The Fermata

Dec 19, 2007

It was morning outside. From underneath the pile of blankets he could not see the sun, nor had his alarm clock struck six-thirty, but he could sense that it was morning. The smell of fresh coffee and bacon in the fryer had told him so. The cure for winter blues was always the same. Bacon and coffee. His doctor had told him to lay off of both, but after forty-two years of marriage, Rhonda was not about to stop and certainly not at the advice of no pint-sized youngin’. And so every morning was the same, bacon and coffee.

John turned to roll out of bed, felt around for his slippers and stood up. In his younger days the cold air would have pinched his skin, but after years in the mine his skin had turned to leather. The creeks and pops his body made as he tied his robe only confirmed the wear. Though he moved as fast as he possibly could, Rhonda impatiently shouted from the kitchen, “Git on in here before it gets cold. We don’t have time for me to heat it back up. Not today.”

Moving down the hall towards the kitchen was a slow process. John had slept in the master bedroom upstairs, but no longer able to make the climb every day, he moved into the guest bedroom near the kitchen several months back. Having hidden his difficulty with the stairs from Rhonda, she had been unwilling to make the move with him. Still, she turned down his covers each night and made it again each morning, something she was on her way to do as John passed her at the kitchen door.

Coming back into the kitchen she said, “Now I am leaving to pickup Eve for the Garden Club’s trip to Boone. I will be home in time to drive to Johnny’s for Caleb’s birthday party at three. Breakfast is on the table and I have a lunch prepared for you in the refrigerator.”

But before John could even respond she was out the door and in her car. ‘It’s good. It’s good that she was leaving,’ he thought.

The process had been slow. At first it was just a sense he had, a sense that told him something was different, that something was wrong. He felt no pain, his appetite did not change, and yet he had a sense. And although the sense remained, he avoided the doctor and made the decision not to worry his wife.

But after a few weeks the sense turned into a slight pressure in his stomach, followed by an ache and then a sharp pain. A stubborn man, it wasn’t until the pain was so bad that he could hardly walk and barely eat that he went to his doctor, secretly of course. By then it was too late, and the mornings of bacon and coffee had become limited, nearly past due.

Finishing the last sip of his coffee, drunk black and straight as always, he headed to the shower. Turning the shower’s full heat on high, he took off his clothes, neatly folding and placing them on the counter, and looked at himself in the mirror. He sagged, everything sagged, and there on his stomach was a bruise. The bruise was the giveaway of the cancer treatments, but Rhonda hadn’t looked at him, really looked at him in years. Despite her lack of love, he wanted to protect her, he tried to protect her, when he first sensed something was wrong. The hidden bruise was evidence of that and as he hopped into the shower the bruise and the skin around it stung under the pressure. By now the sting had become as anticipated as his morning coffee and bacon.

His appointment was at nine, but he always arrived fifteen minutes early. As he walked into the office the nurse behind the counter looked up and smiled.

“John,” she said. “How’s our most handsome patient?” And smiling for the first time all day, he flirted back by saying he was well, now that he had seen the most attractive nurse. “Well, never mind you waiting with those folks,” she said as she nodded towards the crowded waiting room, “let’s go ahead and skootch you on back.”

Since his second visit they had always taken him on back. He wasn’t sure, however, if it was out of Nurse Mary’s kindness or if it was because they were trying to hide him from the other patients. ‘Why should the sight of a terminal squash the hopes held by those who were there for the first time,’ he thought.

He sat on the table wearing the paper robe as the nurse took his blood pressure. His weight, taken moments before, had dropped seven pounds in the past two week, while the pressure continued to rise. 198 over 92. For anyone else the numbers would have been bothersome, but John knew that neither the doctor nor the nurse would be too concerned. His end was near and his medicine was no longer about a cure but was focused on maintaining comfort.

The door to the room opened and the doctor walked in. His coat was perfectly white and crisp as always and before he took the time to speak to John he glanced over the file the nurse had left on the door. “You’re not doing good John. Not too good at all,” he would say.

“Well Doc, you accept what you can’t change.”

“Spoken like a true pacifist,” the doctor said as he finally looked up. “How has it been?”

“A little pain, but it’s manageable.”

“John, I have seen your test results, I know what medicines and treatments you have been through. It’s not just a little pain is it?”

John dropped his head. He was a proud man. He had spent years in the mine and even more years with Rhonda, a little pain he could admit to. But to admit the daily grind he felt on his life was too hard, it was just too much. And so trying to hide the sadness in his eyes, he replied, “yeah Doc. Just a little.”

The doctor knew better. John had, after all, been coming to him now for nearly two years. He could tell John was in pain, and in a mining town he was use to seeing patients too proud to admit when they needed help. He also knew that as he told John he was upping the pain prescription there would be a sign of relief in his eyes.

“How about Rhonda? How is she taking the news?”

