Intensive Care

I went to the hospital today to visit my Dad. I’m not exactly sure why I went, what that movement was motivated by. In part, curiosity, in part obligation. Perhaps more than a little desire to see him prone in bed or weak or to see some sort of imagined deathbed confessional. Perhaps a little out of the desire to see how my stepmother, Trish, would be in that situation.

In any case, I went down there and found him in the intensive care unit. The staff seemed a little apprehensive about me being there and only allotted me a small amount of time with him. They had to verify that I was his daughter. At first, I thought something bad had happened, but they reassured me that things had gone well.

I visited briefly with my sleeping father, touched his hand and counted the tubes in him. He startled at one point and opened his eyes to look at me. I asked him how he felt and he just closed his eyes and shook his head wearily. Not good, apparently. That’s when they kicked me out so that they could do work on him. I left two magazines and a Get Well card for him.

I asked the nurse if I could come back again in the afternoon. She hesitated and said perhaps I ought to talk to his wife about visiting arrangements. I asked if she was around and the nurse said I could look for her in the cafeteria.

I went down to the cafeteria and bought a coffee, then found Trish at a table in the corner. I slid around the table and sat down with her. Trish looked agitated.

Trish explained that the surgery had gone fine, but they had had to use the bypass machine on him, meaning that his blood was being mechanically pumped around in there. She said that sometimes patients like that have a hard time recovering their full mental acuity. Other than that, things were going well.

Except for one thing.

Enter Audrey.

Audrey, according to Trish, first appeared as a rosette form. Or rather, one day Trish had found a rosette form in the kitchen and asked Dad where it had come from. Dad said Audrey had dropped it off one day for him. Audrey, Dad told Trish, was an old friend from school.

Audrey, Trish assured me, was very homely, with fat rolls, and big coke bottle glasses. She was a widow with a gambling problem and would stop by the house on weekdays on her way to or from Mystic Lake casino. She only drops by when Trish is at work.

Last Thanksgiving, there was a knock at the door. Trish was preparing a small meal for just the two of them, and was therefore surprised that anyone would stop over. She opened the door and there was this fat, homely, coke-bottle glasses kind of person who introduced herself as Audrey.

She welcomed Audrey in and sent her down to the basement where Dad was working on his computer. When Audrey came up to leave, Trish asked her to wait a moment and ran downstairs to ask Dad if it was ok if she invited her to dinner at five. Dad agreed and so Audrey went to Mystic Lake and then returned a few hours later.

As they chatted over dinner, Audrey talked a great deal about this grocery store clerk named Charlie, who as Trish put it, sounded like a real loser. “He sounds like a real loser,” Trish said to her, “why don’t you join a social group and meet someone who’s actually worthwhile?” Audrey giggled and said that’s what Dad was always telling her too.

At this point, I interrupted Trish and asked her if she believed Audrey was having an affair with Dad. She said that she liked to tease him about it, called Audrey his “girlfriend” and stuff and that it was highly possible, since it was odd she only came over while Trish was at work.

But, Trish added, Audrey was quite homely. And anyways, she wasn’t really worried about what two seventy-year olds would be getting up to in the middle of the day at her house. And anyways, Audrey hadn’t seen her all made up and in high draconian gear. If she saw her like that, she’d know better than to mess with the likes of her.

Even so, Trish said, maybe I’d better go talk to the nurses about restricting visitor privileges.