I had been sitting in my father's car for thirty minutes. It was cold outside but the sun beaming through the windshield was starting to make me sweat. The driver's seat didn't recline so I couldn't even lie down. I was getting a cold and my head hurt while my nose run. I wished he would hurry.
I had already texted him several times. He was on call for the intensive care unit and I knew he was busy, but he had told me to be there for exactly 1130 and I was starting to get antsy. This was one trait of many my dad and I shared: neither of us could sit still for longer than a few minutes.
I checked my phone again when I saw my dad walking towards the car. He had his red backpack slung over his left shoulder and his hospital issue greens were too baggy on him. He tossed his backpack into the back seat of the car and hopped in.
"So there's a diner down the street we can go to. I don't have very long; there's a family waiting for me that needs some info within the hour, but I can sneak out for a bit."
My dad didn't have the attention span to wait longer than a minute to give directions and get moving. I took the car out of park, rolled down the windows and pulled an awkward U-turn to leave the hospital parking lot. We drove for a few moments in silence. I told my dad about my courses, how I had dropped one that seemed too boring and easy and talked my way into getting into one I had no prerequisites for. He laughed. I hadn't seen him in a long time, and my brother had just gone away to school. He missed us, I knew it. He had loved it when we were young and would spend all day with him, running errands in his old car.
As we pulled into the parking lot of the nearby grill, his phone rang.
"Hello?" A pause. I stopped the car and we began to get out. It was a normal occurrence for him to need to take a work call during a family dinner. "Yeah, we've been weaning him off of his meds all morning. What's that? Of course we called his family. They're on their way." Another pause; I could hear the murmuring on the other line. "He's been in a coma for two weeks now. There is no possible way he's waking up, and they've accepted that." Pausing again. "Just keep lowering his dosages and take him off of the IV. When I get back we'll extubate, his family can say their final goodbyes and then off he'll go. Yep. Yeah. I'll see you soon."
We were already sitting at a table by the time he had hung up. "So what do you want for breakfast, miss?"
Sometimes I wondered how he could do it. How does one exactly become accustomed to taking people off of ventilators? I put the question in the back of my mind and set my concentration on deciding between bacon and sausage.
