Back Check (Aces Hockey #4)(42)

 

"What?" He moved to his side to watch her, sliding lower in the bed, bending an elbow to rest his head on his hand.

 

She stared up at the ceiling. "My dad had Alzheimer's."

 

He frowned. "I'm sorry."

 

She turned to him, and the sadness in her eyes made his heart contract. "You may not know much about it."

 

"People lose their memory."

 

"Right. But it's more than that. He lost … himself." She swallowed and returned to talking to the ceiling. "He'd had it for a while when you met him. He was young to get it, and it progressed pretty fast."

 

Tanner remembered Mr. Medford. Professor Medford. He'd taught math at Michigan State, obviously a highly intelligent man, in his fifties, who loved his daughter a lot. Professor Medford hadn't been thrilled when Tanner had started dating Katelyn … Tanner was a jock with a reputation for rough play, fighting, and hooking up with lots of girls. But Katelyn's dad had at least given him a chance, got to know him a bit, and had slowly accepted that Tanner was an okay guy. Tanner remembered little things now, though, that at the time he'd chalked up to her father being the stereotypical absentminded professor. Losing things, forgetting things, sometimes stopping in the middle of a conversation.

 

"He hated it," she continued quietly. "He hated that he couldn't remember stuff. He knew it was happening, at first, and it scared the crap out of him. He was such a smart man, and proud. He was good at faking a lot of stuff … most people would never notice. He told me about it one day … after he'd been to the doctor … he broke down and cried." Katelyn's voice cracked.

 

 

 

        

          

        

         

 

Fuck. Tanner reached out and laid his hand flat on her stomach.

 

"He told me how scared he was of losing his mind, of losing control of his life. Losing his job. He was terrified about what would happen to him. I started covering for him when I could. Little things like reminding him who someone was when he didn't remember them … finding things for him. It got harder, though."

 

Now he understood why she and her dad were so close, why she'd looked after him and their home so much. He'd assumed she just took responsibility after her mother died, and that was probably true, but she'd needed to do so much more than a teenager should have to.

 

"Right around the time you signed your contract, I started helping him with his classes. He was struggling to teach. He was relying on his TA a lot, and I was marking papers and keeping him organized. He needed to hang on to his job until he could retire when he was fifty-five, to get his pension. Otherwise, he would have had nothing, other than some small retirement savings he'd put aside." She turned agonized eyes toward him again. "I couldn't leave him, Tanner."

 

His chest burned at the misery in her expression and his gut knotted. "Why didn't you tell me?"

 

"He didn't want people to know. He wanted to hide it so he wouldn't lose his job. He didn't want anyone feeling sorry for him. God, Tanner, he was a professor … he was so smart, and he was proud of being that smart and it was humiliating to him. I couldn't tell anyone."

 

"I could've helped. Christ." Now he rolled to his back. "I was making good money, Katie. We could've got help for him."

 

"There was no help. There's no cure. They tried some medications that supposedly slow the progression of the disease, and they may have helped … but not really."

 

"I mean, I could've helped look after him, if he couldn't work anymore."

 

"I couldn't ask you to do that!"

 

He pressed his lips together and closed his eyes.

 

"We hung on until he was fifty-five," she continued. "He retired and everyone thought it was a happy day for him, that he'd start a new life, taking it easy and relaxing. But it wasn't a happy day, other than we were relieved. After that, it was like things went downhill a lot quicker. I was still going to school, in my senior year at that point, but it was getting harder and harder to look after him. He had no volition … he didn't know he was supposed to get dressed in the morning. He didn't know he was supposed to clean up something he spilled, so the house was always a disaster … I was trying to stay on top of that. He didn't know he was supposed to eat. He lost so much weight, and I felt guilty because I tried to be there as much as I could, but I was going to class and studying."  

 

"Christ." His entire body was rigid with tension now, thinking about his Katie going through that … alone.