Page 61 of Don't Go
Get some sleep, old man.This came up next. I'd said that often.
Love you, Dad.That came up third. I'd said it more in the last month than in any year of my life, and the words were too easy now. They came up too fast, and I couldn't tell which of the three had actually left my mouth and which my head had handed me because I'd asked for one.
The car had a steering wheel, a windshield, a brake, and a gas pedal, and I had all four going at once.
The hospital hadn't been a graveyard before. It was a graveyard now.
I went down the corridor.
I'd been walking fine. At the door of his room, fine ended. My knees gave in, but I caught the doorframe with one hand, and I made it through.
He was in the bed.
Mom was in the chair beside the bed with his hand in both of hers. She was crying without sound, shoulders shaking, back bent over his hand as she kissed the back of it in a slow, regular rhythm.
Cade was at the foot of the bed, Suzanne pressed against him, her face tucked into his neck. One arm held her shoulders close while the other gripped the bed rail, his eyes closed.
Theo was on a chair near the door with his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, back bent. The hands in his hair were moving slow, very slow.
I made it to Mom's chair and looked at my father.
He was long under the blanket. His chest didn't rise. His mouth was open in a shape it had never made, and his fingertips, where they showed past Mom's grip, were the wrong color.
I hadn't, until that minute, understood that a body was a place a person lived.
I broke.
My knees went down beside Mom's chair, and the rest of me came with them — chest collapsing, hands on the floor, breath gone.
I tried to take a breath. None of it would come in.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
Cade had crossed from the foot of the bed and was on his own knees on the floor in front of me. His hands were on my shoulders. His face was a foot from mine.
"Beau, look at me."
I looked at him.
His eyes were red. He had been crying for hours. He was holding my shoulders steady, and the steady was costing him.
"Breathe in."
I tried and got a quarter of a breath.
"Out. Slow."
My breath went out.
"Again. In."
Another quarter. Then a half. Then a longer one. He counted me through three breaths. He counted me through five. My breaths got longer. The shaking under my ribs went down a notch.
Cade took his hands off my shoulders.
He didn't stand. He stayed on the floor with me. His eyes didn't leave my face.
"Cade, I can't… I can't be here. Cade — I have to go."
