THE DAWN PATROL

Russell was about to say something to me, but when he saw Angie standing up to change the channel it was like he forgot about everything else. He ran back to the couch and almost tackled her. She screamed and then covered her mouth once she realized where they were. They both broke into a fit of giggling and I told myself he just wants to touch her tits. He was always talking about her tits and how nice they looked. I took the opportunity to leave the room.

I walked down the narrow halls and looked into the different rooms. There were four beds to a room on one side of the hall, and two to a room on the other. Most of the rooms were quiet. The patients were either sleeping, or staring out of the window with that lost look you see in old peoples’ faces. And then I realized everyone was old. They were old, and alone. I thought maybe they’d been forgotten by their families, and it made me think of Grandpa.

I started looking for his room. I passed a few nurses in the hall, but they ignored me, and I was glad for that. For the most part, it was quiet, like a library, and I thought I could hear my own heart beating in my ears. When I stepped around the last corner I saw Gramma sitting on a wooden bench outside of his room. I couldn’t believe Mom or Auntie Marge left her there alone—not after everything they said about her taking pills, and how she seemed so upset. But she seemed fine now. She sat with her little black handbag on her lap. Her coat was done up, and she sat staring at the wall across from her, her tiny feet barely touching the floor, but crossed at the ankles all the same.

“Gramma?” I said as I stepped up to the bench and stood beside her.

“Daniel? My, you’ve grown at least three inches since the last time I saw you,” she said with a weak, unconvincing smile.

“You just saw me two weeks ago, Gram.” I tried to laugh, and started sliding down the wall to sit on the bench beside her.

“Don’t slide on the wall like that. It’s dirty.”

“This is a hospital, Gram. They keep it clean. They have to.”

“I can see dirt. It’s all over the place.”

I smiled. She’s always seeing dirt.

She sat silent, and I watched her. She’d been beautiful once; I’d seen pictures of her when she was younger. Her hair used to be long, and dark—it looked darker in the black and white pictures we had—but it swept down past her shoulders, to the middle of her back. She smiled a lot; even in pictures where you had to sit for a long time, she managed to keep her smile. Now she was old, and thin, and the fine lines on her face had deepened to become wrinkles.

She sat with her head back against the wall and I could see a tear in the corner of her eye. I wanted to reach over and wipe it away, but she did it herself. Her tiny, spotted hand fell on her lap as if it weighed a hundred pounds. I reached over to take it in mine. It was soft, and I could feel the delicate bones rubbing against each other. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Are you gonna be okay Gramma?” I asked.

She nodded and tried to smile.

“Auntie Marge said the doctor gave you some pills.”

“I spit them out when no one was looking.” She smiled at me—this time for real—and showed me the tissue in her hand. There were four different pills wrapped inside.

“You didn’t take them?”

She nodded and smiled again. It was a self-satisfied smile that slowly faded. “I’m better now that I’ve had time to think.”

“You mean about Grandpa?”

She nodded.

“How long have you been married Gramma?”

“Forever,” she said with a sigh. “Fifty-one years. I was eighteen, and he was twenty-two. He was such a handsome man then. You remind me a lot of him. You have the same hair, and the same eyes. You have a lot of your father about you, but mostly your grandfather.”

“Did he really lose his arm fighting off an army of soldiers by himself?”

She shook her head. “There was a battle. That’s all I know.”

“Then he wasn’t a pirate when he was younger?”

“Did he tell you that?”

Now it was my turn to nod, and Gramma smiled. Grandpa didn’t like to talk about the war much—he said he didn’t like to think about it and had spent most of his life trying to forget it—so he made up stories as to how he lost his arm, or what happened to his eye. My favourite story was how he fought off the Berber pirates in the African desert and rescued Gramma from the clutches of their leader, Ab-del-Krim.

As I thought of everything he meant to me, I felt a tear in my eye and wiped it away.

“Don’t cry for him,” Gramma said softly.

“Why not?”

“It’s better he should die than to live like they say he’ll be.”

“What do you mean?”

“A man like him deserves a real death—not this. This is suffering. Men like him aren’t meant to suffer. He’s suffered enough. Everyday he suffered because of his leg, but he never said anything about it. I knew it though; a woman knows. I could see it when the weather changed, and it was cold, or when the rain came. He walked everywhere. He couldn’t bend his knee, but he didn’t complain—even when I learned to drive. If he lives, he’ll never be that man again. He’ll never laugh, or walk, or be the same. He won’t even be able to go to the bathroom. I don’t want that for him.”

“You mean it’s better if he dies?”

“Yes.”

I heard Mom and Auntie Marge as they came around the corner. I looked at Gramma and she closed her eyes. I wished I could do the same.

“Jesus, Danny,” Mom said with a loud whisper. “I thought I told you to go to the waiting room with Russ and Angie? I’ve got everyone running around the hospital looking for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wanted to see Grandpa. I wanted to see for myself; I had to. I found Gramma instead.”

“Oh my God! Is she sleeping? Do you think it was the pills they gave her?” Auntie Marge asked.

“Probably.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Do? About what?”

“Winnie and Ray are going to be here any minute.”

“Is Auntie Win here?” I asked.

“Danny,” Mom said, her eyebrows drawn down into that tight vee I was so familiar with. “I think it’s time you leave. You’re pushing your luck.”

I felt Gramma’s hand in mine—I was still holding it—and  she squeezed it softly. I looked at her sitting on the bench beside me, so quiet and still. She opened an eye and looked at me, winked, and closed it again.

“You don’t have to worry about Gramma, we’ll take care of her,” Auntie Marge said. “Just go wait in the waiting room with Russ and Angie. We brought you your hot chocolate, but it’s probably cold by now.”

By the time I walked back to the waiting room, Russell had already drank my hot chocolate.

And as quick as that—as quick as it takes a memory to flash in your mind and become a recollection—it’s just that, a reminiscence. Gone.

As fleet and fickle as the flying fickle finger of Fate, my friend.

We cross the street and I see three punks near my car, looking at it. I stop to look at them, and one of them sees me. He says something to the others who look up; they drift into the lengthening shadows around them. They’d better just be looking, I tell myself.

No sooner do I think this, than we’re walking back in to the hospital and I say to Russell that I want to stop off at the cafeteria and grab a hot chocolate for Ronnie.

“Aren’t you the good dad,” he says with a laugh, and I nod, thinking, yeah, I am.