Chapter 4: What the Doctors Didn't Tell Him
The ward was on the third floor.
Diane walked ahead of me through the corridor, nodding at a nurse who recognized her.
They had clearly spoken before.
More than once.
She stopped outside a door and turned to me.
"He doesn't know I went to get you," she said again.
"So when you walk in — "
"I'll handle it," I said.
She stepped aside.
I pushed open the door.
Thomas was propped up against two pillows, a monitor beside him tracking the slow, steady rhythm of his heart.
His silver hair was flattened on one side.
His eyes were closed.
He looked smaller than he had the night before.
I sat down in the chair beside the bed and waited.
After a moment, he opened his eyes.
He looked at me for a long time without speaking.
Then, very quietly, he said: "You found me."
"I told you," I said.
"Not this time."
Something crossed his face — relief, and something older than relief.
"How did you — "
"Your daughter," I said.
"Diane."
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them, he looked toward the door.
Diane was standing just inside it, her arms crossed, watching him with an expression I recognized.
It was the look of someone who has done something they know they'll have to answer for, and has decided it was worth it.
"I told you not to," he said to her.
"I know," she said.
"Diane."
"She drove a thousand miles, Dad." Her voice didn't waver.
"She deserved to know where you were."
He looked at her for a moment longer.
Then he looked back at me, and the argument left his face entirely.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"About this morning.
I was going to call you, and then — " He gestured vaguely at the monitor.
"Events overtook me."
"Events," I repeated.
"I have a flair for understatement."
"You have a flair for disappearing," I said.
"This is the second time."
He laughed — a short, careful laugh that he cut off quickly, pressing one hand to his chest.
"Don't make me do that," he said.
"It pulls."
I leaned forward.
"Thomas.
What did the doctors tell you?"
The smile faded.
"That I need rest.
That I need to be careful."
"What else?"
He looked at me steadily.
"That I'm 84 years old and my heart has been working hard for a very long time."
"That's not what they told Diane."
Silence.
He turned his head toward his daughter.
She met his eyes and didn't look away.
"You told her," he said.
"She needed to know," Diane said.
"You were going to pretend everything was fine and send her home."
"I was going to — " He stopped.
He pressed his lips together.
"I was going to handle it."
"The way you handled it fifty years ago?" I said.
The words came out more quietly than I intended.
Not angry.
Just true.
He looked at me, and something in his face shifted — the careful composure he'd been holding since I walked in, moving aside like a curtain.
"Eleanor," he said.
"Tell me," I said.
"All of it.
Not what you think I can handle.
All of it."
He was quiet for a long moment.
The monitor beeped steadily beside him.
Then he said: "Three to six months.
That's what they told her.
Possibly longer with intervention, but I've said no to the intervention."
"Why?"
"Because I'm 84," he said.
"And I've had a good life.
And I don't want to spend whatever time I have left attached to machines in a room that smells like antiseptic."
"That's your choice to make," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"It is."
"But you were going to make it without telling me."
He didn't answer.
Which was its own answer.
Diane moved to the window and stood with her back to us, giving us the closest thing to privacy the small room allowed.
"I didn't want you to come all this way," Thomas said, "and spend whatever time we had watching me decline."
"What did you want?"
"One good evening," he said.
"The bar.
The gin.
You laughing at something I said." He paused.
"I got that.
I thought — I thought that was enough to ask for."
I looked at him for a long time.
"You thought you could just give me one evening," I said, "and then disappear again.
And that would be a kindness."
He didn't answer.
"Thomas." I leaned closer.
"I'm 79 years old.
I drove a thousand miles.
I walked into your empty house and found a photograph with my face circled in red ink and a note that said someone was going to find out something." I paused.
"I am not a woman who needs to be protected from the truth."
He looked at me.
Then he looked at his hands.
"No," he said quietly.
"You never were."
From the window, without turning around, Diane said: "I told you."
Thomas let out a slow breath.
"All right," he said.
"Then stay."
"I'm already staying," I said.
He looked up.
"I mean — " He stopped.
Started again.
"Stay.
Not just today.
Stay here.
With us." His voice was careful, like a man placing weight on ice he wasn't sure would hold.
"I know I don't have the right to ask that.
I know what I took from you when I left.
But I'm asking anyway, because I'm old enough to have stopped being proud about the things that matter."
The monitor beeped.
Diane still hadn't turned around, but I could see her shoulders had gone very still.
I looked at Thomas — at the silver hair and the careful eyes and the place on his cheek where, if he smiled, the dimples would appear.
"Ask me again when you're not in a hospital bed," I said.
He smiled.
May you like
Just slightly.
The dimples appeared.
