flonkbob and much thanks for both his sentence and the extensive medical research he did to lend authenticity to the story.---------------------------------------
The doctor had left half an hour ago. Hugh could tell that the man hadn't wanted to give a backward glance or any indication that he knew what was coming next. But his head had twitched at the doorway to the bedroom. His graying temple and sharp chin clearly visible in profile, left eye swiveled deep into the outer corner to catch a final look at Hugh sitting in the chair by his father's bed.
Hugh saw it but said nothing and knew that he wouldn't. Not ever. Doctor Mann was a good guy, didn't deserve to get into any trouble, he understood, he got it. But how could he not? Hugh's father had been under Mann's care from the start. Had been his friend since before that, even. Tennis, Hugh suspected, from what he knew about his father. It was almost a vice with his dad, according to Mann and other visitors that had come by in the past four months. Wasn't much else for him, Hugh thought, quickly regretting the uncharitable musing.
But a flash of anger replaced the regret a moment later. He scowled at the withered and still face of his father, lying in state (almost) on his twin bed, hands clasped over his chest, barely moving with each weak rise and fall of breath. What else was there for him, really?
This apartment, white and sterilized by a cleaning lady once a week. Art that spoke of money and taste but hung on spotless white walls that seemed to absorb the passion of the painted canvases. Country club friends paying homage to the stricken out of some patrician sense of duty, none of them, save Mann, visiting more than once. Duty done. A twin bed, white sheets and ivory duvet, fit for one alone. One who doesn't expect or possibly even desire company.
And a son. Twenty years gone and now back by that same sense of duty. Bound to the chair next to the narrow bed. No more paper knots to untangle for accountants and lawyers or phone calls to machine-run insurance companies to make. Nothing left to subsume and swaddle Hugh's mind from the quickly shrinking man in the bedroom. Not even any words left to speak, no more of the histories Hugh had never had a chance to hear before, the tales of a life lived in the years since he had left.
An apology had been in there somewhere. Sketched in negative space by the flow of words and stories his father had spoken before he couldn't anymore. Pauses and looks laced into their conversations of extended family, trips, or young life.
Hugh had clenched his jaw and waited during the significant pauses, stared blankly back at the sad eyes when they came. He wanted to hear it out loud but wouldn't ask. He never asked.
And now, silently, he regarded his dad a moment longer before shifting his gaze to what Doctor Mann had left. Each of the bottles on the end table looked just like they did on TV. Squat and clear, a short, narrow neck with a silver band around the top, a neatly printed label girdling its belly. A membrane at the top that the needle would pierce neatly without allowing any of the liquid out.
"Remember the dosage," Doctor Mann had said earlier. "More than that… could be dangerous." He expertly wound up his stethoscope and stuffed it into his coat pocket. Moments before he had used the iconic tool to confirm that Hugh's father was alive but no longer responsive.
It was just official notice of something they had both known for days. The deteriorating slide had been quick for the old man, as these things go.
Hugh looked up at Doctor Mann from the padded chair he had pulled up against the side of the bed weeks before. "I got it," he said with a nod. Mann held his eyes a second then nodded back. No more was said though there was that final little look as the doctor let himself out of the bedroom.
Hugh rubbed his face and reached for the bottles. With practiced ease he filled several syringes, one after the other. He'd been administering the pain-killer for the past three months. Mann had given him a lesson on a grapefruit, injecting water into it several times before overseeing the first shot. His father had joked that he'd always wanted a doctor in the family, barely registering the injection his son gave him.
Hugh looked at the syringes, each cylinder clean and straight with ruled hash marks up their lengths, numbers counting off the CCs at regular intervals. He picked one up, the pencil sized tube filled to the 10 etched in black next to a long horizontal mark.
"Six for good, 10 for bad, 12 for sleep," he muttered the sentence under his breath, his own mnemonic device for the dosages he'd had to administer. He looked again at his father's face. It was grey and old, older than Dr. Mann though they had lived the same amount of years. The skin of his forehead creased above the tightly closed eyes. As though he was concentrating on staying asleep.
Hugh twiddled the syringe between his thumb and forefinger, frowning. He'd seen how the shots had eased his dad's face, but Hugh hated going into this blind. He needed to know and made the decision quickly, acting on it immediately.
Pushing back his own sleeve he jabbed his inner elbow with the needle. The whisper thin steel bit dully, the small pain thudding as he pressed the plunger down to the "6" mark. Pulling the hypodermic away he folded his arm up, sealing off the tiny hole.
"Four for Hugh," he said with a laugh that spoke of fear and disbelief.
Wondering and waiting, the drug crept up on him sooner than he'd thought it would. Muzzy and calm, he realized that the effect of the morphine and the afterglow of orgasm were pretty much the same thing. And he couldn't see anything wrong with that.
"What a way to go," he said out loud without meaning to. Hugh replaced the syringe on the end table with a bit of difficulty, warmth replacing strength in his limbs. Leaning back, he flexed his fingers, savored the feeling and spoke out loud again. "I can do this," slightly surprised, muddy determination in the words.
Torpid and slow, he watched his father from the chair. It may have been the drug but he couldn't recall why they'd stopped talking. No single thing that he could point to and say, that was it, the straw that broke it all to pieces. All he could come up with was a deep and wide sense of anger, layered thickly over disappointment.
"You started it," he accused the lightly breathing man in the bed but there was no heat in it. Struggling to dig through memory, Hugh tried to recall the day he realized he had stopped speaking to his dad. It was raining and he had been left alone again. There was no one he had wanted to tell. Sitting in the dark, bare apartment walls where her stupid posters had been, ticking down names of friends who wouldn't care enough or would care too much for him to bear. And family…? The name at the bottom of the list jolting him as he tried to remember when they'd last spoken. The memory slipped away as Hugh nodded in his chair, head lolling then snapping up.
"Shit," he mumbled at the indistinct figure of his father, "I'm sorry." And Hugh, aided by the morphine and every moment of the past four months, fell asleep in his chair.
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