Page 25 of Woman on the Verge

“Traffic’s pretty light for a Monday,” he said.

“Dad, it’s Saturday.”

“It is?”

“It is.”

“Are you just going to park your car at the airport?” he asked.

I tried to make sense of what he was saying but could not.

“At the airport?”

“Yeah, are you just parking your car there? Or wait, are you just dropping me off at the airport? I can’t remember if you’re going with us to Maui.”

Up until I left home for college, we did an annual trip to Maui, the three of us. He and Merry still went. The last time they’d gone was six months earlier.

“We’re not going to Maui, Dad.”

I felt my heart seize, as if in preparation for shattering.

“We’re not?” he asked. “Then why are we going to the airport?”

“We’re not going to the airport,” I said. “We’re going to the doctor, remember?”

I knew he didn’t remember, but I said it anyway. It seemed respectful, like alerting him to the fact that we’d discussed this already.

“Oh, right,” he said, playing along.

A few minutes after that: “Hey, thanks for driving me.”

He was confused when we pulled into the parking lot for the UCSF Emergency Department. He was confused when we checked in, me explaining his symptoms to the intake person while a nurse took his vitals.

“I’m going to get a wheelchair,” the nurse said, immediately noticing that he was a fall risk.

We helped him lower into the wheelchair, and he had the most clueless smile on his face.

I wheeled him to the triage room. A resident assessed him and said they’d run a CT scan.

“Even if things look normal,” he said, “it’s likely we’ll admit him.”

His symptoms were that strange, I guessed, that worrisome. I texted Merry, gave her the update. She sent a frown-face emoji, which was odd—I didn’t think she knew how to use emojis. I tried to assure her:

This is good news. They’ll get to the bottom of it

From the triage room, they took us to another room, got my dad into a hospital gown, and had him sit in a bed. I sat in a chair next to him, and they pulled a curtain closed behind us. On the other side of the curtain, a woman moaned and talked to whoever was with her in another language. I couldn’t understand what she was saying at all, but I understood her pain and desperation all too well.

“Is Mom still in the waiting room?” my dad asked.

“Mom?”

He just looked at me expectantly.

“Merry?” I said. “She’s not here.”

He gave me a half smile and squinted his eyes. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I’m not. She stayed home, remember?”

---