I want to write about your lies.
It’s dark. About nine o’clock in the evening and my phone is ringing again. It’s Mom.
“I’m here with your father…”she begins, her voice a unique mix of tired and chipper. “He’s a bit down; can you say some kind words to him?” He’s not listening to her again. His own selfish nature killing any kind and reassuring words as though they are trying to attack him.
“Hi, Dad. How are you?” He mumbles, not willing to give. “How was physical therapy?” When he answers, his voice is clear.
“Fine. It was good.” It wasn’t good. If he likes his physical therapist that means the person isn’t doing his/her job properly. They aren’t pushing him.
“What’d you do?” His answer of “not much” was confirmation enough. “If they won’t push you, dad, you need to push yourself.” He is silent. “Dad.”
“I heard you!” He raises his voice.
“Jae,” Mom is back. “He pushed my hand away so I think he’s done talking tonight.” She sighs. “Thank you. I’ll let you go now, so you can get back to doing whatever you were doing.”
“Okay. Do you need anything?” I want to help her. I need to help her. He doesn’t.
“No, no I’ll be okay. I’m going to leave here in a bit and head home.” Her days are full of him, pleasing him, doing for him. She goes to work and as she gets off, she turns to come to him. Always him. Everything for him.
“If you’re sure…” I hedge, my body shifting towards the phone. She does for him and forgets herself. He would never do the same. If she was sick, god forbid, he would make it about himself. He wouldn’t sit at her bedside for hours upon end. It would be a miracle if he came to see her at all.
“Yes, I’m sure. “ Her voice is heavy—full of the weight his sickness has placed upon her shoulders.
“Okay, then,” I pause “I guess I’ll talk to when you get home.”
“Yeah, okay. I should be out of here after this show goes off. If it’s too late, I’ll text you to let you know I’m home after I let the boys out.”
“Alright.” Silence. Neither one of us wants to stop our call as it brings the other comfort. We are a team, the two of us. We work together and pick each other up when he tears us apart.
“Talk to you in the morning, Jae.”
“No, I’ll talk to you later.” She always tries to do this—to keep me away from the effects of his illness.
“Okay, later then. Be good. I love you.”
“I love you too. Drive carefully.”
“I’ll try my best.”
“Bye, Moz.”
“Bye, Jae-Z.”
————————————————————————-
It is just after eleven o’clock. My phone rings.
“Hey, Moz.”
“Hey, Jae.” Her voice is lighter now, less dense. “The boys have been out. Wrink is insane.” Wrink is our seven-year-old bulldog, who believes himself to still be a puppy. “Bubs wasn’t much better. He kept growling at Wrink.” Bubs, whose name is actually Chubbles, is our ten-year-old blind Pekingese. He hates and loves Wrink with a passion that is bigger than himself.
“I’m not surprised. Those two have such a love/hate relationship.”
“Yeah.” It’s quiet. The conversation lulls and we breathe. In and out. Slow and steady. It continues like this for many minutes until…
“I don’t have anything. I just wanted to hear that you got home safe.” I speak. I break the silence and wish I hadn’t. But I know she is tired and needs all the rest that she can get.
“I’m safe. I’ll let you get to sleep, and I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll talk to you in the morning, Mozzy.”
“Goodnight.”
“Night.” The call ends.
It is seven fifty in the morning. I am walking back from the dining hall when I dial the phone. It rings five times before she answers.
“Morning, Mom.”
“Good morning, Jae. What are you doing up this early?”
“I went and got breakfast from Hodson.” There is a pause before I continue. “Are you going in to work today?”
“I can’t. The physical therapist called. She’s coming some time between 9 and 11. The occupational therapist is supposed to be coming out here as well. She didn’t give a time.”
“Do these people understand that you have a job?” It angers me every time I hear about these nurses acting as though only their time is important, only they have jobs to do.
The room is dimly lit. It is passed nine o’clock on Friday a month before last call.
“Girls! You’re here!” Lying in his hospital bed is my father. His voice leads listeners to believe that he is happy to see us, but we know better. His anger will show soon enough.
My mother walks to his bedside. She leans down, giving him a hug. He has Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci (VRE), which is a skin infection that is resistant to antibiotics. It is transmitted through contact. She touches him anyway. She has no choice.
