The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  The trouble happened when it got to be more than a few a day, as is usually the case. He sweet-talked family and friends into giving him cigarettes, and he bummed them at parties and from visitors. He even got a cigarette off a passerby in the parking lot when I left him in the car to run into Walgreens. He was worse than a kid who couldn’t stay out of the cookie jar. And the worst was that I went along with it. We all did. I was a wimp for not putting my foot down. I assuaged my guilt daily when I gave him a lecture along with his ration of up to three cigarettes.

  But it caught up with him. Finally, I reached the point of declaring that there would be no more rationing of cigarettes, and no more smoking. Period. Dad came down with a full-blown respiratory infection, which he apparently got from Little Sunshine, and then he made himself worse with the smoking. He needed to go to the emergency room, and just before we were ready to leave, I found him plopped in a chair wearing his hat and coat, his cane ready, and he was lighting a cigarette. The wheezing and the puffing all at once were alarming. This infection definitely was bringing about the end of his smoking career, and I was glad of it.

  I picked up the squishy pack of Marlboro Lights and waved them at him. “That is your last one,” I said.

  He ignored me, because obviously he was enjoying his last cigarette, despite the fact he coughed between puffs. I was pretty sure he didn’t believe me anyway, that I would take away his cigarettes. He really had learned to live in the moment, and he enjoyed those moments. But I was exasperated with the dumb smoking. I’d quit, but I’d let him have his ration. Now, it seemed, it would be the death of him. I got lax with Marilyn around. And Tick, Tick was smoking, and it didn’t matter what lengths I took to dissuade him from it. He smoked, and he was in cahoots with his grandfather when I wasn’t looking. It was an awful, vicious curse.

  Dad puffed his way to the end, and then he tried to get me to relent. I was adamant “No, that was it—your last cigarette.”

  “What do you mean? I practically gave you your first cigarette. And now you’re going to take them away from your own father?”

  “For God sakes, Dad. Whatever are you talking about? You NEVER gave me a cigarette.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  He never gave me cigarettes. Beginning at age twelve, I stole them from the drawer in his nightstand. My siblings and I went through a fancy charade for years to disguise the fact that we were all smoking Mom and Dad’s cigarettes, as well as buying Kents at the drugstore after school for twenty-five cents a pack. We chewed gum, aired out the house, and drove the car with all the windows open, even on the worst winter days. When I developed a terrible hacking cough at sixteen, and my mother took me to get a chest x-ray, she couldn’t wait to announce the results: “Your lungs are black as tar.”

  But short of tying us up in our rooms, we kept smoking, all of us. It was years and years before I quit.

  “You should understand how I need them,” Dad said. “It’s in my life blood. I’ll probably die of nicotine withdrawal.”

  “No, it’s the other way around. You’re going to die with it. The smoking is killing you faster than anything else you have,” I said. “Just listen to yourself. Look in the mirror.”

  His breathing was wispy and labored and his face was pasty. But he was resolute, all the way to the emergency room. Under that slouchy hat, his lips were pursed tightly. It gave me all the more resolve. He wanted to take a pack of cigarettes with him to the hospital, and he grabbed my purse where I’d stashed the last of the Marlboros.

  “They don’t treat a condemned man so badly. Have a little class (wheeze). Let a man down easy. Just one more; come on (wheeze).”

  I threw my purse in the back seat and hoped he didn’t lunge for it as I pulled into the drive of the hospital. He didn’t. He sat still and pouted. The front of his jacket was dotted with holes from cigarette sparks. I was glad he wouldn’t ever be so close to lighting himself on fire again.

  He made one last wheedling plea as he got out of the car and into a wheelchair at the emergency room door. He quieted down while we waited for the doctor, and waited, and then finally, when the doctor was standing in front of him with a clipboard, about to listen to his chest and admit him with an acute respiratory infection, Dad said, “Mind if I take a break, doctor? I’d like to just step outside with my daughter.” He had a wistful look in his eyes.

