Sarah E. G. Francis. “Late October, 2019.”

I put the phone on speaker and stomped on the brake at the first red light. “I should land tomorrow night. It’s the earliest I could do. I couldn’t find one for today,” I told him.

            “Good, that’s good. I’ll be getting there tonight so I’ll let you know what the deal is.” For a moment I was jealous he would get to dad first, but it’s a shorter flight to Connecticut from Denver, so I unclenched my jaw.

            “Look, Billie won’t stop texting me. I don’t know what to do.” I made a sharp turn so as not to miss my street and felt the emergency gallons of water turn over in my trunk. 

            “What do you mean?” Josh asked.

            “Well,” I realized I didn’t know how to say it. Billie was in Bali on her honeymoon. I imagined her sitting on a beach with a Mai Tai in her hand. I remembered her wedding ten days ago. A country club in a Philly suburb. Rows of white chairs. Purple flowers. The overwhelming smell of hairspray and cologne. My father was in his wheelchair waiting at the end of the aisle. My sister holding his arm, holding him up, as they walked down it, with a cane in his other hand. His bowtie askew, his tuxedo cinched tightly at the waist, the cummerbund acting like the knot of a balloon to secure it on his lean frame. The tears of everyone there as my stepmom Lauren and uncle Jamie helped him sit down in the first row. My dry eyes. Just ten days ago. Just ten fucking days. But I think I knew then. I think underneath the caked-on make-up, the floor-length gowns, and the heirloom jewelry, we all knew then. He barely made it through the dinner that followed. This rapid decline was not a surprise.

            “Sarah?” Josh snapped me out of it. I was drifting as I drove down Kester, so pulled over behind a truck and threw on my hazards.

            “I think she wants to know if it’s okay that she stays to finish her trip,” I finally managed after a few deep and shaky breaths. I already knew the answer. I knew she needed to come home. But every time I had tried to type the words out to her, my fingers had locked. She just had her dream wedding. She was halfway across the world, in an exotic place with her dream husband, petting tigers and feeding elephants. No matter how much I resented her ability to avoid the impossible reality happening back home, I envied it more.

            “It’s really up to her, I can’t say because we’re not there yet, but he sounds different.” Dad was admitted back into the hospital three days ago. At first it was a blockage. Then it was something more. But no straight answers had really come from our stepmom, and dad was barely getting on the phone. Each time I called, the likelihood of it going to voicemail grew.

            “But she’s asking me Josh,” I tried to explain. “I think she wants someone to tell her. But I don’t know what to say.” This was unlike me. I was usually much more decisive. I had been with mom. Her cancer diagnosis, I was on a plane. Her recurrence, I was on a plane. Her end, I was on a plane. I told my sister in no uncertain terms during that time that she had to get her ass back home, stop messing around on the weekends at college. I continuously yelled at her to help, that she would regret it, to spend more time with mom before she couldn’t. She yelled back at me for a year. But this time I could not get the words out for my sister. This time she was finally looking to me for guidance, and I could not tell her what to do. Maybe it was too definite. Despite all our experience with death, maybe I was still afraid. This was not a surprise, but nonetheless, I could feel the shock started to spread through my veins like tiny bullets of ice, pushing my heart to its limit.

            “Okay, well I know what to say,” Josh said. “Lauren told me this morning that dad looked at her and said he was done. I know our father. When he says something, he means it. We’re getting Billie on a plane.”

            I felt my cheeks get hot and the phone start to shake in my hand. I grabbed the wheel with my free hand and squeezed. “Good, call me later, I’m gonna get home and pack,” I blurted out. I hung up the phone before he could tell I was crying.

            I just wanted to get home. I needed to see my dog. I needed to hug my cat. But I also had to pack. Fuck. I hate airplanes so god damn much. The one constant in my adult life had been airplanes. I was a pro. I knew how to get there and beat security lines, how to find the best place to nap at the gate, how to start with one drink after take-off and one in the middle of flight so I could calm the anxiety but also not be drunk when I landed. I had perfected that after getting blackout drunk on the flight home when mom died. I had been flying alone for over ten years. I was usually flying alone. I hated every second of it.

