If My Father Were Here - John Fetto

The father lay in the bed, hands tied to the bed so he wouldn’t pull the thick tubes from his mouth. The machine breathed for him, providing pressure, while more tube reached out from the machines. The ventilator made a whooshing sound, breathing in and exhaling for the old man on the bed, and every few minutes another machine would grind on, filling the cup around his arm, testing his blood pressure.

Across from the father sat the son, fit, healthy, alert. He took short looks at the old father on the bed, noting the gaping, toothless mouth, jammed with tubes, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the way the arms twisted inside the constraints, and the old man’s shoulders buck on the bed, and the waist lifted up, trying to escape. But mostly he watched the numbers posted on the machine, especially the heart beat, how it kept climbing, over one twenty, then one thirty, finally pushing one forty, before it dipped again. Beneath the record of the too high heart beats, another line showed the rhythm of the heart beats, or rather the lack of rhythm and a blinking red light spelled the words “irregular heartbeat.”

A nurse came in, looked at the numbers and quickly left. When she came back she held a syringe.

“I call his cardiologist. He said we can give him this.”

She punched the syringe into the tube. Stood back, and both the nurse and the younger, sitting man watched the numbers. At first nothing happened then the numbers began to change. One thirty five. One thirty. One twenty five. One twenty. Like magic the heart beats began to slow down, all the way to eighty.

“Well that’s better, isn’t it?” said the nurse and left.

The son said nothing. He was still staring at the numbers, wondering how long they would hold at a level his father’s heart would finally burst.