"WHERE WERE YOU?" Trae demanded fiercely, exhaling a loud breath of relief when Lindy strode up to him in the parking lot of Westhaven Villa, the hospice that they decided together would be Lee's last stop before he finally passed.
"Long story," Lindy said curtly. Her arms were folded across her chest and she had done her best to keep them that way to stop the shakes rolling through her body. She was still in her clothes from her doctor's appointment. She had driven straight to Aberdeen as soon as Jack had passed Trae's message along to her at the hospital.
"Where's Dad?" she asked, walking straight for the entrance. Trae scampered behind her on her heels, catching the door and holding it open.
"He's been admitted and all that, but it's not looking good. I went over to the house this morning to check on him and he was barely breathing. So I called nine-one-one and then I called here. They were really fast. But even they said that he's not going to last much longer."
The only thing that distracted Lindy from Lee's fateful diagnosis was the smell of the hospice that hit her in the face as she walked inside. It was enough to make her nose wrinkle in displeasure. She was used to every kind of scent permeating the hallways of the hospital, but knowing this smell now surrounded her own father, the smell of impending death, made her sick.
"I can see him, right?"
Lindy faced her brother, keeping her arms in the same firm line against her chest. She felt the bad news coming like a storm on the horizon. Hospice wasn't where you went to get better. It was where you went to die. Everyone had been sure to remind her of this, though she'd already known it.
"Yeah," Trae said. "He's in room two-oh-eight."
Trae looked older than he ever had as he pointed Lindy down the hall. He'd always been her big brother, but there was something about him then, standing in the middle of the hospice hallway and finally assuming the role of patriarch in their family. He was strong. He hadn't even made himself that way. He'd just been born like that, destined to bear not only his own grief but the grief of others.
Lindy bolted to him, giving him a hug around the neck. She owed him much more than a hug but for now, it was the one thing that she could give to her only living sibling, the person who had been what someone would define as her 'rock.'
"I love you," Lindy whispered in his ear, pulling back and feeling a trace of his wavy hair against her face. Trae looked close to tears as he watched his sister disappear down the hospice corridor, her head swiveling left and right as she searched for Lee's room.
She found it in a corner of the hallway with a cart standing outside that held a plate of untouched food. She wondered if it was Lee's or if he had ended up with a picky eater of a roommate.
Slowly, Lindy walked into the shabby little room. It was mostly dark except for the dull glow of a bedside lamp that appeared to be on its last wisp of light. There was an empty bed to the far right of the room, but Lee was to the left, all alone. His own bed had been situated at an incline so that he could watch the television; of course, it was playing sports.
"Dad," Lindy said in a low voice, not wanting to startle him.
With great effort, Lee moved his neck so that he could look at Lindy, standing near the doorway. His eyes were set in a permanent squint, but that didn't stop them from widening slightly when he registered that it was not one of his nurses who stood before him.
"Lindy," Lee beckoned, raising one shaking hand out from beneath this stack of blankets.
He looked awful, even more awful than when he and Lindy had initially reunited. Lee was still no longer the man he had once been, and that was not only to be applied to his personality change. He was still bald, but his illness had turned his skin so gray that he appeared extraterrestrial. In a span of mere months, his skin had lost its firm hold and now hung in loose wrinkles. He was reaching the end.
