The Hummingbird

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  That stopped me cold. “She’s not going to see him through?”

  “Apparently not. She asked if I would referee their last conversation. That was her word, referee. I told her my shift was ending and you could help with that.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Sorry.” Cheryl slid the key into her car door. “Like I said, a real peach.”

  BARCLAY REED’S SKIN looked loose and thin, translucent like an onion, which I recognized as dehydration. I checked his chart and the level in his water cup. Two ounces since ten P.M.

  “I know,” he said, blinking open his eyes. “I know.”

  “I can swab you with glycerin,” I offered.

  “Thank you, no.” Pressing the button to lift his bed’s upper half, he took several deep and noisy breaths. “Let me see if I can manage a few swallows now. I have a feeling I’m going to need a bit of fortification.”

  As I brought the straw to his lips, he glanced past me. I turned to see his daughter in the doorway.

  The Professor sucked hard, draining the cup with a noisy slurp. Pulling away from the straw, he forced a smile. “Good morning, Deirdre.”

  I moved back by the desk, getting out of the way, less a referee than a guard. I hoped they would not hurt one another needlessly. But I suspected their needs were beyond my understanding.

  “It’s D,” she said.

  “D is not a name,” he replied. “It is an initial. An abbreviation to signify a bad grade.” He turned his face to me. “Why call yourself by a nomenclature that sounds like the verge of failure?”

  Oh, you are not finished yet, I thought. She came when you are weak, but you are far from defeated.

  D rolled up one sleeve of her sweater. “Am I a failure, Barclay?”

  “Why ask a question whose answer is foregone? We both know you have risen admirably. Perhaps meteorically.”

  “Anger is a formidable motivator.”

  The Professor sniffed. “Anger is a snake that eats its own tail.”

  D tilted her head back, watching him down her nose. “It is such a shame that your aphorisms are so far superior to your intellectual integrity.”

  He crossed his arms. “You do not know what you are talking about.”

  “I know the truth.”

  “You believe you do. Which is arguably worse.”

  She rolled up her other sleeve. “Your claims of innocence exist in outright denial of university arbitration, severance without pension, and academic disgrace. Not to mention other matters of guilt we could discuss.”

  “Deirdre, you fatigue me.”

  “Reality fatigues you.”

  He mused a moment, eyes unfocused. “You are utterly without mercy.”

  D stood straighter, shoulders back. I realized she was taking it as a compliment. “About that much, you are correct.”

  “Yes, well.” He picked at a thread on the blanket. “At least we know where you learned it.”

  “Ah—­” She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

  He had bested her. She could not deny her parentage. It was his trump card.

  “I think,” I said, returning from my corner by the desk. “I think the Professor could use a bit of rest now.”

  “Don’t call him that in my presence. He is not a professor anymore. He is a nothing.”

  And she left the room. But I knew D was not done yet. It felt more like a boxer, going to her corner between rounds. I brought the Professor his basket of remotes, taking the water cup to refill.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, a father’s pride and joy.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, shedding my neutrality in family matters. “Looked to me like a snake eating its own tail.”

  For once he did not bother to hide his smirk.

  D DROVE OFF SOMEWHERE to do errands. I cleaned the house, washed the few dishes, and gazed at the lake for a while before returning to the Professor’s bedside. Late that afternoon, he awoke with a start.

  “I’m right here,” I said, rising from my chair. “What do you need?”

  “Has she left yet?”

  “No.”

  He relaxed, sighing.

  “Do you want to speak with her again?”

  He closed his eyes, pondering. “One more salvo, don’t you think?”

  “I think you should do what’s best for you.”

  The Professor opened his eyes. “Nurse Birch, is there a recipe for the ideal last parental conversation? Some script you might supply?”

  “Not that I know of. But you can decide in advance what you’d like to accomplish. It may not happen, but it’s still worth a try.”

  I raised the water cup. He put the straw to his lips by reflex but did not take any that I could see.

  This was all a huge exertion for a man in his last days. Any moment now, Barclay Reed would begin actively dying. It would require all of his time, demand all of his energy. A man not eating and barely drinking will soon sleep the last of his existence away. I was determined to make it peaceful.

  Which meant finishing business with Deirdre, however unpleasant, as soon as possible. “Shall I call your daughter in?”

  “Yes. But then please do not leave the room.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it.”

  D STOOD AT THE DOOR with her hands on her hips. It may have been a power pose, but the fact that she hesitated at the room’s threshold revealed her true emotions. I knew her suitcase sat by the front door. I knew she’d charged her phone and computer for the trip. Her escape was almost complete.

  Yet in some ways, I felt worse for her. D’s father was dying, and she had no inkling of how to make peace with him. When he was gone, D would have to figure it out all by herself.

  When she finally strode in, it was as purposeful as if she were coming to receive a diploma. As she halted at the foot of his bed, the Professor bowed ever so slightly. “Yes?”

  “It’s time I recommenced my life,” D said. “I have a conference in San Francisco, then I’m going home.” She placed two fingers on the bed frame, but jerked them back as though the wood were hot. “I am saying good-­bye.”

