Agency

In Which, In the Words of a Russian Fatalist, "This Is What It Is"

the next morning, Saturday, the day before Mother's Day

"Daddy?"

"Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, WAKE UP!"

Two sets of small hands were shoving at his sleeping back. Although it was impossible, Berry pulled the covers up over his head and tried to cling to sleep. Why was he never allowed to sleep in?

"Daddy, you need to wake up," beseeched Noemi. "It's important."

"Is something on fire?" he mumbled from inside his goose down burrow. "If not, go away."

"Worse," intoned his six-year-old daughter. "Maman and Mister Waffles are missing."

"Missing!" confirmed the four-year-old who was now standing on the bed, jumping on his shins with hysteria.

Berry groaned.

"They're probably just out for a walk. For goodness sake, girls. That's no reason to wake me up."

Noemi lifted the duvet from her father's head and said imperiously, "Obviously, Daddy. We're not stupid. But where do they go walking? I need to find her because Grandpa is on the floor in his bathroom, and he said to tell Maman he needs an ambliance. So WE NEED TO FIND HER!"

Berry blinked and tried to interpret the six-year-old's logic. Oh, shit.

"Dad!" he shouted, even as he leapt over the girls and went flying down to the basement suite.

***

For his part, Jim was lying exactly where the girls had found him: on the floor of the basement washroom. He was grateful for the radiant heating in the floors and the generally swank decor. Berenice had really made it nice in here... you know, for a basement washroom. That tub must've cost a mint. Too bad about the crack in it.

His mind filled the minutes with idle observations like this as he waited for his granddaughters to relay the message to Berenice that he was in some physical distress. He hoped he hadn't made too much of a mess before he fell over and found himself rather stuck on the horizontal axis, incapable of getting up due to the breathtaking pain in his abdomen and the blackening of his vision.

He'd come in here around dawn, feeling nauseous and sweaty. He'd vomited what looked like an awful concoction of blood and bile into the toilet. Then, thinking he would brush his teeth, had simply crumpled to the floor, where he's been ever since.

He knew without knowing that this meant things would have to change now. This was, if not the end, the beginning of something new.

"Dad!" exclaimed Berry as he rushed through the door. "Oh my god, Dad. What's happened?"

Jim watched as Berry's eyes took in the scene around him. There was blood on the toilet -- had he flushed after vomiting? He couldn't remember -- and there was blood on the floor, but that was coming from the streaming gash in his forehead where he must've hit his head on the way down. Distantly, it seemed to Jim that he might have lost control of his bowels as well. Just to add insult to injury, he thought.

He held his hand out to his son, who grabbed it and made to help him up. But Jim couldn't be moved without agony.

"Get your mother, kiddo. I need to talk to her." Jim said.

"Dad, you're confused." Berry made a worried grown-up face at him, but Jim saw his little boy's face in there. Teeth like standing stones, eyes the brightest blue. His son. Himself.

Jim held onto Berry's little hand and tried to make them both less afraid, "It's going to be just fine. It's all going to be the way it was always going to be."

***

Later, in a shared room at St. Michael's Hospital, Jim had been cleaned up and heavily sedated. Berry and the girls were with him, trying to pretend the curtain that was drawn to keep the room's other occupant out of sight was as good as a wall. The girls used the crayons and construction paper given to them by the nursing desk to make paper hearts and flowers for their grandfather.

Berry sat, deflated, in a visitor's chair. He was wearing clothes from his laundry hamper and a pair of flipflops that had been the first thing to hand in the front coat closet as the paramedics were carrying his dad out to the waiting ambulance.

He was exhausted already, and it was only 10 am.

The door opened and, assuming it was one of the nurses, Berry didn't bother looking up.

"Maman!" the girls screamed, leaving behind their crayons for the moment, intent on relaying everything that had happened in their mother's absence.

"Where were you?" asked Noemi sternly. "Grandpa needed you!"

Berenice just hugged them both and looked over at Jim (who was still asleep) and then Berry (who looked stunned and as close to terrified as she'd ever seen him look).

"I was visiting a friend," she answered vaguely. "A good friend who's going to watch Mister Waffles for us while we take care of Grandpa."

Noemi broke out of her mother's hug, crossed her arms and said bossily, "You go get him BACK RIGHT NOW. I don't want someone else to take care of him."

Berenice shook her head. "No, that's not an option. Dogs aren't allowed in hospitals."

Noemi, fury rising, stamped her foot and pointed at Berry.

"Then make him go get him and take Waffles home."

In a more usual sequence of events, Berenice's own face would now have gotten flushed with anger, and the two would have begun an epic match of wills. But this time, the anger didn't rise. Frankly, she was too exhausted and worried to engage in it.

"Noemi," she said softly to her daughter. "One day, you will learn that not everything can be the way you want it. Sometimes, this is what it is."

Noemi looked more surprised by her mother's measured response then she'd ever been by her flying temper. Cowed, she nodded and took her sister back to the crayons.

Berenice sighed and went to sit beside Berry in the other visitor's chair.

"I wanted to tell you. He insisted that he didn't want you to know," she whispered.

"You knew about the cancer?" asked Berry, incredulous. "You knew, and you didn't warn me?"

"As I said, he wasn't ready for you to know. He was afraid of leaving you alone. I think he thought he had more time than he does. He was feeling okay. The pot was really helping."

Berry shook his head.

"Nobody tells me anything," he said finally.