  “Oh, Dad, that’ll be fine. I’m sure you can speak freely in front of the doctor.”

  The doctor looked from me to Dad, and his eyebrows went up. He appeared to be confused, but I wasn’t. Dad wanted a cigarette, and I wasn’t having it. I didn’t want to embarrass Dad, but I was close to getting there. I shook my head and put two fingers to my lips, like I was smoking. The doctor chuckled.

  “If you don’t let me step outside there—just there,” Dad said, waving in the direction of the exit. “Just to have one. If you don’t, I might have another stroke from nicotine withdrawal.”

  “That’s not likely,” said the doctor. “Be glad you quit.”

  “But I haven’t quit,” he said.

  “Yes, you have.” We said it together.

  Dad slept in the hospital bed. Two pillows and an inclining bed propped him up, and he continued to saw logs heartily with his mouth open. I knew he’d wake up and say he hadn’t slept at all. Most of his sleep was deep, short, and fitful, so most of the time, he woke up short of feeling well rested. But at least he slept some. I stood watching him, his breathing regular, coming in soft whiffs. He turned his large, white head on the pillow, and slept on. I sat down and peered up at the soap opera on the suspended television high up in a corner of the room. No one was watching the characters act out their problems with orange and green faces. It was a peculiar picture, and the actors appeared to need hospital care.

  Dad’s roommate, George, stared at the wall. I hadn’t seen him utter a word in two days, but then he blinked and moved his head to indicate that he was alive. The day before, Dad said, “I’m bound and determined to keep George going, keep the poor man alive with some cheering up.” Poor George needed it in good measure. He looked to be on his last legs, but Dad continued to push. “Man needs a boost,” Dad said, in an Irish whisper the nurses could hear down the hall.

  But Dad made little impression on George, who seemed unresponsive to any kind of encouragement. I asked Dad why he kept trying to turn George around. “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” Dad said. But, still, I hadn’t heard a word from George’s shrunken mouth, his yellow-gray skin frightening. The top of his speckled head had only a tuft of hair left on it, and that little bit came to a point. He looked less like a man and more like an infant without the cherubic fat and cheer.

  I wondered if I could do anything for him, or if it mattered. He began to rock forward like he was going after something, then he sank back on the pillow. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but it looked like a general breakdown of everything. His arms were sticks and he hardly breathed at all.

  Everything appeared to be wrong with George, but mostly he looked like he was “crumbling,” which is how Dr. Gibson, one of Dad’s doctor, often described the aging process. The doctor himself was far from that predicament at age forty or so. He was a jolly, young, a vital sort of doctor who loved to talk about gardening, and when he entered the hospital room he seemed to bounce from bed to bed like a huge white beach ball. He took me aside at one point and said Dad was stable, but frankly, “You know he’s declining. Some old people just go out with a heart attack or stroke. Sometimes it’s more merciful that way. And others just crumble away.” He loved to use that word, crumble, which made me think of old cookies, the Coliseum, and winter streets. But it didn’t remind me of Dad.

  Dad wasn’t crumbling, exactly. He lumbered and lolled like a doomed and quaking building. He seemed fine one day, and the next day he was a mess. My brother said Dad’s stuck blood was causing his life force to actually dry up in his veins. It was another sad image to consider. Da
d moved slowly with painful deliberation and maddening hesitation. Sometimes his brain electricity dribbled down to a trickle, or he would stop in mid-sentence and tune out altogether.

  His leg hurt constantly because he had to take a rest from the Prednisone. So, the doctor gave him a super-duper painkiller. Dad threw it up immediately. They tried more “miracle” drugs, but none of them worked, either, so we stopped before we got on that same insane merry-go-round of medication that did nothing. My father was immune, or at the very least, not in tune, with most of the medication. He was compelled to put an unexpected spin on everything, even on crumbling.

  Dad got off the hospital bed to go to the bathroom, complaining that the trip was a waste of time because he was sure nothing would come out, and in the methodical way he went about it, transferring from walker to cane, moving tortuously slowly, he finally got the job done, in about thirty minutes. I offered to help, only to get a booming response, because he was intent on doing his business at his own pace. And I could see he was babying The Leg. “NOOOO,” he said. “I’ve got all day.”

