Sally
Student
Professor
Whitington
English
1010
September
7, 2015
Broken Places
It hadn’t been two weeks since we’d
lost everything. Our home, our TV, my little sisters’ toys and all of our
books, most of our clothes and our swing set.
We lost my father’s business too.
They came early in the morning with a truck. I sat on the sidewalk
across the street and watched them haul it all away. Everything. Gone. We lost
my mom and my sisters too. They left not long after the bank foreclosed, drove
away with my aunt and a suitcase. Gone.
We lost everything except each other.
“You’re always stronger at the broken places,” he told me.
Daddy and I moved into a single-wide
trailer, up on cement blocks. It listed to the left. “It’s like camping on a
slope, that’s not so bad,” my dad said— and he was right. We settled in, my dad
and I. He did odd jobs. I was a junior in high school and worked at the public
library. We did ok, finding our rhythm—school, work, reading at night. I propped myself on the couch with a book
while daddy sat at the tiny table that was our dining room table, kitchen
counter and desk. Daddy was plotting his
next attack. Ever the optimist he said,
“ask any successful business man how many failed businesses lie in his
wake. Well, I have one now. You make some mistakes along the way. That’s
how you learn.”
My aunt called regularly once we had
the phone installed. “You can’t stay
with that man. You can’t! your mother
needs you…” She was drunk whenever she called.
“Three sheets,” dad would say. My
aunt was drunk and mean, always had been.
I didn’t want to hear her diatribe against my father. And besides, she wasn’t my mother. My mother never called.
At night, once I was in bed, I could
see my father awake, smoking a cigarette, sitting at the tiny table. I knew he was writing love letters to my
mother, though we never talked about it.
Into each one he put whatever money he could. He mailed them each morning. Like a prayer, I thought. Every evening we would pick up the mail at
the entrance to the trailer park. Each day my father opened our mailbox. We
both silently waited for a letter, and each day was a disappointment. As we walked back to the trailer one day, my
father threw his arms over my shoulder.
“Don’t worry honey. I’ll get her
back. I know I will.”
My father quit drinking after my
mother left. “I can’t afford beer and
cigarettes,” he scoffed with a wink. I suspected my mother had committed to
both habits with more vigor than ever.
We hit our stride within a month or
so. He was running a car repair shop
downtown, and my school was going well.
My father’s eternal optimism stirred in me a sense of adventure and
hope. “A clean slate— anything is
possible sweetheart—with a clean slate.” I began to believe him.
**********************************************************
I was at work, shelving books in the
children’s book section of our small library, when I heard a familiar voice
asking the librarian for me. Ronny
Martinez looked out of place in the library. At 6’5 he towered over me, but we
probably weighed close to the same. His
hair, black and always a little greasy, hung to the middle of his back in a
pony tail with a slight wave. He looked
like a teenager up to no good. He worked for my father as a mechanic. Ronny lived, ate, and breathed automotive
engines. My father said that he was a
mechanical genius. My father’s
stipulation for all of his employees was that they stayed in school no matter
how meaningless it seemed to them.
Thanks to this policy Ronny would graduate at the end of the year. Ronny was not used to talking to anyone. He
was uncomfortable around anyone but gearheads.
He was agitated and looked frightened.
“Your dad’s in ICU.” I stood dumbfounded, staring at a smudge of black
on his forehead. “It took five of us… me
and Gilbert and Carlos.. them two cops.. five of us to get him in the fucking
ambulance. Shit! He’s in ICU.. you need to go to him.”
I didn’t know what ICU was. Daddy had to be OK, I thought, but I could
feel our world bottoming out. Again.
It was then that I noticed Chris standing
in the doorway. She was an old woman,
like Aunt Bee on Andy Griffith almost exactly.
She had been the town’s librarian forever. I could see she had been frightened by Ronny
and his obvious state. “Is everythin’
OK, sweetheart?”
“Daddy’s in ICU.”
“Oh, Honey, no.” She came to me then.
Ronny sat in one of the child sized chairs
and began to cry, his head in his hands, “IC fuckin’ U. Shit.
He ain’t gonna make it.” I could see the flagpole through the big
picture window. I could hear the metal
of the flag’s grommets as the bounced off the pole in the wind. I could feel myself lowering into a small
chair. I could feel the adventure turning badly. All I could think was, clean slate, clean slate…
Chris stroked my hair and calmly lowered
my head to her lap. I began to cry for the first time since my mother had
driven away. I cried as Chris asked Ronny to call someone who could drive, to
tell them to come immediately and take me to the hospital. It was obvious to Chris that neither Ronny
nor I were able to drive and she had never learned how.
