I bypassed the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby, feeling the need to move. The lobby didn’t offer all that much distraction—just oil paintings of the founders and plaques commemorating big donations. There were also a surprisingly large number of people smoking outside the building’s entrance, considering that this was a hospital. I ended up in the gift shop, walking around the aisles, taking in the bouquets of flowers for purchase, the cheerful, bright-colored teddy bears emblazoned with GET WELL SOON! across their stomachs. I wandered into the card aisle, looking through the racks of Thinking of You and Get Well Soon options. I moved past the sympathy section, not even wanting to know what was inside the somber-looking cards that mostly seemed to feature a single flower, a bird in flight, or a sunset.
Since there was nothing I wanted, I just bought a pack of gum, tossing it onto the counter as I dug in my purse for change. As I did, I noticed a large flower arrangement on the counter, made up of summer flowers, all bright purples and oranges. It looked vibrant and healthy, and seemed to smell like sunshine even in the sterile, fluorescently lit gift shop. Looking at it, I got, for the first time, why people would bring flowers to sick people, stuck inside the hospital with no way to get outside. It was like bringing them a little bit of the world that was going on without them.
“That it?” the woman behind the counter asked.
I started to reply, but my eye was caught by the preprinted card in the arrangement, displayed on a long plastic holder that poked out of the flowers. JUST TO SAY I LOVE YOU, it read.
“Did you want something else?” she asked.
I looked away from the card, embarrassed, and handed her a dollar. “That’s it,” I said, as I pocketed the gum and then dropped my few cents change into the penny cup.
“Have a good day,” she said, then cleared her throat. “I hope everything… turns out all right.”
I looked up at her then, and saw that she was older, closer to my grandmother’s age, wearing a name tag and a sympathetic expression. It was different from the expressions of pity and premature sympathy that I’d hated so much in Connecticut, and I realized I didn’t mind. It struck me that she must see, all day long, people coming through the shop who also didn’t want to be in the hospital, who were looking for something they could buy, some cheap teddy bear or arrangement of flowers, that would seem to make things better.
“Thanks,” I said. I let my eyes linger on the card for a moment longer before I headed out to the lobby. I skipped the stairs and took the elevator to the oncology wing. The card had made me uncomfortably aware of something—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told my father I loved him. I searched my memory as the elevator rose silently through the floors. I knew I’d said it a lot when I was younger, as our home-movie collection attested to. And I’d sign his birthday and Father’s Day card every year with a scrawled love, Taylor. But had I ever said it to him? Out loud, and in recent memory?
I couldn’t remember, which made me pretty sure that the answer was no. This fact weighed heavy in my thoughts, to the point where once I got back to the waiting room, I didn’t even bother picking up one of the outdated magazines. And when my father finally appeared, and asked me if I was ready to go home, I agreed without a second’s hesitation.
In contrast to the trip there, our ride home was pretty silent. My dad looked so worn-out after his appointment, he hadn’t even tried to drive; instead he just tossed me the keys once we made it to the parking lot. We had kept up a conversation for the first few miles, but then I noticed the pauses in my dad’s responses getting longer and longer. I’d look over and see that his head was resting against the seat, his eyelids fluttering closed before opening once again. By the time we got on the highway that would take us back to Lake Phoenix, I glanced over to change lanes and noticed that my dad was fully asleep, his eyes closed and head tipped back, mouth slightly open. This was unusual to the point of being shocking, because my father wasn’t a napper. Though I knew he’d been sleeping more than normal lately, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him nap—especially not like this, not in the afternoon. It made me feel panicky, somehow, even though I couldn’t have said why, and I wanted more than anything to put on some music, drown this feeling out a little. But, not wanting to wake my dad, I hadn’t turned on the radio, and had just driven in silence, punctuated only by my father’s low, even breathing.
As we crossed into Lake Phoenix, my dad’s cell phone rang, startling both of us, the sound of his ringtone suddenly very loud in the quiet car. My dad jerked awake, his head snapping forward. “What?” he asked, and I hated to hear the confusion in his voice, the vulnerability in it. “What’s that?”
I reached down for the phone in the cupholder, but he got there first, answering the call and smoothing his hand over his always-neat hair, as though trying to make sure he hadn’t gotten too unkempt while he’d been sleeping. I could tell in a second that it was my mother, and after their brief conversation, my dad seemed more composed, and much more himself, his voice no longer thick with sleep when he hung up and turned to me.
“Your mother requested we pick up a few things for dinner tonight,” he said, “and I just realized that we haven’t been to Jane’s this year. I for one feel like we’ve been skimping on the dessert this summer.” There were still eleven oatmeal cookies in the fridge, but I didn’t mention those. The one chocolate chip had been divided into five equal pieces among us, and the rest had sat untouched.
I glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost four, definitely verging into what my mother would consider the dinner-spoiling hour. But my dad and I had a tradition of getting ice cream and keeping it a secret—like when I was younger and he would pick me up from wherever I’d tried to run away to. “Really?” I asked, and my dad nodded.
“Just don’t tell your mom,” he said. “Otherwise, I’ll be facing a rocky road.”
I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I don’t know,” I replied, as I pulled into a spot along Main Street. “She might be in a good humor about it.”
My dad smiled in appreciation. “Nice,” he said.
We parted ways as he headed to PocoMart and Henson’s Produce, and I walked toward Sweet Baby Jane’s. It was a tiny shop with a sky-blue awning, the name printed across it in curly white type. There were two benches on either side of the entrance, a necessity because the space had only room for the counter and a single table. Maybe because of the in-betweenness of the hour, Jane’s didn’t look very busy. There were just two boys who appeared to be around Gelsey’s age, eating cones on one of the benches, their bikes tossed in a heap to the left of them. It was rare to see Jane’s this deserted—at night, after dinner, the benches would be packed, the crowd spilling out along Main Street.