  He made it back into bed and settled into the pillow, his feet touching the cold metal bars of the bed frame. It was no use trying to move him without calling the nurse. He was exhausted from the effort of going to the bathroom. I covered him up as best I could. He fell asleep, then woke up with a start, mumbled, then he shook and cried, sputtered and exploded a response to the orange reporter on CNN.

  I felt useless, but at last Dad seemed comfortable. He dozed in the bed, and every once in a while I looked over at George, alternately perched upright or flat on his back, but still staring at the wall. His hospital gown covered his front, and a sheet lay over his skinny knees. George’s eyes opened and closed slowly, while he remained taut and ossified as an old bone.

  I decided to speak to him. “George, do you need anything? Do you want me to call the nurse?”

  He just turned his head that teetered on a stick of a neck. He looked at me through round, blackened eyes like twin peepholes to the grave.

  I adjusted the obnoxious fluorescent light overhead that made everything and everybody look even more ghastly than they were, except for the orange-tinted reporters on the television, who were beyond help. “That better, George?”

  Why would he care? I was not reaching George. Nothing came from his lips.

  This is pathetic. Just shoot me when I get like this. Just shoot me.

  Really, Dad and George didn’t seem to care whether I was there or not. A nurse came in with red Jello and beige cookies on a tray. I busied myself arranging the goodies for the two men, but one slept on and one went back to staring at the wall.

  What were they thinking, waking up in fits, half sleeping through the rest of life? I looked up at Bill Clinton explaining away the machinations of some problem he’d gotten himself into, and all of a sudden Dad sprang awake.

  “It seems when that guy gets into trouble, he goes across the ocean instead of across the street.”

  “What’s that, Dad?” What could he be talking about now? I wondered.

  “Bill—Bill and that nice Tony Blair. Clinton went to London. Now Tony’s in Washington, isn’t he? He and the president are great friends,” Dad said. “We should have them over for dinner.”

  “And Hillary and Monica and Gennifer Flowers?”

  “No. Who cares about flowers. Let’s have tenderloin and shrimp cocktail, and some of those nice tasty eatin’ things.”

  A “tasty eatin’ thing” was an apple pie from Burger King, which for Dad was the main reason to eat lunch or dinner.

  Dad turned to check on his roommate. “George, how you doin’ over there?”

  “Who dat? Oh, Mike, how you?”

  “Fine, fine. This is my daughter, George. Did you meet my daughter?”

  “Oh. Lady.” His mouth formed a third black hole like each of his eyes, and now I heard his voice, which came from old, worn out, rubbery vocal cords, vibrating from the dark well of him. My dad, with his huge white face, ample stomach, and head of snowy hair looked as lively as Santa Claus next to George. Clearly, Dad was trying to pump some vitality across the room to George, who needed a lift.

  “Come on! Let’s get out of here and find some live music. And I could sure use a good stiff drink. What about you, George? The liquor they serve here is worse than bathtub gin,” Dad said. He leaned away from the slant of his bed and the pillow fell behind his shoulder blades. “Get my blue shoes,” waving his hand at me. “That’s an order.”

  I did not feel like playing Navy or hostess to my father and George’s fantasies. “Dad, Dr. Gibson said you can’t get out of here until Thursday. This is only Tuesday, honey. Won’t be long now.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Dad said, ignoring me. “I have to get out of here today.”

  “Don’t tink I’ll be going with you, Mike,” said George, finally. He made a valiant effort to turn his head to Dad and me. Something wrenched inside me at seeing his pain.

  “But, say, Mike,” George said, flopping back on his pillow. “Don’t do anyting (sic) I wouldn’t do.”

