The Cost of Redemption

A son faces a serious dilema

 

THE COST OF REDEMPTION

Bonnie Hanley-Davis

 

     Momma always told me, “Montana, you never, ever have to be anywhere you’re not wanted. Just pick up your feet and move!”  But here I sit, a 43 year-old man, glued to what has to be the most uncomfortable chair in the universe, witnessing the slow death of a man I’ve hated most of my life.  My father deserves the horrible death he is experiencing.  This waste of human flesh cut my life short when he left my momma alone to raise two hardheaded 7 year-old boys. For all of the negativity he’s released into the universe, he should’ve been born a Mayfly-they live for only 48 hours, then keel over and die.  But this fool, who made a conscious choice to be a nonfactor in my life, has the absurd audacity to lie in the hospital bed before me, having been given years of unmerited breathing privileges. Finally. Dying.  

     Death creeps up my nose like rubbing alcohol, strong and bold.  I hate this room! Bright white walls and sheets and nurses shoes and doctor’s coats and bath towels and… is the ice in that pitcher white? Why couldn’t my life have been as bright as the blinding whiteness in here?  Is it his dying wish to add even more suffering to my life before he croaks and busts hell wide open?   Some machine over by the window beeps a little faster. I wonder if his heart’s speeding up because he heard my thoughts.

     “Yea, you are going straight to hell!” I yelled over at him, startling only myself.  I roll my eyes at this old, bald, wrinkled and helpless savage, and study the labyrinth of tubes surrounding his frail body, coming and going every whicha way they please.  It’s too quiet here.  All I can hear is the sound of Death dragging his feet. S**t.

     The door opening startles me.  A man wearing a white coat with a pocket protector full of pens stumbles in. As I look at his white hair, I remember momma saying, “Gray don’t mean ‘old’, but wise.” I wonder what kind of father he is.  What would he think if he knew that he was taking care of a tired a*s sap who had verbally and physically tormented the beautiful family God had given him?  I’m glad that he had the good sense to walk away from my mother, my twin brother and me.

     The doctor, seeing that I’d gone somewhere afar, clears his throat and extends his hand.  Stiffly, I stretch to meet it, never moving from my seat, eyes stayed on my sperm donor.

     “Good Afternoon, Mr. McGruder, I am Dr. Seth.” Sounds like he just said his name was Dr. Death. I should be so lucky. I can’t stand.  I will my feet to, but they seem to be participants in a mutinous rebellion.  I can’t take my eyes off Daddy Dearest.  As the doctor speaks, my ears hear him but his voice seems muffled.  Only a few of his words release themselves into my sanctified pyche.  “…Glad they found you…only known living relative…”  Wait a minute!  The needle just scratched the record… ONLY KNOWN LIVING RELATIVE?  Nobody told me that.  Where is that woman he left my momma for?  Didn’t she give him children?  Where are they? The phrase, reverberated, pounding louder and louder, raping my brain and my soul-ONLY LIVING RELATIVE?  I hear my name being called repeatedly and I’m jarred from my cerebral stupor.

     “Yes, Doctor.  Please continue,” I manage to whisper.

     “Mr. McGruder, I know this is a difficult time for both you and your father.  Are you familiar with Cardiacangiosarcoma?”  I shake my head no, my eyes still stapled to this Scrooge-looking creature.  “…a cancer within the blood vessels around the heart…” My brain said to me “how ironic is it that a man who made a conscious choice to walk away from his “blood” now had poison in his. I wanted to laugh but anger and contempt were choking the snicker that I really wante to release.

     He continued on about how they had done everything they could do, and how my father was suffering major pain, having to be subdued by a shitload of drugs that I wish could come save me right about now.  Pain was our only common factor, only drugs couldn’t erase mine.  I lifted my eyes to the spotless glass window.  My mind rushed back to the last time I saw this joker.

     Mother worked as a cook for a horse breeder in Lexington.  Brother and I used to sit in the beautiful Kentucky grass--grass so green it looked blue. We’d  lie on our backs, daydream, or count the clouds as they rolled by, looking like fluffy cotton balls glued to pretty blue paper.

     One day dad packed us up and took us to momma’s job. He dropped us off at the front gate of the Stovall Ranch and kept going. Left us standing there, with a spray of rocks hurling themselves at us from under the car tires as he sped off.  Momma seemed baffled.  Mrs. Stovall, took one look at us, put two and two together, and gave momma the rest of the day off.  She prayed all the way home. When we got there, all of Dad’s belongings were gone.  I still have the letter he left for her on the bed.  It read,

                            Dear Savannah,

                Have a good life. I can’t do this no more.

                The cost of misery is too great for me to stay. I wish you

                and the boys well. Please don’t ever contact me.

 

     So she didn’t.  Not even after my brother committed suicide two days later. Not even after deep depression consumed momma, confining her to bed, causing us to have to rely on welfare and food stamps.  Not even when I graduated high school and college.  Momma died of a broken heart.

     The doctor’s voice jolted me to awake from my dreadful saunter down Memory Lane.

     “Mr. McGruder left instructions that you be given sole discretion over whether we disconnect life support or continue treatment.  Given his condition, our efforts are futile.  He has remained in an unresponsive coma now for 9 months. His unpaid medical bills are astronomical, and continually rising.  We need your decision within 48 hours.”  He hung his head and left.

      I wanted to save us all the trouble by throwing his a*s out of the window, and watch him fall 13 stories, a*s up, head down with his hospital gown flapping in the wind.  Let the pavement “wake him up”.  I could pull the plug myself right now!   Instead, I thought about the letter in my pocket.  I retrieved the worn and tattered letter from my pocket. My eyes glanced over the deliberateness in the writing strokes he had made 30 years earlier.  I turned it over and wrote,

            Dear Daddy,

      Have a great death! I can’t to do this. The cost of your    

      redemption is too great for me to stay. Your boy wishes

      you HELL.  I’m glad you can never contact me again.

 

     I dropped the note on the bed, opened the door, and started walking.

 

Reviews

[Marie]

This is quite a story. I can't say I like it, because it's too grim and intense. But it's very good. I'm going to read all your stories eventually; so far I've been doing one a day.