THE DAWN PATROL
CHAPTER I
1998
I hate hospitals.
I think that every time I’m in one. They have a smell all their own that reminds me of my eighth grade science teacher, Mr. Gay. He had the scent of formaldehyde on his clothes from doling out the cows’ eyes we were supposed to dissect. It was on his smock, and in his clothes; a smell that clung to him like cologne, because he was always wiping his gloved hands on his smock out of habit.
Memories can come back at you like that sometimes—usually when you least expect them—and while some of them can be warm and pleasant, more often than not, well, for me at least, they’re not. Pleasant memories are happily attributed to nostalgia; the unpleasant ones are there to remind us that life sometimes gets in the way. That’s why even now, after all these years, I’m reminded of long drives through dark, rain-soaked streets when I was a kid—streets I never knew the names of—with the only difference being now, thirty years later, I know their names.
I’m driving my ten year old daughter Ronnie through the clutter of congested streets that is Burnaby. The headlights of oncoming cars force me to squint—but that’s because I’m distracted. I’m thinking of my Grandfather’s death thirty years ago as I drive to see my father on his deathbed. That’s why I keep remembering things.
I remember how we all went in to see my grandfather that first day. It was some time in the middle of November when the phone rang. It had been raining for most of the day—a steady downpour of rain more common to a monsoon, I remember—finally stopping late in the afternoon and settling into a light mist. I could hear my mother’s sudden gasp, and turned to see her sliding down into the kitchen chair underneath the wall phone. There were tears in her eyes, and my first thought was that Russell and I were going to miss The Wonderful World of Disney.
Half an hour later we were all in the car on our way to the hospital. I could see clouds lurking over the mountains with a dark, infectious gloom—looking as if they might open up at any moment—and the street looking mottled with a thousand brightly lit taillights dancing on the wet pavement in front of us.
The clouds looked as if they’d been pulled as tight as a curtain against the sky. Dusk falls hard in November. I looked down at the Fraser River as the car did its familiar bounce across the washboard surface of the Patullo Bridge, making its slow descent into New Westminster. I watched a lone tug pulling on a log boom—a dark shadow on the darker surface of the river—the city’s lights reflecting off the water like something in an old French painting. Dad didn’t say anything about getting new shocks the way he usually did whenever we drove across the bridge—just as I knew Russell wouldn’t say anything when we drove in front of Woodland’s mental hospital, because he knew Mom would hear him. He still turned and looked at me, making a ghastly face.
We drove passed the penitentiary, a Victorian looking castle with modern guard towers and an elaborate gated entrance, when Dad reminded us that Grandpa used to work there. I marvelled at the sight of it, remembering stories I’d heard of escaped convicts trying to swim the Fraser and being pulled under by its fast running current, or freezing to death before they reached the other side. I used to think it was an old fortress, with members of the Hudson’s Bay Company fighting off attacking Indians, but it was always a prison. The city grew up around it when New Westminster became the starting point for the Klondike Gold Rush and the gateway to the continent.
A kid’s imagination can take them around the world I suppose, and I look down at Ronnie strapped into the seat beside me. She’s clutching her doll, Mrs. Duncan, as tight as she can, staring out at the river.
Everything’s changed, but the river’s still the same, I remind myself. It sounds like something Bruce Springsteen might’ve sung. Maybe I should write it down?
I look down at Ronnie as the approaching headlights brighten up the interior of the car. She looks ghostly pale in the light, her long, dark hair framing her thin face, her green eyes flashing in the night like tiny sparks. We drive past the Gate of what used to be the old Penitentiary—the only reminder they left standing after they tore it down twenty years ago—and I think of telling her how the guards used to live on the other side of the river and had to catch a ferry before they built the train bridge. I want to tell her my Grandpa used to work there. He sailed a small boat across the river every morning to work—until he finally bought an outboard. The prisoners’ families lived across the river as well, and my father sometimes took the wives over for a quarter, but I know she won’t understand anything I say.
