Short and Sweet 
Hands
Karla stood looking at the waiting room as she heard the door slam behind her. She started. She didn’t like the sound of slamming doors. A slammed door always seemed to take her back to unhappy times. For a moment, she went back in time to her father’s hand on the door that slammed shut to his home the night he had thrown her out at seventeen. Later the next day, when he was sober, he offered to take her back, but she refused. She had been on her own ever since. She got her stubbornness from him.
She wondered if it was too late to leave. She could back out now and she knew she probably should. After all, she didn’t owe anyone in her family anything. They had not been there for her, why should she be there for them.
She sighed. “Just get it over with, “she whispered under her breath forcing herself to take a step forward onto the worn green carpet with the little pick flowers that seemed just a little out of place.
Karla willed herself to walk up to the information desk trying to figure out if the elderly man and woman sitting there smiling warmly at her were people she ought to know. It had been so long since she had been back to her small home town she hardly recognized anyone, however they all seemed to recognize her. Twenty years and twenty pounds didn’t seem to make any difference. She was still Charlie Patterson’s wild child here and she always would be no matter how old she got. “Hi,” she said tentatively. “Is Charlie Patterson here?”
The old woman studied her for a moment holding her glasses between the trembling feeble fingers of her wrinkled hand. She leaned forward to study Karla more closely. Karla waited patiently “Why I see the resemblance,” the woman declared finally sitting back in her chair. "You must be family. Well it is about time someone came to check on poor old Charlie."
“Oh good, now that I have passed security maybe you could just tell me where he is,” she thought. Karla felt as though she had been approved, as though if she hadn’t been recognized, her question would not have never been answered. Karla smiled to herself thinking, “Well she would be doing me a favor then wouldn’t she.”
“Charlie is on the fourth floor miss,” reported the old man. “Please forgive Madge. She has been living in this same small town her WHOLE life and she doesn’t know what the difference is between her business and yours.”
“Oh Charlie,” laughed Madge. “You make me sound so bad. I am just making friendly conversation after all.”
Karla forced one more smile even though it hurt her face, ”Thanks for the information..” was all she could manage as she headed for the elevator. In her head she was thinking how lucky she was to be free of this place. She loved living in a community big enough that she had some anonymity. People didn’t feel comfortable commenting on her personal business without invitation.
The hospital was old and obviously lacked budget for non-essentials like attractive flooring. The last time she had been here her mother had been dying. The lobby had been covered with dingy gray floor tile back then. You could see that tile sticking out of the carpet here and there, under a water fountain, in the opening of a bathroom. The tile had once been a crisp black and white but time and dirt had made both more the same color than not.
No one came here much any more except for emergencies and those for whom there was no hope left. Everyone else went to the new hospital in the city where there was better equipment, better trained doctors, and some hope of recovery. It was easy to tell there was no expensive air cleaning systems freshening the air, just that disconcerting hospital smell of cleaning solutions used too often to cover the scent of sickness and death.
The elevator creaked and groaned as it slowly made its way up to the fourth floor. It stopped with a disconcerting jolt, then the doors slid slowly open to reveal a bustling station of chatty nurses. Karla groaned preparing for another round of questions and answers.
As she stepped off she was accosted by a small dark haired nurse with a name tag that read simply Betty.
“Karla? Karla is that you?”
“Yes,” she replied trying desperately to remember a Betty from the past she had tried so hard to forget.
Nurse Betty was small and round, swaddled in loose fitting salmon colored scrubs with little blue clovers. Her hair was swept up in a bee hive Karla hadn’t seen since childhood. It was a not so natural shade of black that hinted she was long past the day when her hair could go untreated without being any color other than gray. Nurse Betty held out her pudgy hands in a warm welcoming embrace.
Karla instinctively stepped back. She didn’t like to be touched by strangers and until this woman proved otherwise then she was a stranger to Karla no matter how they might be related. Karla had learned early not to trust other peoples’ hands.
“You don’t remember me do you?” chirped Nurse Betty cheerfully.
Karla smiled meekly, “I am afraid not.”
Nurse Betty didn’t seem to be put off at all. “Well I am not surprised. You haven’t seen me for twenty years.“ She giggled. “I am your mother’s third-cousin Betty form the Collin’s side.”
