Chapter 5: What the Doctor Said and What Walter Didn't Tell Evan
"I need a valve replaced," Walter said.
"Without it, they give me somewhere between six months and two years.
With it—" He paused.
"With it, they say I could have another decade."
"Then get the surgery."
"It costs money I don't have and requires someone to sign as next of kin for the procedure.
My wife passed eleven years ago.
Daniel was my only child." He looked at Evan, then back at me.
"I don't have anyone."
Evan had gone very still.
"You didn't tell me that part," Evan said.
"You're thirteen."
"You told me everything else."
"I told you I was sick.
I didn't tell you how sick." Walter's voice was steady but his hands weren't.
"That's not a weight I was going to put on a child."
"Then why tell him at all?" I asked.
Not accusingly.
I genuinely wanted to understand.
"Because he asked me directly.
The second time we met.
He looked me in the eye and said, 'Are you going to die soon?' " Walter almost smiled.
"I couldn't lie to that face."
I looked at my son.
"What did you say when he told you?"
Evan stared at the table.
"I said okay.
And then I went home and looked up how much heart surgery costs."
The number he must have found sat between us like a stone.
"Evan," I said carefully.
"How much did you think you could save?"
"I didn't know.
I just thought—" He pressed his lips together.
"I thought if I saved enough, maybe it would help somehow.
Maybe it would be a start."
Six hundred and forty dollars against a surgery that cost more than our car.
My son had known that gap was impossible and kept working anyway.
The boss appeared in the kitchen doorway again.
"You want more coffee?"
Nobody answered.
He poured it anyway and disappeared again.
"There's a program," I said.
I didn't know why I said it.
The words came out before I'd thought them through.
"Through the hospital.
A financial assistance program.
My neighbor went through it two years ago for her hip.
It's not nothing."
Walter looked at me carefully.
"Why are you telling me that?"
"Because you're Evan's grandfather and you need a surgery and my son has been carrying this alone for eight months." I set the notebook down.
"And because Daniel kept your photograph."
Walter's face did something complicated.
"I wasn't kind to you," he said.
"At the funeral.
What I said—"
"I know what you said."
"I was wrong.
I was angry and I was grieving and I took it out on the person standing closest to me.
That's not an excuse.
I'm telling you I know it was wrong."
I had waited three years to hear something like that.
I had stopped expecting it so long ago that I didn't know what to do with it now that it was here.
Evan watched me.
"Okay," I said finally.
"Okay?" Walter repeated.
"It's not forgiveness.
Not yet.
I don't know what it is yet." I looked at him steadily.
"But okay."
Evan exhaled slowly beside me.
I hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath.
The boss came out of the kitchen with his jacket on.
"I need to close up." He looked at the three of us at the table.
"You can stay another ten minutes."
He walked to the front and began turning off the lights over the counter, leaving just the one above our table burning.
Ten minutes.
I looked at Walter.
"Tell me about the program you've already looked into.
Because I don't believe for a second you haven't looked."
Walter reached into his jacket pocket.
He pulled out a folded piece of paper.
It had been folded and unfolded so many times the creases had gone soft.
He smoothed it on the table between us.
It was a printout from the hospital's website.
The financial assistance application.
May you like
Three of the fields had already been filled in, in small, careful handwriting.
The fourth field — Emergency Contact / Next of Kin — had been left blank.
