Don't Forget Her
The hospital called Rowan at 4:38 in the morning. He knew what they were going to say before he answered. There were certain phone calls a person spent months expecting and still somehow believed might never come. He watched the screen glow against the dark bedroom.
ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER.
For three rings, he did nothing. On the fourth, he answered, “Hello?”
“Is this Rowan Hale?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Rebecca. I’m a nurse with St. Francis. I’m calling about your grandfather, Harold Hale.” Rowan closed his eyes. The room was completely silent except for the faint hum of the air conditioner... “What happened?”
“His breathing became significantly worse overnight.”
He sat up. “Is he awake?”
“Sometimes.”
Sometimes. He hated that word immediately, “Is he dying?” There was a pause. Not long. Just long enough.
“I think you should come.”
Rowan was already reaching for his jeans. “I’m on my way.”
The cancer had been eating Harold Hale for fourteen months. Slowly at first, then greedily. It started with a cough he blamed on dust from the workshop. Then bronchitis. Then pneumonia. Then scans. Then doctors who stopped using words like treatment and started using words like management.
Harold had taken all of it badly. Not emotionally. Practically.
He hated oxygen tanks because the tubes got caught on furniture. He hated nurses coming to the house because they moved things. He hated being told to rest because there had never been a point in his life when resting seemed useful.
Mostly, he hated that his hands had started to shake.
A clockmaker with shaking hands, he once told Rowan, was about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Rowan had laughed while Harold had not. Now, those hands lay still against a white hospital blanket.
Rowan stopped just inside the room. He had seen Grandpa sick. He had seen Grandpa thin. He had helped him shower when he became too weak to stand for long. He had carried oxygen tanks, picked up prescriptions, cleaned dishes that sometimes sat untouched for days.
This was different.
Harold looked finished.
His skin had gone pale beneath the fluorescent light. His cheeks had collapsed inward. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose, mist clouding the plastic each time he breathed. Every inhale looked like work.
Rowan suddenly wanted to leave. Not forever. Just for thirty seconds. Long enough to walk back into the hallway and convince himself that when he returned, Grandpa would look like Grandpa again.
Instead, he pulled the chair closer to the bed, “Hey.” Harold didn’t move. Rowan sat. “Apparently you couldn’t wait until a reasonable hour to cause problems.”
Nothing.
He stared at the old man’s face, “Very inconsiderate.”
One of Harold’s eyes opened, then the other. His gaze wandered before settling on Rowan. A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows, “You look like shit.”
Rowan laughed before he could stop himself. The sound came out wrong. Half laugh. Half something else, “There he is.” Harold’s eyes closed again.
Rowan reached for his hand. The skin felt dry and paper-thin.
For years those hands had smelled faintly of brass, machine oil, and cigarettes no matter how often Harold washed them. When Rowan was a kid, he had loved watching him work. Grandpa’s workshop had been a world unto itself. Tiny screwdrivers. Magnifying lenses. Drawers filled with springs and gears. Clocks without faces. Faces without hands. Things opened carefully so they could be understood.
Harold had been patient with clocks. People, less so.
“You gave everybody a scare,” Rowan said. Harold made a noise behind the mask.
“What?”
His grandfather lifted one trembling hand toward his face. Rowan hesitated, then gently pulled the oxygen mask away, “Don’t tell the nurse.”
Harold drew a shallow breath. “They fuss.”
“You are actively dying.”
“They still fuss.”
Rowan smiled. “That’s generally when nurses do their best fussing.” Harold’s mouth twitched. Then he coughed. It began softly and tore through him.
Rowan grabbed the mask and held it back over his face while Harold struggled for air. A monitor changed rhythm. A nurse appeared almost immediately. She adjusted the oxygen, checked the machines, and told Harold something in the firm voice of a person accustomed to stubborn old men.
Harold glared at her and the nurse seemed entirely unimpressed. When she left, Rowan leaned closer. “I like her.”
Harold lifted one finger. Rowan laughed again. This time it hurt.
For a while, they sat without speaking. Gray morning light slowly appeared beyond the window. Rowan watched cars begin filling the parking lot below. People arriving for surgeries. People finishing night shifts. People getting breakfast.
The world had terrible timing.
Harold stirred, “Rowan.”
“I’m here.”
His grandfather’s eyes remained closed, “Shop.”
“What about it?" A breath. Then another.
“Top drawer.”
Rowan frowned. “Your workshop?” Harold nodded slightly.
“What’s in the top drawer?”
No answer.
“Grandpa?”
Harold opened his eyes.
“Elena.”
The name meant something. Not enough.
Rowan remembered hearing it when he was young. A photograph, maybe. A girl standing beside a lake. He had asked Grandpa who she was.
His sister.
That was all he remembered clearly.
“Elena?”
Harold looked frightened.
Rowan had never seen that expression on him before. Even after the cancer diagnosis. Even when doctors told him they were out of useful options.
Harold Hale could be angry, irritated, bitter, exhausted, but he was rarely afraid.