Karla smiled. People from small towns always seem to know that kind of thing. They carried the family tree in their heads. If you belonged on the right branch you were acceptable, but if not, there was little you could do to fit in. “We went to school together you know,” continued Nurse Betty.
Karla looked confused. “Not you and I silly. Your mother and I.”
“Oh,” was all that Karla could think to say.
“Well anyway,” Nurse Betty said with a swoosh of her hand. “Enough about that for now - - I am the one that called you.”
“Oh h h ,” replied Karla this time with more feeling.
“Your dad Charlie. He is in a bad way.”
Karla sighed, “What do you need from me?”
“Well I thought you might want to see him,” replied Nurse Betty frowning disapprovingly as she brought her hands to her rather large hips.
Karla pursed her lips together nodding her head while staring at Nurse Betty’s cheerful blue clovers in order to avoid meeting her eyes.
“I guess you would think that, but not really. We have been out of touch for years. I am sure you are doing everything you can for him and there is no need in putting him through the stress of seeing me now.”
Nurse Betty bit her lip. “He is all alone.”
“Call my brothers. They’re closer to him than I.”
“I did. None of the three has returned my call.”
Karla smiled wryly, “Figures.”
“Look,” said Nurse Betty in a tone of voice that let Karla know she was used to getting her way. “Your father is dying. He won’t last much longer. He hasn’t signed a DNR, but I don’t think you want him to suffer. He needs someone to help him through this. He needs someone to sign the papers so that we can let him go as humanely as possible and you ARE the next of kin.”
Karla looked at Nurse Betty somewhat dismayed. “You want me to sign a from that says he can’t be resuscitated if he gets in distress. CALL my brothers. I am not qualified to make that decision. I don’t know his wishes.” Karla retorted emphatically.
“They don’t want the responsibility. You are the oldest. It is up to you,” replied Nurse Betty as though the decision was made.
“I am not the oldest, Charlie Jr. is. I am just the most responsible, but let me be clear this is NOT my responsibility.
“Your mother didn’t want your father to die alone.”
Karla stared at Nurse Betty incredulously. This woman had some nerve “Leave my mother out of this. You don’t know what she wanted. In the end, even she left him.”
Nurse Betty took a breath and started over using her kindest most compassionate voice, “I know she left Karla, but I remember her saying to me over and over again that she had stayed with him for such a long time because she just didn’t want him to die alone. In the end, she left because she knew he couldn’t care for her after she got the cancer. She knew it wasn’t in him to be there for her, but she had people who could, so she let him off the hook.
Karla’s eyebrows flew up. “She knew before she left him. She never said anything to me for at least a year after she walked away,” replied Karla in tone she was sure would let this nurse whoever know that Karla knew she was being manipulated. How dare this woman try to use guilt to manipulate her, as if she knew more about her mother than Karla did. Her mother would never have kept her illness a secret for a year. She just wouldn’t have. Would she?
“Well Karla, she didn’t see any reason to make people worry any sooner than she had to. She didn’t tell anyone but me until she got to the point where she had to have help. Then she came to the one person she knew she could count on to help her through. She had you. Your father, he has no one.”
“Whose fault is that,” Karla retorted startled at how cold and unfeeling she sounded. The ugly voice she tried to keep hidden in her head was sneaking out.
Now it was Nurse Betty’s turn to sigh, “I am sure it is his, but if he doesn’t have someone here to sign the papers to suspend treatment, he will have to go on maybe for days and days in pain. He isn’t able to do it himself.”
“I can’t be responsible for his care. I have no money to pay his bills,” replied Karla suddenly fearful that she had gotten herself in to more than she bargained for.
“You won’t be,” replied Nurse Betty.
“Fine, then give me the piece of paper,” Karla said giving in impatiently. She stuck out her hand determined to get this over with as quickly as possible. She had already been here longer than she intended.
“Don’t you think you need to see him first.”
“No.”
Nurse Betty insisted. “Your going to sign papers allowing a man to die. Don’t you think you should see him first.”
“I don’t want to sign the papers. I am just doing what you asked.”
“Even so . . .” replied Nurse Betty.
Karla could see that Nurse Betty was relentless. It seemed easier to give in than to stand there arguing. “OK then, lead the way.”
