We didn't have much money, but I never felt like a burden. He would wash my hair in the kitchen sink, one hand under my neck, the other pouring water.
“It's okay,” he would murmur. “I'm here.”
When I cried because I would never dance or just be in the crowd, he would sit on my bed, his jaw clenched.
“You are no less. Do you hear me? You are no less.”
As a teenager, it was clear there would be no miracles.
Ray made that room a world.
I could sit with support. Use my chair for a few hours. Most of my life was spent in my room.
Ray made that room a universe. Shelves at my height. A wobbly tablet stand he welded in the garage. For my 21st birthday, he built a planter box by the window and filled it with herbs.
“That way you can grow that basil you rant about on cooking shows,” he said.
Then Ray started to get tired.
“Jesus, Hannah,” Ray panicked. “You hate basil?”
“That’s perfect,” I sobbed.
He looked away. “Yeah, well. Try not to kill it.”
Then Ray started to get tired.
At first, he just moved more slowly.
He sat halfway up the stairs to catch his breath. Forgot his keys. Burned dinner twice a week.
Between his nagging and my pleas, he went.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m getting old.”
Mrs. Patel cornered him in the hallway.
“Go see a doctor,” she ordered. “Don’t be stupid.”
Between his nagging and my pleas, he went.
After the tests, he sat at the kitchen table, papers in hand.
“Stage four. It’s everywhere.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
He looked past me. “Stage four. It’s everywhere.”
He shrugged. “They said numbers. I stopped listening.”
He was trying to keep things the way they were.
He still made my eggs, even when his hand was shaking. He still brushed my hair, though sometimes he had to stop and lean on the dresser, out of breath.
At night, I could hear him vomit in the bathroom, then turn on the tap.
A nurse named Jamie set up a bed in the living room. The machines hummed. The medication charts were on the fridge.
The day before he died, he told everyone to leave.
“You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Even you.”
He trudged into my room and sat down in the chair by my bed.
“Hey,” I said, already crying.
He took my hand. “You know you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, right?”
“It’s kind of sad,” I joked weakly.
He chuckled. “It’s still true.”