I have to stay in the moment, I tell myself; I have to focus. I keep telling myself this, and try not looking at Ronnie, but I can’t help myself. She’s staring into the lights of the oncoming traffic in an effort to avoid having a conversation with me. It almost seems as if she’s focusing on the lights as if she were a deer trapped on the highway. Anything, so she doesn’t have to talk about it I suppose; or is it me? Am I reliving old memories so I can avoid talking to her?
I think of the drive in with Mom and Dad again, how the air in the car was thick and stifling—choking us because Mom and Dad were chain-smoking and had the heat cranked up. Russell and I were in the back seat with the windows cracked open an inch, both of us with our noses pressed to the opening as we struggled to get a breath of fresh air.
Just like that day, I find myself in the hospital parking lot—and because every hospital I’ve ever been to reminds me of all those horror movies I used to watch as a kid, I smile. All I need now is for Vincent Price to be playing the doctor and coming outside to explain things to me.
As we walk across the parking lot, Ronnie reaches for my hand. I’m caught off guard for the moment, brought out of my reverie at the softness of her touch. She looks up at me and I smile at her.
“How you doin’ Pun’kin?” I ask.
“Is Grandpa gonna die?” she says in a matter-of-fact way, trying to sound as grown-up as she can, I suppose, but I can hear her voice skirting along the verge of tears.
“I don’t know,” I say. Standard cop out answer, I think to myself right after. Why not just tell her the truth? He’s had a stroke. That’s all I know.
“Is Grandma gonna be there?”
“Yes.”
“Mom?”
I shake my head. “She’s still at work.”
“Are you gonna bring me home tonight? I have to go to school in the morning.”
“I know. I’ll call Mom again once we get inside. I just have to see Grandma and make sure he’s alright.”
“You mean Grampa.”
“What’d I say?”
“You said Grandma.”
“That’s because I’m worried about her too,” I say.
We cross the parking lot and stop as an ambulance pulls into the Emergency area. Ronnie watches the attendants pull a gurney out of the back and wheel it inside.
“Is that man dead?” she asks.
“No.” I smile at the simplicity of the question.
“How do you know?”
“Because I can see him moving,” I say, and we run across the driveway following the sidewalk around the front of the building.
I almost blow it as I say, “Not everyone who comes here comes here to die—I mean, some people are sick, and they need to see the doctor.”
We round the corner of the building and it looks as if the same patients are sitting outside in their wheelchairs that were there when I was a kid. I don’t even have to look at them to know they’re smoking the same harsh, filterless cigarettes today that they were smoking back then; I can smell it.
I remember Mom letting go of my hand and me and Russell running across the parking lot that first night we came here. The rain had started again, and Mom was fighting with her umbrella, as well as the wind, as Dad stomped across the parking lot with his cigarette looking like a red dot glowing in the night; the smoke puffing out behind him reminded me of a steam engine. The rain didn’t seem to bother him.
I guess Mom thought I was staring at the patients a little too long because grabbed my hand again, giving it a squeeze once she’d conquered the umbrella. She looked down at me with her eyebrows drawn into a tight Vee—as if she’d lost her patience with me even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. It’s a hard thing for a ten-year-old not to stare at someone in a wheelchair with an I.V. bag hanging over their head as if it was an oversized wind chime.
I suppose that’s why I look down at Ronnie to see if she’s staring at the patients having their smokes. I tell myself not to say anything. I'm not my parents, I remind myself, saying it over and over again as if it’s a secret mantra I’ve clutched on to. I’m thinking she probably feels as uncomfortable as I did the first time I came here, because I can see she’s holding Mrs. Duncan tight. I ask myself what sort of memories she’ll bring out of her childhood, and whether this’ll be one of them, or if it’ll be something she hides from for the rest of her life, like I’ve been doing?
Unlike my mother who pulled me inside with her, I lead Ronnie gently through the front entrance.
THE DAWN PATROL