His daughter, George was glad to see, wasn’t in the ICU. If he was already established in Eric’s room, he thought, Marie would be more likely to accept him. He hadn’t told her he was coming.

“I’m the grandpa,” he said to the nurse, extending his hand.

She didn’t take it. He noticed her gloves then, thought she could have peeled one off.

“The doctor’s already been. You missed her.”

George smiled. “It’s just as well. I can never understand doctors. I’ll bet you’d explain it better.” Eric was flat on his back, his bare feet extended to the edge of the bed.

If his wife Dede were still alive, George thought, he’d tell her Eric lay helpless in a wilderness of tubes.

“May I?” He touched Eric’s little finger. “Warm.”

A needle was inserted in a vein on the back of Eric’s hand, taped in place, an oximeter on Eric’s forefinger. “Ah, Chinese hand cuffs.”

Her smile seemed pushed. That doesn’t bode well in a nurse, George thought, being short on patience this early in the day.

He’d seen Eric at Christmas. He wasn’t invited to his birthday in March but perhaps Eric, at fifteen, considered himself too old for a family party. George had sent a check, wrote in the card he hoped Eric had fun with his friends on his big day, maybe they’d taken in a movie?

Eric hadn’t written back.

Eric ‘s pajama bottoms were pulled down his thighs, exposing the catheter. The urine in the tube was pale yellow, straw colored.

George had a friend who’d gotten dengue fever in Vietnam, said it had made his urine dark as good whiskey. He thought the nurse would find this interesting, hoped there’d be a chance to tell her.

He was startled when he saw Eric’s groin. The hair, dark, profuse, could also, he thought, be described as a wilderness. His penis resting on the nest of hair, buoyed by the catheter, seemed large, perhaps from the contrast between the dark hair and white skin.

The nurse pointed to two chairs and a table wedged into a corner. “You can sit down, you know.”

George wondered if he’d been standing too close to her, told himself she should be used to an audience, asked when Eric would resume consciousness.

She lifted Eric’s left arm by the wrist, brought it up half way, lowered it, then raised it again. Something to do with the needle taped in the crook of Eric’s arm, maybe.

“He’s in a medically induced coma,” she said. “When he’s stable we’ll start titrating his meds down gradually. Until then everything’s going to stay the same.”

Kylee, his thirteen-year old granddaughter, had used that term too, medically induced coma, when she’d called him this morning to tell him Eric had overdosed.

“I thought you needed to know,” she’d said.

She and Eric had fought at Christmas.

Marie had spread a red cloth on the dining room table for Christmas Eve supper, set it with her wedding china. A fussy pattern, George had always thought.

“My,” he’d said, when they sat down. “This is festive.”

Eric told Kylee her dress was ugly.

An odd choice, certainly. A summery yellow print, exposing the backs of her plump thighs.

Kylee screamed. She hated him, he was mean. “And Mom and Dad won’t do anything about it.”

She ran to her room, screamed from there.

George praised the food. Fish, traditionally served in Italy on Christmas Eve, according to Marie. Lukewarm, but perhaps that was the way it was intended to be served?

When Marie was clearing the table Kylee came back, looking moderately embarrassed.

“I can be a drama queen, Grandpa.”

“You just want to open presents,” Eric said.

George braced himself for more screaming but Kylee laughed.

When Kylee had called him she complained she didn’t want to go to school because she was worried about Eric but Marie was making her go. “I’m not old enough to visit and she said Eric was okay and there’s nothing I can do.”

Her mom didn’t think he needed to know, she told George, but she, Kylee, didn’t believe in secrets.

George thought it was too much to ask, expecting Kylee to go to school, but he told Kylee Eric must be all right. “If that’s what your mother says.”

So Marie couldn’t say he’d undermined her.

“That’s what I heard,” he said to the nurse, wanting her to know he was in the loop. “But I don’t understand why you’d put someone who was already sedated in a coma. Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

“It’s to prevent seizures.”

“Seizures? He doesn’t have epilepsy.” George knew something about that. When Marie was away at college, a letter for her from the school’s health department came to the house. Dede got scared, opened it.

It was a copy of the instructions Marie had given the college for her medical file, saying what was to be done in the event of seizure.

What if it’s true, Dede said, and Marie is keeping it from us? When Marie was younger, Eric’s age, Dede had worried about her committing suicide, but she’d worried about so many things Marie might do; run away, take drugs, have sex with boys who didn’t even like her.

That won’t all happen, George said, so I’m not going to worry about any of it. If she were really sick she’d tell us, milk it for all it was worth.

Marie had started lying when she was twelve, getting better at it over time. George believed she’d researched the disease to enhance her credibility.

I don’t have many grand mal seizures, she’d written. It’s a rare event for me. Absence seizures are what I have. Petit mal. If she had one in class, she’d slump forward onto the table. No one needed to do anything. She’d wake up on her own.

He guessed she’d said that about grand mal seizures being unlikely because people lose bowel control during those, and she wouldn’t want to go that far.