Karla had known she might see her father but somehow she had put the inevitability of that in the back of her mind. She didn’t remember much about him except for his hands. His hands had always seemed so huge to her. They were rough and callused, hard just like him. How many times had she ducked as a hand came flying toward her. She remembered his palms moving toward her, always open handed as the calluses scraped across her face.
Back in those days he worked all day and when he got home he demanded to be the king of his castle. He did not put up with any guff from anyone, especially not his cheeky teenage daughter who was determined to have her own ideas. Any conversation could turn violent at any given moment. If she or anyone else disagreed with any opinion he offered, he was offended. Everyone else in Karla’s family seemed to try hard to get along with him. It didn’t always work, but at least they tried. Karla never tried at all.
She had been determined not to become her mother. She wouldn’t back down no matter how often her mother and brothers begged her just to try to get along. Karla wasn’t submissive then and she wasn’t submissive now. Nothing made her angrier than someone trying to force an opinion on her. She would come unglued if someone pointed their finger in a discussion or raised their hand to get her attention. She would have none of that.
Her father had been just as determined. He had wanted to mold his children into his idea of who they should be and Karla didn’t fit the mold. He took it upon himself to “discipline” that stubborn streak out of her and often administered stinging slaps that sometimes sent her flying across the room. It would make him even angrier if she fell. Slapping wasn’t “hitting” after all. Men were never supposed to hit women. Hitting was apparently a closed fisted thing. A punch. Just because a slap could send you flying across the room didn’t mean you’d been hit. It only meant you were being dramatic. How many times had he looked at her crying on the floor and said, “Now stop that crying. I didn’t hurt you.” Apparently slapping didn’t hurt either.
Yes, she remembered his hands well. They often came flying at her in her dreams interrupting a peaceful night’s sleep. The rest of him she had managed to block out. She remembered him as being really big and intimidating hulk of a man.
Karla took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she followed Nurse Betty on auto pilot. She was lost in thought and paying little attention to anything but the bobbing blue clovers marching ahead of her. She was surprised when the nurse led her to a room with a little old man. The man lay semi upright in his bed ringing feeble, bony hands nervously. He hadn’t been shaved in a couple of days and so he had more than just a five –‘clock shadow of scraggly gray whiskers sprouting on his face. Karla looked at the old man quizzically, wondering who he was.
“Well Charlie you have a visitor,” said Nurse Betty loud enough to be heard all the way down the hall. She looked back at Karla. “He’s a little hard of hearing you will have to speak up.”
Karla stood transfixed staring at the stranger in the bed. Suddenly she was convinced that Nurse Betty had confused her with someone else. This couldn’t be her father. He was a giant of a man after all.
“Say hello,” urged Nurse Betty.
“I think you have made a
mistake.” Karla began before Nurse Betty interrupted.
“He’s lost nearly 100 pounds and shrunk up a bit in his old age.. I am not
surprised you don’t recognize him. He can hear you if you speak loud
enough, although he only responds when he wants too. He is not always
coherent or lucid. He will probably remember you, but you won’t know from
what time frame.”
Karla stared at the stranger. She waited to feel something, anything. She felt nothing for this man she didn’t recognize. Why was she here?
“Go ahead,” urged Nurse Betty more insistently this time.
Karla couldn’t think of anything to say. She kept waiting to feel something, anything that might give her a hint as to how to respond. She stared around the sterile hospital room. It was typical room with a large window with a really wide ledge that concealed an air conditioning unit. A brown vinyl chair with metal legs sat in the corner by the bed.. The bed next to her father's was empty and made up with sterile white sheets and an equally cold white chenille blanket turned down military style. The walls were painted tan and the light fixtures above the bed were white. There was no sign of color in the room at all except for the blue IV monitor hanging on a stainless steal IV poll. There was no sound in the room except the incessant beep of the heart monitor and the raspy gasps of air coming from the strange little man in front of her.
There was not one picture, card, or flower to brighten the dullness of the room. Even the blinds were a dingy white. There might have been some respite from the scene if the blinds had been open, but they were closed blocking out the world so that all that seemed to exist in the moment was the room, the man, and the nurse standing before her waiting for her to do something -- but what? What was she supposed to do?
