We have to write fast, because tomorrow is Last Thursday.

Last Thursday was a very important day.

We have to write all this down, so we can be right where we were last year at this time.

Today is still Last Wednesday. I was definitely alone on last Wednesday. My brother was definitely in L.A., and I was definitely alone. Today is Last Wednesday, May 3 Days Left, 1969.

1969, you know, was a very good year.

Last Wednesday is the day they moved him down the hall to a different room. He was still two moves away from dying.

When I came in on Last Wednesday, I saw Angela. She was my dad’s nurse before Diego.

“Hey Angela,” I said.

She was surprised to see me. “You guys are still here?” she said.

With that, Angela confirmed what I thought was possibly just my melodrama acting up again. You’re not supposed to be in the hospital that long and not get better. When you’re in the hospital that long, it means something bad.

Angela is the one who marveled at my brother. That happened on First Friday. I think.

She had come to First Hospital Room on First Friday (I think) to check on Mr. Lane. She found me in the hallway with my dad’s door shut.

“My brother’s taking him to the bathroom,” I explained. “My dad would be mortified if I saw his bare skin, so they kicked me out.”

“The men never do that,” she said. “They never do that part. It’s always the women.”

She meant how my brother took my dad to the bathroom, and cleaned him up, and helped him with everything. My dad was very, very lost on the pain medication that day. He needed help with those things.

“You’re brother is an amazing man,” she said. “He’s going to be a wonderful father.”

The little boy never left his father’s side during the Eleven Days of Dying; only when he had to go back to L.A. to guarantee a little job security. He knew the entire nursing staff by name, and the little boy, who by this time was 6 foot 2, 190 pounds and about zero percent body fat, did not hesitate to sit down by his daddy’s bedside and cry, cry, cry.

The little boy is the one who supervised all my dad’s transportation. When they came to take my dad for field trips to have tests done, the little boy is the one who managed the move from the bed to the gurney. He watched all the wires and tubes, because for whatever reason, the hospital personnel didn’t, and there were problems. The little boy made sure they moved him in one fell swoop, and he was always part of the heavy lifting team, and he was always saying, “Ok, dad, don’t worry, I got ‘ya, I got ‘ya.”

The little girl did the best she could to supervise the moves when her brother went back to L.A. She was very self-conscious and nervous, and wanted very much to do just as well as her brother. And she would say, “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m right here.” She would hold his hand the entire time they were moving, because he was having trouble with the pain medication, and he didn’t always remember where they were going, so she would remind him. “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be with you the whole time. I won’t let anyone do anything stupid-dumbass like give you morphine. F morphine, Dad, we hate morphine,” she would say.

Sometimes, while he was being wheeled down the hall on the gurney, he would look around frantically and say, “Mel?” because he needed to know she was still there, and that he was safe. “Hey dad, what’s up,” she would say. And then she would say somethine like, ”F these people, Dad. This place sucks. We are so outta here the minute you feel better.” He would nod in agreement.

Their first field trip without the girl’s brother was on Last Tuesday. I think. They went to a department called NUCLEAR MEDICINE. They both found that place to be very ominous.

The medical people wouldn’t let her in the room with her dad. Something about radiation or something something whatever.

“Ok, but you guys are in there with all the radiation all day, so why can’t I just come in for three minutes?” she asked.

“You can’t come in.”

“Wait,” my dad piped up, with his swollen tongue and his dehydrated mouth. “I don’t have any voice. She has to come with me; she’s my voice.”

What he meant was that with his tongue was so swollen, and his voice was so weak, that I was the only one who could understand him. Plus, I could finish his sentences for him, and that made things a lot easier. I translated everything he wanted to say to the doctors. If I wasn’t in the room, he was helpless. He wouldn’t be able to communicate. He would be trapped.

“You don’t have any voice, Mr. Lane?” they asked. “You sound fine to me.”

What a sonofabitch. I don’t know where the whole world gets off thinking that sick people are stupid, and patronizing them like children. That asshole wasn’t more than 25 years old. My dad could run mental marathons around his stupid ass.

When they shut the door, I couldn’t see him, because the window was all blocked.

“Ok, but you’ll tell me when he’s leaving, right?” I asked. “Because he leaves out a different door, right? I’m going to be right here. How long will it be? You have to come get me when he’s leaving; he can’t go anywhere without me.”

I pressed my ear against the door to see if I could hear the radiation or whatever, so I could tell when it was over. I wanted to knock, but I was too chicken. My brother would have knocked.

I can’t really remember what happened after that. I know we took him to another part of the hospital to do an MRI. And that he had a pounding headache. He didn’t want to do the MRI, because of his headache. I told him, “Eye of the tiger, dad. Ok? Dr. Gordon said we have to do this.”

I don’t really know if Dr. Gordon said that, but Dr. Gordon is the only person my dad would listen to, besides my brother, so sometimes you just have to take the Name in vain.

That’s when my mom showed up. She went to lunch while we were in NUCLEAR MEDICINE. It changes when my mom’s around. She kind of stresses my dad out a little bit. A lot, actually. But that’s a story for another time.

When we got to MRI Headquarters, he refused the MRI. “I’m claustrophobic,” he said.

I retrieved my mom (because she had locked herself out of MRI Headquarters when she wentoutside to use her cell phone, which they forced her to do because it interferes with MRIs or whatever, and she was waving through the glass for me to come and let her in, but all she really needed to do was just go through the other door, which was wide open) and we went and talked to MRI Guy.  “He’s had about a million MRIs during the course of his life,” I said. “He basically has MRI frequent flyer miles. This one should be free, in fact. He’s not claustrophobic.”

It was pretty irrelevant at this point, they said, because he was flat out refusing to go into the skinny-ass MRI tube.  He just had an MRI a few days earlier and now he was claustrophobic, he said.

Dr. Gordon told us later that the second MRI wasn’t crucial anyway. He had ordered it mostly because he and the bone doctor couldn’t believe the first one. The first MRI showed my father’s skeleton riddled with cancer. Two weeks earlier, his bones had been cancer-free. “I’ve never seen it move that fast,” he said, when he gave us The Talk. “I ordered another one because we couldn’t believe it.

With that, Dr. Gordon confirmed what I had thought was possibly just my melodrama acting up again. Two weeks earlier, on my birthday, things shifted. Everything felt very urgent, and when I was away from my dad, I called him every few hours, to make sure he was still there. I was really, really scared to let him out of my sight, and I thought I was being paranoid.

But I wasn’t. 

Dr. Gordon and the first MRI confirme for me that that’s when my father decided he was going to die. That’s when he decided he had had enough. He knew he was going to be meeting his brand new granddaughter in a matter of days, so he steeled himself enough to see her face, took a deep breath, and let the cancer spread.

But Dr. Gordon didn’t tell us about the MRI until Last Friday, when he gave us The Talk.

Today is still Last Wednesday, and I was still holding out for the fact that I was probably just being paranoid.

So after the failed second MRI attempt, we went back up to First Hospital Room, and that’s when they told us to gather his things, we were moving to Second Hospital Room.

We were still two rooms away from dying.

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