My Papa Shakes and It’s All the Same to Me fiction by ALYSIA GONZALES
Hold his legs down. Put his head back. Restrain his arms. Watch the trembling. Wait for it to pass. Hope that he is not stronger than you, that he will not fall and split his skull open. Hope that the nurses hear you in time. Hear the strained vocal cords. Hear the gurgling saliva in the back of his throat. Don’t put your hands near his teeth. Don’t look at his eyes. Try not to vomit. Breathe. Breathe. The rumbling of the bed echoes through the floor and you can feel it in the soles of your feet. In this moment, you are reminded of the time when he stood at the foot of your bed when you were a child. Even though Ma would berate him for making you so hyper right before bedtime, he couldn’t help himself. When you would go to sleep, he would ask you, Are you ready for the earthquake?, and you would giggle yes, and he would lean his big, burly arms on the bed while you lay with the covers pulled up to your chin in anticipation, and he would shake the entire mattress with a force that you didn’t even think that a person could have. The springs would shake and creak underneath, Earthquake, earthquake!, he would holler, and you would laugh so hard that it hurt your lungs as you bounced on the mattress in the tiny bedroom. You come back to yourself. He has passed out now. The hospital lights cast a sickly yellow on his skin. The nurse says, It’s over, I’ll get him some water, and leaves the room. You sit back down, his body is limp, exhausted from the episode. You are tired, too. You haven’t showered in three days, you’ve been taking care of someone who has a team of professionals taking care of them, and for what? What do you do there? The woman at the cafeteria knows your name and your order for breakfast lunch and dinner, knows you must have someone in the hospital you’re staying for because you don’t have a lanyard, you have a sticker. She knows enough not to ask who. After taking your hands off his body, in this moment, you feel the crud between your toes, the grease in your hair, the itchy dandruff, and the film on the front of your teeth. You aren’t sure why you haven’t suffered the 24-minute bus ride home to shower, change
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