How My Daddy Died Part 2

John was on the phone. He said You need to leave right now. I'm looking up plane tickets so you can fly out as soon as possible. Mama says they're keeping him alive until you and Angie can get there. Just try to stay calm until you get home. Drive slow and careful. So I hung up the phone and found Chris and told him what John had said and he said Go! Take care of everything and call us when you can. So I went. I bawled all the way through the parking lot and all the way home. I trembled and quaked and sat down at the computer to find the first flight back home. I found one out of Boston that left in less than two hours. I threw clothes into a carry-on bag. Underwear, sweatshirts, a pair of jeans, my laptop and charger, my journal, a toothbrush, my birks. I was wearing a t-shirt and a sweater and holey jeans and thick socks and Soloman hikers so that I could run through the airport if I had to. We left the house and I called Angie. She was already on the road and said she'd pick me up at the airport when she got into Charlotte. It snowed a little on the way to Boston. It was cold. The airport was crowded and the plane was packed. I sat at the window. Scrunched into the window seat wearing three layers of clothes including a winter coat. I cried the whole time. Shaking and queasy. Praying Please don't let me lose my Daddy. Please let this not be what it is. But all the while knowing that it was futile. That this was exactly what it was. I arrived in Charlotte and ran through the airport. Called Angie and she was 10 minutes away. She picked me up. We didn't talk much. Traffic was bad. It was 5pm rush hour. It took an hour for us to get to the hospital and it was strange because it was the new hospital which I'd never been to. Angie dropped me off while she parked because my stomach was so upset I had to run to the bathroom and heave and poop. After I came out, Angie was just coming in and Sarah and Katie had come to the front waiting area to bring us back to the ICU. That long hall way. Shining floors and fluorescent lights and my head throbbing with every thump of my heart, with every foot step and Mama standing at the end of the hallway. She held me and I sobbed, I wailed. I'd never known the wailing and gnashing of teeth until that moment. I was near hysterical and Mama was very calm, and pale. She was wearing Daddy's John Deere tractor jacket and it hung down past her knees and she whispered to me. He's hooked up to machines, they're keeping him alive. He and I talked about that and this is not what he wanted. His kidney's shut down and he's eat up with the infection. He's on dilaudid and morphine but he can still hear us. We're all going to go in there and we can stay as long as we want. We can talk to him and be with him and then when we're ready, they'll unplug the machines and eventually he'll stop breathing. The nurses said it could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to a few hours. But not until we're ready.