Defeated - Our Geek This Week

The light turned green, my right foot applied pressure to the accelerator as my 2004 Pontiac Vibe slowly inched forward into the intersection. Traffic wasn’t the greatest on the expressway, but it wasn’t the worst either. One of the small benefits of heading into the city during the five o’clock rush instead of away from it. Still, even this road was all hustle and bustle as I looked into the rearview mirror to make sure that the person behind me wasn’t tailgating. I could see the entrance to the concrete structure of the parking ramp from here, so there was no reason to jump on the gas. But again, I was driving a Vibe, hardly a performance vehicle.

Within seconds I had flipped my indicator, turning right. There were two automated attendants waiting to dole out parking tickets, but both were empty as I pulled in. I shifted the car into neutral, braked, and punched the oversized green button to dispense my ticket. The gate lifted quickly and soon I was moving into the parking ramp, turning to the left past all of the assigned parking spaces for doctors, moving slowly along the cement incline, turning left again to the flat, moving past all of the handicapped accessible spaces.

Another sharp left and I was again driving up the incline, but here there were no assigned spaces. I slowed and right near where the ramp met the next flat, I arced right into one of the many open parking spots.

I double checked to make sure I had my ticket with me, and slid it into my left side pocket, zipping it closed so that I wouldn’t lose it. I shut the door to my small hatchback and immediately hit the lock button on my key fob, listening for the slight metallic “shunk” of the electric locks sliding into position.

Satisfied, I looked back down the ramp for any other cars, then crossed to the left and back to the level floor. The painted “2” on the concrete column to the left of the glass door let me know I was on the second level of the garage, the same level as the sky bridge that crossed over the street that I was just on.

I made my way to the transparent doors as they automatically opened, a few nurses and phlebotomists walking in my direction, now at the end of their shifts. I crossed in silence and looked out the glass walkway to see from atop the hill of the city, looking down to cars and traffic lights, vehicles surging along the expressway close in the distance. The sun was already low in the sky. It was late February/early March, but the roads were dry. Snow was forecast for later in the week.

Once across I passed through another set of glass doors and was instantly accosted by the overly clean and sterile smell that always bothered me. The scent of death may be rot, but the scent of death’s approach is that of disinfectant and nothingness. I looked quizzically to the bank of elevator doors to my right, the ones that only went down a single floor. Every time I passed them and thought that they were extraneous, but also reminded myself every time that this was a hospital. Lots of infirm, ill, and disabled people needed the elevator even though it does not travel very far, not everyone can use the steps as easily as I can. And yet, every time I saw it as I entered the same two thoughts entered my mind, the first being pursued by the latter.

I bounded down the stairs, almost like a child. I did this often when no one else was around. Had there been other people nearby I would have just walked down them as they curled to the left, but as there was no one near at the moment my feet fell upon them rhythmically.

Thump thump. Thump thump thump.

Thump thump. Thump thump thump…

This continued the entire descent of the stairway, though I was not as surefooted as I once was. I half-expected every time I did it now that I would misstep, tripping upon my own feet, sending me sprawling down the stairs like a clumsy toddler. Honestly, I would deserve it. Who still uses gravity and the dancing of one’s feet to go down the steps like that still?

Children.

And, me.

I reached the landing and continued left, passing the elevator doors that I unrightfully scorned a few seconds before, entered the hallway and turned right.

By now I could make my way through the facility virtually blindfolded. I stayed along the main path as it curved to the left, passing a cafe on the right, followed by a pharmacy to the left as I approached the main foyer, crossing left in front of the information desk before again turning left into a third hallway. This one distinguished itself by being carpeted and lined with donated oil paintings along its walls. I glanced at them as I did each time I walked by, marking their passage as landmarks as I made my way to my destination. Ahead the path jogged slightly to the left to another set of elevators.

I entered alone and depressed the button marked as “4.” Seeing no one approaching the doors I quickly tapped the “close door” button as well, wondering if the button was actually active. I read somewhere once that most “close door” buttons were not attached to anything, but rather placed there as a focus for the fidgeting nature of people’s impatience. I was guilty as well, of course, but still I had punched the button, and the doors seemed to close nearly immediately. Maybe this button was active after all.

