The Call I Made to My Brother First

I went back up to Dad. I did not sleep much. Dad woke twice in the night and asked where he was, and both times I told him, and both times he said, “Well, that’s a long way from home,” and went back to sleep.

I must have dozed in the chair, because the next thing I knew, the window had gone from black to gray, and somebody was saying my name.

Not Ann. Not Mom’s name. My name.

“Greta.”

I sat up so fast the blanket went on the floor. Dad was looking at me. His eyes were clear. They were his eyes again, blue and tired and sharp, the eyes that can spot a cow with pinkeye from across a forty-acre field.

“Hey, Dad.”

“What day is it?”

“Sunday. Early.”

He thought about that. I watched him put it together. “I fell,” he said.

“You fell. Marty found you.”

“Did Marty feed?”

I laughed. It came out of me like a sob, and I put my hand over my mouth. “He fed yesterday and he’s feeding today. He says your bull got out and he put him back.”

Dad closed his eyes. “That sorry bull.” Then he opened them again and looked around the room, at the chair, at the door, at me. “Where’s your brother?”

I stood up. “I’ll get him.”

Ruthie was at the desk. She had been there all night and looked like it. I told her Dad was awake and talking sense, and she smiled the first real smile I had seen on her and went in to check him.

I took the elevator down and walked out the front doors into the visitor lot. The sun was not up yet, but the sky over the east side of town was pale and the lot lights were still buzzing.

I stood at the curb and got out my phone.

I want to be honest about this part, because it is the part I think about the most.

I could have called Otis first. Otis had been worrying about me for a whole day from the top of a pole three hundred miles away, and he deserved to hear it.

I could have called our Aunt Louise in Flemingsburg, Dad’s only living sister. I could have called the prayer chain at church.

I could have walked over to that truck and knocked on the window and made Bert look at me.

I called my brother.

I do not know entirely why. I have thought about it since. I think it was because I had been angry at him for a whole day, and under the anger, the whole time, there had been something else.

I knew how he looked at that hospital door. I had seen it six years ago. I just had not let myself see it this time.

He picked up on the first ring. I could see him from where I stood, across the lot, sitting up straight behind the wheel with the phone at his ear.

He had never left the lot. Not once, in all that time, except to cross the road to the gas station.

“Is he…” Bert said. His voice broke on the second word, and he could not finish.

I took a breath.

“He’s awake, Bert,” I said. “He knows me. He knows what day it is. He asked if Marty fed. And then he asked where you were.”

There was no sound on the line at all. Across the lot I watched my brother put his forehead down on his steering wheel, and his shoulders started to shake.