Death Benefits (12 page)

“It's gonna be okay, Arthur. I'm gonna call Nina. It's gonna be okay.”

He groans as I call 9-1-1 and then Mom.

While we wait for the ambulance, he whispers something, but I can't make out the words. I lean closer even though he smells really bad. I think he may have pissed himself. He speaks again. It sounds like “Kill me.” Or maybe “You killed me.” It's either a command or an accusation. I feel as if I've stuck my finger in a light socket—buzzed and disoriented and paralyzed. Have I killed him? Would I? Should I? If someone wants to die, which is worse—the accidental or the intentional? How can I even ask that question? My stomach heaves, and I have to swallow hard to keep from puking.

When the ambulance finally arrives, the paramedics confirm that he's had a full-blown stroke.

“Good thing you were here,” one of them says. Oh yeah, right, I think. I almost blurt out something about not calling soon enough, but instead I just watch dumbly as they bundle Arthur up and lift him into the ambulance. I climb in and sit next to him. As we drive away from the house, sirens blaring and lights flashing, he speaks again, two words, his voice almost a gargle. This time I know what he's saying: “Kill me.”

Twelve

T
ime both slows down and speeds up after Arthur goes into the hospital. When I'm away from him, the summer seems to be zooming by in a blur of bike rides, trips to the gym and hanging out with Dani. When I'm with him, time creeps along like a slug on a damp dark trail.

Being with Arthur is more painful than any bed of nails, but I need to do penance, to atone. For not calling 9-1-1 sooner. For calling 9-1-1 when I did. For wishing him dead. For trying to keep him alive. It's my hair shirt, my whip, my karma. And yeah, I know I'm getting my dogmas mixed up. I've drawn the line at two of the most common forms of penance though: fasting and celibacy. I can't fast because I figure I need my strength to bike the ten miles out to the hospital a few times a week, and I can't take a vow of celibacy in case, well, in case I have a chance with Dani. She thinks it's sweet that I care so much about my grandfather. She'd probably hate me if she knew the truth.

When Arthur was first admitted, he was in acute care; now he's in the geriatric rehab ward. In the days right after the stroke, Mom had almost hourly consultations with the doctors and nurses, who told her that I saved Arthur's life by calling 9-1-1 right away. I know better. So does Arthur. I'm waiting for him to tell the world what a selfish little shit I am, how I stood beside him with my phone in my hand and had a philosophical debate with myself before calling for help. Although how he would know that is beyond me. Some kind of old-person superpower, maybe.

One day, while I'm sitting in Arthur's room watching him sleep, I start thinking—worrying, really—about what to do next. Maybe it's not too late to take off in the T-bird. Arthur won't care, and if I'm going to go, I need to go soon. School's about to start. If I stay here, I'll have to make new friends, buy new clothes, maybe grow my hair a bit. If I go back to Nova Scotia, I'll have to find a crappy place to stay and work at a shitty job after school and on weekends. I probably won't even have time to hang out with my friends. Peaches will find another guy. Hell, she probably already has. It won't be the same.

Suddenly Arthur speaks. “I never went to university, you know.” It's like he's reading my mind, which is pretty freaky. He struggles to sit up and swats me away when I try to help him get all his pillows into place. It's painful to watch him drag his withered body into a sitting position, but I understand why he wants to do it himself. I remember feeling that way when I was a little kid and Mom was always trying to help me. Tying your own shoelaces, sitting up in bed—it's not so different. It's all about independence. Or the illusion of independence anyway.

I sit down and wait for him to speak again. When he doesn't, I nudge his foot and say, “How come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you never went to university?”

“No time,” he grunts. “Everyone said I should concentrate on my music. But they were wrong.”

“Yeah? You did all right.”

“It was only one thing. And when it was gone—there was nothing left.” He holds up his twisted hands. “Less than nothing.”

“How would going to university have changed that?” I ask. “What would you have studied?”

His answer takes me by surprise. I would have guessed English or philosophy, but he says, “Physics.” It's so out in left field that I laugh.

“Physics? You would have studied physics? Why?”

