After Afterall

35

I find my parents' house is locked when I arrive. I try my key, but it doesn't work. I ring the doorbell and knock on the door, but the house is silent. Richard's car is in the driveway, which makes me think he's home somewhere. And then I remember my mom telling me how he's been chopping a lot of wood lately, so I walk around to the side of the house and look over the fence. Sure enough, Richard is swinging an axe—which would make me laugh, if I hadn't been feeling so shitty for the last week.

"Hey," I call over the fence.

Richard sets down his axe. "Hi Meredith." He walks over and unlocks the gate. "Did you try the front door?" he asks.

"It's locked."

He nods. "It hasn't been a good day."

"I'm not judging you, but if it's a bad day, then why are you out here? Shouldn't someone be in there with her?" I ask.

Richard lifts his axe, but he doesn't swing. He lifts it to about hip height and then lets it fall. He pulls off one of the gloves he's wearing and wipes the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. "It's been a week," he tells me and for a second I think he's talking about Derek and I. But he doesn't know about the break up, so that's not possible. And then I think of my mother.

"She's been gone a week?"

"Yes." He sighs. "On Thursday night she was herself and right before we went to bed, she wasn't. She was asking for Thatcher. She didn't even know who I was. Neither of us slept because she was too confused to sleep and I couldn't let her stay like that alone, so I just sat up with her. She slept Friday for most of the day and I thought she'd be Ellis again when she woke up, but she wasn't and she hasn't been herself in a week now."

I sit down on the porch steps and run a hand through my hair. "You should've told me."

Richard crosses the yard and sits down beside me. "I know you've been busy. I didn't want to worry you."

"I appreciate that, but you can't do this on your own." I look over at him. He looks exhausted. "Have you even been sleeping?" I ask.

"Some."

"You need to sleep."

Richard nods. "It's been a rough week."

I turn away from him. "Yeah, it has."

It feels like ever since my mom got sick neither of us has spent any time together without discussing her. Richard and I used to spend all our time talking medicine. He was my mentor early on because despite my mom being a superior surgeon, she could never teach me like Richard could. I remember spending hours with him running skills labs and reviewing charts. He never showed me any favoritism, but even when I wasn't on cases with him, at night we'd go over the procedures he did and he had me explain how I'd do them. He made me a better surgeon.

But we don't talk medicine any longer because he's no longer working and my mom's health has been coming first. I wonder if he wishes he was still working so he could busy his mind.

"I hired a nurse," he admits after a long period of silence.

I nod because I'm not surprised. "That's who's watching her."

"Yes. Her name is Grace. She's young and works predominantly with dementia patients. She's good and Ellis seems to like her, although she won't call her Grace; she'll only call her Nurse."

"Sounds like the old Ellis."

Richard smiles a little. "Yes, it does."

"It's okay that you hired a nurse. You can't be expected to do all of this alone."