Not Yet

Lights flash continually in the dark, hurting my eyes, but I do not look away. I follow them because I have to. Because my father is inside that vehicle and we don’t know what’s wrong with him. Keep driving. Keep following the lights. It’s three days until Christmas.

At the end of the dark road is a tall building with light pouring out of it and a large cross on the side. They rush Dad in under the word Emergency, but I have to find parking. Fit my car into a neat little row. Stay inside the lines.

The hospital is one long hallway with a million single doors opening on either side and a set of double doors stamped with warnings at the end. The air is not fresh. It has been sanitized and purified and turned into something foreign in my lungs. Peaceful paintings in annoyingly subdued colors try to calm me down. But I am calm. I won’t cry. Not yet.

We wait three hours. It is tomorrow now, but the dark makes it all the same. We finally see Dad, and he is full of tubes. One is obtrusively supplying oxygen down his throat. One is draining his lung. It smells like disinfected infection. I try not to gag. This is more than sickness. It feels so wrong I cannot label it.

In the morning, light spills in instead of out. It floods through the doors and smudged windows, highlighting a hundred shades of pale blue and white. Dad will have surgery soon to remove the pea-sized abscess on the right side of his brain. The tiny little thing that keeps him from using his left arm and leg, confuses his thoughts and muddles his speech. The thing that made him fall instead of walk yesterday, and gives him seizures that scare his family. That might stop him from ever playing his guitar again. Or worse.

The bathroom counter is cold and hard, digging into my back as the doctor’s gentle warnings ring in my ears. But my dad is going to live. I don’t need to cry. Not yet. Instead, I walk the hallways where nurses scrub their skin off up to the elbow and doctors speak in soft, flat tones that are almost calming. I never really understand what they’re saying, but I nod and stay inside the lines. I walk to pass the time.

The surgery that removes a 2 inch diameter piece of my father’s skull reveals that there is more infection. He will need more surgery, and there are no guarantees. Mom is praying hard and finding strength in the Lord, but I haven’t found that strength. Not yet. Extended family and friends believe we will see a miracle. I want to believe, so I plead with God and make bargains I cannot possibly keep.

The tears finally come.

(Twenty years later, my father is alive and well. The visibly absent piece of his skull makes a great conversation starter.)