  The Prednisone, which worked miracles on The Leg, also lowered Dad’s immune system. He had been taking a month-long break from it, and for reasons only known to modern medical science, the doctor tripled Dad’s dose of Prednisone in the hospital—all the better to open his lungs. The result of that treatment was that my father developed a diabetic condition. Another lung opener, the drug Vomax, cured the wheezing, but it raised his blood pressure to 190 over 96 and wound him up tighter than a carnival barker. He was taking pills to counteract pills. I tried to get him off the pills, but it seemed we couldn’t get away from them. Pills were part of the juggling act of old age, and it was hard to keep all these tiny balls in the air. They plinked and skittered into every corner of our lives, the useless little things.

  “Does he really need all these pills?” I asked Dr. Gibson.

  “Well, yes, he does. We’re trying to make him comfortable.”

  “Do you think the medication is working?”

  “It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? Especially with your father. He’s a special case.”

  “I guess they’re all special cases,” I said. “But for Dad, the pills don’t seem to make him any better.”

  But, by then, Dr. Gibson was looking at his pager, and with clipboard in hand, he whirled away and down the hall before I could say Vomax and Prednisone. I wanted to be a mind reader and see the future, or better yet, have a medical degree myself so I could call some of the shots, but since none of that was feasible, I sat down on the side of Dad’s hospital bed and opened a packet of saltines to go with the tepid vegetable beef soup. Dad was more interested in his lunch—which appeared to be tan in color, with a sprig of lettuce—than anything the doctor had to say.

  “Will you open this, too?” He handed over the small box of apple juice.

  “Sure,” I said.

  It was a good moment, and I decided we would enjoy it together. One moment at a time.

  Dad was about to reach his limit of pills and IV’s and other tests under Medicare. After that, he would have to leave the hospital and “recuperate under supervised care.” I was pondering what that meant, but I hadn’t gotten an answer from Dr. Gibson. He talked about putting Dad in “an interim rest facility for recovery,” but I didn’t like the sound of it.

  “You just won’t be able to manage him alone for a while,” the doctor said. “He needs the constant therapy and staff to watch him round the clock.”

  Marilyn was waiting in the wings, but she was not a therapist. While Dad recovered, the hospital staff, doctors included, maintained a wait-and-see attitude toward what he would need when he got out. Nobody knew what would happen with Dad, so we lived pretty much day-to-day. The hospital nurtured the aspect that it was a place of rest and recovery; it was not a place to die or be terminal—not even for poor George.

  A visitor told me that George was riddled with cancer from the
waist down. He moaned when he was lying down or sitting up, which pretty much excluded any possible position of comfort. The only time he seemed rested was during the brief episodes when he received pain medication. After Dad broke the ice between George and me, George often looked over at me and said, “Oh. Lady.”

  His greeting wasn’t social. He was in pain. His eyes grew deeper and blacker, and while he half sat up because he couldn’t lie down, sometimes he said, “Ooooooooo llllaaaady.”

  I left my father to look for George’s nurse, and when I found her, I got straight to the point. “Would you give George in Room 402 some pain medication? He seems to be very uncomfortable.”

  “He just had a shot of morphine,” she said, busying herself behind a Formica counter stacked with sheets of paper in varying sizes and colors, all with unintelligible writing on them. “He can’t have anymore, unless the doctor prescribes it.”

  “Why don’t you call the doctor? Ask him to prescribe more, maybe even a lot.”

  She looked at me, or through me, as if I made no sense at all. “Excuse me. Are you a member of the family?”

  A blank wall of hot anger rose inside me. I saw my mother’s face. But I kept my voice level, like they did.

  “No, I am not. I’m a concerned person who has been watching George writhe around in agony, periodically, for almost two weeks,” I said. All of a sudden, I felt a pang of guilt. I had waited so long to say something, all the while his condition got worse. “You can hardly stay ahead of this thing, whatever it is he’s got. You need to step up the pain medicine for someone so obviously terminally ill.” In my head, I heard my mother’s hospice nurse saying those very words, like it was yesterday.

  The nurse decided to take a different tack. “You know,” she said, “he’s not in here as a ‘terminal’.”