Together

Katherine Xia

Period 1

Ms. Tompkins

World Literature Honors

Together

My brother gives my hand three, comforting squeezes.  It’ll be okay, we’ll get through this, he communicates to me.

I don’t say anything, but I don’t let go of his hand either.  My eyes are burning with the tears that are fighting to break into the world and run down my face.  My muscles are all tense and contracted in an effort to keep a calm demeanor.

Beep… … beep… … We’re in the hospital.  There’s my mother, brother, and I.  And my father lying in the hospital bed, surrounded by the crowd of machines keeping him alive.

Beep… … beep… … The only sign that my father is still alive.

Beep… … beep… … My eyes are fixed on the heart-rate monitor.  The jagged line weaves up and down, up and down.  Each time the line goes taut, all the oxygen seems to be sucked out of my lungs, only to return for a brief moment when it begins to rise again, up and down, up and down.  All of a sudden, this jagged line is the only thing that matters in my world.

Beep… … beep… … I will it onward.  Willing it to not sentence my father to death.  Willing it to keep the fragile order in the room from dissolving into a crying, chaotic mess.

Beep… … beep… … Is it just me, or is it taking longer for the line to start working its way upward again?

Beep… … beep… …Up and down.  Up and down.  One second passes. Slowly. Stretched out.  Dragged on. Only to be replaced by another.  

Beep… … beep… …Time seems to have lost meaning.

Beep… … beep… … The thoughts come out of nowhere.  I feel the doctor’s stern gaze  rake over my skin as the paramedics roll my father into the intensive care unit for the fifth time  this year.  The subtle, disapproving shake of a head between two nurses.  And then her words.  My mother’s best friend from college.  Laina.  Spoken in an exasperated, pleading voice.  “Why do you do this to yourself?”  

What she meant to ask was, “Why don’t you file for a divorce already?”

I take in the man lying in front of me.  His skin is pasty, pale, waxen, and it hangs loosely from his thin frame.  The bones are jutting out and are prominent even beneath the paper smock delicately caressing his body.  Through a slit formed by parched, cracked lips, lies blackened, yellow teeth, some chipped in places.  Underneath the scents of antiseptic, I can smell the fumes of alcohol, and underneath that, the stench of cigarette smoke.  

I remember finding my father lying passed out on a couch in the living room.  The reek of rot and decomposition crashed into me so that I felt like I was going to pass out, too.

I remember scrambling to the nearest phone, doing my best to avoid the pools of vomit splattered on the wooden floorboards my mother had just recently meticulously polished to a shine.

 I remember gazing back at my father as I answered the standard emergency call questions. “Where are you right now?  What is the person’s condition right now?” My eyes drifted to the dozen empty beer bottles littered around my father, some of them shattered into millions of shards of tiny, fragmented glass.

I remember staring at those shards of tiny, fragmented glass.  How precisely they seemed to be describing our family’s lives.

I remember my father telling me in a cracked, hoarse voice that my brother and I were priceless treasures to him.  And I had immediately retorted in a scathing voice, dripping with malice, “Well, I think you’ll need to redefine your definition of ‘priceless’ considering how you care more about your six dollar pack of smokes and your ten dollar six pack of beer.”  That shut him up.

But now I’ve realized, perhaps too late, the way his eyes, embedded on his gaunt face, shined with life when he said those words.  But now I’ve realized, perhaps too late, that my anger blinded me from seeing the way he flinched from my words, like knives driving deep into his chest.  

And now, it may be the last conversation I will ever have with my father.  

My vision is really starting to blur now, my eyes burning more than ever.  And that’s when I see my mother, straight-backed and gazing fixedly on my father.  Her chocolate brown eyes twinkling. Defiant.  Her fingers spinning the sparkling, blue diamond ring around and around her finger.

And suddenly, I can imagine a future.  A  future with my mother, my brother, and I.  And my father.  We’ll be gathered around our dining table, not a hospital bed.  He’ll laugh his big, vibrant laugh as he tells us jokes and stories.  My mother will smile her warm smile and plant a giant kiss on his cheek, stretching a little to compensate for the height difference.  My brother will have his big, goofy grin plastered  on his face, teasing me about my stick-thin stature and dumping more beef and potatoes onto my plate.  

Beep… … beep… …  “Why don’t you file for a divorce already?”

Beep… … beep… …  No.

Beep… … beep… …  Never.

Beep… … beep… … This is a family.

I give my brother’s hand three, comforting squeezes.  It’ll be okay.  We’ll get through this.  

Together.