Derailed

FIFTY-THREE

I came home.

Kim came rushing out of the kitchen and stopped and stared. As if I were an apparition.

I nodded at her, I whispered, “Yes.”

She slowly walked toward me and curled herself around my body like a blanket.

It’s okay, she was saying, you can rest now.

Alex came running down the stairs, crying, “Daddy’s home.” He tugged at my shirt until I picked him up and held him. His cheek was sticky with chocolate.

“Where’s Jamie?” I asked Kim.

“Doing her dialysis,” she said.

I kissed her on the top of her head. I put Alex down. I went upstairs to Jamie’s bedroom.

She was hooked up to the portable dialysis machine. I sat on the bed next to her.

“We’ll be going back to Oakdale soon,” I said. “Back to your friends, okay?”

She nodded.

She did this three days a week now.

There was some talk of getting her on a list for a kidney-pancreas transplant — the newest hope for diabetics like her. But then there would be antirejection drugs to worry about the rest of her life, so it was hard to know if it would really be better for her. As for now, we hooked her veins up to this terrible machine three days a week, and I sat there by her bed and listened to its whir and hum as it pumped blood through her failing body.

Sometimes I drift off to this sound, and Anna is suddenly four years old again and I’m back at the zoo with her on that long-ago Sunday morning. Feeding the elephants. I lift her up into my arms, and I can feel her tiny heart running to greet me. There’s a soft chill in the air, and the leaves are drifting down from a swaying canopy of dark russet. Just Anna and her dad, walking hand in hand together in search of memories.

And I know I will sit here forever.

I will sit here as long as it takes.

THE END