Content Warning: sexual assault

As Laura stepped out the door of her apartment building, the air clung to her like a skintight dress.  Three a.m. and still no break from the mugginess. 

Crossing the parking lot to her car, she thought about what the doctor had said.  There was a lot of medicalese, but what it all boiled down to was that her father had been rushed to the ER with a heart attack and was in critical condition (whatever that meant).  A card in his  wallet designated her as the person to be responsible for making decisions about his medical care, should he be unable to do so.  Which, apparently, was the situation now.  So here she was  heading for the hospital.

The Toyota miraculously started on the first try, and she pulled out onto the empty road, hoping the noise caused by her muffler half hanging off hadn’t awakened anyone in the complex.  Fortunately, the air conditioner still worked.

So, she was Wesley Hillman’s health care proxy.  Probably the alternate, after Mom.  Who would have thought he’d outlive her?  But nobody had had any idea about how much territory cancer had claimed throughout her body until it was just weeks to the end. 

And this time it was him.

She looked around in a desperate attempt to distract herself from the thoughts on the edges of her consciousness, but the road was dark and featureless. 

She took a deep breath. The hospital nurses that had taken care of her mother had been nice enough, but Laura could see how her mother had lost any say in how her body was treated.  I won’t let that happen to me, she thought.  None of this heroic lifesaving technology to keep me alive as a vegetable.  But then, who would there be to make sure of that?  If she didn’t have a husband or even any friends now, at age forty-five, who would there be by the time she was ready to go? And, of course, who knew when that would be?  A drunk driver could come out of nowhere right now, and that would be it.  You just never knew when life was going to kick you in the stomach.

Well, she’d tried making friends, but she’d always been afraid that if she let them get too close, they’d take advantage of her.  She’d had friends as a kid, though.  She and Janie Sanders had been best friends until they were twelve and then she’d told Janie what had happened and the next day Janie wasn’t allowed to play with her any more.

She hadn’t bothered trying to tell anyone else after that.  And it had gone on, night after night. . .  I wonder if that gas station up there is open, she forced herself to think, but it was too late.  The memories would force themselves upon her now, paralyzing her and making her gag until she’d have to relive the whole thing.  The click of the latch as he opened her bedroom door.  The smell of Old Spice and Cavendish pipe tobacco.  The trying not to breathe so he wouldn’t know she was there.  The creak of her bed as he sat down.  His hands.  The sound of –

She jumped as a car honked behind her.  How long had that light been green?  They must think she was crazy.  She floored the gas and the sudden clatter of the muffler startled her even more. 

God, she was jumpy!  Well, better to be jumpy than to be. . . back there with those thoughts.  The turn for the hospital was coming up soon, she knew.  Yes, there it was. 

She parked the car.  She could still feel her heart racing, and the backs of her knees were wet.  She gulped the sodden air as she walked unsteadily toward the big revolving door.

“I’m here to see Professor Hillman,” she told the reception desk clerk, feeling as though she’d left her brain somewhere back in time.

“Hmm. . . Hillman, Wesley.  Intensive care.  Fourth floor.  The elevators are around the corner on your right.”

The hospital – people walking around with brisk importance under overbearing fluorescent lights – was comforting in its bizarreness.  Her composure returned as the elevator rose to the fourth floor.

He lay in the bed, motionless, grayish.  The machines surrounding him testified that he was alive, but there was no other sign that she could see. 

“Ms. Pearce?  I’m Dr. Delaney.  Your father’s not doing too well.  We’ve got him on a respirator and a feeding tube, and I don’t foresee his being able to get along without them.  I think we’ve got his heart stabilized for now, but he appears to have diminished brain function.  I’m sorry to have to let you know this way, but I’m not one for sugar-coating things.”

Laura nodded absently.

“The decision is up to you, as your father’s health care proxy, as to whether you want to prolong his life under these circumstances or terminate the life support.  We could give him enough morphine that he would go peacefully.”

She looked away from the doctor and back to her father.  A faint smell of Old Spice and Cavendish pipe tobacco had emerged from under the heavy mask of hospital disinfectant.  Turning away from her father, she strode toward the door, took a deep breath and let it out.  “I’m not ready to let go.  We’ve had a long history together.  Please do whatever you can to keep him alive.”

The hospital’s revolving door released her to the dank air’s familiar embrace.