  Barclay Reed gazed at her, his fondness unconcealed. “We both are.”

  “I do not forgive you.”

  He harrumphed. “Perhaps one day—­”

  “Not likely.”

  “Please know,” he persisted in a quiet voice, “should the kindness arrive to you some years hence, that I accepted your forgiveness today.”

  “How can you accept what I have not given?”

  “I am the one doing the giving, Deirdre. Should the time come that you find the character and self-­esteem to forgive me, please remember that today I absolved you from any guilt about how long it took to arrive.”

  “It’s not Deirdre,” she said to the floor, her voice choked. “It’s D.”

  And she was gone.

  We heard the door close, the rental car start up and drive away. We listened while a breeze stirred the tree outside his bedroom window. There was a scent of newly mown grass. The Professor let out one long sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “But I also think that was a pretty spectacular and wise gift you just gave her. Years from now, she will thank you.”

  “Yes, well.” He adjusted his bed angle an inch. “Some time ago you told me that suffering was educational.”

  “I believe that.” I expected him to say something about his daughter next, about what his hurt at her hands was teaching him about the long patience of parental love. But he surprised me.

  “Instruct me then, Nurse Birch. What are you learning from your husband’s suffering?”

  I all but gulped. “Excuse me?”

  “Your Michael. What is the latest thing his pain has taught you? Perhaps it will prove instructive.”

/>   So I told him about Gene, and the screw, and the gun. This time the professor did not interrupt once, until I explained about the loving lie.

  “Clarify,” he said. “Your husband knowingly fabricated heroism by his friend in order to convince him to take the rifle?”

  “Not just that. Also to make him feel better about himself, in a way that only a fellow soldier could do.”

  “Hold right there, please.” Barclay Reed silenced me with a raised hand. “I’ve just made an interesting connection.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He shifted in bed. “Here I am up to my neck in disease, we both know I’m in real trouble. Yet my mind just this moment acquired a new idea.” The Professor pursed his lips. “I may keep learning right to the very end.”

  I thought: ­People generally die as they have lived. For a scholar, learning might be as habitual as breathing. But all I said was, “Would you like to share what you learned?”

  “You’ll see momentarily,” he said. “First I need you to refresh my memory. What was that exercise called, the four inquiries?”

  “The Four Questions, yes. I’m sorry you found it so annoying.”

  “Do I recall accurately that one of them concerns apology?”

  “Yes: ‘Is there anyone you wish to say “I’m sorry” to?’ ”

  The Professor rubbed his hands together. It was the most animated I’d seen him all day. “Could you please fetch some paper?”

  “DEAR DEIRDRE.”

  I sat at the bedside, taking dictation. Fingers interlaced in his lap, he continued in his best lecturing voice.

  “Or as you would have it: Dear D. You are correct, as ever. Blount’s research was impeccable. Mine was the sloppy work of a tired mind.”

  I paused with the pen, but the Professor continued his oratory.

  “He had made all the true finds, a sailor in uncharted waters, while I circled below like a shark, hoping something edible would fall from the stern. I justified it to myself by reasoning that his career was so green, it could easily withstand pruning by a senior historian. I was motivated by selfishness, greed, and ego.”

  It was hard for me to write those things, because I did not believe them. If the Professor had impressed me with anything over the months, it had been the integrity of his intellect. But he persisted.

  “Therefore I admit to you, now, today, and for all time: After decades of admonishing students for cheating, I committed precisely that academic crime. It was the wrong thing to do. I was wrong.”

  He waited for my writing to catch up. I ached to interrupt, but before my hand stilled he spoke again.

  “Obviously I paid a high professional price, but it was a pittance compared with the loss of your esteem. Therefore today I wish to apologize—­not in a vain hope of changing your opinion of me at this late hour, but for the sake of my own conscience. I am sorry, genuinely sorry. I congratulate you on your immense career achievements despite my misdeeds. I wish you all continued success.”

  At that he held out one hand. “There. May I sign it?”

  I swallowed. Incredible. But his arm was outstretched for the clipboard.

  “Here you are,” I said, handing it over with the pen. He wrote his name in a fierce burst and shoved the clipboard back at me. I scanned the letter. There was a space between my writing and his signature, where I imagined he would write if not exactly “your ever-­loving poppa,” then at least “fondly” or maybe even “love.” But it was blank, a space of missed opportunity.

  “Nurse Birch, would you please mail this epistle immediately? I relish the idea of it greeting her when she arrives home from the conference.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave you alone.”

  “Might we agree that, personality idiosyncrasies aside, I have been generally undemanding in the final wishes department? I wish to call that trump right now.”

  “I don’t know, Professor.” I was tempted to add that I did not want to mail a letter that said what this one did.

  He raised his right hand. “I, Barclay Reed, do solemnly swear not to die while you drive to the post office and back, so help me God.”

  What could I say?

