There Will Come Clear Skies

He rises early, usually at dawn. Decades of discipline and old age carved a Spartan routine. After a hot coffee and a myriad of pills and vitamins, he walks under tree limb canopied streets and rising mist—the grass still fresh from the morning dew before the cruel midday sun.

It is summer in Florida, Sunday. I wake at noon, groggy and tired. My father is not home yet. I drink a lazy cup of tea and watch clouds amass in the distance. In the small nook of my room, time flies as I read Pico Iyer’s recollections of lonely places in the world. I check the time. It is almost three. A little worried, I text him asking where he is.

“I’m in the hospital. Not sure when I’ll be back.”

I call him right away. He tells me he drove himself to the hospital in the morning because he felt off.

“Why didn’t you ask me to drive you if you were feeling bad?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

His hospital room is quiet and empty, his eyes transfixed on the round clock hung on the wall across from him. Eternal minutes turn to hours of anxious waiting to find out what is going on. Dizziness turns to frustration, but we cannot get too upset. In desperate rooms patients are dying, barely clinging to life. Whose rich story has been so unceremoniously extinguished?

He has been here half a day, laying in bed, waiting.

“I’m going to walk out of here. I feel fine now.”

“Absolutely not. We’re waiting.” When he comes back from the

By:Daniel Fairman

ultrasound something feels off. He needs another test. A heart catheter exam, about forty-five minutes. Often people think about taking care of someone who is sick and, rightfully so, all the attention is given to them. Who did I have to turn to? Who would listen in a house filled with grief? Generations of manhood taught us to suffer in silence. I wander the halls of the hospital in a trance listening to the detached beeping of monitors from behind closed doors and watching nurses fill out paperwork. An old woman stands by a window, her face etched with grave lines. Sneakers screech on the tile patterned floor. Tired janitors push their carts down the long, sad halls, white walls blaring loneliness.

A nurse had been looking for me. He tells me my father is on the seventh floor. I walk in. The doctor introduces himself and explains what must happen.

Three major arteries are blocked. Open heart surgery or we wait until the next emergency which will likely be fatal. The triple bypass is scheduled for six a.m. tomorrow.

For the first time in my life, my dad is afraid. His eyes struggle to keep his usual composed look, but the welling of tears, the shaking of his hands, betray him. I want to stay the night. He says no, I’ve done enough already. There’s nothing I can do anyways. Go and get some rest. I know he says this because his heart is fragile. Though he is quiet and stoic, behind this is a lifetime of broken hearts, of cold parents who never uttered the words all children deserve, of girlfriends who left him, of a wife who abandoned him, and of best friends dead and gone. At the end of sixty-seven years, the battered soul of a sensitive man learned to hide like a lost child in the dark. All that is left is a father and son who love each other quietly but deeply. Tomorrow, his heart will truly be bare, open to the world as it never has been before. He is strong. He will be fine. But what if he isn’t? It is just the two of us now. We look out the window. The sky is gray and rain falls on the lake below, thousands of droplets. Hard ripples spatter across the dark blue surface. The heavy rain streaks the window, fast-moving on the clear glass. In the sacred silence of sorrow, the storm passes. Dappled sunlight streaks into the room. Clouds drift away and rays of golden light illuminate the lake. My father smiles. For a moment, he is lost— gone in some beautiful dream. He is not the weary old man anymore but a shining youth, radiant and pure. I squeeze his hand and, in a whisper, he says, “There will always come clear skies.