Hurry, Last Thursday is almost over. We have to hurry.

Last Thursday was a very important day. We have more to tell about that day.

Breathe, Daddy, breathe. There’s a little girl begging her daddy to breathe.

This is the day her brother flew back to Phoenix. I think. It was either today or Last Friday. Maybe Last Friday. I can’t remember.

But we should tell this part of the story anyway.

This is the worst part of the story. I thought maybe I should wait until Next Last Thursday to tell this story, that maybe that would be better.

But we should tell it.

Today the little girl’s brother flew back, with his wife and his brand new little baby. Their Daddy had only just met the little baby for the first time less than two weeks earlier.

“Daddy, do you want to hold her?” the little girl had asked on that day two weeks earlier.  He was still at home. It was the Friday before First Tuesday.

But he answered that he was too weak to hold her.

“Daddy, are you sure?” she asked.

“Mel, I’m just glad I lived to see this day,” he said.

“What? What are you talking about? Daddy, what’s the alternative? Why wouldn’t you have lived to see this day?” she had asked.

He didn’t say anything audible, but he didn’t need to. She already knew.

On this day, Last Thursday, the Daddy would see the little baby for the last time.

They arrived from the airport around 1 p.m. or so. Originally, they weren’t going to bring the little baby up to his room, because she was just three months old and there’s a lot of sickness in a hospital, too much for a little baby. But the little girl heard the little baby from down the hall.

“You brought her!” the little girl squealed. The little girl loves that little baby. She’s the sweetest little baby ever.

At the moment, the sweetest little baby ever was screaming, because she was hungry.

The little boy walked into the room. He was holding the little baby.

This is the worst part of the Eleven Days of Dying.

He held the baby outstretched like an offering. The look on his face. It was the look on his face. The little boy held the baby outstretched like an offering, and the look on his face, the look on his face was so scared and so desperate and so helpless. He was holding out the little baby, and his face was saying, “Please live, please stay, look what we brought you. Please stay.” But mostly, his face was saying, “I don’t know what else to do.”

The little boy was desperate, and he had never felt so helpless; he had never felt despair before. He was watching a semi-truck in slow motion, and it was about to mow down his daddy. He didn’t know what to do, and he was so, so scared.

The little girl could have lived her whole life without seeing that look on her brother’s face. For whatever reason, that’s the worst part. She wanted to jump around him like a million little jumping beans and say, “Don’t cry, don’t be scared, don’t be sad, stop it, stop it, stop it.”

Because she couldn’t stand to see her big brother feel sad.

He held the baby over their father, and she was still screaming because she was hungry.

We were talking to him: “Daddy, the baby’s here. Daddy, she wants to say hi. Daddy, can you hear her?”

How could he not? She was screaming at about 8 decibals.

He didn’t wake up.

That’s a bad sign.

“Daddy, the baby’s here. She wants to see you.”

On the next scream, he jumped and turned his head to the baby. He saw her and he reached his hand up to touch her. That look on his face. It was pure, sincere tenderness. And he reached for her.

The little girl could have lived her whole life without seeing that. It just reminded her of how vulnerable her daddy was.

His eyes were only open for a few minutes. Then he was out again.

The little girl walked out with the baby and the boy’s wife. The boy’s mother-in-law was there too. The mother-in-law had known their daddy for 20 years, before the boy and the girl ever met. They were old friends. The mother-in-law was crying.

“Do you want some time alone with him?” the little girl asked.

She said no, that she had talked to him a bit.

“But do you want some time alone?” she asked again. She was trying to say, “You need to say good-bye.” But it was still a secret, so she didn’t say anything. Plus, the little girl thought that maybe if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t come true.

Maybe all that happened on Last Friday. I think it did. Because I think after we fed the baby, Dr. Gordon gave us the talk, and that was on Last Friday.

But I can’t remember.

That was the worst part of the story, the part about her brother’s face. That was the worst part, to watch someone she loved and depended on so much be so, so desperate and so, so scared.

That, I suppose, is the end of Last Thursday.

Now we are one day closer.

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