“Hey,” Rowan said. “What about Elena?”
Harold’s fingers closed weakly around Rowan’s wrist, “She didn’t run.” Rowan stared at him. “What?”
“She didn’t.”
His voice was so faint Rowan had to lean closer, “Who didn’t run?”
Harold looked directly at him, “Elena.”
Something cold settled behind Rowan’s ribs, “What happened to her?”
Harold’s eyes moved toward the doorway. For a second, Rowan thought he hadn’t heard.
Then Harold whispered, “I left her there.”
“Left her where?”
His grandfather shook his head.
“Grandpa.”
“Should’ve gone back.”
“Where?”
Harold’s breathing quickened. The monitor followed.
Rowan immediately regretted pushing.
“Okay. Forget it. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“Coward.”
“You’re not a coward.”
Harold’s eyes filled with tears.
That frightened Rowan more than anything else had.
He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen his grandfather cry.
“Listen to me,” Rowan said.
Harold shook his head.
“Too long.”
“What has?”
But Harold had already begun fading again. His grip loosened.
Rowan replaced the oxygen mask.
“Sleep.”
Harold’s eyes closed.
Rowan kept holding his hand.
At seven, a doctor came in. She spoke quietly. Kindly. Too kindly.
Rowan understood maybe half of what she said.
Respiratory failure. Comfort measures. Medication. Hours. Possibly less.
She asked whether there was anyone else Rowan needed to call.
He stared at Harold.
“No.”
His grandfather had outlived nearly everyone. Rowan’s father had been gone for years. Grandma had died before that. Friends disappeared one funeral at a time.
Eventually a person became the last name left on an emergency contact form.
Rowan was it. The doctor touched his shoulder before leaving and he hated her for that. Then felt guilty because she had done nothing wrong. He sat back down.
“Guess it’s just us.”
Harold didn’t answer. Rowan talked anyway.
He told him about work. About a photograph he had restored the week before that somebody’s toddler had torn in half in 1987. He told him the museum still had the terrible coffee machine Grandpa hated. He reminded him about the time he had tried teaching Rowan to repair a pocket watch and Rowan launched a spring across the room.
“You called me mechanically cursed.”
Harold’s lips moved.
Rowan leaned closer. “What?”
“Still are.”
Rowan laughed.
“Asshole.”
Harold smiled.
Barely. But it was there.
A little after eight, his breathing changed. Rowan knew immediately. Nobody had to tell him. The pauses became longer. Each breath seemed uncertain whether another should follow. Rowan moved his chair closer and took Harold’s hand with both of his.
“I’m here.”
Harold’s eyes opened.
They were cloudy now. Distant, “Rowan?”
“Yeah.”
Harold seemed relieved.
For several seconds, he only looked at him.
Then he said, “Don’t forget her.”
Rowan swallowed, “Elena?”
A tiny nod.
“I won’t.”
He had no idea what he was promising.
It didn’t matter.
Harold relaxed. His eyes closed.
Rowan sat with him while the sun climbed higher behind the clouds. He felt each breath through the hand he held.
One.
Pause.
Another.
Longer pause.
Another.
Then nothing.
Rowan waited. His brain supplied another breath even when Harold’s body did not. He watched his chest.
Waited.
Still waited.
“Grandpa?”
Nothing.
A machine began making a sound.
Someone came into the room. Then someone else.
Rowan stayed in the chair.
A nurse touched his shoulder and said something he didn’t hear.
Harold’s hand was still warm.
That seemed impossible.
Dead people were supposed to become different immediately. Cold. Still. Obviously gone. Instead his grandfather looked like he had finally fallen asleep after fourteen months of being tired.
Rowan lowered his forehead onto their joined hands.
He didn’t cry at first.
The first thing he felt was anger.
At the cancer. At the hospital. At Grandpa for dying. At himself for every call he had let go to voicemail because he was working. Every Sunday he had decided he would visit next week instead. Every conversation that had ended with love you, talk later.
Later had apparently been a limited resource.
Then the anger cracked.
Rowan covered his face.
And cried.
He stayed until someone finally asked if he wanted a few minutes alone. Rowan almost laughed. He had been alone for the last hour. The difference was that everyone else had only just realized it. Before leaving, he stopped beside the bed.
Harold looked peaceful. Rowan hated that phrase too.
Peaceful.
As though dying had somehow improved the situation.
He touched Grandpa’s shoulder.
“Top drawer,” he said quietly.
The words came back to him.
Shop.
Top drawer.
Elena.
He looked toward the window. Rain had begun streaking the glass.
“I heard you.”
Rowan picked up his jacket.
At the door, he looked back one last time.
“Love you, Grandpa.”
Then he left.
He made it all the way to the elevator before remembering the last thing Harold had asked of him.
Don’t forget her.
The doors opened.
Rowan stepped inside.
As they closed, he realized something that bothered him more than it should have. He could remember Elena’s name. He could remember the photograph. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember her face.
