Zac Goldstein<\/p>\n
When I was in the hospital watching my father die, I couldn\u2019t help but think of how much the old man reminded me just then of the first car I\u2019d ever bought with my own money. I\u2019d spent $200 and a case of beer to liberate a beat-to-shit Dodge Shadow from some hick\u2019s backyard. The car\u2019s hood and passenger door didn\u2019t match the rest of the body, and the interior was cracked and musty. It needed new brakes, new tires, new everything. \u201cShe don\u2019t look like much,\u201d the hick told me. \u201cBut she\u2019ll run.\u201d And run she did, often begrudgingly, frequently absorbing my verbal abuse, transporting me to and from classes and my job until I\u2019d finally saved up enough money to put her out of her misery and get myself a truck.<\/p>\n
In Dad\u2019s case, the only thing telling me he<\/em> was still running was the steady beep of the machine he was hooked up to. I\u2019d always remembered him as a stocky man, nearly neckless, stout-gutted, and wide across the shoulders. But in that bed, he looked like a half-melted statue of himself. The weight was gone, and the remaining colorless skin hung limply on his bones like a sheet. I could scream his name a dozen times and I knew he didn\u2019t have a prayer of hearing me. In that room, in that moment, it didn\u2019t matter who he was or what he\u2019d done. The sight of him was damn sad to see, and I had seen more than enough.<\/p>\n Escape came by way of elevator ride to the hospital\u2019s cafeteria, which at that hour was a ghost town. I spied a cluster of nurses gathered \u2019round a rectangular table, but I knew better than to bother a nurse — even to say hello — when it wasn\u2019t her shift. Being married to one had taught me that much if little else.<\/p>\n The only other soul in the cafeteria was this biker-looking guy hanging around the coffee. He had one of those leather vests that the bikers wore, and his hair was down to his shoulders (which, truth be told, could have made him any number of things besides a biker). Leaning against the wall, he sipped from a Styrofoam cup and stared steely-eyed at the cafeteria door as if it would burst off its hinges at any moment.<\/p>\n Like the nurses, he looked like someone best left alone, but I\u2019d had my fill of alone. Besides, pissing off a maybe-biker was still an improvement over standing vigil in room 322, so I walked over to the coffee, poured myself a cup, and took up a post right beside him.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, brother,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n He gave me a look like he was trying to figure out if I was drunk or crazy or nothing worth worrying about.<\/p>\n \u201cI know you?\u201d he asked. His voice had a surprising twang.<\/p>\n \u201cNah,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m just here watching my dad die.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s tough shit,\u201d the biker said.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, well, he was a prick.\u201d I sipped the coffee, which was bad even by hospital standards. It took two sugars just to bring it to drinkable, and I doubted it\u2019d have much kick. No wonder nurses were grouchy all the time. Although in my ex-wife\u2019s case, that may have had more to do with me.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know how it is,\u201d I told the biker. \u201cGuy works a shit job for twenty years and takes it out at home. Everything\u2019s everyone else\u2019s fault. The world\u2019s out to get him. You ever know anyone like that?\u201d<\/p>\n The biker finished his coffee, pitched it in the trash, and turned his attention once more from me to the door. What or whomever he was waiting for hadn\u2019t shown yet, so he probably saw no harm in putting up with me a little while longer. \u201cA few,\u201d he said, quietly, at last.<\/p>\n \u201cThe funny thing is I got the worst of it, but I\u2019m the only one who\u2019s here. Mom\u2019s gone, of course, but my sisters? My brother? Forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n The biker said something that I couldn\u2019t quite make out on account of someone paging one of the doctors over the P.A. the moment he opened his mouth. It sounded like it might have been \u201canswer,\u201d in which case he was fucked because I had none.<\/p>\n \u201cIs it cancer?\u201d he repeated after the announcement had finished.<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d I said. \u201cYeah. Cancer. It started . . . I forget where, but it\u2019s all over him now. Man\u2019s barely even a man anymore, ya know?