The rumble and whir of the bus was like the song of angels to me. I stood up from the bench and helped Aldo shuffle toward the bus's open, waiting doors. "C'mon, Grandpa," I said, squeezing his hands. "A few steps now."
Shakily, he used the handrail of the bus to guide himself up. I fed our money into the driver's till, took the transfers she offered, and then followed my grandpa down the narrow aisle. The bus was pretty full, but we found seats near the back doors. Steadying himself with the handhold at the top of the seat in front of us, Grandpa settled in next to me as the bus lurched forward into traffic.
Surface streets flew by, and then we were up on the interstate and the skyscrapers of downtown Seattle came into view. Grandpa was still humming to himself, and then all of a sudden he was looking into the empty seat in front of us, his eyes darkening.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
Grandpa started speaking Italian in a low, insistent voice.
I rubbed my hand on his back. "Grandpa?"
A lady in a row across from us made a shushing sound from behind her open newspaper.
The stream of Italian got louder, more urgent sounding, like Grandpa Aldo was arguing with someone. Now more people on the bus were turning and glaring at me and Grandpa. Even people with earbuds were staring at us, probably wondering what the hell was going on.
Grandpa's hands were moving now. He was gesturing and speaking to this empty chair in front of us—and my face was burning with humiliation.
"What is wrong with that guy?" I heard someone say loudly behind us.
"Crazy people," muttered someone else.
I patted my grandpa's back, trying to bring him back to reality—to the present moment. And inside I was getting madder and madder—mostly at myself. Why hadn't I just let Jason give us a ride when he'd asked me if I needed help? But I couldn't. I didn't want to rely on him for help with stuff like this when there was a chance, and a good one, that he'd eventually lose interest in us and our problems—or worse yet, me.
"Everything all right back there?" said the driver into his loudspeaker as he pulled off the interstate.
"Yes," I replied in a loud voice.
The people around me gaped at us. Grandpa was still gesturing and speaking Italian a mile a minute. And then I heard him say, "< sd hace="em>Si, Roberto."
Oh, great. The king of apparitions was back. "Grandpa," I said, tugging on his sweater sleeve. "Are you seeing Roberto?"
He ignored me, still nearly shouting at the empty chair.
"This is very disruptive," said a man dressed in a dark suit across the aisle from us.
"I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but he can't help it. He's got Alzheimer's."
Most of the people on the bus went back to their crosswords and paperbacks and music. I patted Grandpa on the back again. "Is he here? Is Roberto here?"
Grandpa didn't answer me, but he paused in his conversation.
I stared at the empty seat in front of us with what I hoped was a fierce look. "Roberto, Rob, whoever you are. You have to hit the road. I don't know if you're getting this, but people on this bus are thinking Aldo is a fruitcake. So, please leave."
There was a stillness in the air suddenly. And I could see dust glittering in the filtered light coming in through the bus windows. A calmness came over Aldo. He settled back in his chair and closed his eyes as if he were very tired suddenly.
I exhaled and patted his hand. So, whatever he was seeing—whoever—maybe they had reacted to what I'd said. I didn't know how that was even possible, but it seemed to have worked. I tried to relax into the brown Naugahyde bus seat next to my grandfather. We had two stops to go, and then we'd transfer to the direct bus to the medical center.
As I headed with Aldo to the back doors of the bus, an older black woman reached out to me. "I nursed my mother through that, sweetheart," she said. "You just hang in there and remember to ask for help when you need it."
My eyes started to water.
"Be strong," she called out as we descended the stairs.
I got Grandpa situated on the bench under cover of the bus shelter as rain began to patter down. He was humming to himself again, but instead of being comforted, he was glancing around like he was unsure of something.
He squinted at me. "Hello," he said, pausing as if he knew he'd met me and was trying to remember my name.
"I'm Holly," I said, patting his arm. "We're going to see Dr. Wells."
"Oh. I don't like this rain," Grandpa Aldo said, trailing off into humming.
