One to Tell the Grandkids

by Kristina M Sanchez

  The nurse gave him a kind, apologetic smile. “Yeah, of course. Just follow me.”

  “And who can I talk to about this? They can’t keep her in a windowless room.”

  “I know. I tried to tell them it was a bad idea, but they didn’t listen. Dr. Tam is actually waiting for you.”

  Taryn tuned out the sounds of their voices as she tried to understand what was happening.

  She had never been in a convalescent home, and the experience was jarring. The hallways and rooms were full of the elderly, as could be expected. They weren’t the lively types like advertisements for retirement homes and communities boasted, enjoying the free time their golden years allowed for. No, there was something just a little off about the people they passed as they hurried down the hallway. There was a man with a plastic grin and blank eyes, a woman slumped in her wheelchair with an exhausted, vacant stare. Despite the brightly colored walls with paintings of flowers, the vibe the place exuded was far from comfortable. Taryn’s sense of smell picked up on too many scents at once: hospital quality food, antiseptic, sweat, urine, and who knew what else.

  To top it all off, there was a noise emanating from somewhere nearby that chilled Taryn to the bone. It was a hoarse wail, barely identifiable as human. Everything in her wanted to cringe away from the sound, run in the opposite direction, but they were only getting closer.

  Taryn eyed the residents who seemed more cognizant, talking, interacting with the nurses and other visitors as they went by. They all seemed to be ignoring the screaming.

  “If you moved her once, you can move her again.” Caleb pointed at a room as he spoke. The room the wailing was coming from. Dread curled in Taryn’s stomach.

  “We can’t get her in a new room until this afternoon. Do you think you can help us calm her down, Mr. Ryder? She’s been crying off and on like that for hours now.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” He made a disgruntled sounding noise, looking across at the nurses. “Just do me a favor and make sure your staff doesn’t call my dad again. It’s a waste of time.”

  “Of course.”

  Caleb gave a short nod and strode into the room at a brisk pace. Taryn lingered for a handful of moments longer, terrified for reasons she didn’t really understand, before she followed him.

  Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

  The room had a single occupant, a single bed, but it wasn’t a normal bed at all. It was a hospital bed, but one that been covered from mattress to ceiling in some kind of netting. It was as though the bed had been turned into a tiny ball pit, except Taryn was fairly sure she wasn’t going to find anything fun in that cage. Caleb was standing by it, his voice turned soothing. “Ann. Ann, it’s me. Shh. Hey, listen. It’s me. It’s your little brother.”

  The vaguely human cries quieted ever so slightly but didn’t settle completely. Taryn was beginning to hear an extremely garbled speech pattern—noises that were shaped like words but weren’t quite making it.

  Caleb reached up. His fingers found the zipper of the netting and began to pull it down. For one irrational moment, Taryn wanted to yell for him to stop. All her life she’d been taught that things in cages, especially things making those frightening noises, shouldn’t be let out.

  “I’m going to move you back or you’re going to fall, okay?” Caleb said, leaning into the bed. Taryn watched as he got his arms around a writhing figure, scooting her forward so she was more securely on the bed. “There.” He sat down in the chair, reaching in, stroking her face. “There, I got you. I’m here now.”

  Slowly, Taryn shuffled forward.

  There was an actual human being in the bed, a female human being. She was dressed plainly in a shirt and sweatpants, both of which fell shapelessly over gaunt features. Her hair was cropped short. Most disconcerting and disturbing of all was the way her body moved in unnatural jerks and jolts. It never stopped. She never settled.

  Her eyes, if not focused, were at least concentrated in the general vicinity of Caleb’s face. She spoke, if it could truly be called speaking, in a guttural language. It sounded like her throat was full of phlegm, a wet rasp that made Taryn’s stomach churn. She made little whimpering and whining noises in between words.

  She wasn’t old. She wasn’t old enough at all to be in a place like this.

  “Tell me, Annie. Are you upset because of the window?” Caleb stroked his sister’s hair as he spoke.