He glares at me and says, “It doesn't matter now. I educated myself but it wasn't the same. I memorized poetry, read all the classics, taught myself French and Italian, read every book about physics I could get my hands on, but I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. All anyone ever wanted from me was my music, so I gave them that. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“It can't have been so wrong,” I say. “You're famous.” And rich, but I don't say that out loud.

“It wasn't enough. Don't make the same mistake.”

“Okay,” I say. “I'll go to university. I promise.” I was planning to anyway, so I'm not even lying.

“What will you study?” he asks. He's never taken this much interest in anything about me, except maybe my sex life, or lack of it, so I think about it a bit before I answer.

“Math.” The minute I say it, I know it's true. I love math. Always have. It makes sense to me.

“Math, eh? Music's all about math, did you know that?”

I shake my head.

“There's a book,” he says. “
Emblems of Mind
. You should read it.”

“Okay,” I say again. His eyes are closing and he's slipping sideways on his pillows. I help him lie down. This time he doesn't push me away.

“When's Arthur coming home?” I ask Mom as we drive to the hospital for what seems like the thousandth time. It's been almost three weeks since his stroke, and I've logged a lot of hours at the hospital. I no longer wake up every day and think, Today's the day I take the T-bird and head East. I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I've started thinking of Victoria as home.

“Home?” Mom sighs. “I have no idea. Maybe never.”

“Never?” It hasn't really occurred to me that Arthur won't get better, that he won't sit in front of his
TV
and yell at the news anchors on CNN. That he won't yell at me.

“He needs so much care,” Mom says. “He won't be able to manage on his own.”

“So what will happen to him?”

“I'm looking at long-term care facilities.”

“Nursing homes, you mean.”

“They don't call them that anymore.”

“But that's what they are.”

“Some of them are very good. Quite homey. Lots of opportunities for socializing.”

“Arthur will hate that,” I say.

“I know, Rolly,” Mom says. “Believe me, I know.”

We ride the rest of the way in silence, and when we get to the hospital, Mom goes off to have a meeting with Arthur's team, which consists of a geriatrician, a dietitian, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist and a social worker. According to Arthur, they are all, with the exception of the speech therapist, incompetent cretins. According to Mom, they are patient, hard-working health care professionals who only have Arthur's best interests at heart. From my limited observation, they're somewhere in between, depending on the day and Arthur's mood. Arthur is right though. The exception is Lars, the speech therapist, who looks like a middle-aged Norse god—handsome but a bit beat-up, what with all that cold weather and warfare and human sacrifice. Mom says he looks like Nick Nolte circa 1990, “when he was hot.” Which must mean she thinks Lars is hot, which is weird and maybe, I don't know, vaguely unethical. He is part of Arthur's “team,” after all. Lars doesn't take any shit from anyone, Arthur included. If you want to learn to talk again, Lars is your guy. If you don't, well, step aside.

Arthur bonded with Lars immediately and his speech is improving rapidly. The slur has almost disappeared, and he doesn't have nearly as much trouble finding the right words for things. He's forgotten some stuff, like my nickname (which is good) and his kids' names (which is bad), but Mom takes it all in stride. Aunt Marta doesn't. She told Mom a while ago that she won't come to visit until Arthur remembers her name. Mom called her a word I've never heard her use before, and they haven't talked since.

I stop at the hospital coffee shop to pick up a coffee and a chocolate-glazed donut for Arthur. That's our ritual: I bring coffee so Arthur can complain that it's not a
café au lait
. Once in a while I go to Starbucks and get him a latte, but he still bitches at me.

Today when I get there, he's waiting for me by the elevator in his wheelchair.

“What took you so long?” he growls.

“Good to see you too,” I reply. “Where do you want to go? Your room? The lounge?”

“Home.”

I don't know what to say. I have no idea when he's getting out, but I'm pretty sure he won't be going home. He's like a baby that's learning to walk: he can only go about ten steps before he starts to topple over. “I brought you a donut and coffee. Let's go to the lounge. Maybe watch some
TV
.” I start to wheel him away from the elevator, hoping that he'll be distracted by the possibility of a
Little House
rerun.