Nothing he’d say anything about now. I’d never embarrass you in front of your children or Steve, he could tell her.

She might ask why he’d want to embarrass her.

“The seizures are the body’s response to toxicity,” the nurse said. “To help him stabilize we’re supporting his bodily functions, his organs. It’s safer if he doesn’t have any seizures now. That’s what the ventilator is for.”

“Oh, thank you.” He wondered if he should have been able to figure that out on his own. “What else can tell you me about my grandboy?”

“Your daughter will probably want to talk to you herself.” It felt like a reproach, and so did the way she walked from the room, not looking at him.

Marie, when she came, stared at him.

“You’re here.”

If she’d ask he could say he needed to be with Eric.

“It sounds as if he’s improving. Good news!”

“You must have talked to Kylee.”

“Please don’t scold her.” Though he was sure nothing would happen to spoiled Kylee. “She was upset, needed someone to talk to.”

Marie didn’t answer.

“Buy you lunch, young lady?”

She was looking at Eric. “I ate breakfast late. But you go.”

“You know, I think I will. I’ll spell you when I come back.”

He walked to the bed, took one of Eric’s feet in his hands. The nurse had returned, was examining Eric’s mouth, pulling back his gums with her gloved fingers. George would have to reach over her to touch a hand or shoulder.

“I won’t be long, big guy.” Machine and boy continued their soft, steady sounds.

He asked the nurse what was good in the cafeteria.

“I don’t know. I bring my own food.”

If Marie had come he’d have offered to take her downtown, but he figured he shouldn’t be gone long now, have her think all he cared about was something good to eat.

He stopped at the gift shop across from the cafeteria after lunch, looking for something to take away the oily taste from the tuna melt he’d had, remembered going there with Dede on the day Eric was born. They’d bought a box of chocolate cigars wrapped in blue foil for Steve to give out. George bought another box for his own friends.

He and Dede put a cigar in the freezer for Eric to have later. George had come across it before Eric’s tenth birthday and gave it to him along with his copy of Treasure Island and a pup tent.

When he thanked his grandfather for the book Eric said his school didn’t like the students reading abridged books.

George chuckled to show he wasn’t offended. “I never knew I wasn’t reading the real thing. I loved it, hoped you might too.”

Eric snapped the cigar in half to share with his sister before he ate it.

When George opened the door to the ICU and looked across the nurses’ station into Eric’s room he saw Marie had moved her chair closer to the nurse.

“He’d been moody,” Marie was saying, “but he still talked to me.”

George examined an arrangement of lilies and carnations in an oversized mason jar on the counter at the nurses’ station.

“I wanted him to see a therapist.”

The lilies had gotten sloppy. The yellow stuff at the tip of the big stamens was smeared across the pink flowers.

“But he wouldn’t do it.”

“If you think something’s wrong you can’t ignore it,” the nurse said.

From a distance the carnations looked all right. Up close he could see the sheen on the petals had dulled. They had no scent.

“I’m so grateful for another chance.”

The lilies stunk up the place.

“You can’t get complacent. You’ve got to check in every day, keep on top of it.”

Marie said yes, she should have done that.

He went into the room. The women moved closer together.

“I have a boy of my own,” the nurse said. She stood, fiddled with the IV line. “I know how precious they are.”

George, wondered if what she said was true, if she really did have a son. He took her chair, next to his daughter. “Why don’t you get yourself a bite, honey? You look tired.”

No need to leave, the nurse said. There were snacks in the little nourishment room down the hall. “I’ll bring you a sandwich.”

George thought she should have something hot, but Marie accepted at once.

She had no business giving you advice, George said, after the nurse left. “She doesn’t know what happened.”

“I asked.” She looked out at the nurse’s station. “Oh. Dr. Fisher’s here.”

George saw a man in a nice blue herringbone wool suit, the suit disguising his narrow shoulders somewhat. “Is he Eric’s doctor?”

“One of them.” A hospitalist, she called him, in charge of the care Eric received in the ICU.

George said he was looking forward to meeting him.

“He won’t come in.” George wondered if Marie intended to prevent him from talking to the doctor but Dr. Fisher stayed in the nurse’s station, talking into his phone. This young man continues to make satisfactory progress. No evidence of organ damage…

Everyone in the ICU, nurses, visitors, even patients, if they were sentient, could hear Dr. Fisher telling how Marie had called Eric from work to ask about his day, told him what snacks were available, became concerned because he sounded slow and drowsy and went home.

He was asleep when she got there.

“You’re not going to like this,” Eric muttered, when she roused him.

His first attempt, according to Dr. Fisher.

A HIPAA violation, George was sure, talking about Marie’s failure in front of everyone in his braying voice.

He wanted to tell Marie to go out there, stand in front of Dr. Fisher on her thick legs, stare him down.

“Couldn’t he dictate someplace private?”

Marie shrugged.

