Stealing The Show (Such Sweet Sorrow Trilogy, Book One)

5

WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS fast. 

Paps goes into the hospital that night. He's coughing up more blood. He doesn't know where he is. 

We wait, helpless, in the waiting room. I watch CNN and hate everybody on there because they're going about their lives like nothing is happening, like whatever BREAKING NEWS they have is more important than this.  

The doctors don't come tell us what's going on often enough. My dad keeps asking the nurses and they always say, "The doctors will let us know when there's an update." Every fucking time, same thing, like they're robots.  

We see some guys come in after a car accident. They're drunk. They think their broken arms are funny. One of them keeps touching his face that's all raw and full of glass. Assholes like that get to live and Paps has to die. I hate them. 

I start to like the nurses because they make the drunk assholes with their non-life-threatening injuries sit out on their gurneys for an hour, and one of the assholes wets his pants.  

My mom comes to the hospital, too. She loves Paps--everybody does, and for a moment it's like we're a unit again. She hugs my dad and sits next to me and holds my arm, and I even let her.  

Jubilee and Shoe and the rest of the cast come by after about an hour. They've changed clothes and are out of makeup. They cancelled the cast party to be here, but I send them off after a while because this isn't doing any good. It's not their Paps in there in pain. They should be having a party for one fucking amazing play. It should be in honor of Paps, I say. He loved nothing more than a good time. Make him proud, I tell them.  

But I don't go. No. I'm here again, doing nothing. 

Finally, after about four hours, he's stable enough for us to see him. We three head down the hallway, which is darkened since it's after midnight. I think we're probably not supposed to be here this late, but I don't care. 

The one thing I want is to see him right now. And the one thing I don't want is to see him like this.  

We get to his room and he's not even in the bed. There are three nurses in there flitting around like they've got crushes on him.  

"Are you comfortable, Mr. Champion?" one asks.  

"Darling, with a smile like that, you could lay me down on a slab of cement and I'd be comfortable."  

She giggles. She actually giggles. She's probably seen Paps' wrinkly body and his ninety-three year old dong, and cleaned up the blood that kept spurting out of his mouth. And he still makes her giggle. 

They've got him in a chair over by the window. He's wrapped in a hospital blanket that's tucked in all around him so he looks like a lumpy cushion with this disembodied head floating over it.  

The heater is on right there under the window and it's blowing his hair. Paps' long comb-over hairs are winging up in the hot breeze.  

Out the window there's a streetlamp that puts this bluish light into the room. It's started to snow, the first snow of the winter, and in that blue light coming in, the snowflakes make it look like there's a disco ball going around the room. 

We're standing there, watching the light, watching his hair flutter, looking at his suddenly small-looking head poke out of his blankets, thinking how he almost died, but didn't, and he looks right at me. 

"Ahh..." he sighs. "This is the life."  

I've never laughed so hard. I laugh until I cry. I laugh until I can't breathe and I feel like I might die.