Page 100 of End Game

I don’t have to think. I already know. “No. Nothing has changed.”

I’m still irrevocably in love with her, and all it was to her was a way to pass the time.

Chapter 29

Diana

The car ride to Amherst is silent except for the hum of the car’s engine and the smacking of the cab driver’s gum. I crawled out of Barrett’s bed early this morning, around maybe five or six o’clock, and returned to my house to pack a quick bag. I don’t know how long I’m going to be home. I don’t know how long my dad will be in the ICU. His immune system is already so weak from all the treatments, and all I hear about hospitals is people picking up infections and illnesses that they didn’t have when they went in. And then the rehab facility… There’s a lot I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m scared. Terrified, really. My dad is hurt, and he’s sick, and I don’t know that he’s ever going to get better. This isn’t the end—at least, it shouldn’t be the end, it’s “only” a broken hip—but the very real truth is that the end could be sooner than any of us anticipated.

He’s terminal. He’s not going to get better. Whether he has a few months or a few years, we still don’t know. We won’t know until after the fact, until everything is over. I have to treat each and every moment like it might be the last one I get with him—because it might be.

I’m not ready for my dad to die.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. But sooner or later, whether I want to or not, it’s a reality I’m going to have to face. He’s sick. He’s in pain. I don’t want to curse him to a half-life of pain and suffering. I just want my daddy back—my strong, capable dad who used to throw me over his shoulders and play keep away with me in the yard for hours and go on hundred mile bike rides just for the hell of it.

The chemo takes a lot out of him. The biweekly blood draws and intensive drug regimen probably don’t help. He’s sick. He’s dying. All they can do is make him comfortable. He’s not going to get better, not really.

And now he’s hurt.

I’m a ball of anxiety on the entire two hour car ride. I stare at the window without seeing the scenery. I don’t want to be doing this. I want to be having a good time with my friends, going to class, going to practice, living my life… not visiting my father in the ICU, not knowing if he’s going to walk again, not knowing if he’s going to walk me down the aisle at my entirely hypothetical wedding, not knowing what the rest of his life will look like.

My mom meets me in the hospital lobby and gives me the biggest, tightest hug I’ve ever gotten in my life.

“Hi, baby girl.”

“How… how is he?”

“He’s doing good,” Mom says. “They’re doing rounds in an hour or so, and then hopefully he can be released from the ICU and admitted to a regular room.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “That sounds good.”

“Come on. Do you want to see him?”

Slowly, shyly, I nod. She takes my hand and leads me towards the bank of elevators. The ICU is on the fifth floor.

“It’ll be okay. It’s just bumps and bruises,” she says, punching the button for the floor.

“A broken leg isn’t—”

“No, but it could be worse,” she rationalizes. “He’s waiting for you.”

“And the concussion? Any update?”

“He does have one, so he’s staying off screens, but other than that he looks good,” she says. “He’s bored. The nurses keep coming in and checking on him every fifteen minutes. He wants to go home.”

“Is he… does he have pain?”

“They’re keeping him well medicated.”

So yes—he’s in pain. Between the broken leg, the bruised rib, and on top of that, the terminal cancer… my heart aches.

The elevator releases us, and my mom directs me down a hall to a set of rooms near the bathroom. There’s a desk outside of the two rooms, where a nurse wearing scrubs is typing on a computer.

A rapid beeping comes from a monitor on the left and she springs into action, bolting into the room.

“That’s Frank,” Mom says. “He keeps taking off his heart monitors.”