I watched him sleep for awhile. A long while. It felt almost illicit, like something I shouldn't have been doing. And maybe I shouldn't have, because I can't say as there has ever been something in my life that was sweeter than Kaden Barlow sleeping in my lap while I traced the contours of his head and his thick, muscular neck with my fingers.
Chapter 24: Kaden
I didn't want Tasha to leave the next morning. I wanted her to come to the hospital with me, and then, eventually, back to Brooks and then to wherever I ended up when I was drafted. I guess I had done some growing up since I'd last lived in Little Falls, though, because I didn't ask her for any of those things. She had a job, a whole life, and I wasn't anything more than a temporary part of it.
My dad was sitting in a private waiting room when I arrived at the hospital. The doctor was scheduled to brief us at around noon but I wanted to be there earlier. My father's face was unshaven and there was a sudden 'old man-ness' to him that scared me when I saw it. We talked about unrelated things, life at Brooks, what NFL team I was hoping for, the fact that he'd started to get into cooking. At just after eleven, a doctor in a white coat walked into the waiting room. My dad and I both looked up at him, searching his face for any sign of whether or not what he was about to say was good or bad news. There was none. At least he didn't torture us with preliminaries.
"The swelling in Mrs. Barlow's brain has come down overnight. It's still too early to talk about long-term prognosis but I think I can say we have moved into 'cautiously optimistic' territory."
Confused, I looked to my father and saw that he was crying. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry and my immediate instinct was to join him. I didn't, though. He needed me to be strong for him and for my mother.
"I - um, I'm not sure what that means," I said to the doctor. "Long-term prognosis? Does this mean she's, she's, uh..."
I couldn't say it. I couldn't ask if it meant my mother was going to live, because that would have meant acknowledging that she might die. Fortunately, the doctor knew where I was going.
"Mrs. Barlow is still in a very serious condition, I want you to understand that. We'll have to wait until she wakes up to get a more realistic picture of what can be expected but the immediate danger has passed."
I asked a few more questions before the doctor left, but it was clear that he expected my mother to live. Nothing else he said, about how she would be when she woke up, really sunk in. All I heard was that she was going to live. It was all my father heard, too. When we were alone again he slumped forward with his hands covering his face and sobbed quietly for a few seconds. Then he wiped his eyes and looked up at me.
"I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry, this isn't-"
"Dad," I said, my voice breaking, "don't say sorry. There's nothing to be sorry for."
And then I started crying, too, overwhelmed by the news and the emotion of the moment. My dad reached out and we wrapped our arms around each other. I've always been close to my parents, but my dad is one of those stoic dads, all back slaps and approving nods. Our relationship was different after my mother's accident. It was better, too. Like it was OK for him - for both of them - to rely on me as a grown man at that point.
We were allowed to see my mother briefly. Her face, swollen and bruised, was so covered in bandages and tubes and wires that led to beeping monitors I could barely tell it was her. I kissed her forehead and held her hand and whispered to her that I loved her, that I was going to take care of her - of them - when she got out.
I wandered the sunlit hospital hall afterward, so my dad could have some time alone with her. I was elated. My mother was going to live. It didn't matter if she needed help. She was going to live. And my life was changed forever. It took me a few months, maybe longer, to understand just how different things were but I felt it from the very moment I got the phone call at Brooks. So many of the things that I had worried about suddenly seemed so inconsequential. And so many of the other things - other people - that I had somehow come to picture in my mind as permanent, revealed themselves to be terrifyingly transient and impermanent.
When I spoke to Tasha on the phone that evening, after spending the day at the hospital with my parents, the entire conversation felt suffused with a kind of poignancy that was deeply unfamiliar to me.
"So, it's good news then?" She asked after I'd updated her.
"Yes," I replied, unable to shake the thoughts that were spinning through my mind - what if something terrible happened to Tasha? What if she got hurt and I wasn't there to take care of her? What if she didn't know I loved her?
"Are you sure?" She asked, as I reeled at the admission I'd just made to myself, that I still loved her.