71C

greer engle-roe

The bus tears through the neighborhoods as if carried by a storm, all swept up in thundering wheels and rattling framework. I’ve been shivering for an hour while waiting for the 71C, rocking on my heels beneath the dim glow of a street lamp. The street corner is unfamiliar, the night around me a hound, snapping and snarling. I board the bus at ten.

Amidst the noise, the passengers around me are ghost-like in their silence. We’re each mirages, a human outline, eyes staring sightless, waiting. It’s cold. I can imagine my breath fogging the air in front of me, but in the dim lights everything is cast in a hazy blue. I’m reminded of a movie scene, protagonists emerging from a swamp, backlit by a green glow; the bus shines blue, it hangs in the air. I shiver more violently, breath stuttering.

In this rocking, rolling cage, I huddle closer, tug at my sweater, try to catch a breath. The message board blinks street names; we could be in the South Hills for all I know. When I try to tangle my gaze with another’s, they look dead on, only a husk remains. I look up at the board once more, scrawling a lazy message. I could scream.

All I can feel is the cold, and the dark, and then this blue light, like we’re caught in a dream. I can’t focus, feel like I’m drowning, but the pain from the cold is sharp. I watch my knuckles turn red, lips shading onwards to purple and then blue. I’m gasping for a name, leaning over in my seat like a drunk, leaning on this board, all my weight bound to it. All I need is a street name, something I know. Something I can cling onto, wait a little longer for. Something that I can see, and feel, and taste.

I got a call from Catherine this morning. She sounded urgent as she cried into my ear, something about our Dad. I blew it off, I don’t even know why anymore, maybe out of spite. I spent the morning lounging on my couch watching soccer games on my phone, then went and lunched at Angelo’s, got a haircut at Mister’s, and then I got a text. Hurry. Suddenly I was in a panic, it struck me like a bell; I was left ringing.

My mind went back to last November, and I couldn’t shake it. I can still picture the hospital hallways, too bright lights, smell the cleaning products, and that of something sick. The smell that I only ever associate with hospitals.

I was late then too. Cat had been waiting in the lobby, she’d glared at me when I came in, told me he was already under. She told me I only lived on the other side of the city, told me it shouldn’t take me that long to come over — told me he’d had a heart attack.

I remember her face, how there was a blush high on her cheeks, how it clashed with her pale skin. The color was too jarring. I remember studying that color the whole time, how it darkened when her voice rose, spread to her neck when she dragged me into a hallway to get away from the onlookers.

He woke from the anesthesia at half past one in the morning, a defibrillator newly implanted in his chest. His breathing was shallow, and he looked at me with cloudy eyes, I looked at him cloudy too. Cat said it was the medications, I knew it was because I was his son.

I’d only managed to run to the other side of the city, but when one wants to, eight miles can stretch years. He never hated me for it, only told me he was disappointed. When he called and said he wanted to hear my voice, I left a text. He texted back, I don’t know where I messed up in teaching you about love, what it means to care for someone, or be together as a family. It’s my fault, I should have taught you all this. It stung twice as much as if he’d shouted. He never shouted.

My father once claimed that I didn’t love him. He said it’s the details that matter. He said he wanted the sheets washed. I stood still by the foot of his bed, while he sat in the middle. He didn’t look angry, only sad.

“You don’t care, that’s why you didn’t remember. If you cared you would. If you loved me you would show me that. You would say goodnight, or goodmorning. You would ask how my day is. You would offer to get me coffee, or set time out of your day to talk with me. You don’t do any of that, you don’t even think of it, that’s the problem. It never crosses your mind. You don’t care about me or respect me. You don’t love me.”

“I do. I do love you.” I was crying. I’d just turned seventeen and tears were streaming down my face. “I’m crying, doesn’t that show I care?” I asked.

“You’re sorry is what. You don’t care, you’re just sorry you messed up.”

I had nothing to say in response, except the offering of my tears. I couldn’t even speak if I wanted to. I could feel the words getting caught in my throat, how I was choking on them. It was humiliating to sob, so I could only let the tears and snot track down my face.

