The Home Stretch [A Year Ago]

Last year, today, also the first day of school. That time a Monday, this time a Tuesday. S and I leave early so we can leave some mangoes with security for the doctors before school. I don't go up to see Appa because of S, who is not allowed to visit.

Once I've seen the kid into class and paid the fees, I come back to the hospital to wait for Dr. K who will discharge him today. Appa is supposed to have oxygen arranged at home before he's allowed to leave but he leaves by car, with no oxygen until he's home. The doctors have discussed this and Appa feels he can make it without.

I stay behind to settle bills. Do I go back to school to pick up S and the books? Did he come back home by bus? With the books? Appa covers some of them until he tires. Those covers are the only ones that survive the year intact. All other covers come off in a couple of months.

Earlier.

Six days in hospital. Appa waited for S's birthday before getting tests. On the day he went to see the doctor - for once with Amma, because she wants to see him - the doctor tells them he needs to be admitted immediately. Later, I see in his file that Dr. K has written: Breathless. Cannot even complete one sentence.

Amma stays on. I call everyone. Two of my uncles arrange to leave immediately, one of them with my grandmother and her younger sister.

My prayers are fervent and continuous. This was not expected. Later that night, after S is asleep, I scribble on my post-it and get online to look for crematoria and mortuary numbers. Why mortuary? Who lived so far away we would have to wait for them? Everyone was coming anyway, right now.

The next morning in the hospital, Appa is cheerful as only great adversity can make him. "Whatever happens we will face it," he says. I have heard and will continue to hear this many times in the days to come. I'm not sure how it makes me feel.

He has to have something called a guided aspiration. There's some fluid in his pleural cavity (cavity? is that right?). There will be a local anaesthesia given. While he prepares for it, Amma leaves for home. I'm told Dr. K wants to meet me and I should go see him whenever I come in.

He is with a patient but he nods and says to please wait for a few minutes. When he's ready, I sit.

"It doesn't look good," he says. "His lungs are in a very bad shape."

I reply with a variation of Appa's whatever it is we will face line. "You can tell me the worst, doctor. We're prepared for anything."

He wasn't prepared to hear that, however. Doctors want hope to spring eternal. He says we need to wait to see how the U/S guided aspiration goes.

In the days to come, the doctor notches up his cheeriness as Appa finds the pain unbearable. Eat more! You're looking good! How are you, sir?

I massage Appa's shoulders which hurt him all the time. The doctor on rounds says I shouldn't because of possible haematoma. We have to consider his liver condition as well. The balance is precarious. I try to be cheerful but find it harder each day. There's a second-hand bookshop down the road. I walk down one evening I'm in hospital and find a Le Carre, and something else I can't remember. I have the library's David Sedaris. How unrelated all writing is.

People come to see Appa. There are relatives at home. I remember nothing of their presence. There's the early morning trip to the hospital, the parking lot attendants, the security, the nurses - I know them all by name now.

Nurses. That head nurse who did not come even when Dr. K rang for her. He yelled at her, she was defiant but later apologetic. But they were all lackadaisical. Wrong dosages, wrong inhalers. Not even Amma knows what has to be given when. I have to keep an eagle eye on them because Appa is not always able to speak.

This is my preparation: this daily knowledge of decline in ability. In this I am better prepared than Amma. It wasn't prescience that made me look for the crematorium numbers; just preparedness.

If Appa had known, he would have been proud.