“Charlie,” said Nurse Betty in her I know you are hard of hearing near shout. “This is your daughter Karla. Do you remember Karla?”
Karla resented the nurse forcing her into this situation. She resented that Nurse Betty thought she knew what was right for her and her family better than Karla did. She resented herself for being willing to go along with this ridiculous charade. Surely this wasn’t making anyone feel better except Nurse Betty.
The man looked up then through cloudy confused eyes. He nodded his head. Karla wasn’t sure if he was nodding because he knew what was going on or because he just wanted Nurse Betty to be quiet. He didn’t say anything. He just continued to stare through cloudy eyes as he gasped for each raspy breath of air. He never stopped wringing his tired old hands.
“Hello,” was all Karla could think to say.
He nodded again.
“It’s hard for him to talk,” said Nurse Betty in a softer voice. “He has cancer that has metastasized to his throat near his vocal cords. He irritates the tumor any time he speaks.”
Karla nodded. She didn’t know how else to respond.
“I will leave you two alone,” Said Nurse Betty exiting faster than Karla thought her large frame could move. There had been no time to resist. Now she was here alone in this room with a man she didn’t really know.
She didn’t say anything. She just went and sat on the chair beside him because walking out seemed to be the wrong thing to do. In a moment he closed his eyes. He slept all afternoon although there were moments when he would shake as if he were in great pain. Karla saw that he had a morphine pump strapped to his chest sticking out of loose fitting tan pajamas. Each time he began to shake she pressed the pump to release the morphine and the shaking would stop. The afternoon dragged on as she sat silently watching him sleep, listening to the dull beep of the heart monitor and watching the IV drip, one drop at a time, slowly and hypnotically doing whatever the drugs were doing for this man with the frail hands.
His hands fascinated her. She couldn’t help but stare. Those hands didn’t seem to be capable of hurting anyone. The skin sagged and you could see the dark blue veins flowing beneath the wrinkles. Karla met a woman once that read hands at a dinner party. When they talked later, the woman confessed that she couldn’t see much of anyone’s future. She said hand reading was really a Chinese art and the secret was in the present. The woman laughed at the people who wanted to know their future. "Our hands change as we change. I can tell you about yourself and how you live and think today. If nothing changes who you are today will determine your future, unless of course you decide to change," she explained. Karla wondered what her father’s hands would say to that woman now. All they said to her was that the stranger in front of her was fretful, tired, and ready to be done with life - perhaps that was enough.
She wanted to recognize him so that she could feel something. He didn’t look at all like a man who could be hard and dangerous. He just looked lonely and tired. She didn’t know how long she should stay. She tried to think, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure how she had gotten herself into this, but now that she was here it seemed too cruel to walk out on the man who lay before her.
He tried in vain to press his morphine pump but he didn’t have the strength. Karla leaned forward and pressed the button for him without saying a word. Neither spoke as she stood watching as his body gradually relaxed a little, given some respite from his pain. She wondered who pushed the pump before she came. Who would press the morphine pump if she left? He WOULD be all alone.
Yet why was she here.? Surely this wasn’t her job? Where were her brothers? Where were his friends, his drinking buddies, and his pool hall floozies that drove her beaten down mother crazy? They were certainly around to drink his beer and listen to his lies back when he could tell them. Now that he needed them, they were gone, just like he had been gone whenever her mother needed him when they were growing up. The only thing that was left for him was to twist and turn nervously pulling on the long frail fingers of the hands she didn’t recognize in his half sleep state of pain. So she sat down beside him for the rest of the afternoon pushing the button whenever he reached for it. There they were in the quiet silence of the stark white room, father and daughter, with nothing to say.
Then suddenly his clouded eyes cleared. He looked lucid. Karla stared transfixed. She jumped backed startled as he pulled his frail body in a sitting position with more energy than she imagined his tired old frame could contain. She instinctively reached out to him. “Lay down, you will hurt yourself,” she insisted.
“No.” he replied firmly though in a hoarse whisper soft voice. “I don’t know how long I can do this so listen quick. I have something to say.”
Suddenly she was overwhelmed with compassion that he would put so much energy into having a few last words with her. She felt her heart hardened by pain and time start to soften. She stepped closer. He grabbed her younger firmer hand in his old bony one. She didn’t want to make him speak “It’s OK Dad. I forgive you.” She whispered as she gulped back tears.