“I brought your favorite girl to see you.” She smiles and nods towards me.
“Hey, dad.” He reaches his hand out to me. He doesn’t care.
“Jae how was school this week?” I have no choice I take his hand. He squeezes and holds my hand, looking at his television.
“It was alright.” I say, pulling my hand back. Guilt begins to bite me the closer I get to the hand sanitizer pump on the wall, so I wait.
“Did you have physical therapy today?” She asks him, grabbing the stiff hard yellow chair to sit at his bedside. She reaches for his hand. I push for the hand sanitizer. He stares at the television, ignoring her. “Jim?”
“What.” He snaps, his eyes pull away from the screen to glare at his wife, my mother.
“I just asked if you had physical therapy today.” She is tired.
“Yes.” His answer is brief and he takes his eyes away from her, back to the screen.
“What did you do?”
“You’d know if you had been here.” He snaps at her. He knows how she feels when she has to work. He knows that she feels guilty for leaving him alone to deal with the medical teams. He knows that she is doing her best. He knows. He doesn’t care.
“Jim, honey, you know I had to go in. I’ve been off with you this whole week. I can’t keep doing that or they will fire me.” Her days are full of him, whether she is here with him or at work. She thinks of him, always. He spends his days in a hospital bed, thinking only of himself.
“Whatever, Alexa.” He dismisses her so easily. His eyes back on the television screen.
For many minutes, it is quite until one of the nurses comes in. Casey? Danielle? Jen? I don’t remember. They have all run together now.
“Oh, Mrs. Jensen! I didn’t know you were here!” She sets up to start my father’s feeding tube for the night. “I know you weren’t here earlier.” She looks at my mother as though she committed a crime.
“No, I had to go into work today. I took the rest of the week off to be here but I had to go in today.”
“Ahuh, right, well, since you weren’t here today…”
When the nurse came in, my father let go of my mother’s hand.
It is five o’clock two weeks before the last scene. The sun shines through the patterned window of 11 West Zayed room 16. I am sitting on a cream colored couch that folds into a bed; she is sitting on the hard yellow chair again.
“Jim,” she is sitting as close as she can get to him, knees pressing against the railing of his bed. We have been hear since nine this morning, having only stepped out when my father needed to be cleaned by his tech. We took that time to rush down to the food court though we have not had the chance to eat yet.
“Jim, honey.” She checks him, testing to see if his shuteyes are truly that of a sleeping man. One of his tactics he uses when he is trying to lull us into a false sense of security, when he is tired of us, or wants to catch us eating. Eating. We haven’t been able to eat like normal human beings in so long that it seems almost foreign to think that people sit down and enjoy meals. We do not have that luxury.
My father has not been able to ingest food in months now. On January 4th, he went in for a surgery that was supposed to remove the cancer in his esophagus, detach and move his stomach to meet what was left, and that was supposed to be that. However, it didn’t work quite the way we’d been led to believe that it would. As it turns out my father’s particular surgery is well known in the medical field for failing. Apparently for every doctor that preforms his type of surgery, 1 in 10 will fail. My father is happened to be that one.
“Jae, I think he’s asleep.” She carefully slides her chair backwards. As she goes to get up, his eyes slide open.
“Alexa? Where are you going?” His voice isn’t groggy in the slightest. He looks at her accusingly before shifting his gaze to the television—sports.
“Nowhere, Jim.” She sits back down, her shoulders dropping. My mother moves her chair back and reaches for his hand.
We don’t get to eat until nine. We don’t leave until eleven. He enjoys his sports.
It is four weeks before the last scene. We are in Doctor’s Community Hospital, the same hospital he walked into three weeks earlier. Visiting hours began at eleven, though we snuck in at nine.
“Please, be careful.” Her voice is full of worry and desperation. My father is being moved from MICU up to the third floor. The women transporting my father are entirely too short to do their job. The drainage box connected to his chest tube has dropped to the floor for the fourth time. “Please, please, the box is connected to a tube inside of him! Please.” I place a hand on her should as we watch wide eyed as these transport techs mishandle my father.
“Ma’am, we know what we’re doing. We know he has a chest tube.” This comes from the older woman with bloodshot eyes, Tammy. She looks drunk as she hides behind the head of the elevated bed.
