Sprung Leak
Everything is inevitable.
My father’s weak, pudgy body was covered in blood, but he still managed to make a joke.
“I think I sprung a leak,” he said.
He had a tube in his vein that the nurses forgot to take out and patch up before he went into the shower room, and blood was squirting everywhere. His pale white skin was covered in crawling tentacles of bright red blood. He cracked a smile, an embarrassed one, but still a smile, as the nurses swarmed into the shower room to patch him up.
Two days ago, I thought he would be dead by now. He had a stroke - his third one - and had to be hospitalized. But more than that, he had been physically declining for the past three years. A noticeable decline: always tired, often unable to walk for more than a few minutes, forgetting he just said what he said a few minutes ago. He was a few months shy of 70, but not a good 70. He was a worn-out and haggard 70 that showed what that age was really like, despite the vivacious salt and pepper-haired men with hard chests and dark tans you see on TV and, once in a great while, in real life. Seventy is close to the end for most people, and when I got the phone call from my brother about the stroke and the hospitalization, I couldn’t help but think this was the old man’s last scene.
He lived in Buffalo and I lived in Miami. So by the time I got to the hospital - about 36 hours after he was admitted from Miami - he had mostly recovered. He was still weak and woozy, but not in the realm of total physical debilitation he was in the previous day. He looked like he would pull through once again. And when the doctor gave him the okay to leave, he almost jumped out of the bed.
“I haven’t showered since I got here,” he told the doctor. “Can I clean up before I leave?”
It had only been a day and a half in the hospital, but he had always been a man who had to have at least one shower per day, and the resentment he had toward the hospital for not letting him shower was all over his face.
The doctor called for a nurse to get him a towel and slippers. The nurse came quickly, the staff eager to discharge a patient and open up another bed, and handed my father his supplies. He walked toward the shower with at least one tube still attached to his forearm.
I almost said something to the nurse, but my instinct in a hospital is always to let the professionals do their job. Even though I don’t think most hospital staff members are very competent, much less talented, and the idea that we should always trust a “medical professional” is one of the most misguided ideas we have in our society, I still tend to err on not questioning them. I am not always the man I wish I was.
My father went into the shower room and I sat down to wait, eager to get out of the hospital myself. After a few minutes, I heard the door creak open and he called my name.
That’s when I saw him covered in blood. And I already told you what happened next. After the nurses plugged the hole, he finished his shower and came out looking more like his old self - hair slicked back and wearing the jeans and polo shirt he must have come in wearing. But they still looked clean and ironed, just like his clothes always looked. I grabbed his things and we left.
I ended up staying with him for about a week. The doctors recommended that he refrain from driving and anything more physically exhausting than walking around the house, so I stayed to help him out. But every time I saw him, every time we talked, I couldn’t help but think of that image of him: half-naked, flabby but frail, and covered in blood. And the images kept getting worse.
When we ate at the dining room table, the sweater and khakis disappeared and he was back in his blood-soaked hospital gown, his fleshy arm wobbling as he stuffed a spoonful of peas into his mouth.
When we watched TV, he would be on the couch, lying cozy under a wool blanket, but I’d still see him in that cheap, falling-apart gown and as the blood cascaded down his pale skin.
And when we sat on the front porch, him sipping tea and wishing he could sip whiskey like I was, I’d still think of the blood, the weakened body, the overall frailty and decomposition of the man who raised me.
I wanted to talk to him about this. I couldn’t get it off my mind. And we’ve been taught that talking about our uncomfortable thoughts out loud is somehow therapeutic and good. But it rarely is. It might be good to talk it over with ourselves, write it down to really think about, and work it out (and probably delete right after we figure it out or get close to doing so).
But I couldn’t do that because I already knew why it bothered me and I didn’t want to broach the subject with him. He was dying. He didn’t have a terminal disease and he might even have another couple years left. But the man who once spoke so much and so loudly that the neighbors in our apartment building had to complain, the man who liked to drink until so late in the night my mother would call the bar to tell him to get his ass home, the man who kicked my ass a couple times when I deserved it back in the days when most kids do. That man was slowed down to a near standstill. He was still that man. He was here and the things he said were mostly the same - a little more forgetful, a little more confused about certain things.
But physically, he was almost gone.
That’s why what happened wasn’t my fault. You have to remember: He was already on the verge of death. He would have died anyway. If you could have seen what I saw, you would agree. There was no way he would have lived much later than the day he died. You have to understand how bad he was - so weak and frail and completely on his way out.
We hadn’t drunk very much. I had maybe one or two small whiskey drinks. I’m not a big whiskey drinker, so I water it down and use lots of ice. It’s hardly whiskey at that point. And I only had two. He had several. And you know how he likes his whiskey - straight up. I told him he should lay off. The doctor said to avoid alcohol for a month, but he didn’t care. He just kept drinking.
And you know how he gets when he’s had a few. Just has to get behind the wheel with the windows rolled down to feel all that fast, fresh air on his drunken face. I told him I would drive, but just a short ride.
The light was green. I made a left turn. The other car must not have had its lights on because I didn’t see it coming. It had to have its lights off. It came out of nowhere. Nobody would have seen it coming. It was so dark out. I heard a loud crash that was so loud, it hypnotized me, completely filling my head with the sound of the boom and the clatter and the shatter. I was conscious and could see and feel everything: the car tipping over, the windshield breaking, the force of 3,000 pounds of steel ramming into my 3,000 pounds of steel. But everything I was taking in was only being processed as sound as if my brain didn’t want to accept what was happening and would only register the sight and touch and smell and taste - even the fear and confusion - as just sound. In that moment, I was grateful for this and prayed that everything happening would never be more than a sound. But that didn’t happen.
I looked to my right and the sound dissipated, blending into everything else. My sight, hearing, and smell were all functioning again but were taking everything in overdrive. My father’s body was covered in blood so bright red that it hurt my eyes with its glimmer. His groans were loud and slow, burrowing their way into my brain, making sure to find a place where they will never leave. And the smell - a mixture of gas and smoke and steel and asphalt and whiskey. The smell was the worst part. Worse than the pain. The pain was just there. But the smell reminded me that this could have been avoided. We didn’t have to get in the car. We didn’t have to come here. He didn’t have to die in the passenger seat, covered in blood, the traffic light continuing to change, covering him in green light, then yellow, then red.
But you have to believe me when I say that he was almost dead anyway. If you saw him in that hospital, you would understand. It’s not my fault. Do you believe me?