The Chemo Calendar I Handed His Daughter

Treatment eight

The first Tuesday in February, I got up at 4:30 anyway. Nineteen years of hospital shifts and four months of chemo mornings had set my clock, and it didn’t care whose turn it was.

I made the coffee. I filled the thermos with warm water from the tap and set it by the door next to his bag. I didn’t pack the bag. It wasn’t mine to pack anymore.

Michelle came out of the guest room at five sharp, dressed and made up, with her dark hair in that sleek bob she’d worn since high school and her camel coat buttoned to the neck. She said, “Morning,” and nothing else.

I poured her a cup of coffee. She drank it standing up at the counter, reading the calendar on her phone, where she’d taken a picture of every page the night before.

At 5:10 she went down the hall to get her father. I heard her say, “Dad, it’s time,” and I heard him say, “I know what time it is,” and I had to turn away and look out the window.

I stood out on the front step with my coffee mug when they went out.

It was gray dawn, the sky the color of dishwater, with a little snow on the lawn from the weekend.

I was wearing my navy cardigan, which was not near warm enough for a February morning in Nebraska. I stayed out there anyway.

Michelle walked him down to the driveway with her hand under his elbow. Les had on his puffy coat and the gray knit cap my sister made him for Christmas, and he looked thin as a fence post inside all of it.

She opened the passenger door of our silver sedan. He held the door frame with one bare hand to lower himself in, the way I’d taught him, so he wouldn’t drop the last six inches into the seat and jar his stomach.

The cold metal made him wince, and Michelle dug his brown gloves out of her coat pocket before she did anything else.

She didn’t look back at me. She shut his door, came around the front of the car, and got in the driver’s side.

He did look back. Through the passenger window, he lifted one hand off his knee. I lifted my coffee mug.

It was the first time in seven treatments that I wasn’t the one holding his elbow.

I watched the taillights go down the road toward the highway until they were gone in the gray.

Then I went inside, and I sat down at the kitchen table, and I cried harder than I had since the day of the diagnosis.

When I was done, I washed my face and called my supervisor at the hospital.

I told her I could work Tuesdays again starting next week. She said, “Oh, honey, is he better?” and I said, “His daughter’s here.”