“You obviously don’t know—”
“Mom, no.” I turn to her. “We can’t.” They have him in their hands and anything we say could affect the outcome of this transport.
“I don’t think y’all are going to be able to fit in here with us, so…” Tammy trails off, her red eyes peering over her glasses from beside the bed. She waves her hand as the doors to the elevator close.
“We’ll take another elevator. See you upstairs, Jim.” We call for another elevator and somehow manage to arrive before ‘The Tammy Express’.
As the doors to their elevator opens chaos begins. The sitter who traveled with my father and Tammy begins to guide the bed out of the elevator. “Wait, wait! Hold up, girl, the brakes still on!” Tammy’s calls out. The sitter steps back, tapping the brakes on each wheel on her end of the bed.
My mother leans into me with her forehead placed on my shoulder. “I can’t watch this.” She brings her head up anyway and watches. Tammy guides the bed into the elevator door, wall, back into the door before finally getting the bed out of the elevator.
It takes more hands than enough to get my father into the new room and onto his new bed. Each time they move him, my mother flinches and reaches out. She wants to protect him from the pain that they are putting him through. Thankfully, his chest tube stays intact.
“Any y’all going back down? I’m off so I was heading out.” Tammy’s voice ends the severity of the moment like a clown stepping into a prayer service. “None of you feel like dropping this bed back down there, huh? Alright, well, I’ll do it.” She did not wait for a response as she grabs the elevated bed. “Okay, Mr. Jensen. I’ll see you!” She calls as she swerves out of the room, hitting almost everything in her path. “Bye, y’all.”
My mother and I look at one another laughing harder than we have in three weeks.
It is January 4th. It is eight in the morning. My father and mother are walking together into the waiting area for Pre-OP. My father’s brother, Steven, waits for us inside.
“Jim, how are you feeling?” Uncle Steven puts down his newspaper and gives my father a hug.
“I’m ready to get this over with, Steve.”
“Yeah, you’ve had a long road.” My father and his brother sit beside one another with my mother grasping my father’s hand. I sit next to her. We sit in silence with nerves running circles around us.
“Jensen?” A woman in Pre-OP blue scrubs calls a half hour after our arrival.
“Here.” My mother stands as my father is still grasping her hand tightly. They walk together towards the nurse.
“Oh, you can come back to see him in about an hour.” My mother’s face drops, as does my father’s. This cancer has brought the pair closer to the point that, at times, they have trouble functioning without the other.
“O-Okay.” My mother pauses, looking at my father. “Jim, are you going to be okay?” He relies on her more than he’d like to admit. She goes with him to all of his appointments and takes notes. She even goes with him to chemo and radiation. Before all of this, she had leave to take off when she was sick or needed to rest. She doesn’t take off for herself now, only him.
“Yeah, Alexa. I’ll see you in an hour, right?” She nods, squeezes his hand, and lets go.
“I love you.” He does not respond as he follows the nurse into Pre-Op
—————————
It has been an hour and thirty minutes. They finally allow us back to see him in Pre-OP. His surgery is set to start in an hour at eleven.
“Jim,” as she steps into the room, my mother’s body relaxes. She goes to him, kissing him, and grasping his hand.
“Hey, Jim. What’d they do to you back here?” My father and his brother chat as my mother and I stand, watching my father. Doctors come in and out. Before we know it we are being told that it is time.
“Jim, honey, you need to be strong. We need you to fight.” My mother cracks as she looks into my father’s eyes. She tries not to show him her fear but she doesn’t succeed.
“I will, Alexa. I’ll see you all soon.” He makes a joke about some show he wants to watch and I smile.
As he is wheeled away, my mother and I grasp hands as we begin to pray.
————————
At two, Dr. Khan comes out to tell us that his part of the surgery went well. He was in to oversee the tumor extraction and the freeing of my father’s stomach. They had to remove his gallbladder as well.
He said to expect Dr. Ahmad to come out in four hours. We continue to wait.
————————–
At six, there are only four only people besides our group in the waiting area. The board that is supposed to update still says OP. My mother picks up the red phone that calls into Post-OP.
