The Name He Wrote on the Line

“Where’s my ring?” he said.

They had made me take it off him before they wheeled him back on Monday.

I had stood in the pre-op hallway at five in the morning with his wedding band in my palm and nowhere safe to put it.

So I had threaded it onto the thin gold chain I wear with my little cross, and I had worn it against my skin all week, under my blouse, under my cardigan, through the ICU and the waiting room and two nights in a recliner.

I pulled the chain out and showed him. The ring and the cross hung there together, swinging a little, catching the light from the window.

Ron did not say anything for a minute. He reached out with his swollen fingers and touched the ring where it lay against my collarbone, very gently, as if it might be hot.

“Leave it there,” he said. “Till these sausages go down. I like knowing where it is.”

I had to look out the window for a while after that.

When I turned back, he was watching me. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I can hear it in your voice. You’ve got your church office voice on.”

“Brian’s coming back at two with some papers for you,” I said.

“What kind of papers?”

I wanted to tell him. Every part of me wanted to sit down on that bed and tell him exactly what his son had typed and exactly what his son had said to the nurse. I could feel the words in my mouth.

“That’s between you and Brian,” I said. “He’ll explain it. You decide what you want. I’m not going to put words in your mouth, Ron. Not about this.”

He studied me. Ron was a lineman for the co-op for thirty-one years. He knows how to look at a thing that might be live. “All right,” he said finally. “But you stay.”

“I’ll stay unless the notary asks me to go.”

“Notary,” he repeated, and his eyebrows went up, and I could see him start to put it together. Then he closed his eyes and said, “All right,” again, and that was all.

He slept a little more. I ate half a turkey sandwich from the vending machine and read the same page of my devotional four times.

At ten till two, Brian came back. He had his folder under his arm and his quarter-zip pulled up to his chin, and he stood at the foot of the bed like a man waiting to be called up to the front of a classroom.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, son.” Ron held out his hand, and Brian came around and shook it, careful, the way you shake the hand of a man who has just had his ribs pried apart. “Deb says you’ve got something for me.”

“It’s just paperwork,” Brian said. “Just in case. So somebody can pay your bills and handle the house if you’re laid up. It’s what people do.”

“Is it.” Ron looked at the folder but did not reach for it.

At two o’clock exactly there was a knock, and a woman came in wearing a hospital badge on a lanyard and carrying a zippered bag. She was about my age, with reading glasses pushed up in her hair.

“Mr. Larkin? I’m Kim Walters, from patient services. I’m a notary. I understand you have a document you’d like to sign today.”