That ladder, that ritual meant the world to them. And it might have cost me mine.
Einstein leads us back to the gate. I don’t leave my father’s side as they carry him to the ambulance. With a flick, the paramedics lower the legs on the stretcher to let it rest on the pavement while they open the doors to the back.
No one looks at me. No one says a word. I’m terrified.
In shock, I wait while the paramedics collapse the stretcher legs and push my father into the empty rear compartment of the squad. One EMT climbs in behind him.
“You’re welcome to ride along, if you’re comfortable going now. If you’d rather drive, that’s fine, but we need to leave now. Right now,” he says emphatically.
I process very little of what he’s saying. “My keys,” I say, dazedly. I know I need to go get them.
The EMT nods. “Just meet us there.”
I turn on shaky legs to run into the house and get my purse. When I re-emerge, the ambulance is just pulling out. I climb into my car to follow.
My legs feel numb where they dangle below me. My foot feels leaden where it presses on the gas pedal. My hands feel frozen where they grip the steering wheel. Nothing seems to be working right. My thoughts are jumbled and dark, foreboding. Ominous.
In the back of my mind, I keep thinking there must be some mistake. Or that I’m still dreaming, that this can’t be happening. That my father can’t be hurt badly, that he must not have heard me calling his name. Surely he didn’t or he would’ve opened his eyes.
But he was so still. So very, very still.
My mind churns, mixing and remixing my emotions into a thick paste that rational thought can’t penetrate. But one feeling lurks behind all the rest, like a still, black backdrop. It’s the horrific, bone-deep, gut-wrenching certainty that something is so wrong that my life will never be the same again.
Never.
********
At the hospital, the dreaded hospital again, I follow the signs that say EMERGENCY all the way up to two wide, wooden doors that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Still confused by what the morning has held for me, I stare blankly at the sign until constructive thought can get a foothold.
With a muted click, the doors swing open and two nurses emerge. They smile at me as though my father isn’t in a room back there, possibly slipping away from this world, taking with him the only anchor I have left.
As they continue past me, I slip through the doors, unnoticed. I make my way slowly through the labyrinth of identical halls with identical smells and identical workers, my eyes constantly searching for the familiar face of my father.
Unremarkable door after unremarkable door goes by and still no sign of my father. I reach the end of the hall and turn the corner. Up ahead, I see the nurse’s station to my right. As I walk toward it, I pass a room with a flurry of activity inside. Nurses are shuffling quickly in and out, carrying different things. A harsh male voice is barking orders, demanding different things. I realize as I watch that I don’t need to ask anyone to help me find my father anymore.
I’ve found him.
The excruciating ache in my chest tells me so.
I stop just outside the room, staring through the window, watching the scene like I might watch a train wreck. A train wreck where my whole world is lying on the tracks.
I hear the word “clear” followed by an odd tapping sound. I know what it is. I’ve never heard it before, but I can guess. It’s the machine that shocks a dying heart back to life.
I stand, mute and motionless, listening, watching, crumbling inside as the commotion dies down and I hear the same male voice, not so harsh anymore, pronounce time of death.
Like a silent movie, somber faces file out of the room, one by one. Some look at me in question as they pass; others don’t meet my eye. It seems they know who I am. Maybe they can feel the agony coming off me in waves.
Finally, the doctor emerges. I open my mouth to speak, to tell him who I am. I hear someone say my name. But surely that’s not my voice, that broken sound. Surely not.
But it must be. The sad look of sympathy on the doctor’s face tells me so. It says that he’s the bearer of bad news. And he knows he’s delivering it to me.
His words come to me from a long distance, like he’s speaking from the other side of a large, empty room. I see him reach out compassionately and lay a hand on my arm. I feel his touch like I’m wearing layer upon layer of thick wool.
He takes me by the shoulders and turns me around, leading me to a tiny private room tucked away in a quiet corner of one hall. The soft blue furniture and soothing taupe walls are clearly meant to calm, but I feel only desperation.
Devastation.
Heartbreak.
I watch his lips move as he explains to me what happened. A few words echo through my mind in a disjointed way, things like basilar skull fracture, fatal and instant.
I think he asks me about other relatives to notify and someone I can stay with, but I can’t be sure. Like a radio with bad reception, I’m fading in and out of the world around me.
I hear that voice again, the girl’s voice, the broken one. It asks to see “him.” It spills my thoughts into the air, but it’s nearly unrecognizable to me.
I watch the doctor nod solemnly. Then he’s touching me again, leading me back through the halls into a now-empty room. Well, not completely empty. It’s only empty of the living.
Gentle hands position me at my father’s side then push me down into a chair. And then I’m alone. With my father. One last time. To say things he’ll never hear and to beg for things he can never give.
His hand seems small and pale when I slide my fingers over the cold palm. He’s always seemed larger than life, even his hands. But that’s no longer the case. They’re tiny in the face of death. Everything is.
I lean forward in my seat and brush my fingertips down his cheek. It’s firm and cool. Still. Lifeless. Never again will I see the smile that graced his face so often. Never again will I see the love that shined from his eyes. Never again will I hear the voice that soothed my worried soul.
Never.
That’s a word I’ll have to get used to.
All the things I took for granted, all the things I thought there was plenty of time for, all the things that carried a tag that read someday, now reads never. All the some days and one days, all the maybes and ifs are now nevers. Never is the new constant. The only thing that will always be true now is that he’s gone. He’ll always be gone.