“I want to sleep in my own bed,” he says. “The noise here is unbearable. The lights are always on. Someone's always poking at me or asking me questions.”

“At least you've got a private room now,” I remind him. “Remember that dude you shared with when you first came? What was his name?”

“Chuck,” Arthur says. “His name was Chuck Callahan and he had never heard of Mozart. And he snored like a chain saw going through a sequoia.”

Why does he remember Chuck's name, but not my mom's? It doesn't seem fair. And where does a word like
sequoia
come from when he often can't remember simple words like
milk
or
book
. I know it's something to do with how the stroke damaged his brain, but it still freaks me out. I mean, we're all walking around with this amazing, delicate spongy
thing
inside our skulls, and we totally take for granted that the wires won't get crossed—until they do, and it's too late.

“His family brought food in buckets,” Arthur continues. “Chicken. What kind of people eat food out of buckets? Like pigs at a trough. The smell was disgusting.”

“That's why they call it pigging out. You oughtta try it sometime,” I say. “It's good. I'll bring you some. Fatten you up.”

We turn into the lounge, where two old ladies are playing a card game, and an old man has fallen asleep on the flowered couch. The
TV
is on, but it's muted. Oprah's audience is crying again. One of the old ladies looks up and smiles at Arthur.

She has bright blue eyes, and she's wearing hot pink lipstick with fingernails to match. A multicolored scarf is tied in her white curls. From the neck down, she is standard-issue geriatric-ward patient, female variety: fluffy pink robe, slippers to match, walker at her side.

“Ah, the famous Mr. Jenkins,” she says. “Care to join us?” She waves her hand at the cards. “We can always accommodate an extra player, can't we, Leah?”

The other old lady (pale blue robe, green slippers, red lipstick on her teeth) smiles and nods.

“How about it, Arthur?” I say.

He shakes his head and covers his eyes with one hand, as if that will make him invisible.

“Take me home, Royce,” he quavers. “I want to go home.”

The old ladies look at each other and make soft clucking noises, like giant pastel chickens confronted with an ailing rooster.

“Sorry, ladies. Guess he's not up for it today.” I turn the wheelchair around and start down the corridor to Arthur's room. He keeps his head down and his face hidden until we get to his room and I help him into bed. I wipe the tears from his face and get him to blow his nose before I hand him his donut and coffee.

“You okay?” I ask. I'm not sure why he was crying— the thought of playing cards with old ladies, maybe— but I've been told that mood swings and paranoia are common with stroke patients.

I'm not too surprised when he says, “They're after me, you know.”

“Who?”

“The merry widows. I'm rich and famous. They think I'm a good catch.”

“Jeez, Arthur, they just wanted to play cards, not marry you.”

“Don't be stupid,” he replies. “You can see it in their eyes. The greed.”

“No way, Arthur. They were just being friendly.”

“Don't argue with me, boy. This coffee's cold. Get me another.”

A couple of times a week I ride over to Arthur's house to take in the mail and start the car. I resist the temptation to take it out for a spin, although I wonder what Dani would think if I pulled up outside her house in a '56 T-Bird. Maybe some day, when I have my proper license, we'll go on a real date: dinner, movie, sex in the backseat of the car. Very 1950s.

My paycheck ended when Arthur went into the hospital, but Mom hasn't said anything to me about getting another job. Since I'm no longer saving for a car, I spend money on haircuts, bike gear, clothes and a membership at the Y. My stash is dwindling fast. Too fast. I wonder if one of the bike shops in town might hire me. I don't think much about Lunenburg anymore. Peaches' status on Facebook is “dating.” There are tons of pictures of her with my buddy, Lewis. I don't have any right to be upset. But it still hurts. If Dani and I were a couple, which we're not, I could post some pictures of my own. Instead I ride out to the hospital after lunch on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Arthur has to do rehab stuff every morning—he hates it, but it's not optional— so on the afternoons I visit, he bitches about it to me. Mom still does the weekend shifts.