“If you’d love me, you’d show it. But you’re just cold. Everything in your demeanor is cold. You have an attitude about you.”

I knew my sister was in the room next door. I knew the walls were thin, and she could hear. If she was upset, she didn’t show it, she never interrupted, but I knew it hurt her.

In the morning she cast nervous glances between my father and I, feeling the chasm of silence between us. She didn’t prompt either of us to speak, only glanced at me in disappointment when our father left the room to go on a walk, and I didn’t follow. I moved out at eighteen.

I’m late again, sitting on the bus, halfway to a hospital that I only remember in flashes. I can’t quite remember the routes, can’t remember the stops. The bus keeps shuddering, and I’m shuddering with it.

I arrive at the hospital at half past ten. A dim lamp illuminates the entrance. I nearly miss it altogether. The entrance has a tented little overhang leading up to it, it looks like a side entrance, or something butlers would stand inside at a fancy hotel.

When I step through and into the main lobby, my heart clenching feverishly, Cat isn’t there. I look for her slim form, the curl of her ginger hair, the angle of her knee length coat. She loves a good coat in Winter. An empty ground floor greets me, couches devoid of occupants, a desk devoid of a receptionist. I bang on the window, loiter by the elevator, study the purple plaid design enthralling the floor in its ugly grid. A woman taps me on the shoulder, just before I’m about to start shouting. She must see the wildness in my eyes as she quickly steps away.

Back over by the desk, leaning on it heavily, I answer her questions diligently.

“The patient’s last name?” She smiles at me softly. She must be a kind person. I want to take one of her gold painted hair pins pinning up her bun and prick her in the eye.

“Harold.”

I get a yellow wristband for my troubles, and a room number. She gives me instructions on how to get there when I stammer something in response. Stumbling into the elevator, I stare at the bleary form reflected by the silver steel walls. I look haggard, and my stare is a mile long, I recognize my father in it, the slope of the shoulders, the breadth of the forehead, the stubbornly receding hairline, despite the modern cut.

I get lost again on the upper floor, and have to beg to a nurse who dutifully tows me along. He is cheerful, I wonder how anyone in a hospital can be so cheerful. I don’t knock before I enter.

The first thing I see when I walk into the hospital room is the bed. The first thing I hear is the beeping. I’d recognize it anywhere. My father lays in the bed much like last time, I can’t hear his breathing, or see the rise and fall of his chest, but I can hear the monitor. Cat sits in a chair beside him, curled over and onto a folding tray like a cat, chin propped on her hands. She doesn’t glare at me when I walk in, doesn’t say anything as I hesitate by the foot, only motions to a seat on the far side. She doesn’t point, only nudges her head up an inch, looks at the chair. I take a seat.

Words slip and fall off the tip of my tongue. They trot up the incline all cocky and assured, look over the edge, and slip away. I can’t even manage a whisper.

His skin is a shade paler than I remember. His flak hair is pasted onto his forehead. His eyes are closed, so is his mouth. I can still see the creases in his forehead, he lives with so much stress, and the wrinkles around his eyes. The hospital gown he wears has shifted awkwardly over one shoulder more than the other, the edge of the hair on his chest is visible.

I look away before too long, instead focusing on the length of his bare arm, the dark hair that fades away across the back of his hand. He has an IV in the crook of his arm, held there by a translucent tape; the edge has curled away slightly. He must have been jostled or moved, or it had been hurriedly applied. He has another IV in his opposite hand, the one that is resting below Cat’s nose.

In the stillness and silence of the room, I remember the empty gazes of the people on the bus, how they stared sightlessly. Cat is staring like that now, her gaze lost somewhere to my right. I want to jostle her, but I look down at my hands clasped in my lap instead.

It takes me a great time more than I would like to gain the strength to reach out and curl my strong fingers over my father’s on the bed before me. His hand is soft, wrinkled, and spotted with age, but warm.

Greer Engle-Roe is a senior in high school, attending Interlochen Arts Academy with a focus on creative writing. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Neologism and JUST POETRY. Along with poetry, they spend many hours watching soccer, building models, and painting miniatures.