\u201d<\/p>\n The biker nodded solemnly, and I thought that\u2019s all I would get out of him, that he\u2019d go back to door-watching and threaten me to leave him alone. Instead, he leaned further back against the wall and stretched and drew in his breath.<\/p>\n \u201cListen, bud,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to tell you your business, but if I were you, I\u2019d go up there and grab a pillow and finish it. That\u2019s what I would do.\u201d<\/p>\n I waited for him to say more, but he didn\u2019t. His suggestion wound its way through the gears of my sleep-starved brain, setting off ethical tripwires by the dozen. Part of me suspected he was right, that anything short of that was just dicking around and biding time that needn\u2019t be bided. But could I really do something like that? Should<\/em> I really do something like that? Did the beatings, the fits of rage, the drunken declarations that I was a mistake and would never amount to anything, the time he damn near broke my arm, the fact that he couldn\u2019t even lift a finger now, did all that make it mercy or revenge or some emotional chimera I struggled to define?<\/p>\n \u201cRight,\u201d I said at last, suddenly anxious to leave the topic. \u201cAnyway, what\u2019re you here for?\u201d<\/p>\n The biker smacked his lips and shook his head. \u201cCouldn\u2019t tell ya,\u201d he said. \u201cPersonal business.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPersonal business?\u201d I asked. \u201cAfter what I just told you?\u201d I must have sounded like some kind of jilted lover, but fuck it, I thought we\u2019d had a moment.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s you, though, innit?\u201d the biker said. He stared me down with the same intensity he\u2019d shown the door a moment earlier. It was a 72-point-font declaration that our conversation was finished.<\/p>\n Stung as I was, I knew, as I left the cafeteria, that he was right. That was me: forever drowning the world in my troubles. \u201cIt\u2019s like you have no off button for anything bad,\u201d my then-wife once told me. \u201cIt\u2019s not even your fault. It\u2019s not even something you know you\u2019re doing half the time. But Christ, honey, I just can\u2019t take it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither, it turned out, could anyone else. The elevator ride back up wasn\u2019t nearly as desolate at the ride down had been. I filed in next to a family of four, the parents young and fit, one tike cradled in the mother\u2019s arms, the other hand-in-hand at the father\u2019s side.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone ever been stuck in one of these?\u201d I asked, the words fleeing my lips before I thought to lock them in. A post-chili bowel rush would have been a better conversation starter. As the ensuing awkward silence stretched the seconds between floors to eons, the mother\u2019s face went tomato red and the father pulled his child closer. My only saving grace was that the kids were too young to comprehend and panic at my suggestion.<\/p>\n Maybe I really couldn\u2019t help it. But then again, maybe the old man couldn\u2019t either. He\u2019d been sick for weeks, if not months, before he finally called me; that\u2019s how stubborn he was. \u201cListen,\u201d he\u2019d said, his voice reduced to a wheeze. \u201cI know none of you want jack to do with me, but I need you. If this goes the way I think, then somebody\u2019s gotta settle my affairs.\u201d That was how he put it: no \u201cI\u2019m dying, son\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d He knew I wouldn\u2019t want to come but that I would anyway.<\/p>\n Some psychologist — maybe Freud, maybe Jung — once said the most terrifying thing was to accept yourself completely. If the old man had truly crossed that bridge, then whatever choice I made when I got back to 322 wouldn\u2019t be any choice at all.<\/p>\n ZAC GOLDSTEIN<\/strong> is a New Jersey native turned Southern exile. He holds a BA in Journalism from The College of New Jersey and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where he served as fiction editor of The Greensboro Review<\/em>. He currently teaches at Guilford Technical Community College.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Zac Goldstein When I was in the hospital watching my father die, I couldn\u2019t help but think of how much the old man reminded me just then of the first car I\u2019d ever bought with my own money. I\u2019d spent … Continue reading