HEAL YOU | JENLISA

TWENTY-SIX

JENNIE

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WEEKS PASS. WEEK AFTER WEEK AFTER WEEK, UNTIL IT’S BEEN two months since my dad landed in the hospital. He starts moaning at some point, a slow, rhythmic moan that goes on for hours. It’s always the same. I must have inherited my perfect pitch from him, because his moans never vary from a perfect E-flat.

No one can figure out why he’s doing it, but the doctor tells us not to worry. He’s not in pain—of the physical kind. Priscilla, ever skeptical of expertise that isn’t her own, becomes fixated on the idea that he’s constipated and insists on giving him milk of magnesia. It turns out my dad is extremely sensitive to milk of magnesia, and we go through an entire bag of diapers—and a lot of gagging and nausea, on my part, which makes Priscilla glare at me—before his body settles down.

He moans the entire time. And continues afterward.

E-flat, E-flat, E-flat, E-flat, E-flat.

Priscilla and my mom grow frantic with worry. Because modern medicine isn’t helping, they have an acupuncturist come to the house and treat him. They push herbal remedies into his feeding tube, put CBD oil under his tongue. They even pay a naturopathic doctor to give him vitamin C intravenously. It’s obscenely expensive, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works.

If anything, his moaning gets more vigorous.

I want to tell them to stop, that he’s moaning because he doesn’t want to live this way, and all their ministrations are torturing him. But I don’t. I know it won’t do any good. I’m not here to talk. I’m here to watch over my dad, to make sure he’s never alone in his room, to see to his needs.

The sound of his moans gets to me, though, the constant reminder of why he’s moaning, and it’s not like I can put headphones on and ignore him. If he coughs or chokes, I need to know. I have no choice but to endure it. When my shift is over each day, I sit in the kitchen, close enough that I can hear if Priscilla needs my help, but far enough that his moans are muted.

It’s not a true break. I know I’ll be called upon at any moment, but at least I’m not directly absorbing his emotional pain into myself. Also, it doesn’t smell like soiled diapers and Salonpas pain-relieving patches here.

I’m catching up on the hundreds of unread text messages on my phone—Roseanne performed on live Canadian TV and just signed a contract with Sony, the twelve-year-old prodigy is going to be in a Netflix movie, Jisoo’s violin cover of a popular rap song was chosen as the theme song for a new medical drama (ironic because she hates both rap music and medical dramas),Lisa spoke with the head of acquisitions at LVMH and it was “rad,” Jennifer is checking up on me, saying she’s worried about me—when my cousin Sheila walks into the kitchen with a duffel bag and a rolled-up yoga mat in her arms. Her hair is frazzled like it always is, and she’s wearing her regular uniform of leggings and a baggy shirt over a fancy workout bra that crisscrosses in the back like a spiderweb, the kind that I can’t wear because I get lost in the straps.

“Hey, Jennie,” she says, smiling at me in her sweet way. She likes everyone, genuinely cares about everyone. “How are you? How’s your mom? Where’s Priscilla?”

“Is that Sheila?” Priscilla calls out from the other side of the house.

Instead of answering with words—I’m literally too tired to speak—I push a smile onto my lips and point toward my dad’s room.

Sheila has only taken a few steps when Priscilla barrels into the room and gives her a big hug, saying, “You’re here. I can’t believe you didn’t even text me ahead of time.”