  The drive along Lake Oswego to the post office was lovely, dappled light through the trees. Sometimes there is a guilty pleasure in taking a break from the bedside. Meanwhile, in the gaps between houses, I could see the water flashing, beautiful and untouchable. I remembered that in May I had hoped to swim in that lake, had meant to ask the Professor for permission to use his dock.

  Of course I would make no such request now. We were weeks past anything like that. Merely asking would amplify how my life was healthy and his was waning. I hurried down the winding shore road. The time for pleasures like swimming had long passed.

  HE WAS YELLING the moment I opened the front door.

  “Nurse Birch. Nurse Birch.”

  I came running.

  The Professor had raised his bed’s upper half as far as it would go. His face was as white as a fish’s belly. “Did you mail it? Is the letter gone?”

  “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine, if you did as I asked.”

  “Yes, of course.” I pressed a hand flat on my chest. “You scared me.”

  “Don’t be a weakling. I’m fine.” He coughed, just once, but hard. “You did indeed mail the letter?”

  “I just said yes.”

  He looked at me sideways, eyes narrowed.

  “Don’t you believe me?”

  “I do, Nurse Birch. To a point.”

  “Professor.” Collecting my wits, I stepped up beside the bed. “You don’t have to trust me. It’s OK because I know that despite mistakes I’ve made here, I have behaved in a consistent and trustworthy manner. So if you have doubts, they are about you, and I’m not taking them on.”

  “Blast it all, I didn’t mean to imply—­”

  “The letter to your daughter went in the blue collection box outside the Lake Oswego post office. A sign said the box is emptied at 4:30, so I was in time for today’s mail. That is the truth, whether you trust me or not.”

  Barclay Reed bowed his head like a child being scolded. After a moment he raised his eyes and read my face. “You have something you wish to add.”

  “I do. That letter wasn’t true, was it?”

  He took the controller and leaned his bed back a few degrees. He tugged at the white tuft of hair on his brow. He sniffed and sighed.

  “Righ­teous­ness is my daughter’s power,” he said. “She needed it, growing up with an overbearing father, and a mother so subservient it drove everyone to frustration.”

  I could feel a lecture beginning. They’d become rarer, so I was ready to pay attention and have my question answered later. Of all the patients in my experience, Barclay Reed was the one for whom listening mattered most.

  He raised his eyes, staring at the blank of the switched-­off TV. “Shinju was Japanese. We met during my Fulbright. Her name means ‘pearl.’ She was extremely intelligent, attractive in a modest fashion, and regrettably lacking in confidence. It was winsome, in the quiet way of humility. I reasoned that moving to America would diminish her disposition toward female servitude. I miscalculated—­as does anyone who expects marriage to solve a relationship problem rather than exacerbate it. Shinju could not choose which movie to watch, what to eat, where to vacation, anything. She elected not to have a will, not to express personhood at all, despite the increasingly vocal urgings of her husband.”

  He picked at the blanket. “When she developed heart disease, it was the same. Concealed for fear of inconveniencing me. Did you know that heart disease affects more women than men?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Yes, you would. At any rate, a heart attack took her. At a supermarket on Boone’s Ferry Road. She was jugglin
g grocery bags, but in adherence to her beliefs, she stepped aside for some man in a hurry, and the weight was too much for her. She was young. Only forty-­one.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “But D told me . . .”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

  “D called you her mother’s murderer.”

  “Did she indeed?” Barclay Reed sucked in a huge breath. He rubbed his face with both hands, then kept them over his eyes as though he were a hiding toddler. Finally he let his arms fall. “Perhaps I oversimplified.”

  “If there’s something you need to get off your conscience, Professor, now might be an excellent time.”

  “Oh, it’s not even approximately as you suppose. I only meant that I implied her life ended there in the parking lot. Dramatic license, et cetera.” With one finger, he began making figure eights on the blanket beside his leg. “In point of fact, an ambulance arrived in minutes, and emergency workers revived her. The police notified me, I collected Deirdre from school, and we rushed ourselves to Providence Portland Medical Center. A nurse led us into Shinju’s ICU room. I feel it no weakness to confess that the array of machinery was intimidating.”

  I nodded. “Naturally.”

  “Moments after the nurse departed, various devices began beeping, an alert sounded on the intercom, and a team of men and women charged in as we backed out of their way.” His finger stopped doodling and he closed his eyes. “There are few things I would wish to unsee from my life. But those next moments left images that will never heal.”

  “The team coded her.”

  “Precisely.” He opened his eyes. “They pumped her chest brutally. They shocked her heart with those paddles. They lifted the hospital gown and spread her legs wide, modesty be damned.” He poked the air with an imaginary syringe. “They jabbed needles repeatedly into her thighs.”

  I had heard countless stories like this. I had even experienced a few during my training. Coding teams had a sincere desire to save the patient, but I knew how gruesome it could be for the family.

  “The needles I can explain,” I said. “They wanted to give her adrenaline. When the heart’s not pumping, there’s no blood pressure, so veins and arteries lie flat. They were trying to hit one that would take the injection.”