Dreaming of Beverly

The lights are way too bright, so I’m just going to keep my eyes closed. The noise, too, is overwhelming, and I don’t want to listen either, but ears aren’t like eyes so I’ll just have to find a way to will them to close. I feel the motion as the gurney, my gurney, is wheeled through the ambulance bay doors, a Star Trek-like “whoosh” as the doors open ahead of me, then the wheels bounce just a bit over the threshold to the hospital.

I’m not too old to know about Star Trek. I was thirty-two in 1966 when the first episode aired. Billy was eight then, and we watched every single episode together for the next three years. That was back when a season was a season and it lasted most of the year, not ten episodes like shows today. What kind of bullshit is that? 

Billy loved Star Trek. He spent his allowance on a Star Fleet communicator badge that he bought from an ad in the back of a comic book, though it didn’t actually communicate with anything. He made himself Spock ears out of Play-Doh, which was all well and good until he fell asleep with them on and stained up Beverly’s good couch. It really was her fault because she forgot to put the slip covers back on after Margie came over for lunch, but  she didn’t see it that way. Billy was kind of up shit’s creek then, and there was nothing I could do to help that. When Beverly was pissed at you, she was pissed and you just had to wait it out. Even Billy.

Billy’s here now, he drove the car. He drove it right into the ambulance bay as if he belonged there. I was in the same place I had been for the past thirteen hours, laid out on the back seat of his Taurus, smelling the old cigarettes from the previous owner. We had stopped three times for gas, twice for food and twice to empty my catheter bag. Then there was the stop in Tennessee, where Billy took me to the ER because the catheter was clogged up and nothing was coming out. We spent two hours there, waiting for them to have time to change my catheter so we could get back on the road. 

For some of the drive I sat up and looked out the window, especially through the North Carolina mountains, otherwise I would have been carsick, but for most I was too tired to stay sitting up. Billy wasn’t happy that I didn’t keep my seat belt on, and given that I was the one who taught him the “buckle up for safety” chant when he was a kid, I understood that, but I couldn’t keep it on and lay down at the same time. Even so, if my back was flat, I had to bend my knees up full to fit into a seat half my length, and the seat belt just got in the way. What did I care about safety anyway? I’m eighty-six years old, probably never going to be eighty-seven. Dying in a car crash just might be the best thing that could happen to me. Throw me through the window, I’m ready.

Billy showed up a few days ago. 

“Dad,” he said, “I want to take you back to Florida with me.”

“What for?” 

“They’re not taking good care of you here,” he said. “And I think the sunshine will help you get better.”

  “Better?” Did I say it out loud or only think it? “I’m old, son. It’s only going to get worse.”

“Ever since you came to this nursing home, you just seem to keep dwindling. You aren’t the man I remember you to be.”

Again, I think, I’m old as dirt, and will never again be the man you remember. But I don’t say that, I’m sure of it. What difference does it make? I like that he remembers a different man, because so do I. 

“Okay,” I say. “Your mother is gone. There is no reason for me to stay here.”

He sucks in air and looks very pleased with himself. Jeff is sitting next to him, smiling a much less assured smile. Billy gets up and walks to the door.

“I’ll go let them know,” he says as he exits the room. “I’ll be right back.”

This leaves me sitting with Jeff. Just Jeff.

“Mr. Howard,” Jeff says, “I’m so glad you will be coming back with us. Billy has been so worried.”

“Hmm,” I say, not having anything else to say.

“And I’m so happy to finally meet you. Billy has been such a mess about introducing us. I know you haven’t been thrilled about….”

He pauses, indefinitely.

“About what?” I muster the energy to ask.

He looks a bit surprised that I am participating in the conversation. He stutters a bit when he answers.

“You know, about our marriage.”

I look at him for a good long time. It’s long enough that my head starts to sag and I start to get sleepy. Jeff is misinformed. I have no opinion on their marriage one way or the other. Billy “came out” probably thirty years ago. This is old news. And, I have never met Jeff, but I suppose he’s just fine if Billy wants to be with him. I would have liked for Billy to have kids, mainly because I would have liked to have had grandkids. But he didn’t. He talked about surrogates and whatnot when I brought up the kids thing long ago, but he never did it. Just as well, I never really saw him as ready to be a parent.

But what of that? Who is ever ready to be a parent? I sure as hell wasn’t. I knew it was coming when I married Beverly. It was 1956, and that’s what we did - we got a good job, got married, had kids. Climb a notch on the career ladder, have another kid, repeat. Form your perfect nuclear family.

Some of that played out. The getting married and having the kid part, but when it came to the job, that one didn’t come so easily. I was still working stock at Woolworths when she told me Billy was on the way. I loved her with all of my heart, but I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to support them both and even went so far as to plan my own suicide should the rent fall behind, even for a month. If I didn’t kill myself, her father would do it for me. What I wouldn’t have given for the pill, but we were still at least two years away from the first one coming on the market.

So then we were on our way to Florida, my nursing home and lifetime home left behind. It was a long trip, and I became more and more tired as we went. 

I am sleeping soundly, nonsensical dreams of pregnant cats and fish tanks full of fish I forgot to feed floating through my head, when we abruptly come to a stop in this overly-lit ambulance bay. I know that is what it is because I open my eyes briefly and see the lit-up sign declaring “EMERGENCY” as we pull in.  There are rightful ambulances parked by us, towering above the Taurus, but once I close my eyes, I cannot open them again and I cannot move. 

A door opens by my head and another other by my feet. I let my legs extend for the first time since we left the ER in Tennessee, but I can muster no more movement. I hear an unfamiliar voice.

“He’s barely breathing. Get him onto the stretcher.”

I feel the jerking of my body as I am pulled onto the stretcher, and I think, “careful, that shoulder really hurts,” but the pain subsides and nothing else has changed. The lights are too bright and the sounds are too loud.  I sense the motion of the gurney as I am moved through the ER.

I hear Billy.

“Where is the nearest bathroom?”

“Down this hall on the right,” a sing-song voice that reminds me of Beverly answers. This is the voice I fell in love with when I was twenty-three, the one that later sang our child to sleep when he was colicky, in spite of the tears running down her own face. “Rockabye baby, on the treetops, when the wind blows…”  My dear, dear, Beverly.

“Mr. Howard, can you hear me?” A male voice, unheard before. I cannot respond.

“the cradle will rock. When the bough breaks…”

“Doc. We need you here!” I hear him exclaim, then there is more noise than my ears can close out. A rustle of feet, beeping of monitors, squealing of something, I don’t know what. 

“He’s coding,” I hear the male voice say, then I dream, 

“..the cradle will fall…”

eternally, 

“down will come baby…”

of Beverly. Cradle and all.