“Yeah,” I tell her. “Sorry about that. I’m here. Let’s do this.”
“There are a few things I should tell you,” she says, “you know, about Ed’s condition.”
This should be a comfortable experience.
I’ve always felt weird about hearing about other people’s health issues from a third party.
“He’s on a lot of medication right now to try to keep his heart going until they can find a transplant,” she says, “but he’s still pretty aware of what’s going on around him. They took the tube out of his throat, so he’s just on an oxygen mask right now. He’s lost some weight since he’s been here, because he can’t bring himself to eat, but his color is starting to look better…”
She keeps going, but as she does, I start to notice a sick feeling creeping into my stomach and I’m not sure I can listen to any more of it. It’s not the description of Ed’s health and the apparatuses that are keeping him alive that bothers me so much as it is thinking back to that black bag of carved, limb-shaped tofu in its raspberry sauce.
Rita called me again today, though this time she didn’t see it necessary at all to say anything to me. She just kept breathing into the phone.
I assume the call was placed so I’d know she was out there, alive and unharmed—a superhero in her own right: Stalker Girl, the only superhero who might just end up killing you in your sleep with a pair of tweezers and a claw hammer.
>
“How long do I have?” I ask.
Penelope, who had been in the middle of a sentence talking about how I shouldn’t worry that they keep a crash cart in Ed’s room at all times because with the chance that his heart just goes, the doctors don’t feel comfortable having Ed more than 10 feet away from a defibrillator, looks up at me and says, “I know you’re not thrilled to be here, but the fact of the matter is that you are here, and I think the two of you can still make peace in the time he has left.”
“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Penelope,” I tell her. “I’ll do my best, but he has a lot of enmity toward me.”
Hey, I finally got to use that word in a sentence.
Bully.
“Just having you here is enough,” she says. “I’m just glad you came.”
Penelope takes me by the hand, and she leads me through the lobby to the elevator down the hall, and we go until she stops and turns to face me.
“Just go easy,” she says. “Can you do that for me? I know he can be a hard man to love, but he’s not a bad man. Just go easy.”
I’m not the one I’m worried about, but if it’ll put her mind at ease… “All right,” I tell her. “Are you going in with me, or should I go in alone or what?” I ask.
“Oh, I really think I should be in there with you, don’t you think?” she asks.
I shrug.
It’s going to be hellish either way.
We enter the room, and Ed’s is the first bed in the room.
“Edward,” Penelope says, “you’ve got a visitor.”
He’s lying there, pale and visibly weak in his bed, but when he hears his wife’s voice, he still opens his eyes. When he sees her, his eyes brighten, almost as if the sight of her is giving him new life.
Then he looks over and finds me standing here.
His expression changes pretty quickly.
Ed lifts his oxygen mask, and in a thin, raspy voice, he asks, “What the hell is he doing here?”
“I thought it would be good if the two of you talked for a while,” Penelope says. “It would be good for the two of you to bury the hatchet. I know Jamie never liked that the two of you butted heads and I see no reason why it should go on any longer.”
That was pretty good. I wonder if it’ll have an effect.
“This Hollywood fuckhead killed our daughter,” he says.