  “Yeth.”

  Caleb didn’t acknowledge Taryn’s presence as she crept closer, taking in more. The tip of Anne’s nose was rubbed raw, and Taryn saw a corresponding bloom of blood on the white mesh of the netting. The jerky movements, the way Caleb had found her more in the netting than on the bed, must have been why she needed it in the first place. Watching her, Taryn could see how easy it would have been for her to fall out of a bed.

  “You don’t have to stay, you know.” Caleb’s voice had a harsh edge to it, like he was barely containing his anger. Even though he wasn’t looking at Taryn, she knew the words were directed at her. He fished his keys out of his pocket and thrust them in her direction. “Take my car.”

  “How will you—”

  “I’ll figure it out,” he snapped. He shook his hand so the keys jiggled.

  Taryn didn’t move right away. She wasn’t sure what she should be thinking or feeling. Her throat was painfully tight, but after a few swallows, she managed to find her voice. “It’s nice to meet you, Ann.”

  Ann’s eyes jerked to hers, and Taryn instantly understood what Caleb had said to his father. She’s still in there, trapped in that fucking body.

  There was intelligence in the depth of her teary eyes. There was something wary and worn and ever so slightly curious. The skin around her eyes twitched like the rest of her, with no rhyme or reason, but her irises spoke volumes in a crystal-clear language that Taryn did not comprehend.

  Taryn swallowed again. “Your brother is a good friend of mine.”

  Ann made a series of noises, bleats and whimpers which Taryn took to be an acknowledgement. She nodded. “I’m, um, I’m going to butt out now. But it’s nice to meet Caleb’s big sister.”

  She did retreat then, without taking the keys, both overwhelmed and certain she was intruding in a place she had no business being. She was also dangerously close to losing it. Her vision was already blurring.

  “Excuse me?” Her voice trembled as she went to the nurse’s station. “Do you have a public bathroom or someplace quiet I can . . . ?” She gasped, trying to forestall her sobs long enough to get her point across.

  “The restroom is down the hall and to your right, but if you’re just looking for someplace to be alone, there’s a chapel to the left of the front door.” There was sympathy in the nurse’s voice. Taryn could imagine how many tears the woman saw in a place like this.

  “Thank you.”

  She found the chapel easily enough. It was difficult to get the door open with her hands shaking the way they were, but somehow Taryn managed. She slipped inside the tiny room and sank down onto a bench, leaning her forehead on the pew in front of her. There, she could hold back no longer. She broke down in a torrent of tears.

  For long minutes she grappled with the reality of this place. In many ways, she had no context for a place like this, especially for the incongruity of Caleb’s sister being a resident here. At the same time, she was having flashbacks to visiting Bailey in the hospital. There were similarities there she couldn’t deny—the taint and oppression of illness to begin with.

  One thing was for certain, though, and the knowledge resonated in the marrow of her bones, a sickening, stifling weight that left Taryn gasping for breath. Ann wasn’t here to get better. There was no coming back from whatever had happened, was happening to her.

  Caleb’s sister was dying. She was dying a slow, maddening, dehumanizing death.

  Taryn couldn’t sit up straight as her thoughts spun. She found herself drooping lower and lower with each memory. The way Ann looked so
alien, her face slack in some places, tensed in others. The unnatural movement of her body. Her non-speech. Her inhuman wails, full of despair and frustration. She sank until she was on her knees on the ground, her head cradled in her arms as she cried.

  She knew firsthand how disease could ravage a body. She’d thought there couldn’t be anything worse than watching her sister, a baby, a toddler, and finally a tiny child, go through what she had. This was worse. Or at least just as bad. Horrible in ways Taryn had never even considered.

  It was a long time before Taryn calmed. It was ages before she could breathe again, and even then the pain was too great. She couldn’t fill her lungs. She rubbed at her chest as though she could massage away the tight knot where her heart used to be. She cried until her head pounded and her throat ached.