            My dog ran up to me when I entered my light one-bedroom valley apartment. Sadie was such a sweet, gentle, old yellow lady lab. She waited for me to put down my bag and the stack of clean plastic-wrapped dresses and then demanded pats while licking the tears off my cheeks with her giant, soft, pink tongue. Angel, my black and white tuxedo cat (“dressed for a party” as my boyfriend Isaac often said) perched lazily on the kitchen counter by his empty food bowl, watching us from above. For a minute I saw my father again, in his black and white wedding attire, seated at the table next to me for dinner, moving the food around his plate but eating none of it. I sat on the floor of the kitchen with Sadie and ran my hands over her ears and her sides. She was so soft, so yellow, so bright. Everything in the apartment was bright. I watched the window as birds darted from one potted plant to the next and noticed our hummingbird feeder was empty. It all made me cry even harder.

            My phone buzzed in my bag and I reached up from the floor to drag it out. A new text.

            “Joshie is getting us a flight tonight. With the time change and everything, we should reach dad’s the day after you.” Good. Billie was coming, like I knew she should. Billie was younger than me, not by much, but by enough. She was only a freshman in college when mom died. But now, seven years later, my instinctual urge to protect her from this next loss had been overridden by Josh’s uncompromised view.

            Get the hell up, I instructed myself. I only had today to get everything packed, write out all the pet care instructions for Isaac, then back-up instructions for if he had to come to join me in Connecticut (which I knew he would, eventually), and pick up more food for Sadie and Angel. I started in the bathroom and pulled a small bag for toiletries out from under the sink. 

            As I stuffed it with toothpaste, toothbrush, face wash, astringent, Q-tips, razor, deodorant, roller perfume, Vaseline, and tampons, I caught my reflection in the mirror. My face was red and puffy, my eyes bloodshot and my lips swollen. I looked like I’d been stung by a wasp, the allergic reaction bloating me from the inside. I immediately splashed cold water on it. I had to get my shit together. There would be time for this later.

            In the bedroom, while getting my suitcase out from under the bed my phone rang. Isaac this time. He’d be at work for another few hours before getting home. 

            “Yeah?” I answered the phone.

            “Hey babe, what’s the latest?” He sounded tired. How could he be tired? I was the one who was tired.

            “Josh got Dills a flight, she’s gonna be there the day after tomorrow,” I replied briskly.

            “Oh, that’s probably good. She shouldn’t have gone in the first place.” I agreed with him, but I didn’t want to. 

            “Yea, look, let’s talk later, I gotta get ready.” It was the second time in under an hour that I hung up before the other end could say goodbye.

            My suitcase was old and weathered, but sturdy. Angel tried to climb into it while I threw things from my closet on top. A familiar ringing began in my ears. The world turned. Static danced in front of my eyes. The little black and white tuxedo cat meowed as I stumbled around him to reach the bed. Shit, I’m going to pass out.

            I collapsed on the bed and tried to breathe through it. This used to happen a lot when I was young, when I would forget to eat, or over-exert myself in a play or dance recital, or on the tennis court. That’s where I first remember the familiar haze taking over me: playing tennis with my mother in Central Park. It was brutally hot, I hadn’t had enough water to drink, and I fell trying to return one of her killer backhands. The thumping in my ears blocked out her screams. But as I came to, I realized she was screaming not for help, but for me to get up. She was telling me to stop being dramatic. I was ten, maybe eleven. Later I would discover I had a severe iron deficiency, and it would take years to correct it. After that day on the tennis court, I never let her see me faint again.

            But in the privacy of my own room, almost twenty years later, I could fight through it alone and in peace. The cat jumped on the bed and curled up between my arm and breast. I covered my eyes with my hands and counted backwards slowly, feeling his purrs vibrate my chest. The haze stopped as quickly as it had started.

            That night and the next morning were a blur. By the time I parked in the lot at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I couldn’t remember the conversation with Isaac the night before, the taxi ride to LAX, the terminal, the plane, or the drive to the hospital. But I did remember lying on my bed, staring at my hand, and counting backwards from twenty. I remembered the bright green tennis court with crisp white stripes in the oppressive summer heat of Central Park as I locked the doors of my rental car and found my way through the hospital to the cancer ward, to you.