I took out the cell phone for emergencies and dialed Jason's number. He didn't pick up, but I left a voice mail asking him to meet us at the clinic later. I didn't know if I could deal with a long bus ride home with Grandpa. As I clicked off the phone, I felt strangely comforted. Not weak at all.
I sucked in a deep breath, and kept holding on to my grandpa's hand as the next bus rolled up to the stop. I got us to the clinic in one piece, and there, thankfully, the doctor had an amazing fish tank in the waiting room. Instantly, Grandpa Aldo was absorbed in the underwater action.
Jason still hadn't returned my call when a nurse came out with a clipboard. "Mr. Santucci?" she called.
I stood up. "That's us. Come on, Grandpa," I said, helping him to his feet.
Inside the little exam room, I took a chair while Grandpa Aldo sat on the end of the paper-covered table. We waited, Grandpa humming, me flipping absently through a gossip magazine with its celebrity weddings, diet ads, reviews of movies I would probably never see at the theater, summer's best hairstyles. It was funny how I used to enjoy reading through those kinds of magazines with Marisa while we painted our toenails. Now they just seemed like little crappy stories with flashy pictures of people and things I didn't care about.
"All right, let's check your blood pressure, Mr. Santucci," the nurse said, coming in a few minutes later.
"Wait. Let me help you." I put down the magazine and stood next to Aldo. I took his cap and his cardigan sweater off and set them back on the chair.
The nurse strapped the blood pressure cuff on Aldo's arm. He winced at the uncomfortable pressure around his biceps.
"It's okay, Grandpa. It'll go away in a moment," I said in a soothing voice.
"Bene," Aldo said, settling down.
I smoothed some of his gray hair back behind his ear. He had a pretty good case of hat head. "The doctor will be here in a moment to check us out."
The nurse wrote down info on Aldo's chart and left. A few minutes of humming and magazine-page-flipping later, there was a knock on the door. The doctor swooped in and with what seemed like a forced but necessary smile shook Aldo's hand. "How are we feeling, Mr. Santucci?"
Aldo gave him a smile. "Hello, I am Aldo," he said.
"Yes, we met some time ago with your daughter, Julia." The doctor turned to me. "Hi, I'm Dr. Wells." He was young. Blond bangs swooped down over his eyes, which were covered with hip, thin glasses. He had a little goatee, but maybe that was intended to make him look older.
"Hi, uh, my mom, Julia, she couldn't come today. I'm Holly, his granddaughter, I take care of Aldo." I took out a small notepad and a pencil from my bag. "I'm going to take some notes, if that's okay."
"That'd be really helpful for later, when you're at home," said the doctor. He glanced down at the chart on his clipboard. "Well, blood pressure looks pretty good. Mr. Santucci, how are you feeling?"
Aldo just nodded.
"He's been having hallucinations," I said. "Just now on the bus, in fact, he had another one. He sees things that aren't there. He has conversations with supposed ghosts. Right, Grandpa?"
"Not uncommon," the doctor said, making some notes on the chart. "As the dementia progresses, you'll see more and more of that type of thing. How about motor skills? Aldo, are you getting around all right?"
Aldo didn't respond, so the doctor looked at me.
"He's able to do normal stuff. He's just doing things out of order. Like the other day he was frustrated because he put his shoes
on his bare feet. When I checked, his socks were lying there on the bed, untouched."
"Sequencing can be a big problem. I explained some of these things to your mother when she was here last time. She couldn't come today?"
"It's just me."
The doctor shook his head slowly and made some notes on his chart. "Well, I'm glad you brought him in for his appointment. Thank you on Aldo's behalf. So, are there any other new behaviors you've noticed? Any changes in cognition?"
"The other day, he tried to make us breakfast and nearly set off the smoke alarm."
The doctor nodded. "He'll forget some basic steps, so try to give him clear tasks, directions for each step. Make numbers big. Label cabinets. Anything you can do to help him retain some of his independence is going to benefit him. You have a lot to give yet, Aldo," he said, giving him a smile and a pat on the arm. "How are the meds working out?"
"Fine, but what about the hallucinations—you know, the ghosts he keeps seeing? Should the drugs be helping with them?"
