“Pop!” Sam yells, his voice panicked like I’ve never heard it. “Call 911. Call 911 now!”
I bolt toward the office as Luther grabs the phone. On the floor of the office strewn with paperwork lies Pop, one hand clutching at his chest, the other clawing at Sam’s arm. He’s covered in sweat. His face is gray and terrified.
The only time I’ve seen him look so lost is after Mom died. When he wandered through the house like a child, picking things up and putting them down as if, maybe, she wasn’t gone, but simply misplaced.
“They’re on their way,” Luther calls.
My heart races like I’m still running. “Pop?” I croak out, and I sink down next to him. He mouths my name but no sound comes out.
Before I can figure out what we should do next, paramedics are pushing us out of the way. Pop loses consciousness before they get him out of the office.
“What—what—Colin, what happened? Pop?” Brian runs up to the shop as the paramedics are putting Pop in the ambulance, late as usual. “What’s wrong with him?”
I remember that edge of panic to Brian’s voice. I remember it from when Mom died and Brian came home from school to find Pop crying in the kitchen.
But I can’t talk to Brian. It’s taking every bit of energy to drag air into my lungs. Luther pushes Sam into the ambulance with Pop, but they can’t take us all.
“I’ll drive you.” Luther grabs Brian’s arm with one hand and mine with the other and puts us in his truck. This too is familiar. Luther was there, especially those last few weeks when Pop was with Mom in the hospital most days.
The ride to the hospital is a blur of Brian crying and Luther talking and traffic lights changing and horns honking, and then we’re in the waiting area. Brian’s chewing on his lip, his knee bouncing and his head swiveling every time someone walks by. Sam is slumped in his chair, eyes straight ahead, cradling his cell phone. Luther is half watching us and half watching the nurses’ station. It’s too bright and too quiet and too loud to feel anything.
We’re probably getting motor oil and grease on the waiting room. Mom never let Pop sit on the couch without changing his clothes and taking a shower. She insisted that oil still managed to get on things even when he did. The price of loving a mechanic, she always said, smiling.
I close my eyes, trying to picture her. Trying to remember how she smelled. I know her perfume was some kind of rose—her favorite flower—but I can’t conjure it. There’s only sweat and oil and stale recycled air.
TEN MINUTES later it’s over.
Pop’s dead.
A heart attack, the doctor says.
I DON’T remember getting back to Pop’s. Luther must’ve driven us, but I don’t know how long ago. Sam is a robot as he makes arrangements with Vic, a guy from the neighborhood we’ve known forever whose cousin runs a funeral parlor. Luther makes a bunch of other calls. I don’t know.
“We have to call Dan,” Sam says tiredly.
“I gotta go home. Gotta feed the cat,” I mumble, stumbling to my feet. I hold up my cell phone to say they can call me if they need me.
“You have a cat?” Sam’s saying as the door closes.
WHEN I get home, I try to call Shelby over, wanting to drop my face into her fur and hug her to me like a stuffed animal. She lets Rafe cuddle her like that sometimes. She comes close, but when I try and grab her, she swipes at me, claws raising red lines on my hand. It doesn’t hurt enough, so I try again. She thinks we’re playing and rolls over onto her back. I rub her belly. She always likes it for five seconds before she attacks. She claws lines of heat down my forearm with her back feet and latches on to my wrist with her teeth. When I try and lift my hand away, she comes off the floor with it, wrapped around my arm. When she gets tired of playing, my forearm is crisscrossed with scratch marks oozing blood, but I don’t feel any better.
I pull myself up, looking at my stinging arm. Picture Pop’s arm as he clutched at his failing heart, lying on the floor of the business he built, staring up at me like I could help him. I can’t even help myself.
My interactions with Pop in the last month? I didn’t say one word more than absolutely necessary. Didn’t stick around one second longer than I had to. Didn’t pay attention to anything but my own work. I can barely swallow around the guilt clogging my throat.
The first gulp of bourbon trails fire behind my breastbone, the second warms my stomach, and the third goes down like water. So does the rest of the glass.