0393088618 (N) by Mary Anna King

Author:Mary Anna King [King, Mary Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Personal Memoirs, Retail
ISBN: 9780393088618
Google: ywmdBAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0393088618
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2015-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Wake Up

After I graduated from high school, I had a summer job at a nationwide call center where I booked rental cars for people in exotic locales like Danbury, Connecticut, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I still refused to spend any money on a car myself, but Granddad had retired by then and didn’t seem to mind giving me a ride when I needed one.

One afternoon two weeks after my high school graduation we were in the Chrysler, a new gold one that he’d bought himself as a retirement present. He kept his eyes on the traffic on the Lake Hefner Parkway, his hands locked at ten-and-two, when he told me, “Mimi’s sick.”

“Is it cancer?” I asked. She’d had a bout with breast cancer during my junior year of high school. They found it early and performed a mastectomy—she had been fine since then. But I knew that cancer could come back. It always did in the movies.

“It’s not cancer,” Granddad said. “They think it’s kidney failure.” A membrane of water clung to his blue eyes. He didn’t look at me and he didn’t blink.

Whenever we had reason to discuss Mimi’s health over the years, Granddad always said, “Don’t you worry, Mimi-Mouse is going to outlive me. By a long shot,” and he’d point out that Mimi’s parents had lived into their nineties. Granddad talked that way through every one of Mimi’s migraines, asthma attacks, and the increasing number of pills she took with her breakfast. He said it through the breast cancer and the mastectomy. But he did not say it today.

Mimi would need to start dialysis treatments as soon as possible. She was going into surgery the next day to insert a tube in her stomach. Then, once a week doctors would connect her body to a machine to clean her blood. The only other option was a kidney transplant. But new kidneys went to twenty-year-old diabetics or kids with rare congenital diseases, not seventy-four-year-old women who had recently had cancer.

“It’ll be a simple procedure,” Granddad said. “She’ll be home before you are tomorrow.”

But when I finished work the next day, Becca was waiting for me in the parking lot. She sat on the back bumper of the old gray Chrysler chewing her cuticles. This was strange: Granddad hadn’t sold the old car yet, but he never let Becca or me drive it. Not unless it was an emergency.

“Mimi’s not waking up,” my sister said.

Becca and I drove to the hospital. Granddad had asked us to bring a pair of pajamas for Mimi so she wouldn’t be cold. Mimi was on the eighth floor, in the intensive care unit. The tile floors, fluorescent lights, and the strange lady behind a desk sent a tremor through my psychic landscape.

“We’re here to see Mrs. King,” Becca said.

“There are no visitors in ICU, I’m sorry, girls,” The woman behind the desk said.

“We’re not visitors,” I said. “We’re her daughters.” I tilted my head to indicate the bundle of clothes in my hands.

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