This is my favorite picture of me and my dad. Even though you my upper arm looks fat and you can see the blemish near my shoulder, and my hair looks like it needs to brushed, because it needs to be brushed.
This picture was taken on his last birthday. Ever.
I’m standing behind his chair and leaning in, so our heads are next to each other and I have a big happy birthday smile. I remember being surprised the first time I saw this picture, because he’s smiling so much his face his flushed. He looks like he’s laughing.
You can tell how much we look alike in this picture. Sometimes it’s hard to tell because of his full beard, the extra weight around his face and wear and tear that came from being 30 years ahead of me, seven major surgeries and three rounds of chemo/radiation.
But in this picture, you can see very clearly that this is my father.
When my father went in for his sixth major surgery, we were waiting with him in the OR prep room. The P.A. said, “We need some O+ blood for Mr. Lane, please,” and I said, “Dad! I have O+ blood too!” and the P.A. said, without even looking up from the chart, “Well congratualtions Mr. Lane. That means you’re her father.”
“Oh.”
That was a bit deflating.
So while we already had hard evidence that the family blood lines were solid, it’s nice to have this one picture, where you can see the man’s face in his daughter. And all because he’s smiling.
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.
Look, but be quiet.
He’s sleeping.
That’s why the little girl and the little boy are sitting in the dark.
Their Daddy is going to die in exactly 48 hours and 25 minutes, but don’t tell them. They’re just babies.
Look at the little boy. There’s a puppy in his lap. That’s the puppy his mommy and daddy gave him when he six. He named the puppy Boots, because the puppy was black with tan feet. Bootsy was run over by a car the following Christmas Eve. He was killed. The Daddy had to wake up the little boy and tell him.
You should have seen the Daddy’s heart break from it. You’ve never seen anything like it.
Look at that little boy. He’s still wearing his Tampa Bay Bucaneers pajamas.
See the little girl? See her there? She knows what’s happening.
But she’s not going to tell anyone. It’s a secret.
See her walking down the hallway to bathroom? See how she’s avoiding all the cracks in the tile?
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
She’s avoiding them anyway, just in case they meant to say your father’s back.
Hop scotch to the bathroom, little girl, in your favorite Strawberry Shortcake dress and your hair in pigtails, just like your best friend Allison.
She’s not going to tell the little boy what’s happening when she gets back. He might cry like he did when the puppy was killed, and she would die from that.
So she is keeping it a secret.
On-your-honor-you-will-die-stick-a-needle-in-your-eye promise that you’ll keep it a secret.
They have just two days left, but we can’t tell them.
Look at them.
They’re just babies.
Today is Last Thursday.
Today is a very important day.
Today is the day after I took a day off from the hospital, because I cracked in front of Dr. Gordon. Today is the day my brother came back from L.A., with his wife and his baby.
Today is the day that his creatinine level slammed through the roof again, after it had shown so much improvement the day before. Today is the day his heart rate was holding steady at 125, and that they made him start wearing an oxygen mask, because his blood oxygen level was so low.
I got to the hospital first on Last Thursday. There were new machines in Second Hospital Room. There was the machine where I could watch his heart rate, and the machine that measured the blood oxygen. If the blood oxygen level went below a certain number, the machine would beep and all the nurses were supposed to come in and yell at him to breathe.
But I was there, so that was my job.
About every three minutes, the machine would beep, and it was my job to yell at my daddy to breathe.
There is a little girl sitting next to her sick daddy, and she’s shaking his arm and grabbing his hand and yelling at him, “Breathe, Daddy, breathe, take a deep breath, Daddy, breathe. Daddy! Breathe!”
You’re heart has not broken, not once, and you have not died, not once, until you have pounded on your daddy and yelled at him to breathe.
The little girl wouldn’t stop looking at the machine. She watched the digital numbers flick back and forth, and she would start pounding and yelling when they got too low. He was doing that thing where he was having a hard time waking up, even if you yelled at him. A couple of times, she called the nurses into the room when the machine was beeping. “Make him breathe,” she would say.
They finally took him off the blood oxygen machine. It’s sleep apnea, they said. It’s really common in people who snore, and it’s not a big deal. Fucking Christ. My dad has snored his entire life. Why the hell did we have to go through that useless exercise?
Then the little girl sat and held her daddy’s hand and read trashy magazines, and she watched the heart moniter. 125…132…127…135…pause…125. The little girl tried to send mental telepathy from her own heart to her daddy’s heart, so it would slow down. “Plug into my heart,” she would think. “Plug into my heart, it’s working just fine, and it’s young, so it can handle the two of us.”
She tried to talk to him, to read him the headlines, or make some jokes, but she couldn’t. He was asleep, and she was staring at him, and the heart monitor, and she was really angry. She was starting to act like he wasn’t in the room. He was so far away, so disconnected, and she was pissed.
127…138…pause…144…128…pause..135…
The little girl’s heart paused each time her daddy’s did. Daddy, quit it. Quit pausing your heart. Breathe, daddy, breathe.
There is so much more that happened on Last Thursday. This story only takes us up to about 9 a.m. There is much more that happened. Last Thursday was a very important day.
But this story seemed like it needed it’s own space, to tell the story of a little girl begging her daddy to breathe.
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.
The season finale of Law & Order last night was so good. So. Good.
The bad guy (Ludacris) won in the court room, but lost in life, and the good guys (all the detectives and their chief and the assistant district attorney) are about to lose their jobs because they lost the trial and because Ludacris exposed all kinds of police misconduct.
