F*ckface by Leah Hampton

Author:Leah Hampton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

* * *

The ward nurse had told us Hassel couldn’t dress himself, so I had good reason when I refused to give him his clothes. Violet was at the nurse’s station asking about pills and doses. She asked me to check on the old man. I reeled through his door still in a dazzle of emotion. The room’s medicinal reek revived me like a smelling salt, and my breath came in gulps.

Hassel filled up his bed like a hickory stump. I put a hand on my chest and tilted one hip, trying not to face him down too hard.

“Well, Dad,” I said, casual like. “You gonna make it?”

Hassel nodded, then flung his torso forward. “I’m ready to go,” he said.

“They’ll send somebody to help you,” I said. I was still snotty and worn through from weeping into Walter’s muscles. “Just hold on now, and let them get you dressed.”

Hassel grunted. He rocked his bottom back and forth, inching his feet off the bed onto the cold floor. Sheets and gown swirled around him.

“I’m not waiting, Tina,” he said through rocks in his throat. “I want to get on home.” He pointed behind me. “Reach me my shirt and pants out of that cabinet and bring them here.”

“Hassel, you’ve got to have help,” I said. “You heard the PT say you don’t have any balance. You’ll fall over pulling on your underwear.”

Hassel seared his rheumy pupils at me and pointed again, fist quaking.

“Pants,” he said.

I breathed. My arms felt sore and soft, like they feel after chopping wood in the cold.

“No, sir,” I said.

My fight hadn’t left me, and Hassel knew it. We stared each other down like frontier outlaws. The room swelled with his ire.

Hassel didn’t test me further. He would have if I’d been one of his own. Instead, after three tries, he spluttered up off the bed. Once standing, he lowered his chin and glared at me through spidery eyebrows. Fluorescent light pooled around a clutter of charts and bedpans beside him.

“Fine, then, young lady,” he said.

Then Hassel Fields, all eighty-three shaky years of him, pulled off his hospital gown with an operatic reveal. His flabby arms swooped up, and after a defiant fumble, he stood before me buck naked, daring me to stop him from seizing his khakis.

My breath fell out of me in a whoosh, and my hands dropped to my sides. I loosed the Arby’s bag, which flopped to the floor and landed on my foot. I gawked.

Hassel’s splotched, veiny body was a fearsome map. He had two long, black bruises where The Box’s seatbelt had spared his life—one near his heart, the other across his belly. His ball sack hung low and full like a finch sock. His legs looked scrawny and pale under the bulk of his battered torso.

Every muscle in me stilled. I couldn’t move. Here was Howard’s source, and here was I refusing it. My secondary brain, a layer of sentience underneath the immediate, compared his body to my husband’s and cast me into the future.

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