  By the time Caleb came in, her tears had stopped. Her mind was a blank space. She couldn’t stand to think anymore.

  “You didn’t have to stay,” Caleb said, standing beside her.

  Taryn didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. All she did was scoot over, taking his hand and pulling him down beside her. He didn’t resist. When she put her arms around him, he didn’t pull away.

  For almost a minute, he was tense under her hands, but then all the air seemed to go out of him. His breath began to stutter, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, letting her hold him.

  He didn’t cry. He ducked his head so his breath came in sharp puffs against her neck, but he didn’t cry.

  Neither of them let go for a very long time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “It’s called Huntington’s Disease.”

  Caleb sat across from Taryn at a diner around the corner from his sister’s hospital. It was the kind of diner where you ordered at the counter and they left you alone. He had his hands cradled around a cup of hot apple cider, which he spun around and around and around as he told his story. “Some call it Huntington’s Chorea. Chorea is what they call those spastic movements. I think I remember someone telling me it means ‘to dance.’ ”

  He huffed, shaking his head and tapping his fingertips against the cup. “Things like that really get under my skin. Annie—she loved to dance. This isn’t dancing.” His voice was rough, angry. “Dancing is graceful. What’s happening to Annie is the antithesis of that.”

  Caleb jumped when Taryn’s hand closed over his. He let her loosen his fingers from around his cup, watching as she stroked his palm. It was a soothing motion, and he found it calmed him.

  “I think I remember hearing about it. Like on a TV show.” She looked up at him. “I remember it was genetic.”

  He understood immediately what she was asking. “It is. When a parent has the disease, their child has a fifty percent chance of having it.” She looked pale, and Caleb hurried on. “I don’t have it. I can’t pass it on to my children.”

  Taryn’s hand stilled over his, her fingertips brushing the inside of his wrist. Caleb took a deep breath before he spoke again.

  “My mom was in an accident when I was eighteen. Ann was twenty-five. The accident was strange. My mother was walking. She was on the sidewalk when she tripped on nothing and fell in front of a moving car. She died of her injuries at the hospital before I could get to her.”

  “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

  Caleb nodded his thanks before he continued. “Because of the nature of the accident, there was an investigation. Her blood work tested positive for Huntington’s. That was when we found out, and that was likely the cause of the accident. A lot of people with this disease die from falls or choking. Things like that.”

  One by one, he wrapped his fingers around her hand. He didn’t squeeze but let the small weight put walls around the overwhelming emotion that rocked him. It was just a remnant—left over traces of the terror he’d felt at the time.

  “It’s a death sentence.” His voice was tight in his throat. “If you have it, there’s no cure at any stage of the disease. It’s a promise of a slow death. To put it simply, your brain is eaten away. You lose control of your emotions, your body, yourself. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.” He swallowed hard. “When we found out, I didn’t want to get tested. I was so afraid.”

  “I can understand that.” Taryn pressed her free hand against her belly beneath the table. She looked just a shade paler than usual, and he knew without asking what she was thinking. Her sister had died of a genetic disorder. Her baby had a chance of having the same disease. It wasn’t a large chance, but having lived through it once, the idea must have hung like a weight around her neck.

  He flipped his hand, comforting her now. She smiled at him. “I’m sorry. Please go on.”

  At first, he took a moment to study her, to make sure she was really okay. Then he went on. “Ann got tested right away. I can’t say I blamed her.” He breathed in deep, trying to buoy the sudden heaviness around his heart. “She had a baby. A boy. My nephew, Spencer.”

  Taryn tilted her head. “You have a nephew?”

  “Technically.” There was a bitter taste in Caleb’s mouth. “I haven’t seen him since he was a baby.”

  Confusion and then horror spread across Taryn’s face. Caleb looked down, flexing his free hand into a fist. “Ann tested positive, of course. Not only that, she was already in the early stages of the disease. That’s fairly rare for a woman as young as she was. See, with Huntington’s, most people can live a normal life to a certain point. The disease is dormant. You probably won’t show signs and symptoms until you’re fifty. Young, but not young enough that you didn’t get to enjoy a good portion of your life. That was the way it happened with Mom. She raised us just fine, had a normal life, and never even knew she had the disease.