The frail old man seemed to grow right in front of her eyes. His chest puffed out indignantly and his face turned red with anger. Now this was the man she remembered. This was the man who had towered over her in childhood making her knees buckle with fear
“Forgive me? I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t need no one’s. I don’t need none sept maybe the good Lord’s. I done lots of stuff I don’t suppose I ought to, but that is between me and God. I done some talking to him and I hope he will take me. But if he don’t that ain’t between anyone but me and him. Don’t go pittyin me. I don’t need your pity forgiveness. If you want to forgive then do it for yourself, don’t do it for me. I ain’t askin you but for one thing.”
Just as instinctively as she had reached out to him she now pulled away. “What?” she asked with a familiar edge in her voice.
“Take care of your mom. Don’t ask nothing from her. She don’t have much and she don’t need to be spending what little she’s got on you.”
Karla gasped. Apparently he didn’t remember that her mother had died years before. “Well at least he cared for someone in his own strange way.” She thought bitterly.
Karla didn’t know what to say. It seemed easier to work with his time frame instead of hers. To explain to him would have been too hard and so she finally answered, “Mom will be just fine. Don’t worry about her.”
He looked relieved then, and just as quickly as he had come to life he crumbled backward. His eyes were fogged again and he struggled for each raspy breath.
She wanted her chance to speak but she could tell that he had retreated to far into his veil of morphine to understand her now. “So he was in there all the time,” she thought to herself. Hiding in the form of a helpless old man was a brutally hateful, scary, selfish man. He hadn’t softened with age, only his form had. Karla was having her own trouble breathing. She bent over thinking she might hyperventilate.
Her own reaction surprised her. She felt devastated that this was all he had to say. She hadn’t even known some part of her needed to reconcile with him. She hadn’t known there was a place in her heart that had secretly dreamed of an apology or that she had dared in some far away forgotten place to hope to discover that he had loved her in his own broken way.
She had come all this way without being able to articulate why. Apparently she had, had an agenda all the time and now she knew her childish hopes were dashed. She regretted the effort. If she hadn’t come at least she could have dreamed that if she had, it would have been different. She could have blamed herself. Now there was nothing left but the cold hard reality; one more sad thing to have to live with on her journey.
She felt nauseous as she backed up to the chair and set down on the sticky vinyl. No tears came though, that was good. She would hate to be seen being weak by him even now. She didn’t know what to do next. She didn’t know whether to stay or go. He still needed help, but she felt empty as she tried desperately to control her breathing. She looked up to see Nurse Betty standing in the doorway.
“He’s a son of a bitch. He always was but he is right you know.”
“It’s not your business.” Karla retorted much too tired to even pretend to be polite.
“Probably not, but there is no fun in being a nurse unless you can stick your nose in someone else’s business,” she replied.”
“What do you mean right anyway? I never took anything from my mother. I certainly can’t now.”
“I don’t mean about your mom. I mean about you forgiving him for yourself. You can walk away from here and it would serve him right, but you would carry your hurt with you. Forgive him because you can, not because he deserves it. Leave your hurt here and walk away the better person when your done.”
“What do you know about me? You don’t know what there is to forgive or not. How dare you make assumptions about me.” Karla retorted..
“Sure I do - - a damn hard thing. I know he treated you rough. Still, you are the only person you have to look in the mirror at. I know you from when you were a very little girl. I know that you have it in you to be the person you want to be. You would never have come if you didn’t. You don’t owe him. You are here because you can. He can only do what he can do, but you are called to do all that you can.”
Karla felt an unbridled rage rise within her like smoke going up a chimney. Somewhere deep in her she had contained a smoldering anger that could not be held any longer. She spoke in a low, angry, hateful tone that uncomfortably reminded her of her father. “You have no right. You should have never put me in this position. It’s not fair.”
