Finding It There

Goodbye

The world always looks bleak through a hospital window.

Ironically, the summer outside my window was in fact very happy looking. Popcorn clouds on a forget-me-not blue sky, a warm glow cast over everything the sun touched, leaves and grass trembling in the gentle wind. There was a playground just below my window, and I could watch the kids play, and even hear them laugh. The ones that were well enough to leave their rooms, that is.

But it looked bleak to me. Out there was an entirely different world than the one I used to know. It was a world I would have to face alone.

"Holland," said a voice, a sweet, soothing voice. A voice trained to be that way. "Are you ready?"

I turned towards the nurse and nodded solemnly. Her name was Sarah, but I wouldn't need to remember it. I wouldn't be back at this hospital ever again, let alone this city.

I'll never understand why they insist on wheeling people out of hospitals who are perfectly capable of walking. They pushed me in a squeaky wheelchair all the way down to the front doors, where a man who I barely knew stood, his brown beard overgrown and his worn baseball cap shading his tired cobalt eyes. Dad.

"Hi Holly," he said in his low, rumbling voice as I stood. There was something broken about it. He wrapped me in a fragile hug, like he was afraid to break me in his strong hold. My good arm hung loosely at my side as I breathed in his scent for the first time in a long time. He smelled like donuts and cigarettes.

His rusty black pickup was waiting for us outside the doors under the overhang, and in its bed were boxes of what must've been my belongings from the apartment. No one spoke except the nurses, who waved me off after helping me into the car. I would've told them I didn't need help, but I didn't feel like putting up a fight. I was too tired to say anything at all.

As my dad pulled away from the hospital, he let out a long, sad sigh. The radio was playing classic rock quietly, something by AC/DC I think.

"I came to see you," he said finally. "A couple days after the accident, while you were still asleep. I was really scared I would lose you too."

I nodded, but it was such a small nod he probably didn't notice, and he continued.

"I'm really sorry, Holly. I would've stayed longer, but they made me come back to work right after the funeral. I'm sorry you had to miss it. It was really nice. Lots of people showed up."

People who probably hadn't talked to my mom in years who suddenly decided to care now that she was dead.

"They told me to send you their best wishes. We all prayed for you at the funeral too, that you'd recover-"

"Is it okay if we don't talk about this anymore?" I said flatly, looking out the window as my city whizzed by. This would be my last time here for a long time. My stomach was lurching.

"Of course. We don't have to talk about anything if you don't want to."

He took my silence as confirmation, and we drove on without speaking as the cemetery came into view, a field of stones and statues far more permanent than the lives that were buried dead beneath.

Her grave was fresh, a mound of dark earth beneath a humble, shiny brown headstone. "Henrietta Holstein, 1974-2017, 'Lived fully, loved deeply.'"

My chest burning, I felt a thick hand squeeze my shoulder, and I looked up to see my dad wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. Suddenly short of breath at the thought that her body was just below my feet, I slid out of its grip and hurried back to the car. I was bitter that after all those years he'd been away, he never once seemed to care about my mother or me. And now he was crying.