You Can Never Spit It All Out by Moore Ralph Robert

Author:Moore, Ralph Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SENTENCE Publishing
Published: 2016-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

The nurse led Wade across the waiting room, past a seated family, all eight look-a-like faces rising, expectantly, as a doctor approached, faces listening, one by one lowering, in grief. Led him down a corridor with open alcoves, each alcove displaying someone in a white bed, people of different heights gathered around the rails, guests and patient all trying to be cheerful, talking too loud. With each tableau he thought, how many hundreds of people have died in that bed?

No one was around his Dad's bed.

His face looked like Wade's, but old. Mouth sunken, as if his teeth had been removed. He was forty-eight.

Dirt under his yellow fingernails, probably garden dirt. He was working in his garden when he started vomiting blood.

"Hey, Dad."

He looked up at Wade, disoriented.

"They're trying to find out why you're bleeding internally."

His voice was hoarse. "Hey."

Wade reached over the side rail of the bed, slipping his hand into his Dad's, white plastic strip stapled around his father's wrist, an intimacy that felt embarrassing, holding hands with his Dad. But then there had been so many intimacies, washing him while he could still stand by the sink, sliding the soapy washcloth up into his lifted armpits, him letting out a moan of physical pleasure; pulling his underpants down at the extended care facility, getting a whiff of his genitals, his smooth legs like a little girl's; having to flush after him.

"Who are you?"

"Do you remember your wife, Rebecca?"

He kept an alert watch on Wade's face. "Sure."

"You and she had a son."

His watery blue eyes shot Wade an impatient look. "Yeah."

Wade held onto the grasp of his loose-skinned fingers. "I'm that son. Wade."

He gave Wade the most peculiar, heart-breaking look. "Really?"

When Wade came back out into the waiting room, the sofa where he, Maggie and Josh had sat, talking, was empty.

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