If they get rid of the A.D.A., I will be pissed. She’s awesome.
They did that same cliffhanger thing last year, only they just went ahead and killed the A.D.A. and had our favorite lawyer, Jack McCoy, use all kinds of illegal tactics to catch the bad guys. At the end of the episode, they were starting the paperwork to disbar Jack.
No. Way.
At the hospital the next morning, I alerted my father of the crisis. It must have been first Monday, because my brother was there, and we were still in the first hospital room. He moved four times during the Eleven Days Of Dying.
“Daddy, they’re going to disbar Jack. Daddy, did you hear me? The season finale of Law & Order was so seriously last night; they murdered the A.D.A with the long dark hair and they’re going to disbar Jack. Daddy? Daddy, they’re going to disbar Jack.”
He kept sleeping.
When they stop waking up all the time, that’s bad. But I already knew.
When he did wake up, he jumped a little.
“Hey kids.” It took him awhile to say that.
“Daddy, did you hear me? They’re going to disbar Jack McCoy. What are we going to do?”
Law & Order was our favorite show. When I moved to the east coast, I had the upper hand, because it came on an hour earlier here than it did back home. So I would call him at the end of an episode, just as he was watching the opening credits, and I would say, “Daddy, want me to tell you how it ends?”
He would tell me to call back on the commercial and hang up.
“Daddy, if they disbar Jack McCoy, I’m never watching again.”
He looked at me with wide eyes and nodded his head. He agreed we could never watch Law & Order again if they disbarred Jack McCoy.
That was First Monday. I think. That also must have been the day of the Morphine Incident. I remember my brother in the OR now. He didn’t know my dad was allergic to morphine. I think that’s why I remember being alone. But I do remember him tag-teaming the surgeon with me once I brought it up.
It was nice to see my dad tell the entire OR to go to hell for that. That was his old self.
It was nice to see his old self. Old Self had been absent the week before, because of the pain medication. It was really bad. Hallucinations and whatnot. Dr. Gordon ordered a CAT scan, to make sure he wasn’t losing his mind. Actually, it was to make sure there wasn’t a brain tumor, but he didn’t tell us that until after.
We hated that part.
That was the part where I thought, this is the worst it can get. He is losing his mind. My dad’s body was never healthy; not after he had Polio in 1952. But he was probably the most well-read man on the planet. In college, we used to call him before history exams and ask him to debrief us on things like the latter half of the 19th century. And he did, in great detail.
I thought, this is the worst it can get. He’s losing his mind, and he’s going to live. He’s going to live that way.
During that time, they had to ask him what his name was and what year it was and stuff like that. I think the day he got it wrong must have been Last Tuesday. Because I was definitely by myself. It was before 8 a.m., and I was definitely by myself.
One of the doctors came in, but it wasn’t Dr. Gordon, it was somebody else.
“Can you tell us what her name is?” They pointed to me.
He choked it out. Swollen tongue, dry mouth. He choked it out. “Mel.”
“Right on, Dad.”
“Can you tell us what her name is?”
“He did. He said M-.”
“No, wait. We want to hear him say it.”
“He did. He said Mel. That’s what he calls me.”
“Oh, ok. We didn’t hear him.”
That’s when I became my dad’s voice. His mouth was so swollen and dry, no one could understand him. But I could.
“What year is it, Mr. Lane?”
“1969.”
“What did he say?” They looked at me.
“He said 2006. Daddy, what year is it?”
“1969.”
They looked at me. “We heard him say 1969.”
“Well, that’s the year he got married and finished his master’s degree, so it must have been a good year.”
I knew I should leave it alone. He was on pain meds, and tired, and I knew I should leave it alone.
“Daddy, do you know who I am?”
“Mel.”
“I’m your daughter, right? So what year is it?”
“I said 1969.”
“Daddy. I’m your daughter. What year was I born?”
I was born in 1976. I was trying to reason with him.
“Mel, why are you asking me this? Did I get it wrong?”
I started to drizzle tears. I nodded. He was visibly very upset.
“Goddamnit, Mel. I am really struggling with this stuff.”
He was very, very frustrated, and very, very angry. He took his cancer personally. When he was diagnosed the first time, he shook his fist at God and said, “You hit a kid with Polio and you leave him alone.” He was very frustrated and very, very defeated. That was the worst part.
“It’s ok, Daddy. You’re gonna be fine. Fuck whatever year it is anyway.”
And the little girl held her Daddy’s hand and tried very hard not to cry.
And that was very hard.
Apparently, I have a memory for shit.
I just hung up the phone with my brother. He said, “Yeah, I remember when that doctor tried to give dad morphine.”
“What? You were there?”
“Yeah, I was there.”
“You weren’t back in L.A. that day?”
“No, I totally remember that. They gave him that bracelet that said morphine on it.”
I have no recollection of him being there.
Not a shred. Not even when he reminded me he was there, in the OR, arguing about the morphine.
Is he sure? Maybe he was at lunch. If he was there, where was mom?
Why do I remember being alone in the waiting room?
He must have been at lunch.
Am I remembering the right day? Maybe the OR situation was on First Monday, before he flew to L.A. Maybe I cracked on First Monday.
If you asked the three of us to write down what happened, you’d have no idea we were talking about the same man.
Daddy meeting his little baby granddaughter, the Friday before First Tuesday.
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