The doctor clicked his pen shut and set it onto his clipboard. "That's just a major symptom of his brain misfiring. The drugs help a little but don't contain them completely."
"Do you think what he's seeing is real?"
"Sure. It's very real to him. What he's seeing is as real as I am to you right now. Trying to convince him otherwise is counterproductive."
"He speaks Italian to his hallucination."
"Very common. I see many patients pick up their native tongues after years of using English only. Even languages they haven't spoken since they were children."
"Is it normal," I said slowly, "for someone to deteriorate so rapidly?"
Dr. Wells leaned forward toward me. "Holly, I've been caring for Aldo for a couple of years now. This didn't develop overnight."
I couldn't keep the tears from rising. "My mother has known about this...?"
"She and your uncle have known for a while," he said. "This decline you're seeing is characteristic of a more challenging phase of the disease."
Aldo started humming again, and I patted him on the arm.
"It's okay," I said, more to myself than him. "It's all okay, Grandpa."
The doctor cleared his throat. "We'll wrap this up so you can get him back home. How is he sleeping?"
"Not well. He's up before us every morning, and sometimes I hear him talking at night."
"I'm going to prescribe a sleeping aid. We need to give his brain as much time as possible to shut down each night and recharge." He scribbled on a small pad. "We're going to try to keep him as healthy and comfortable as we can. You just keep doing what you're doing," the doctor said, holding out the prescription.
I reached out to take it, and the doctor held it tight, meeting my eyes. "You remember to take care of yourself, too."
Meanwhile, Aldo was looking at the doorway of the exam room, fixated on one spot in particular.
"Grandpa?" I said, touching his arm.
Aldo gazed back at me, recognition lighting his face. "Cara mia. Is it time to go?"
"Sure, almost."
"Hello," he said to the doctor as I handed him his cap and sweater.
Dr. Wells smiled kindly. "Hello and goodbye, Mr. Santucci."
"Aldo," Grandpa corrected.
The doctor escorted us back out to the waiting room and said goodbye, then the door closed behind him. I saw him in the square window as he walked away, like a little, fading picture. I got Grandpa settled near the fish tank again, pointing out the bright orange starfish near the coral. And then I read through the notes I'd made, wiping my eyes with my sleeve.
He found them in the waiting room at one of the Virginia Mason Clinic's offices. There was a huge aquarium on one wall of the office, and Aldo was staring at a few of the angelfish congregating near the bottom of the tank. The carpeted room was filled with the soft sounds of classical music, one of Mozart's piano concertos, Jason guessed.
He'd never liked hospitals or doctor's offices. They seemed like sad places. He remembered being a small boy and accompanying his mother to appointments, which as he got older realized must have been fertility doctors, treatments that didn't work. Maybe it was that absorption of his mother's loss of hope. Maybe it was the memory of turning up at the hospital after Rob's crash. Or the sight of Holly, unconscious, bandaged, and bruised in the hospital bed, and his fruitless search for where they had sereruised taken Rob. Whatever it was about hospitals and medical offices, he just didn't like them. But he was here for Holly and Grandpa Aldo today. He'd gotten Holly's message and zipped right over, hoping he wasn't too late to pick them up.
The fish tank was impressive, and Aldo was engrossed in movement of the sea grass, the little orange fishes hiding within.
"Hi, Aldo," Jason said, patting the old man on the shoulder, but Aldo didn't surrender his view of the swirling fish or reply.
Holly's eyes were red and tired but filled with relief. And for just a second, Jason felt his heart swell. She was happy to see him.
"Hey there," Jason whispered as he slid into the open seat next to Holly and took her hand. "How're you doing?"
She bit down on her lower lip, like she was holding herself back from losing it.
"That bad, huh?"
"Thanks for coming," she said.
"Well, I'm glad you called," he said wrapping her in a big hug.
She sank into his arms. "Mom should have been here," she said in a muffled voice. "She should have been here to take all this in. I can't deal."
He smoothed her hair, hugging her tighter. "I know. This is hard."