Nurse Betty stepped in to adjust his pillow and pull his sheets tight without saying anything. Karla watcher he pudgy hands make skillful adjustments. She was gentle yet efficient in a kind professional way. Even though she new this man she was not personal with him. As she was walking out the door she turned around and said, “No it’s not fair, it is life. I don’t get to decide who I want to take care of based on whether or not they have earned compassion. I had to get over that right away working in a small town. I know who was a bastard and who was a saint and everyone in between. In the end, we are all the same, small little people needing a kind hand and a kind word to help us out of this world. We need it whether or not we earned it. We take it from where ever we can get it. I give because I can, what other reason is there ever to do anything anyway”
Then Nurse Betty left her in the room alone with the old man. Karla stared at the doorway where the nurse had stood making her noble speech. She sank back into the chair, letting it support her body unable to support it herself. Why was she here? She wasn’t the higher ground type. The old man wasn’t sorry and he never would be. Still she sat. She wanted to leave but she didn’t. She didn’t have the energy. She was just tired. She looked up to see her sad face reflected in the mirror above the sink. “Who are you?” she asked her reflection. “Not someone I can be proud of apparently. Mother Theresa you are not.”
She wanted to leave more than she had ever wanted to do anything in her life, but still she stayed. She couldn’t say why. The compassion she had felt for the strange little form in the bed had given way to resignation. She felt numb. It would have been easy to leave in that state but inexplicably she stayed. One day, dragged into two, and two dragged into three. Being at the hospital became a routine like a job she didn’t like very much, but needed to survive. She was on remote control trying not to think because thinking about what she was doing made it too hard to continue. She watched him, she pushed the pump, she sat in silence hour after hour as she waited for him to die so she could go on with her life.
On the fourth day she went down to the cafeteria for breakfast. She sat at her usual table in the back corner not wanting to be seen for fear of being recognized eating her bland eggs and toast. A couple sat in the booth next to her. Karla was glad the booth seat backs were high enough that she couldn’t be seen from their vantage point. Their voices sounded familiar, but Karla could not place them. She wasn’t trying to eaves drop, but when she heard her father’s name her ears perked up.
“I hear old Charlie is here somewhere,” the woman said.
“Really? I hadn’t heard. What’s he in for?” Replied the man.
“Don’t know.”
Karla almost zoned out. She wasn’t interested but then the man spoke again. “Poor old Charlie. He never had a chance.”
The woman agreed. “What can you expect coming from THAT family.”
“Yep,” You remember how he used to come to school? We made so much fun of him for showing up day after day in the same patched overalls. And those shoes, remember his shoes, with the soles tied on with string so they wouldn’t flip flop around. I swear they bought one pair of shoes for the boys and passed them down. It didn’t matter how wore out they got.”
“You boys were mean. You should be ashamed,” scolded the woman. “There ain’t no shame in being poor, but you sure shamed him.”
The man laughed uneasily. “Ahhh. We was just kids being kids. You have to admit Charlie was a funny looking sight with those big ears and floppy shoes.”
“Well you ought to have been more kind. You know why he would fight at the drop of a hat, cause he felt like he had to. Up to the time when he started to beat all of you up, you gave him nothing but grief. He had enough that was why. He learned early not to take no guff cause it only gets worse if you do.,” the woman replied grimly as if the memory was painful to her even now.
“He was a tough one, that one, but what do you expect. He had to learn to fight just to survive his house. You know Charlie’s father used to have his older brother beat Charlie up just for entertainment. The old man used to say that all of his boys were gonna be meaner than junk yard dogs and he was right. He was right cause he raised them like junk yard dogs.”
”Yep. He did,” the woman agreed.
The man went on, “That old man was the meanest man I ever met. He used to make the hair on the back of my neck raise up whenever he walked into the room. I worked at Nanna’s store and he used to come in for supplies. Just looking at him scared the bejesies out of me. Sure makes me feel blessed to have the parents I did.”
“For sure,” chimed in the woman’s companion. “And the old man’s mother – I think she was the cause of it all. The old woman was insane. I swear she was. “It was a crazy family. Charlie’s sister told me once the old woman would be sticky sweet to them. She would call them over to her with candy or a treat then whack them with her cane and laugh.”
The man laughed, “See how good you’ve got it mother. You could have married into that family and then you wouldn’t have such a fine, upstanding man as you got. “
It was the woman’s turn to laugh now. They were just two old people sharing a memory, passing along a little gossip. They had no idea Karla was sitting in the booth behind them reeling. She waited for the pair to leave before she got up and went back to her father’s room.