The patient had benefitted from the cautious course they’d followed, Dr. Fisher said, was medically stable, so, still proceeding with caution, they would begin reducing, then eliminating, the pentobarbitol he was receiving via the infusion pump. Somnolence, he said. Increased gut activity.

The nurse came with a can of orange juice and an egg salad sandwich for Marie, nothing for George. Marie expressed gratitude, admired how the sandwich came with a piece of parsley, then jumped up, went to the bed, said she’d thought she’d seen Eric’s eyelids flutter.

George went to stand beside her. “Like REM sleep. I wonder if he senses, somehow, that he’s alive.”

Marie exchanged looks with the nurse.

There was nothing wrong with what he’d said, George thought. Poetic really.

Marie’s phone rang and she left the room to answer.

George wished Eric would wake then, when it was just the two of them.

He’d touch his face. You must never do this again, he’d say, never ever. Stern, but Eric would hear the tenderness in his voice.

Marie looked pleased when she came back, said Kylee was coming. “She’s been missing me, couldn’t wait till I come home tonight.”

Steve was bringing her. Marie and Kylee would visit in the park across from the hospital and Steve would stay with Eric.

I’ve been with him all along. “It’ll be good to see Steve. And I’d love to get a gander at Kylee.”

“She didn’t say anything about seeing you.”

The first time I’ve been here since it happened, Steve said when he came, smiling as if letting Marie do the heavy lifting was endearing.

Marie smiled too, before leaving for the park and Kylee.

Steve pulled a chair to the head of the bed, plunked himself down across from Eric, stroked a bit of the exposed skin on Eric’s shoulder.

George tired of the silence. “That was interesting what they said about having to induce a coma.”

Steve looked up, seemed surprised to see him. “I sure do thank you for coming today.”

He turned back to the bed, leaned closer to his son, cooed.

It was unfair to Marie, George thought. Steve had just arrived, like the worker come late to the vineyard, who would nonetheless be rewarded as generously as the ones who’d labored since sunrise.

As to the value of the reward he wasn’t certain. They, or more likely, Marie, were in for a hard time. A psychiatric hospitalization when Eric was discharged from the ICU, he guessed, finding a therapist, meds that worked, and always the knowledge Eric might try again.

He could see the appeal of a celebration, though, as if the worse was over.

Eric might like his parents telling him, his friends too, how much they loved him, though Marie and Steve had always been loving, for all the good it had done, and the friends would drop off soon.

He’d have to force the words from his dry mouth but Eric might say he was glad to be alive.

Not if he were me, George thought. Falling asleep every night in the quiet dark, waking into the fresh day, hearing what you’d said twenty, thirty years ago, once more betraying your child’s trust.

Christ, but Marie had been stupid. Too stupid to live, he used to say to Dede.

He couldn’t hear their voices any more, Dede’s and Marie’s, just his own.

This morning, when Kylee called, he’d been remembering Dede’s thirtieth birthday. Marie had given her a china figurine, a shepherdess. “Pretty like you,” she’d told Dede.

George studied the figurine’s flaxen colored china curls and bell shaped skirt, thought he’d never seen anything so banal, told Marie she was old enough to know her mother didn’t like cheap junk.

Dede cried, said she loved it.

Kylee might have thrown the figurine against the wall, but Marie remained at table, accepted a second sugary slice of the cake she’d helped Dede make.

He couldn’t remember her face. Hurt, angry, frightened? He didn’t know. He couldn’t see her.

“He’s swallowing more,” Steve said. “I wonder if that means anything.”

Thinking aloud. Not to me.

“I’d better be heading back. I know I’m leaving him in good hands.”

“We’re sure glad you could come.”

Here’s your hat, there’s the door. What’s your hurry?

He approached the bed. Eric appeared to have turned his head a little, towards his father. Steve didn’t look up when George took hold of Eric’s foot, the same foot he’d held before, said he’d look up Marie before he left.

The park smelled sweet, soapy. From the pink blossomed trees at the entrance, George guessed. Like the cheap cologne Marie wore when she was a teenager. Love’s Baby Soft. Sickening, he’d told her. You make me sick.

He came upon his daughter at once, sitting on a bench with Kylee, big girl, in her lap.

Kylee twisted round to look at him. She’d been crying, he saw, before she pressed her face back into her mother’s shoulder.

Marie looked surprised, as if his presence required an explanation.

“I came to say goodbye. Let me know how he’s doing. How all of you are doing.”

“Of course.”

“I’d give anything to have done things differently.”

The first time he’d told her that she’d asked him why he hadn’t.

She stroked Kylee’s hair now. “That’s all right, Dad.”

If I had to do it over, he thought, I’d make it my business to know how to make that dull little girl believe loving her was as easy as falling off a log.

I’d know how to make her want me to stay with her now.

“I’d give anything.”

“I know.”

Who was he kidding? If he had it to do over she’d still be stupid, make him angry.

“I’d give anything,” he said again.

“Take care of yourself, Dad.”

Kylee smiled sleepily, settled in deeper.

“Anything.”

If, he thought, leaving them there, I had anything to give.