Ghost of You

The Ghost of You - Chapter 9

I was able to meet Berta outside the hospital just as she had pulled up. Together, we took the elevator up to the ICU and met Ma who was calm, but we could tell she had been crying. "I've never seen him in so much pain. Girls, he's in so much pain," she said and Ma grasped onto Berta, crying into her shoulder as I walked into the room. Dad had been attached to a more industrial sized oxygen unit and his breathing was very labored. "What happened?" I asked as a Doctor made her way around me to check vitals.

"His treatment hasn't been helping as much as we had hoped and the new medicine has only sped up the inevitable."

"What. Does. That. mean," I asked slowly and through gritted teeth, trying my best to hold myself together.

"We've done what we could, but, it's time." I could Berta whisper a, "no. nonono," into Ma's shoulder and Ma shh'd her and soothed her with her humming.

"You mean, there's nothing more you can do for him," I asked and the Doctor nodded. Berta continued to fall apart behind me as I stared at my father, who lay comatose on the hospital bed before me. I moved forward a few steps before turning back to my mother. "Ma, what happened?"

"I took him into the ER and they said his BP was severely low so they transferred him here and he started clawing at the walls saying he was in pain. I told them to do something and they put him in the coma-"

"You DID THIS TO HIM,"I screamed at the Doctor who moved forward to calm me down but I backed away from her. "Charlotte, he was in pain. I just, I've never seen him like that and I asked for mercy."

I stood over his frail body, my eyes swollen with tears as I tried to remember every piece of him. His smile, the way his eyebrows were all bushy and he had that one, out of place hair that used to drive me so crazy that I'd pluck it; I tried to remember the way his hair parted, and the scar on his forehead. As I watched him try desperately to breathe, which would make his entire body jerk each time he exhaled, I thought about everything we had talked about since I was a little girl. I remembered us watching cartoons and playing with my toys, and I remembered how he'd help me get ready for school in the morning and how he was the one who dropped me off and picked me up every day. I remembered talking to him about how stupid boys were and about stuff I had learned in school. I remembered the late night chats we'd have over what seemed like endless bowls of soup or the number of Rummy games we used to play. I remembered watching movies with him and listening to him spout out all of this seemingly useless trivia about the actors or other things and thinking he was the smartest man in the universe, the strongest man in the universe. And here he lay, defeated and broken. I turned to my mother and sister and gave my blessing before exiting the room.

I knew he was in pain and I knew he'd been keeping it from Ma, Berta, and probably me to an extent for quite some time now, but that didn't make this any less hard. I waited, biting the cuticles of my thumb until I heard the loud beep of the machines being unplugged. I continued to listen to monitor continue to beat for another 5 minutes before it became one long constant sound and I fell to the floor, sobbing.

He was gone.

My best friend, my dad....gone.

.....

Berta said she'd stay with Ma and asked if I would be okay back at Andy and Allison's. I told her Bender was there, I lied. I had reached the point where I had cried so much that I was numb and could care less about anything at that point, because it felt like all I cared about was gone within the span of an hour. I drove home in silence and let myself into the dark house. It still smelled faintly of spaghetti and my stomach instantly turned sour. I ran to the bathroom as fast as I could and threw up what little contents I had in my stomach. After what felt like an eternity of dry heaving, I sat against the toilet bowl and screamed and cried.