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Chapter 2

The irritating tone of my alarm permeated the darkness like a foul odor. I stretched out to turn it off and rammed my fist right into a steel wall. There shouldn’t be a wall there though, there should have been a good two feet of open space, then a short dresser where my alarm sat with a sock over the glowing numbers, then six more feet of space over Ward’s bed before the wall. Besides, the wall was plaster.
The bus. Today was Saturday, and that ringing could only be my cell phone. Why could people never call at a normal time? I rolled over and felt down this time, over the side of the bed. My fingers eventually knocked the noisy hunk of plastic over and I picked it up, fumbling for the pick up button.

“Hu-hello?”

“Steve?” it was Rebecca. “I’m really sorry to bother you at this hour, but I could really use a friend right now-”

I was wide awake now. “I’ll be there in ten, where ya at?”

“The hospital. I-”
“Don’t say anything more, just try to relax, I’m on my way.”

By now I already had my socks on and was wrestling with my pants. Two thirty in the morning and from the hospital. She couldn’t be banged up that bad if she was calling me herself.
The thought of her father floated through my mind. The good spirited man was overweight and beginning to get up there in the years.

No, it couldn’t be him. He was her only remaining family, and that wouldn’t be fair.

* * * *
The emergency room parking lot was surprisingly full at this hour, but then again, when does anyone ever go to the emergency room, but at two in the morning? I located Jenny, parked haphazardly along the edge of the small lot. I slid Winona into the row of spots to the left of it and got out.
She must have heard me pull in; she was walking out the doors as I walked in.

“I’m sorry to bother you at this-”
“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted, “It’s what friends are for. What’s wrong? It’s dad isn’t it?”

She nodded, “He wasn’t feeling well when he went to bed last night, and a couple hours ago he woke up with a stabbing chest pain. He said an ambulance was coming, so I shouldn’t bother. After he hung up I burnt rubber here and got here just after the ambulance did.”
I gave her a hug. Her eyes were wet.

“Hey, it’s all right. I’m sure everything will be ok...”
“I’m not though. Dad has heart disease and...”

She stopped talking as a doctor walked into the waiting room, staring at a clipboard.

“Rebecca Huston?” he asked the papers on the board.

“Yes?” replied Bark.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news...”

A new wave of tears assaulted her. “He’s dead isn’t he?”

“What?” said the doctor, startled. “No, not at all. He’s very much alive, it’s just we’d like to keep him here for a few -”

“ROBERT!” a voice yelled from down the hall, “Doctor McCaullin! Room 103!”

He spun around and began to jog back down the hall. Rebecca and I were still standing there when he came back out twenty minutes later, his head hung.

“Yeah, he’s dead. I’m sorry miss, he had another heart attack and there just wasn’t anything I could do.”

Bark nodded.
“I understand,” she said, just above a whisper, “I’ll be back later.”

The doctor nodded and I escorted her out, an arm around her shoulders. We almost made it to the curb before her she sank. I eased her to the ground before sitting down next to her on the cement ledge. She hugged her legs to her chest, crying into her knees.

“He’s dead, he’s dead. He was fine yesterday! I saw him this afternoon! I talked to him not two hours ago and now he’s dead. That’s it. I’ll never get to talk to him again. Never feel his arms around me, never be able to ask him for his advice again. It’s my fault, I should have tried harder to make him eat healthier. I should have forced him to exercise more...”

“No.”

“Yes, yes it is. I’m his daughter. It’s my job to look after him as an old man.”

“Don’t lie to yourself. If you had done that he would have been an unhappy, grouchy old geezer in a lot of pain.”
I put my arm around her again, squeezing her.
“Your dad died with his loving daughter there, in the room if they had let you. He was a happy man, lived in his own apartment, had a loving daughter that stopped by at least every other day to say hello, bring him groceries, give him a hug. Most of his friends are in the nursing home, dumped there by the ones that supposedly love them. He was a great man, and I know he was truly grateful for what you did.”

She nodded, rubbing the wet shoulder of my T-shirt against my skin. I started to get up, helping her to her feet.

“Come on, let me get you some breakfast. Afterwards there’s something I want to show you.”

She nodded, allowing me to lead her to her truck. She started to open the driver’s side door, but I stopped her, holding my hand out.
“I’ll drive.”
She nodded again, dumping her keys in my had. I snaked to the other side of the vehicle and held the passenger side door for her. Fifteen minutes later I was doing the reverse outside of Perkins. Neither of us said a single thing during the meal except to order. She didn’t seem to eager to talk about anything, and try as I might I just didn’t know what to say.

Some say that there are times when one communicates best with silence. As I sat there in the awkward stillness I could feel the grief overflowing from her and drifting like a thick fog across the table to me. I wanted to do something, anything to take the burden off her and ease the pain.

I remembered as a child dreaming my brother had died in his sleep. I had awoken, believing it to have really happened.
I had been sitting on my mattress on the floor, and I remember how our dog had poked her head cautiously through the door. Even in the dark lighting of the room I had been able to make out the concerned expression on her muzzle. She pushed her way in then, coming over to sit against me. She looked into my eyes and put a paw on my knee, as if to say
“Everything is going to be all right. I’m here for you.”

She had stayed there until morning, at my side, until I learned it was just a dream.

I wished I had the same ability as her now, to convey without speech the same comfort she had given me. I looked up from my emptied plate to Rebecca, who was staring across the table at me.
“Thanks,” she whispered.

“It’s nothing,” I replied, “that’s what a friend is for.”