The Complete Collection. William Wharton

want my father to stay here in the intensive care unit until it’s absolutely clear it is no longer necessary.’

      He looks sidewise at me on this one but I charge on.

      ‘I want all tests or any treatment that I or a consulting physician deem necessary.’

      That one hurts too, but he dips his head slightly. He doesn’t know what’s coming.

      ‘Dr Benson, I’ve lost confidence in your nursing staff. You’ve read about the disgraceful incident where my father was tied to a chair here in this hospital with his wrists lacerated, his hands swollen and his catheter torn out. I don’t want anything like that to happen again. If I consider it necessary, I want the right to sleep with my father in his room and care for him or see that proper care is given.’

      ‘Come, Dr Tremont, we do have hospital rules. You could never stay in the intensive ward here, for example.’

      ‘Let me finish, Dr Benson. Here in the intensive ward I’m not worried, there’s sufficient nursing coverage, but in the regular wards, this cost-saving technique of a central station for a large number of patients is not adequate.’

      Benson stands up. He puts his hands in his pockets, bends his knees and rocks on his toes. He’s into his dismissal routine. I remain seated and cross my legs. I lean forward.

      ‘And when I decide my father can come home, leave the hospital, I want whatever support equipment I consider necessary, including Perpetual-supplied nursing aid.’

      He goes into a head-shaking routine. He pastes on an old-style ‘ain’t this ridiculous’ smile. Maybe he is Will Rogers.

      ‘I’m not sure all that can be arranged. It’s completely against hospital policy, especially your staying with the patient at the hospital.’

      ‘Dr Benson, I’ll be here with my father the rest of the morning; if, after consultation and reflection, you decide you can fulfill my requests as I’ve described them, would you have them typed out, signed by yourself and delivered to me here?’

      I pause.

      ‘If not, you have the card from Knight & Knight; you may contact them or they’ll contact your attorneys.’

      I stand up and do my dismissal routine, a slight Peter Lorre bow from the waist. We do some more eye-to-eye staring. He could still throw me off the floor and lock me out of the hospital but I can see he isn’t going to. He can’t afford it. He walks past me, out the door and off the floor.

      An hour later a nurse scurries in with signed approval for everything.

      During the next week, I stay with Dad a good part of the time; Billy comes and sits with Mother most days.

      Dad continues in a coma. I see Dr Chad every morning; he’s kind and concerned. There’s nothing said about the confrontation with Benson. Chad does an LP; there are some red cells in the spinal fluid but nothing to indicate serious stroking. He takes an EEG, but it’s hard to tell anything while he’s comatose. These things should all have been done a long time ago. The brain scan shows no sign of a tumor. But he remains unconscious. His BUN stays high. His eyes are dilated and his pulse irregular. It looks as if there will be no problem about Dad leaving intensive care.

      On Thursday afternoon, Dr Chad sits down in the chair beside me in Dad’s room. He pulls out the record and goes over the medical evidence. He looks at me.

      ‘Mr Tremont, I think your father’s dying. I’m still not sure just what happened. It could be any of a number of things, but his condition looks irreversible. If you want to have another consultation on this, please do.’

      I look at him. It’s hard to accept. I look over at Dad. If they took off all the support – IV, oxygen, monitors, catheters, all the hardware – he’d die in hours. I can’t say anything.

      ‘Mr Tremont, you should probably start considering arrangements for your father’s death. I know your mother is very ill and perhaps you should try to prepare her. I don’t think he will last much more than a few days.’

      I go down to the lobby and call Joan. I tell her what the doctor said. She’s shocked but not surprised; that best explains the way I’m feeling myself. Joan says she’ll meet me at Mom’s.

      I go home. Billy’s in back working with the motorcycle. He took a spill on it riding the fire trails and he’s trying to straighten the forks and knock out some bumps in the gas tank. The headlamp and direction-signal lamps are broken, too. Mother’s watching TV. I sit beside her. If the show is over before Joan gets here, I’ll break it to her myself. This is another hospital show. I’m beginning to think everybody’s dressed in white, blue or green gowns. The show ends with a freeze shot of a woman screaming. Some fun.

      I walk over and turn off the set. Mother’s in her dressing gown after taking a nap. She has her hair in curlers and some cream worked into her face. She’s a full subscriber to the ‘don’t let yourself go’ theory of survival.

      ‘Mom, I just talked to Dr Chad.’

      She’s onto it right away.

      ‘What did he say, Jacky; is he going to die?’

      I think her mind is still half in the soap opera; we’re acting out another episode. I should complain; it makes things easier for me. I take on the role of kind, loving, concerned son.

      ‘Dr Chad feels Dad doesn’t have much longer. He wants us to make the arrangements.’

      That sounds appropriate to the genre. I’m feeling disengaged, thirty-six-plottish. Then Mother puts her fist into her mouth and starts crying, really crying. The soap opera is over.

      She throws her arms around my neck. Mom’s such a tiny woman, I always forget except at times like this. If a man were her size, he’d be totally marked by it, at a terrible disadvantage. I wonder if I could be five feet tall and cope.

      I hold on to her until we hear Joan’s camper roll into the driveway. Joan climbs down and comes in. Mother and Joan fall into each other. I’m empty, bare, cold inside. I’m surprised to find I’ve been crying. I’m the one it hasn’t reached yet. I’ve been so busy, arranging, arguing, fighting, I haven’t allowed it to happen to me. My father’s going to die.

      It’s hard for all of us to talk about it but we need to do something. Except for an insurance policy, my folks haven’t made arrangements. Like most people, they didn’t want to think about it. Mother says she and Daddy agreed they wanted the simplest kind of funeral but buried in the ground together, in the same grave. That’s all. We decide on the Holy Cross Cemetery, about two miles from my folks’ house; no showing of the body or any of that. Mother wants any money beyond the minimum to be used for mass cards, prepaid masses said by priests in different places for his immortal soul.

      I’m all primed to fight against embalming. It seems I need to fight something through these hard parts, something to keep me from thinking.

      When I was fifteen, my Grandfather Tremont died. I was known in the family as the one who was good at school and I’d noised it around about wanting to be a doctor. My grandfather was to be embalmed in his own bedroom for the laying out. Friends of the family, the Downeys, who had a funeral home around the corner, were doing it. I was elected to help with the embalming.

      By the time I’d watched the draining of the dark, thick blood, the cutting out of the insides, the stuffing of cotton into the sides of his mouth and into the eye sockets, it was the end of my doctoring career. I also swore nobody I loved would ever have that happen to them.

      This is the first time I’ve had to check out that resolve. I’ve had thirty-seven lucky years since then, not being forced to make any of those decisions, but now it’s here.

      The next day, Joan and I go to Bates, McKinley & Bates, a mortuary and funeral home on Culver Boulevard. It’s a sad business for a sunny California day but it’s good doing anything with Joan.

      The mortuary