The hospital was easy to find. I was the only one allowed in, being next of
kin. Ronny tried to convince them he was
my brother to no avail.
The ICU floor was empty, dark, and cool.
There were around a dozen beds, five of which were occupied. Daddy was in the corner, a dim light behind
him. I was about to tgo to him when I
was stopped by a nurse. She was startled
as I came into the light. I knew she was
expecting me, but I was obviously not what she expected. I might have been 16, but even as tall as I
was I still looked barely 14. “Is your
mother with you honey,” she was almost whispering.
“No. Just me.”
“Well, let’s go see Dr. Simon, he’s
waiting to talk with you.”
I jerked my arm out of her gentle grasp.
“No. I don’t need to talk to a doctor, I need
my daddy.” I went to him, as the nurse frantically tried to contact
someone on the phone.
My father was surrounded by dozens of
machines and he seemed to be hooked to each one by tubes or wires. The light
was dim, but I could make out his blond hair, wild against the white of the
pillow. As I came closer, I could see that he was held to the bed with white
straps. It was then that I saw his face, white, skeletal almost. His blue eyes were barely visible behind the
drooping lids. I needed to catch my breath, to regroup. I needed that clean slate that I had this
morning. “Daddy.” He couldn’t hear me.
Chris’s voice came to me from across the room—she was talking to
the nurse, her wool coat buttoned to the top, her purse just so on her
arm.
“How did you…” I started to say.
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s OK. Grandma is
here,” she said with a knowing look. I went to her. I went to her, my arms
reaching around her slight frame. I’d
never loved anyone quite like this before. “So, Dr. Simon, my granddaughter
needs to know what has happened.” Chris, the matronly model of morality, sat me
down on a chair as she lied as naturally as breathing.
The doctor sat across from me. “Your
father is critically ill and medically unstable. We are closely monitoring him. He is in a
life-threatening situation. Earlier we
did an emergency laparotomy. He
complicated matters by trying to pull his tubes and leave after the anesthesia
wore off. We’re hoping for the best.” Hoping
for the best. Hoping for the best is writing love letters to mom. Hoping for the best is what we were doing
this morning. “No,” I said, “I don’t believe that. I think you are planning
for the worst.”
Dr. Simon stared at me, silent. Chris said, “please. Tell us what the outlook
is. She needs to know.”
The doctor looked my way and then averted
his eyes. “We don’t expect him to make
it through the night.”
“Thank you,” Chris whispered. She shook hands with the doctor, and then led
me to the corner where they had daddy tethered. She held me as I caught my
breath. He looked so small, so weak.
Tears came freely. I could see him in the light, so dim, emanating from the
machines, monitoring his hear, his lungs, his brain. You can’t monitor his chances.
I looked forever into my father’s face.
His eyes were closed. He was so still. I put my hand on his. His eyes fluttered open. It took him but a
second to come to with a smile and wink. “Ahh honey, don’t cry now,” he said
weakly. “Temporary setback is all.” His voice was so quiet, each word took
great effort. “Don’t listen to them
honey. These people in hospitals only
look at half the truth. The most
important half is beyond their ken.”
“Daddy… daddy… don’t go.” I sobbed,
kneeling at his bedside, my face in his hands still strapped to the bed.
“Honey, listen to me and listen
carefully.” I rose a looked into my father’s eyes. “I am going to walk out of here. I’m going to get your mother back. We will be together again. I promise you that, we will be a family
again. I am not giving up and neither
can you.” He winced as the pain worsened.
I couldn’t see beyond his physical condition. His words, though strong, seemed the words of
a dying man. “This heart monitor is faulty.
It’s missing some serious machinery.
You go back to that doctor, that young man, and tell him that his years
in med school will be wasted on me.” His eyes were bright and blue against the
pale of his skin.
“I need you to write the letter tonight.”
He squeezed my hand with all his might.
I carefully laid my head on his chest. His
fingers were in a fist and I saw his eyes clench tight. The machines were surrounding us, the gauges
measuring and calculating how much life, how much longer. I could hear my father’s heart beating. I
realized then that these machines were useless in measuring this man’s heart.
My father clenched again in pain. You’re always stronger at the broken places.