She pulled back and looked him in the eyes. "Take us home, 'kay?"
"Sure." He wiped fresh tears from her cheeks with his thumbs and kissed her. "Let's get you guys out of here."
Chapter Twelve
You're speechless. For once in your ghostly life, you're speechless.
Holly talked to you. Well, at you.
Maybe showing up on the bus and causing such a ruckus with Aldo wasn't the greatest idea—but she stared into your face and told you to hit the road. Sweet, sweet Holly—her eyes full of insistence, her beautiful mouth set in a hard line—told you to leave Aldo alone on the bus.
Yes! Your spirit heart had cartwheeled. Finally, she paid attention to you, even if she couldn't see you. Aldo, well, he was obviously still pissed off at you about the other day, but you figured he would come around.
Not wanting to rile the old guy up again, you stayed out of the way at the doctor's office. Just out of eyesight beyond the door, but close enough that you could hear what was going on. You'd heard Aldo's silence, his lack of response when they talked to him. From knowing him the way you do, it'd seemed so strange, so sad. That guy could go on and on with his stories, his advice. He's gregarious and warm, the Aldo you know. But not here, not with them. Alzheimer's had control of him. vg. La"5%
If only you could have held Holly's hand while the doctor told her how much Aldo's disease had progressed, how much worse he was going to get. It was like you could see right into her breaking heart. You'd never seen her that full of despair before. She'd always been such a trooper. Helping her mother raise her sister, never complaining about their lack of money, their crappy apartment. You'd admired her ability to let things roll off her back, but you'd never asked her how she felt about everything. Maybe you'd been so wrapped up in your own problems, in the swirl of senior year coming at you in a rush, that you hadn't really been there with Holly.
You'd been there, but not there for her—not like you could have been, anyway. Not like you kind of are now.
You follow Jason, Aldo, and Holly through the maze of the medical center's parking garage and into the back of Jason's Audi, next to Holly. By the look on her face, you can tell her mind is still whirling with worry. Moments later, at the front door of the apartment building, she kisses Jason lightly on the cheek.
"Thank you. Again," she says.
"You need help getting him up to your place?" he asks.
"Nah." Holly's smile is a mix of half-gratitude, half-affection. She really is starting to fall for him. And the way she looks at him is so familiar, it makes your heart hurt. Back then, she loved you. Maybe more than you ever knew or appreciated.
"All right," Jason says. "I'll see you later. Good night, guys." He pats Aldo on the back and holds the door for the old man and Holly to shuffle through. The glass door closes and he's left on the outside.
"I know how that feels," you mutter.
He turns, and for half a second you fantasize it's because he heard you speak. But of course he's just heading back to the car. His steps are heavier, slower. He's feeling bad for Holly, obviously. For a while you hang out with him, but there's nothing happening. He drives home, slows a little around the dangerous curve, then zooms up the hill. Just another day in the life of a guy who's into your girlfriend. It's time to take care of business, so you think of Aldo and you're in the kitchen. Aldo sees you and, from his seat at the table, waves you off with a disgusted grunt. Holly's busy laying out his medication for the night, rummaging through the drawers for more notepaper.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start trouble on the bus," you say in a gentle tone.
Aldo looks up from his cup of coffee. "Sure, kid."
"Like I said, I'm sorry."
"I told you, I don't think we need to visit anymore," Aldo says. "Scram."
Holly walks over and puts her hand on his back. "Grandpa, you okay?"
Aldo nods.
"Sorry," you say again. "Every time she sees us talk—"
"She thinks I'm crazy!" finishes Aldo.
"Well, can we go somewhere in private? Can you tell her you need to lie down? Please, Aldo, at least let me explain. I really am sorry."
"This is the last time," he says in quick Italian.
Holly's still standing there over him, a concerned expression in her eyes. "Grandpa?"
"I ... will rest," Aldo says.
Holly reaches out and helps him to his feet. Then Aldo works his way down the hall to his room. Once the door closes, he sits on the bed and fixes you with a hard stare. "Speak, ghost. Tell me what you want from me."
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