The ride was short and relatively low on the shaking back and forth. The car stopped with a soft thunk and the doors shushed themselve open as I stepped into yet another hallway, turning right and heading toward the doors marked “Lemmen-Holton Cancer Center” as they automatically opened in opposite directions, revealing the controlled buzz of the nurses’ station. I stepped through the doors, approached the station, placing my hands under the automated dispenser of hand sanitizer, and listened to the electric screech as some of the clear gel poured into my extended right hand. I brought my hands together, rubbed them thoroughly around and then grabbed a sticker from the counter indicating that I had been sanitized. I placed it on my winter jacket, signed in as a visitor, then turned back down the hall, no one speaking to me as I did this.

I watched the numbers change as I scanned them until I saw the right one. Rapping my knuckles on the door, I entered before hearing a reply, various machines beeped and flashed around my father as he sat up in his hospital bed, his body draped in a gown. He has been watching the TV in his room, but he turned toward me as I entered, his face expressionless. I didn’t take offense, this was just how he was, and I suspect how I was as well. When someone entered the room there was seldom a smile or a frown, just a look in your direction, an acknowledgment that you were here. Sometimes it could be off-putting to people as they might think it was indifference but it wasn’t that either. It was just observant.

You’d think I would have been used to this by now, going to the hospital, and yeah, I was, a few months ago, but this was new. Something was different this time. It was familiar, but I wasn’t quite ready to be used to this again.

From August until, what, October? of the previous year I had made the trek to the hospital and his room, regularly, sometimes a few times a week. Oddly enough, he had been diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL) on his birthday in August. Shalee, my brother and his wife, and I had all chipped in and bought him a ticket to the Lions versus Bears game at Ford Field the week before in anticipation of such. We had looked forward to surprising him with the tickets, to all of us going to the game in October. Instead, he received cancer.

As such, his recovery became his focus, his rallying point while he went through biotherapy. His doctor told everyone that he would be well enough to go when the time came, and he was. We all drove down together and had a great time.

By December he was getting treatments, but staying at home. His hair fell out, and he lost weight, but he was there with us at Christmas, and six weeks later when we held a benefit in his honor. His numbers (whatever that even means, I don’t know, a count of something that somehow indicated that he was doing well, or not as bad, who knows?) were looking good.

Things were looking promising.

Until they weren’t.

“Hey, dad,” I said as I continued into the room, walking around the edge of the bed and toward the chair in the corner of the room, to his right.

“Hey…” he returned, his voice trailing off. It sounded normal enough, and perhaps to a stranger his voice was just fine. But for those of us that had known him, his family and friends, there was something new to the timber in his voice, almost undetectable, but it was there sure enough, faint, a phantom lingering in his voice.

A weakness.

I ignored the change in his voice, a very man-like thing to do, right? If there was something there, some small indication that that might be an underlying issue, just ignore it for a while and it will go away. This is why men often didn’t go to the doctor for maladies until it was too late. This is always why, on average, women outlive men.

Because men are stupid.

Had my dad done that? He hadn’t been feeling well for a week or so before he finally saw the doctor. Was it longer? Did he ignore warning signs before it was too late? Or did he just attribute them to the growing list of aches and pains that one encounters as age entrenches itself deeper and deeper. Without actually being him, I would never really know.

We spoke, that idle talk that people speak when one is in the hospital and the other is there to visit, I in my corner chair, him propped up in his hospital bed, the tv on. It was always on. Just like at home. Something I was prone to do as well if I wasn’t paying attention.

Various nurses came in from time to time to check on him, to check his various IVs. Some were for hydration, others for biotherapy. They were all bags full of clear liquid, all potentially life-saving, all full of transparent hope. Through it all pops took it all in, but he looked tired, exhausted even. The light in his eyes seemed dimmer. It’s obvious to me now, hindsight being 20/20 and all, but at the time I didn’t dwell on it. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, I don’t think it was, but children, even those in their 40s, sometimes have a hard time admitting to themselves that their parents are very much merely mortal.

