shrugged a smile. “The same. Asking for you since breakfast. Knows when it’s Tuesday, but always thinks you won’t come.”
“And I’ve never missed in two years. Are his feet still swollen?”
“I’m afraid so. The doctor increased the Lasix dosage. Could be his heart. No other problems. He likes his food as well as ever. Do you want a follow-up call next visit?”
“Might be a good idea. Thanks, Cherie.” In search of a fork and bib, Belle toured the small dining room where several patients waited for lunch, exchanging a few words with Billy Kidd, a blind man dressed to dapper perfection, and waving at familiar ladies (always so many more ladies). The saddest group sat docile in gerry chairs, heads lolling. They were fed by the staff, one of the time-consuming attentions which accounted for the monstrous monthly sum per patient. Even so, over a ward fee of $900.00 to her father’s private rate of $1,700, the government added a similar contribution. Staggering numbers, but a friend of Belle’s had reported in tears that her father might have to pay $60,000 a year to put her mother in a nursing home in Vermont. Maybe overtaxed Canucks should “se taire,” or keep quiet.
Down the hall she could hear his television reporting the local news. Sudbury’s first murder of the year had occurred: a ninth grader had left her newborn in a cardboard box. She had wrapped the child in a flowered nightie and pinned on a note, “I love you, precious” when she placed the box beside a dumpster in a -25° night. “Precious” had been found by two schoolboys the next day. The mother waited under the protection of the Children’s Aid until a court decided if charges should be laid. Children having children, Belle sighed.
As she entered his room, her father pointed at her from his gerry chair. Its locking table prevented him from falling, a necessary but cruel protection against the danger of a broken hip, but he hated it. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said. His thick white hair was fresh-cut and his clothes clean, matching blue shirt and practical navy work pants good for one thousand washes. She arranged the bib and set out his meal, filling a plastic glass with water from the narrow bathroom. The builders hadn’t anticipated the problems of the elderly. How the attendants manoeuvered him attested to their logistical wizardry with a Hoyer lift.
While he enjoyed his shrimp and she made messy inroads on the chili dog, Belle leafed through the Enquirer. Jackie O was still getting headlines even after answering the last trumpet. If it could happen to her . . . Belle probed behind her right ear where she had been having some discomfort. No lump yet. She checked discreetly to see how her father was faring since it wasn’t wise to chat with him while he ate. Coordinating breathing, chewing and swallowing became difficult after a series of small strokes; aspirated food was a geriatric nightmare. He cooperated with her, but with the nurses he was bossy and demanding, reverting to the “bad boy” of his childhood. However, he seemed more “with it” today. “Good shrimp. Good shrimp,” he nodded. “Pie and ice cream?” His eyes darted back and forth to the box on the dresser.
“Sure, as soon as you’re finished,” she agreed. Shortly after, she replaced the remains of the meal with the dessert. “Hey, you’re in luck. Cherry pie. Remember how Mother used to make it? What a dope I was to lose her pastry recipe.” Then she went to the dining room and returned with his tea.
“How are your feet?” She looked sadly at the swollen pair.
“OK, OK,” he insisted. “Can we go out for lunch next week?”
She didn’t like to believe that he would not walk again. Just getting him to medical tests was a bitter challenge, weather aside. A recent chest x-ray had been a logistical horror story, though he had tried his best. “Well, there’s still lots of snow left. And you would have to walk to the van.”
“I can walk. I’ve never let you down yet, have I?” he asked. And she felt her eyes tear and pretended to look out the window at a chickadee.
“No, you certainly haven’t.” She shifted topics. “Do you know that this has been the worst winter in the last century and a half? That means that no other Palmer ever in Canada has seen one as bad.” He liked to boast about his family emigrating from Yorkshire in 1840. In Toronto she had taken him to Prospect Cemetery to find the grave of his grandfather, a corporal in the New York 22nd Cavalry during the Civil War. Many Canadians had gone south to fight for glory or purpose or something absent in the peace-loving North. When her father had first arrived at the nursing home, he had had a black roommate, to whom he had proudly related his grandfather’s service.
“Oh, I saw Love on the Dole last night. Remember that one?” She knew he loved talking about his working days.
He brightened, sipping his tea, which she had cooled first with an ice cube from his bedside pitcher. “That’s an old one. Deborah Kerr. Before the war, right?” He scratched his head. “No, 1941. Brits were at war, maybe not the Yanks yet. I saw every picture ever made back then.” When the television news ended, Belle rounded up the detritus and left him anticipating his afternoon soaps and after-dinner favourites, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. He had been interested to learn that Alex Trebek had come from Sudbury.
On her way out, she leaned over the high desk at the nursing station. “You know most of the doctors in town, Cherie. What can you tell me about Dr. Monroe?”
“Are you taking your father there?” She emphasized the last word with a gasp.
“No, it’s a business matter. I met him the other day and had a few questions.”
Cherie leaned over the desk and glanced around. “A woman in my nursing class dated him, if that’s a polite word. After they broke up, she had some pretty harsh words. Hypocrite, liar, that kind of tone. His qualifications maybe?” She paused and looked sceptical. “Could be spite, though. She went to Victoria after that. Wanted a change.” She snorted, pointing at the snowdrifts outside. “Guess she got it.”
“Wouldn’t his credentials have been checked?”
“In those days? He came here back when the place was desperate for doctors. You know the North. Always on the short end. Glad to get what we could.” She lowered her voice until Belle had to lean perilously. “But don’t mention this, will you? Not too ethical of me to blab.”
“Of course not. And thanks for keeping an eye on the old man.” Belle went out into the sunlight that had replaced the morning fog. Behind her in the nursing home, every day was the same, just like in her fish tank. They did their best, God bless them, she thought, getting into the van and turning on the radio as Oprah’s voice beamed out, greeting her fans in Northern Ontario in connection with a contest to win a trip to her show in Chicago. The country station plunged on. “Last time I saw him, he was Greyhound bound,” Dottie West sang as Belle blinked into the brightness.
As she returned home, the plow sat in the same spot. This time the driver had been joined by a front end loader large enough to shift the Skydome. Likely laughing at his friend’s poor driving, the loader man had ignored the banking and slipped off at the same spot. Megalon sent to rescue Godzilla and not a brain cell between them. Strolling neighbours were pointing and laughing, while the men hunched morosely in their cabs. What kind of unimaginable bigger brother would have to be summoned now? The churned-up land looked like Guadalcanal.
TEN
It was time, past time really, to search Jim’s camp. Belle checked her calendar. Clear for tomorrow. Perhaps if the weather held, she could go. She filed some papers, made a list of places to visit which included the land registry office, and sent two new bills. And
