The Moment Between by Nicole Baart

Author:Nicole Baart [Baart, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Test
Publisher: BMLA Digital
Published: 2017-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

At some point I gave up trying to comfort Lou and went to get the nurse. I had told her what happened before I went in to see him, and she was prepared for the worst. Without a word, she brought him a tiny pill in what looked to me like a mini muffin cup. Candy, I thought. They make it look like candy so it’s easier to swallow. Somehow that made it harder for me to swallow.

Lou was equally unimpressed with her efforts. At first he batted her hand away and growled fiercely, though I knew he was simply incapable of articulating everything he felt. I almost told her to forget it. I’d stay with him: I’d mourn with him and calm him down on my own. But that was impossible. He didn’t even want me here.

“Dad,” I coaxed, “take the pill. It will make you sleep.”

He turned his head from us and buried his face in his hands.

“Dad,” I said, firmer this time, “if you don’t take the pill, they’re going to have to inject you with something.”

My father has always been a man’s man, but he has never been a needle man. When I mentioned an injection, he stiffened. The nurse held out the pill again and this time he took it. With obvious reluctance, he tipped it in his mouth but refused the water she offered. He struggled to swallow for a moment and tilted his head back as if that would help. I watched a tear slide into his ear.

The nurse moved toward me as if she intended to fold me in a quick, supportive hug. But she stopped short, lifting her arms awkwardly and giving me a sympathetic look and a helpless shrug instead. Then she shuffled away with an apologetic air, leaving me alone again with Lou.

He was curled on his side now, facing away from me with his hand across his face so I could only see the chrysalis of his ear. I spoke softly, afraid of damaging that exposed organ, so bare and vulnerable to hearing things that could wound so deeply. “I’m going now. If you need me for anything, the nurses have my cell number. I can . . . I can be here in no time. Okay? Dad, okay?”

Lou didn’t say anything. He didn’t make any indication at all that he had heard me.

Should I tell him that they were going to do an autopsy? That it was standard procedure for suicides? As quickly as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it. Lou did not need to know that Hailey would be cut, that she would be more or less filleted on a slab of cold, hard metal. The thought was so stark, so staggering, I grabbed the rail of Lou’s bed to steady myself.

“We’ll have to . . . to figure out . . .” I couldn’t finish. He didn’t want to hear about funeral arrangements. He didn’t want to hear about the responsibilities that had been thrown on us—on me.

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