Cheating Gods of Death (Sequel to L: Find A GirLfriend)

Bill Nye and Stephen Hawking

"Okay, Mom."

Everyone except for the Arctic Monkeys was quiet the rest of the way.

When we arrived, we had to wait in another sad hospital waiting room. There was a three year old boy with cancer playing with some blocks with his mom. I wasn't ever affected by sappy shit like that, and this time wasn't an exception. He's an inspiration, great. Power of the human mind, right. Great.

Mom went in first, her heels diligently click clacking in the same pace as the nurse.

"George?"

"Yeah?"

Erica had looked towards me, almost crying. Glassy emotion brimming in her eyes, polished to perfection.

"I... I don't know what to say..."

"Just say hello. He's been gone. I... I don't know what to say, either."

"Mom said we kinda couldn't prepare."

"She did..."

The same portly nurse came back to get us. Her streaky highlighted hair adorned with gray hairs and grown out dark brown roots. Her eyebrows weren't so bad. Yes, I looked at her eyebrows. I was raised by my mother. I couldn't stress that enough.

She led us around a labyrinth of corners, past more people who more deathly ill or mortally wounded in their rooms. Then, we heard Mom sigh and was led in there.

Nothing could have prepared me, but Erica was fine. She said her hello and hugged him, then sat beside Mom. Seriously, that easy for her.

"Hey..."

His eyes... moved. They followed my hand as I waved like the most awkward sixth grader at church. Nothing else would. He sat limp and sunk into the wheelchair, awkwardly set onto the foot holder things (no idea what they're called). His head was attempting to rest against his left shoulder; his hand suspended off of the armrest of the chair. His lips were parted.

But, he followed me, even as I sat next to Erica and the doctor talked about the future as if it rested on the shits we gave as a family. Even while talking about "family effort" he kept eye contact with my father.

"The medications you're on should keep helping your central nervous system to come back to functionality, but we don't know to what extent. It is a trial, after all. Miss, if you'd keep a weekly update on improvement, regression, and other things, it would help the trial. Now the line we put in is right here, inject the 20cc of the vial that we showed you earlier into that. Do you need us to show you how to do anything else.?"

But the conversation drifted back to my mother, who was frazzled and scribbling notes onto a receipt. It turned out to be a lot of care. He had a PICC line for the drug cocktail infusions, not to mention the correct way to clean him (I'm not talking about bathing, which was also a thing), positioning, the history of bedsores, and then Erica and I were led away for him to be prodded. And, the person who called Mom had incorrectly described his state. As it would turn out, he wasn't completely paralyzed, just weak from being still for so long and woozy from having a nurse shoot his blood everywhere when messing up trying to take a sample. She was new.

Mom came and brought us back in to receive a folder of care information, pamphlets, and doctor's contact information. Then, we left, Mom holding an empty shopping bag, a black canvas case for something, and the manilla folder as well as pushing Dad along in front of her.

When we got to the car (thank God it wasn't a car, it was similar to an SUV), she let Erica and I settle before lifting my father straight out of the chair and into the passenger side of the front, then shutting the door. Simple as that.