“Doc,” John said as he ran his hand through his hair, “I haven’t told her.”

“You have to tell her John,” the doctor told him. “It’s not being fair to her, keeping this to yourself. You say you’re not telling Rhonda because you love her and want to protect her, but making her wait until you’re gone to find out is cruel.” It was not the first time the doctor had told him so, but he could not bring himself to tell Rhonda. She lived in her own little world and though he barely held a place in it, he dared not pop it.

As he headed home the car began to swerve. The pain across his gut clenched so tightly that holding the car straight was difficult, if not impossible. The Black Mountain roads were empty as always as John realized that the loneliness and only the loneliness is what kept him alive while he slammed his breaks. As the car swerved this way and that while coming to a stop he knew he had to tell her. For once he knew she had to know. Given the growing difficulty of the past few days he knew time was short. The doctor had been right, she needed to know, but now it could wait till tomorrow. He was too kind hearted of a man to allow his grandchild’s birthday to be overshadowed by his condition. And so for now, just now, he needed to get home before she did.

He would beat her home in time to take another shower, to get the scent of the doctor and the medicine off of him. He would dress in his Sunday slacks and shirt, polish his shoes and make sure a crisp ten dollar bill was in his wallet, the job, he thought, of any respectable grandfather.

Only minutes before three did John hear the sound of Rhonda’s car turning into the driveway, followed by the silence of the engine shutting off. A last glimpse of despair and pain crossed his face as he touched him stomach before she came in. From the mines he thought he had learned what pain was, but this was worse and having to hide it, to pretend it did not exist, made the difference. Rhonda was home and until he climbed into bed that night he knew he would have to be fine for the rest of the day.

“We’re leaving in five minutes for Johnny’s,” she said with hands full of brown bags. But the bags were on the counter and she was upstairs before John could muster the energy to ask how the trip had been.

Sitting at the table quietly he waited. His hands were crossed in front of him. His eyes closed. He knew it would take 15 minutes for Rhonda to get ready and he knew that even if he was sitting in the car waiting, he would be scolded for holding them up. Of course their kids had grown up knowing that he would not run late, but letting her take the blame was not something he wanted to do. This being the last birthday he was likely to attend, he had also wanted to make it special, to not miss it, and sitting at the kitchen table only served to frustrate him.

She wore the red sundress. It was the dress John had bought for her some years back. It was the dress that he loved to see her in the most. And as John drove them both to the party he could not help but think that he should buy her a new one before it was too late. This one had holes, each of which had been meticulously repaired by Rhonda, but holes none-the-less.

They arrived to the party ten minutes late. The cars of friends and other family members had taken the parking spaces near the house. Fearing that Rhonda would be faster than him, John dreaded the walk. And once they managed to get inside the house Johnny looked up from the kitchen and tapped his watch.

“Mom, Dad. You’re late for your grandson’s birthday,” he would say. “Caleb was asking for you. He’s out back showing the other kids his new bike. Why don’t you go say hello.”

Once out back Caleb went running towards John, leaping into his arms. The impact of his grandson nearly causes him to keel over, but a quick disguise turned the stern wince into a smile. It was hard for him to do, and as he held his grandson in his arms he looked quickly around to ensure that nobody had seen the pain.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” Caleb said. “It’s my birthday. What did you bring me? Where’s my present?”

Putting Caleb back to the ground and stroking his chin as though a beard were present, John replied by saying, “now what would make you think I have something for you?”

“Grandpa! You know you brought me something! Where is it?”

John reached for his wallet, making mention of a crisp one waiting for Caleb. Kids ran in circles screaming and Rhonda had disappeared to the kitchen to help with the birthday cake that would momentarily be coming out. It began as a sharp pain along the middle of his stomach as he handed the ten dollars over to Caleb, but John brushed it off.

The cake was chocolate, something else John had been told by his doctor not to eat, but a piece rested on the plate in front of him anyways. Though he tried to hold fork in his right hand, the pain had grown too much. Moving it to his left, he could see Rhonda and Johnny looking curiously at him out of the corner of his eye. The pain had grown and chewing was near difficult. Taking the first shallow, however, made him keel forward and cry out.

“Dad!” “John!” came the shouts from those rushing to him. An undistinguishable voice could be heard on a cell phone calling for an ambulance. “He just fell over,” the voice was saying.

The ride to the hospital was quick, and by the time the paramedics had John rolling into the emergency room he had lost consciousness. One of the hospital doctors would ask Rhonda about John’s medical history. Two more rushed through blood tests and a MRI. Although they raced as fast as they could, they were loosing him.

When an autopsy was preformed they found the cancer. In his last days it had spread throughout his entire stomach, and though he had managed to hide the illness, the hospital had told Rhonda it would have taken years to get to where it was at when John passed. When she finally talked to John’s regular doctor she had but one question, why did he never tell me? Taking her by the hand, the doctor would sit her down. Love. Love he would tell her.