Catharsis

ONE

My feet hit the shiny, waxed floor in time with my pounding temples as I sprint through the entrance and down the nearest hallway. Nurses with carts of towels and patients wheeling IV poles clear the way as I search for room two-fourteen. ICU. She said he's still hanging on. I still have a chance to say good-bye and that's all I can hope for.

Gaping halls have led me to a rotunda with a circular cherry wood reception desk at the center. Someone pushes an elderly man past me in a wheelchair as I spin confused circles. Panting, I try to get my bearings. The old geezer stares, his grizzled brows are arched with suspicion.

"Can I help you, sir?" A woman at the desk asks. She's hunched over her workstation with a polished smile.

"Yeah." I approach the desk.

"Name of the patient?"

"James Malek."

I drum my fingers on the surface of the lacquered desk with my heel bouncing on the tiled floor. The second-hand of the clock on the opposite wall is twitching. Tick, tick, tick. He's living on borrowed time. That's what she told me. The nurse consults her computer screen at a snail's pace while my pulse thumps double-time. Please, please, hurry.

"That's the ICU. Straight ahead, take a left and it'll be through the first double doors," she says mercifully.

"Thanks." I push away from the desk and barrel through the lobby, weaving around the floral patterned chairs that are occupied with confused-looking people. The hall off the rotunda branches left and right. I take the left and there are the double doors the receptionist mentioned: painted gray with two narrow, vertical windows. Throwing them open, I'm hit with a caustic blast of antiseptic and artificial lemon that's on the verge of singeing my nose hairs.

"That will give you a couple of days to handle the preparations," someone says.

I come to an abrupt halt and my shoes skid on the floor with an audible squeak. Four grief-stricken eyes look my way.

Two of them belong to Mom who is standing in front of a closed door with a tissue in her fist, face wet with streaming tears. The others are the curly-haired nurse's. She grasps the stethoscope around her neck as if she's holding on for dear life. Time stands still for a moment. It seems like nobody says anything for an eternity.

"Mom?" the word gets caught in my mouth.

"Oh, thank God," her voice shakes and she practically runs toward me, flinging her arms up around my neck. "The semi driver wasn't drunk after all. They just told me that he fell asleep at the wheel and - "

"This isn't happening," I interrupt breathlessly as I break away from her embrace and barge my way into the room: room two - fourteen.

"Aaron, wait!"

But mom's pleading isn't going to stop me. I've always been a skeptic. What more can I do but demand proof? The curly haired nurse hangs her head and opens the door, wordlessly inviting me into hell.

Blue early evening light shows eerily through the cracked mini blinds. I narrow my eyes to get a better look at the figure lying on a hospital bed, covered up to his neck in a white sheet. Strands of wavy black hair matted with blood have been fixed over his forehead in an attempt to cover up the swelling, but it's so obvious. His skull has been fractured; dented in and split like a fist to drywall.

Is this even him? With his chin hanging open and receding, he looks more like a zombie. Weary eyes are cracked halfway and I search the opening for their usual friendliness, deep brown hue, any sign of life. But there's nothing here; only white space and deadness where Dad used to be. One glimpse and I turn on my heels, right back out the door and into the cavernous hall.