  “But once Ann’s boyfriend realized what we were in for, that Ann would deteriorate, that instead of her being his son’s mother, she would eventually have to be cared for like another child if not worse, he bailed. He took Spence with him.”

  “Oh shit. Oh damn.” She took his hand in both of hers, holding tight. “That’s horrible. I wish I had something better to say, but . . . yeah. Horrible.”

  Caleb took a handful of moments to steady his breathing. The injustice of the situation still rankled. “I thought it was despicable of him. Ann said she understood. It broke her heart, but she didn’t want Spence growing up watching her die.” He paused, his heart aching so much in that moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  “It’s a shitty thing, but now, I think I understand. I was there. Of course, I’ve been here the whole time. In the early years, when Ann could still walk and talk, she fell so much. What if she had dropped him? And then those fits. Like what you saw, sometimes she would fly into completely incoherent rages. It didn’t matter who tried to calm her. I can’t tell you how many times she hit me, scratched me. There was no rationality there.”

  Taryn looked somewhat green around the edges as she took in his meaning. “You think she would have hurt Spencer?”

  “Not on purpose, but because she couldn’t help it? Yeah. It happens in other families. Sometimes, that’s what brings on the diagnosis. My mother’s mother divorced my grandfather because of it. She had no way of knowing he was ill.”

  “She just thought he was an abusive asshole.”

  Caleb nodded. “Exactly. It’s an ugly disease, just terribly ugly, and it only gets worse. There’s nowhere to go but down.”

  “And Spencer? Does he have the disease?”

  “I really have no idea. His father didn’t get him tested before he took off.”

  He watched Taryn work her jaw, processing. Her eyes were glassy, but she didn’t cry. “So what’s the deal with your father?”

  Caleb exhaled in a noisy gust.

  “I’m sorry,” Taryn said. “None of this is my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Well, I wish you hadn’t seen us before. I guess you’re kind of in the middle of it now.” He rubbed his hand over his chin, trying to tamp down his anger before he answered. “In all honesty
, I don’t give him enough credit. He went at it on his own for a while, in the early years. They lived together—he and Ann.”

  “And you lived in LA.”

  “Yes.” Caleb pushed away the twinge of guilt he felt. “It broke his heart, seeing his daughter fade away like that. My father . . .” He struggled. “He’s not the kind of guy who could handle that kind of helplessness well. He started talking about putting her in a home. It was inevitable. I always knew it was inevitable, but not then.”

  “That was when you came back here from LA.”

  Caleb nodded. “My father moved in with his girlfriend, his wife now, and left Ann and me the house. I took care of her.” The lump in his throat choked his words.

  “Until the inevitable.”

  He looked at her, suddenly desperate for her to understand. “She needed more care than I could give her.”

  “Of course she did.” Her fingers were stroking his arm now, the rhythm gentle.

  They lapsed into silence, and Caleb knew he should change the subject. How could he expect Taryn to know what to say? What was the correct response to his story?

  “Do you think . . .” Taryn began. She puffed out her cheeks and hurried on, stumbling over her words. “I’d like to come with you when you visit. If you don’t mind.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to get to know Ann. And I’d like to keep you company.”

  “You can’t possibly want to—”

  “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t want to.” Her hand pressed against his skin with a reassuring pressure. “I don’t think anyone should go through this alone. Not Ann and not you.”

  Though he knew he had to be looking like the world’s biggest, gape-mouthed idiot, Caleb continued to stare incredulously. Once upon a time, he had loved a girl with all his being, and she had claimed to love him. That girl would never have done this for him in a million years.

  It was a different emotion that choked him then, a gratitude so overwhelming, he wanted to cry. He breathed in through his nose and swallowed several times until he was in control again. “You have no idea how much that would mean to me.”