“We have a busy day,” I mutter, grabbing a tasteless granola bar from the pantry.
“We?” She sounds enthusiastic, and it makes me cringe.
“Rowdy?” Her eyes scrunch as her brain tries to place the name. “The new foreman Mrs. Jacobson hired?”
I know she’s been distracted since my dad came home from the hospital, but we discussed the guy for thirty minutes the other day. It was a brutal conversation, and while speaking of the new hire, it was nearly impossible to keep a sneer off my face.
“Ah, yes,” she responds, but I can tell from the confused look left on her face that she truly doesn’t remember. She shuffles to the sink, rinsing her coffee cup. “It’s still early. Why don’t you go spend a few minutes with your father?”
I want to argue. I want to tell her that going into their bedroom, seeing him wasting away is the very last thing I ever want to do, but her tone doesn’t leave room for refusal. Appetite lost, I toss the granola bar back in the pantry before making my way down the short, narrow hallway.
Their bedroom door is closed, but I already know what I’m going to find when I step inside. The room has been transformed into a mini-hospital room. Their queen-sized bed has been disassembled and stacked on its side in the corner, replaced with an electric bed meant for my father to die in.
The family bible is no longer on the side table, having been replaced with a pitcher of water and more meds than any one person needs in a lifetime. The first sight of those meds over a week ago gave me hope. Medicine is meant to cure, to make a person better, but then the hospice nurse explained that they’re merely to keep his pain level down enough to make him comfortable.
The first time I saw Dad reach for them is when it finally sunk in that things were tragically bad. Before, the man wouldn’t even take over-the-counter pain meds to ease the aches in his muscles and back. Now, he begs Mom for his next dose long before it’s due.
“Dad?” I say with a quick knock on his door before turning the knob.
He doesn’t answer, but I honestly don’t expect him to. His days are spent sleeping, and when his eyes aren’t shuttered, they’re crinkled up in the corners from the agony of the cancer eating away at his insides.
He doesn’t budge, doesn’t even twitch when the old door hinges squeal their resistance. I haven’t seen his hazel eyes, the same ones I see when I look in the mirror each day, in several days. Even though he sleeps a lot, I still avoid this room like it’s the portal to my own mortality. It makes me a complete asshole, a horrible son, but I’ve often lain awake at night wondering if something tragic like a car accident or getting trampled by cattle would be easier for everyone involved, including my dad. It sounds selfish, and I’m well aware that it does, but watching a loved one waste away is a brutal position to be in.
I heard Mom discussing his care with the hospice nurse and aide the other day, and I know they’re all struggling to keep him comfortable, but no matter how many times they reposition him, he’s still getting bedsores. They’re everywhere, on the tips of his ears, his elbows, even on the ridges of his spine that was once corded with strong muscle. He’s literally wasting away, only able to eat a few bites of food for each meal.
I don’t nudge him awake or speak again. I merely stand in the doorway and look at the man who was so strong my entire life. He’s now been reduced to the pale man lying helpless in a hospital bed that has no place in his sanctuary.
Before a sob of weakness can bubble from my throat, I back away and close the door as quietly as I can manage.
“He’s sleeping,” I tell Mom when she meets me at the end of the hallway with disappointment clear on her face. I was in there for less than a minute, and although that was more than enough time to make me regret seeing him, it clearly wasn’t long enough according to my mother.
“You could sit with him. Hold his hand.”
“I have to get to work,” I mutter as I sidle past her.
I hate leaving her to care for him on her own. It’s killing her just as quickly as the cancer is killing him. But what can I do to help? His prognosis is death, and the damn cows on the Jacobson Ranch still need to eat. I tell myself as I drive over that I’m doing exactly what he expects me to. I’m putting in a hard day’s work and keeping my end of the bargain I made when I started to work here.