modern computer desk. Ergonomic chair. A couch/daybed that might have come from Ikea. In the closet I find blankets and a pillow, and Elle snuggles down and is well on her way to sleep before I make it out of the room.

  With Elle off to dreamland, the next thing on my agenda is to look for Mom’s advance directive, a document that is beginning to seem as mythical as the holy grail. Still, I make my way to Dad’s study, which is mercifully neat and orderly, all as it should be. I sit down in his chair, gathering warmth and strength from my memories of his steady, gentle presence.

  A large planning calendar sits in the middle of his solid wood desk, the squares filled with notes made in his precise, tiny handwriting. The Dad Font, I’ve always called it. A notation for next week catches my attention: Dr. M./POLST.

  All the warmth flies away. If Mom was planning a POLST, like Dr. Margoni said, then it’s probable that there really is an advance directive somewhere.

  If I were my mother, where would I keep such a thing?

  The most logical spot is the four-drawer cabinet that has stood behind locked closet doors in this room for as long as I can remember. Dad takes his clients’ confidentiality seriously.

  Finding the keys is too easy. The inside of the middle desk drawer is like an advertisement for one of those little plastic organizer trays. Everything is neatly stowed. It’s the complete opposite of my desk, in which items are piled so high you can’t even see the plastic organizer.

  But when I go to open the closet door, it is already unlocked. Behind it, file folders and papers are strewn helter-skelter all over the floor. The top drawer of the cabinet is open. Even the picture of Jesus and the little children that hangs in front of the safe is on the floor, and the safe door is also hanging open.