Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“Go ahead,” War says quietly. “I’ll wait here.”
I nod slowly to the nurse. “Okay, let’s go talk to him.”
“Wonderful.” She opens the refrigerator and gets a water bottle out. “Come on this way. My name’s Lorraine, by the way, I’ve been your daddy’s nurse for a year now.”
“How’s he doing?” I ask as we walk through the halls toward my father’s wing. He has his own section with several private rooms, bathrooms, living rooms, and a small kitchen. “I know he’s sick, but how sick?”
“I’m a hospice nurse,” she says and that tells me everything. “But he’s got good days and bad days, just like everyone. You happened to show up on a good day, which is a real blessing.” Lorraine flashes me a kind smile. “Just to warn you, he’s in a hospital bed, there’s beeping equipment, and he’s got an IV line in right now for some medicine, but that’s not always there. Some people get a little squeamish around that stuff, but don’t let it put you off, just act like you normally do when you visit your father.” She pauses when we reach the door. “Do you need a second to gather yourself?”
I take a deep breath and shake my head. Lorraine’s nice and she’s clearly done this before, but there’s no amount of waiting around that will make this any easier. “Let’s go in.”
My father looks like he shrank to half his size. His face is gaunt, his hair gray, the wrinkles around his deep blue eyes deepened into massive furrows. His room is exactly like I remember it, except for the hospital equipment: oil paintings of the Texas landscape, pictures of the family, including several of my mother, and more than a few of me when I was little. There’s a TV playing a Western, but Dad’s eyes track me as I walk toward him, feeling strange and small and like a child all over again.
“Hi, Dad,” I say, and Lorraine comes over, giving him the water and helping him sit up.
“I found this one in the kitchen looking for everyone else,” Lorraine says, giving him a knowing smile. “But you know how that is.”
“Thank you,” Dad says to his nurse. “Could you give us a moment? I haven’t seen my daughter in quite some time.”
“Sure, honey, sure.” Lorraine gets him settled. “You need anything at all, you just yell.” She gives me another kind smile and departs.
I remain standing alone at the end of Dad’s bed.
A thousand emotions tear into me with their claws. Memories, good and bad, some of the worst and best of my life. Dad sitting on a stool taking his boots off after a long day of work, giving me a tired smile as I do a dance I practiced for him all afternoon. Dad grunting as he changed the channel with me by his side, talking about his favorite movies, hugging me tight against his massive, warm flank. Dad staring down his nose and calling me a liar. And now Dad is lying in that bed, looking like a skeleton, pale and sickly, slightly jaundiced, exhausted and aching. Dying slowly, by inches, when I never imagined he could be anything but his massive, vital self.
“So,” Dad says, and his voice is still that low prairie rumble, drawing out a single word. “He really did it. He brought you home.”
“Didn’t think he could?”
“I had my doubts. You’re a Leader, after all. Stubborn to a fault.”
I smile bitterly at that. If he only understood how much that stings, he might’ve not said it. “Why’d you send War after me, Dad?” I want to ask a dozen other, more important questions, but that’s what comes out first.
He chuckles and that laugh nearly kills me. I loved that laugh. I worked hard for that laugh. Whenever my father smiled and gave me that laugh, it was like everything was worth it, all the hard work, all the tough lessons, all the struggle and the judgment. My father could make me feel seen, or make me feel invisible, or make me feel any number of extremes more easily than anyone else in my life ever could before and since.
Now I feel tiny and humbled and scared and sad for my larger-than-life father.
“Didn’t trust anyone else,” he says, and he coughs and sips the water Lorraine gave him. “Not that I trust Warren. Your cousin’s been very involved in everything and I needed someone she didn’t know.”
“Which one?” I can’t imagine any of them taking charge of Leader. There’s lazy Evan, a couple years older than me, and burly Dean, exactly my age, and dense Bruno, dumb as a rock and two years younger, and those are all Uncle Lovett’s boys. There are also Uncle Dudley’s kids, and Aunt Noreen and Aunt Jade, both with their own broods. Too many cousins to count, and all of them worthless in their own way.