All afternoon she stared at the old man with the raspy breath. She wondered if she had ever really known him at all. She had never imagined him as a child. She still couldn’t. She didn’t even know if she had ever even wondered what had happened to turn him into the man he had become. She guessed she had just thought he was born that way. It had never occurred to her that he was ever small, ever vulnerable, or ever hurt himself.
She drifted off in a fitful sleep trying to picture what he must have looked like as a child. She had never seen a picture of him. In her dream he came to her, a tiny, dirty, little boy, small for his age with big ears that stuck way out from his head stopping to retie the string that held his shoe together. In her dream he dragged his feet waiting until the last minute to run up the school steps so the boys wouldn’t have a chance to laugh at his patched up overalls and holey old shoes before school started.
Then suddenly he was out on the play ground being pushed around by an older boy she assumed was his brother. “Do like I say or I will beat you up like I did last night.” The little boy shook and sniffed back tears while the other boys called him a big eared, cry baby. Looking more closely you could see the marks; blue, black, and sickly yellow marks of one bruise on top of anther that hadn’t quite healed.
She stared at the little boys face as he looked hopelessly around the playground for even one friendly face, but found none.
Suddenly Karla awoke, tears streaming down her face. She cried for him, that boy with no protection. She wondered why the kids who need a helping hand the most seemed so unlikely to get it. Why she questioned did other children would reach out to hurt someone already damaged and struggling to survive? She hurt for him and for all the little boys learning to shut off their tired, scared, lonely hearts in order to get by knowing that what saved them that day would get them in the end. They would never get the love they so longed for because they wouldn’t leave a crack to let it in.
No wonder he had become an angry man who cared only about himself. She felt angry for that boy herself, enraged that people had known what a hell his life was and no one had lifted a hand to help. Logically she knew he had grown up in a different place and time from the world she lived in now. In his day, people believed they should stay out of other people's family business. She still found it hard to believe that no one would help a scared little boy with no place to go for protection. He was all alone in the world and he kept himself that way. His choices kept him that way. Maybe that was the only way he could feel safe, all alone.
Her dream made her wonder what her father wished she was like. Was it possible that he was like other men inside? Could he have been reaching out to her in all his brokenness hoping she would look up at him with the admiring eyes of an adoring daughter. If she ever had, she couldn’t remember. All she could remember was being afraid and trying to hide it. All of these years she had only considered her experience of him. She had never even thought about what his experience of her was at all.
That afternoon she went down to the florist and bought a couple of plants and some flowers. She sat them around the room in places where she thought he might be able to see them. The next morning on her way to the hospital she stopped at the store and bought him new pajamas, some nice sheets, and cashmere socks. She doubted he had ever worn cashmere. It wouldn’t have held up under his work boots.
When Nurse Betty arrived for his usual grooming she found Karla sitting beside her father, gently stroking his hair as she hummed to him in a motherly way. Karla gave her the new bedding and clothes and Nurse Betty took them without saying a word. She didn’t ask why. She just acted as if everything was normal.
For two more days, Karla arrived every morning with new linens and fresh bed clothes. She sat beside her father, watching to see when his lips were dry so she could soak them gently with a sponge, stroking his hair, and pushed the morphine button regularly so he wouldn’t be in pain. When he slept she would sit contemplating the silence. It seemed as if life outside the doors of the hospital had stopped and they might go on like this forever.
Then on the seventh day Karla’s moment of contemplation was interrupted by a gasp. She turned to her father. His hand was holding the bedrail white knuckled. “Help me,” he gasped. “I am dying.”
She stood up and took his cold hand. The heat was leaving his body. She knew he was right. He was dying. He was alone and afraid and dying. She had never seen him show his fear before. There as she held his hand she was sure she was right about him now. He had lived his whole life in bravado hiding his fear. He had lived sad and alone, so afraid of everything he wanted, he never had anything he really desired.
She gently held his hand and leaning over touching her face to his. “Don’t worry, I am right here. Hand and hand we will get through this. You are not alone. You will never be alone again.”
He sighed and smiled just a little. It was the most peaceful she had ever seen him. A moment later he took one last big gasp and then let go. He was no more. The hand in hers was cold as ice, an empty shell that once held a soul or maybe the soul held it, she wasn’t sure. All that was left was his hand in hers. She let go and left his hands behind.
.