As children our parents are gods, full of authority and power. They know all. Their omniscience is matched only by their omnipotence.

They are perfect.

There may be hints to their imperfection before such, but somewhere in one’s teens, and certainly no later than one’s 20s, we begin to realize that our parents are not infallible. For some it is younger, much younger, unfortunately. But at some point you realize that your parents are as flawed, as fucked up, as anyone else. Eventually, we recognize their humanity.

But here, at this moment, I still wanted to believe for a while longer that my father was going to live forever, even though I was keenly aware of the fact that such was fantasy.

We are always their children.

At some point a doctor came in; I don’t remember if it was one of the younger ones, or my father’s 70-something cancer doctor who had an energy far greater than his years. I just recall him telling my dad that they were going to have to do that one procedure again if he was going to fight this cancer. What was it? That’s lost to memory, I only recall that it included shoving very long needles into my father’s spine as he lay prone for hours.

As the doctor was telling my father this a shadow fell across his face. Another veil had dropped.

I don’t think that my father realized that he had dropped his veil, because he brought it right back up almost immediately. It was that brave face that parents make when in reality they are scared. As I am myself a father now, I get that; you always want to at least appear brave to your children, not for yourself, but for them, so that they wouldn’t worry.

Eventually all of the commotion in the hospital room died down to a dull roar. We weren’t quite alone yet, but alone enough when my father looked at me, attempting to project strength.

I saw the pained look on his face. I knew that the spinal treatments that he went through a few months ago were hell on him and that he had expressed that he never wanted to go through something like that again, but here we were, just moments after the doctor informed him that he would indeed need to go through them again if he wanted to continue battling this cancer.

“You know,” he said to me, pausing, not for effect, but perhaps to convince himself, as much as me, about what he was about to say next. “I hated that treatment. Hated it. I said I wouldn’t ever go through that again.” He trailed off a bit, not realizing it initially. Then he caught himself, and with all the willpower he could muster he looked me dead in the eye.

“But I will. I’ll do it for you all…”

“I know, dad, I know,” I said, trying to reassure him, but really, we were both actors in this moment. As hard as my father was trying to be the ardent survivor of the family, I had seen behind the curtain. The reality was that my father was tired, exhausted after having fought the Mantle Cell Lymphoma for six months now. In his heart I knew that he thought that he should want to keep going, but he was done.

In those eyes of a man that I sometimes feared as a child I no longer saw the fierce passion that was usually there. Now, despite the mask of determination, I saw only defeat.

He was done and I didn’t know it yet. I suspected, then and there at that moment, but what child wants to admit, can admit that? I chose to believe my father because the alternative was incomprehensible.

Yes, fathers die, but a long time from now, whenever now was. Fathers become old and frail and then they call you to their bed to tell you that they were proud of you, that they loved you, and then drifted off into a peaceful sleep and everyone acknowledged what a good, hard fight they had fought, and what a rich, fulfilled life they had led.

I didn’t want to admit to myself that my father, my hero, my god in many ways, was defeated.

But as I walked back the way I had come through those sterilized hallways, well, I would like to tell you that I maintained this fantasy at least until I fumbled for my keys and got into my car, that I had at least made it to the machine that consumed my validated parking ticket and then somewhere along that stretch of expressway on the way home the facade fell.

I would love to tell you that.

But the reality is that the charade didn’t make it to the door of his room. It hadn’t lasted even a minute after he had said it. Like Californium, the belief that he would fight on existed for nanoseconds, then effervescently ceased to exist.

Two weeks later as I hurried back from what was supposed to be a quick dinner with Shalee, Jordan, and the girls at Buffalo Wild Wings I found myself again at my father’s side.

He was old and frail, and then he told me how proud he was of me and how much he loved me, then a few moments later, clearly high on morphine, asked us all rather impatiently if it was “…OK if I go to sleep forever now?”

And then he did, passing about 10 hours later with my mother by his side.

Eight days later we held his funeral.

His fight was over weeks before, but neither he nor I could admit that then.

He wanted to be strong, and I wanted to let him think I believed him.

Originally written and published on Facebook in September of 2020