“Love you, too. Call me when you land.”
Brooke kissed her friend’s cheek, and walked into the airport.
CHAPTER TWO
Antiseptic and despair. Why was it hospitals always tried to cover up the ugly with the sharpest contrast in the form of bleach, or its second cousin that had a name no one could actually pronounce?
Ever since Brooke’s father’s stroke two years ago, traveling back and forth to California was a difficult task at best with her life settled so far away. The physical distance between her and her father made helping him challenging to manage.
He insisted he could drive.
She didn’t think he could.
“No one has taken my driver’s license away.”
“That’s because the DMV and the hospitals don’t talk,” she argued.
“I drive better than I walk.”
He drove a double cab truck he’d once used to move parts from his machine shop. He only drove three miles to the grocery store, but that didn’t stop her from worrying about him . . . and the other guy on the road. She’d shown him how to use Uber. She’d ordered grocery delivery.
No.
Her dad wanted nothing to do with that.
He was fighting the loss of his independence with every breath he had left in him.
And she was gaining gray hair at an early age because of his obstinance.
There was no way to stop him.
Taking away his license to drive became a waiting game. Waiting for the accidents or tickets. Not that her father would tell her about either of those things occurring. Maybe one of his doctors would make the call to the DMV. Even then, there was no telling whether her father would willingly stop driving even if they revoked his license. The whole thing simply sucked.
The middle-of-the-night phone call about a car accident was a predetermined given.
Yet here she was, not because of an accident, but because of a bad gut.
He had the eating habits of a twelve-year-old. The man had been married four times. Great at getting married. Failed at staying married. Even he agreed to that much.
His idea of a decent meal was anything that took less than five minutes in the microwave. God forbid you needed to stop in the middle of the heating cycle to open, poke, or turn the plate around and restart the thing . . . That was too much effort.
This wasn’t the first time his diet had sent him to the hospital.
As much as Brooke had preached, he didn’t listen.
Only when a woman he was sleeping with was in his life and cooking for him did he pay attention. To be fair, he was good when Brooke was there doing just that when he was recovering from the stroke. But he’d gone back to his old ways when she’d left him on his own. Old habits and all that.
Here she was . . . walking through the halls of the hospital after a health screening, with a sticker on her chest so she could enter the floor her father was on. Though the pandemic was behind them, hospitals, doctors’ offices, and care centers for the elderly and sick ran by a new set of rules.
She’d come straight from the airport, and her luggage was still in the rental car.
Before walking to her father’s room, Brooke stopped to talk to the nurse.
“I’m Joe Turner’s daughter, Brooke. How is he doing?” she asked.
The nurse’s smile was kind, her words slow and calculated. “He’s either in pain or confused from the pain medication. So far, he hasn’t tried taking out any of his tubes.”
“Tubes?”
The nurse explained what Brooke should expect when she walked into the room. Nasal tubes, IVs . . . bladder tubes. “Surgery is scheduled for the morning.”
Brooke signed the paperwork needed and walked down the hall.
Stiffening her spine, she walked into his room. “Knock, knock,” she said before pulling back the curtain.
Her jaw dropped.
Her father was sprawled in the bed with one leg dangling off the side. In his hands was one of the IV pumps.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Brooke.” Her name was muffled. The tube in his nose was attached to the wall. His eyes were glazed, his hospital gown dangling from one shoulder exposing more of his body than it covered. An adult diaper appeared to be falling off. He didn’t look like he knew where he was.
“What are you doing?” She dropped her purse in the chair and walked to his side.
“What?” he asked, completely oblivious to how ridiculous he looked half on and half off the bed holding an IV pump.
She pointed to the IV equipment.
Joe shook his head as if she were indicating a fly on the wall. “Someone has to h-hold it.”
“Isn’t that what this pole is for?” she asked, placing her hand on the rolling pole he’d obviously taken it off of.
“Oh . . . huh.”
Yup . . . her father was completely confused.
“Let me help you.” She took the pump from him and pressed the call button for the nurse.
The heat still clung to the day even though the sun had set. That was what it was like in the middle spaces of Southern California.
Brooke pulled into the driveway of her father’s condo.
Her condo.
She’d bought the place for him a few months before his stroke. Brooke had been itching to buy a place for herself when Marshall came along. Marshall convinced her that roots for the two of them didn’t make sense. Renting would give them the freedom to work around the globe. That didn’t stop Brooke from wanting to invest her money in something.
After her father’s fourth marriage failed and he was forced to walk away from joint assets—again—the man had been reduced to living in his machine shop. As the years ticked on, however, and his health started to decline, living in a dirty shop became less of an option. When she’d come to him with a proposition to buy a condo that he would live in, he balked at it. She talked about investments and the need to look to her future and eventually he agreed. Knowing he had a home to go to at the end of the day gave her peace of mind, and after the stroke, it had been an absolute necessity.
Although they’d originally talked about him helping financially with the place, that never came to pass. The stroke forced his retirement and stopped his ability to make an income. In addition to helping her father rehabilitate, she took a crash course in how to liquidate a machine shop. At the end of it, she’d managed to make her father close to fifty thousand dollars, which would be his only retirement outside of his social security checks. All he had to do was be frugal, and he’d likely be okay.
Or so she hoped.
Brooke looked at the garage door of the condo before getting out of the rental car.
Déjà vu hit her hard.
She unlocked the front door, took a breath, and walked in. The smell hit her first.
Placing a hand over her nose, Brooke turned on a light.
The acid stench of illness filled the air.
Brooke moved around the living room, opening windows and doors. She put the ceiling fan on high, helping move the air about the room.
Evidence that her father hadn’t been well for a while sat in waste containers at the ends of the sofa and dining room table.
And the filth.
The place was filthy.
Dirt in cracks and corners. Dishes in the sink.
She opened the refrigerator and found processed cheese, orange juice, and an assortment of condiments. The freezer met her with her father’s normal diet of frozen breakfasts, dinners, and ice cream. The kind with nuts that he wasn’t supposed to be eating.