“This is Mrs. Jensen. I’m calling about my husband…” she trails off, listening to the voice on the other end. “He’s still in? Okay, okay.” She puts down the phone and we continue to wait.
——————————
By seven, we are the only ones in the darkened waiting area. My mother has called into Post OP three times. There is no news.
She watches the clock and the board equally. Her eyes bat back and forth. She looks to the phone and any noise makes her jump, hoping to see Dr. Ahmad’s face.
—————————————-
At seven thirty, she calls again. They have news. Dr. Ahmad is coming to speak with us.
——————————————————–
At eight o’clock, the doors to Post OP swing out and around the corner comes my father’s favorite doctor. His face is dark and somber. My mother lets out a whimper.
“Doctor, what do you have to say to me?” She is grasping her chest. She looks as though she has aged twenty years in these long hours.
“Well, he’s okay. He is going to recovery soon.” My mother sags back into her chair, still grasping her chest.
“Oh, oh God. I thought—” she stops, shaking her head before smiling. “Thank you.”
“We had clear margins. He did well throughout the surgery. We did have to give him some blood. However, we did find something on his lungs.” My mother stops breathing as though her lungs have given up at the thought. “There is crystallization on his lungs. It is hard as rock. I tried to freeze it off to get a sample to run to the lab. I did end up getting a sample but we won’t know what it is for a few days.” Dr. Ahmad’s raspy voice gives us news that none of us want to hear, least of all my mother. As he talks, her body seems to deflate.
“What do you think it is?” She asks, wanting and not wanting to know the answer.
“I’m not sure but it could be…” He tells us what he thinks and I pray that he is wrong. A few days from this moment, we learn that my father is a lucky man and it is not more cancer.
———————-
It is nine o’clock. We still have not been called back to see him. The board still says OP. My mother calls.
“This is Mrs. Jensen again. We are still out here. No, Dr. Ahmad has come to see us.” She pauses, holding the phone closer to her ear. “Thank you.”
“The woman on the phone said that he was just wheeled in and she will come out to get us soon.” She sits down again, hands clasped.
Minutes later, the Post-OP doors open and a woman in Post-OP dark blue scrubs comes striding out.
“Mrs. Jensen? I’ll take you back but only one other person can come see him. You can’t stay for long.” My mother jumps up and I turn to my uncle.
“You can go.”
“I-I shouldn’t. I think I’m getting si—“
“Go, take a mask then.” I urge my uncle speaking over him. My father would want to see him. My uncle lives in Connecticut and doesn’t come down enough.
He goes with my mother and I wait alone. Soon enough, the pair come back.
“Jae, would you like to go?”
“Yes.” I walk passed my mother and head for the doors.
“Jae, wait!” I continue before turning around, cocking my head. “I just want to warn you that his eyes are open.” I nod and turn back, heading to see him. “Jae! You know what I’ll just come with you!”
All alone in Post-OP, laying on a bed with his eyes staring mindlessly at the ceiling is my father. I stop at the end of the bed. My mother reaches for his hand, holding the one that is not punctured by an IV.
“Jim, honey, Jae and I are here.” She speaks to him and his heartbeat quickens. “You did it, honey. You made it through.” She releases a shaky breath and continues to speak. He needs her and she needs him.
“Ladies, you have to go.” We are ushered out.
As my mother and I walk back to the waiting room to see my uncle off, we look at one another and know that this is only the beginning. But we didn’t know how long this would take.
I want to write about your lies.
Every time you open your mouth and tell her she needs to do more.
I want to make you hurt.
Every time you talk about her to my father and say that he has no one.
I want to show you the pain that she feels.
Every time you pressure her to act in the way that you wish she would.
I want you to listen to the stories she has to tell.
Every time you act like you like her, just to patronize her.
I want to show you the strong woman that she was before this.
Every time you pull your hand away from hers.
I want to yell at you to stop.
Every time you listen to those nurses and yell at the woman who loves you.
I want to shake you and scream louder.
Every time you lay around instead of doing your physical therapy.
Every time you made it harder for her.
I want to remind you who picks you up every time you fall.
I want to remind you, nurse, that you know nothing at all.
I want to remind you, father, that you would be dead if she didn’t love you with everything that she has.
I want to remind you, Moz, that you are strong and I love you more.
Timeless English 