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I could sit with support. Use my chair for a few hours. Most of my life happened in my room.
Ray made that room a world. Shelves at my reach. A janky tablet stand he welded in the garage. For my twenty-first, he built a planter box by the window and filled it with herbs.
“So you can grow that basil you yell at on the cooking shows,” he said.
I burst into tears.
Then Ray started getting tired.
“Jesus, Hannah,” Ray panicked. “You hate basil?”
“It’s perfect,” I sobbed.
He looked away. “Yeah, well. Try not to kill it.”
Then Ray started getting tired.
At first, he just moved slower.
He’d sit halfway up the stairs to catch his breath. Forget his keys. Burn dinner twice in a week.
Between her nagging and my begging, he went.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Getting old.”
He was 53.
Mrs. Patel cornered him in the driveway.
“You see a doctor,” she ordered. “Don’t be stupid.”
Between her nagging and my begging, he went.
After the tests, he sat at the kitchen table, papers under his hand.
“Stage four. It’s everywhere.”