Things you think about when you’re in the ICU holding your dad’s hand and he’s still under anesthesia from open heart surgery but he opens his eyes for the first time

Note: When I agreed to write for Metathesis this month I planned on starting off with something strident, political, and sharp. I had this series all planned out about football and fascism, “third way” pro-lifers, and Stardew Valley in the age of Trump. Maybe I’ll revisit these before months’ end, but I did not count on how tired I would feel by the first few weeks of our new regime, nor how acutely I would sense the Internet’s saturation with thinkpieces on yet another new advancing horror to resist. These last several weeks have felt inhumane to me in a vague way, not because of any great suffering on my part, but because the relentless grief and anger that the rise of white nationalism to our country’s highest offices inspires has a deadening effect on the senses. In that spirit, I want to share something that, at least in the reading, feels more humane to me.

That it makes sense why they need to lower a person’s body temperature to 92 degrees for such a major surgery but it still feels awful holding his frigid hand.

~ ~ ~

That his hands and feet are swollen, so swollen the skin feels stretched like a cheap water balloon.

~ ~ ~

A conversation you had in the days leading up to the surgery. You didn’t talk much — he wasn’t too forthcoming about his feelings and your attempts to solicit anything from him felt trite and obvious.

How are you feeling? Well I had a heart attack and doctors are about to break my sternum open, run all my blood through an external pump while my heart gets cut up, so pretty bad I guess.

So you don’t have that conversation, and instead, after a while, you ask him something more open-ended and he tells you that it’s weird to be on a hospital bed surrounded by family so soon after burying his own dad. You think about both scenes. With his dad, there were no father/son conversations at all. Grandpa’s shallow breaths were slow and quiet; everyone in the room traded stories in hushed, laughing tones about the shared violence of their childhoods. Snow piled up on the deck furniture outside the sliding doors of his hospice room. Different with your dad. There is a lot of worry, a little self reflection, and a lot of middling conversation that helps stave off the heaviness of futurity and risk. Not like with grandpa who was practically already gone. Your dad’s well enough to make the waiting hurt. With your dad, the room is smaller, and there’s a roommate who’s a lot older and has just had the same surgery your dad is going to have. The roommate dies overnight.

~ ~ ~

You think his trimmed beard doesn’t look that bad at all and that his chin is way less recessed than your mom says it is.

~ ~ ~

The thing about your dad is you feel like if you had lived his life you’d have a lot more to share with your kids when they visit.

~ ~ ~

His eyes open and you get the sense that maybe they shouldn’t open yet. His eyes bulge. You think he looks confused. When your mother cries he looks concerned, maybe a little guilty. You wonder about your own cholesterol and look at your wife. One of your sisters starts to cry too though not the one you expect.

~ ~ ~

You think about that breathing tube.

~ ~ ~

You don’t feel regret but an adjacent feeling about not talking to him more before the surgery. You wonder when the last time was that you both had an extended conversation about something you mutually felt was important and that was not triggered by a family crisis. You’re both people who like to argue, like to be right, but you’ve stopped arguing with any regularity, in part because it stresses your mom out, but also because it’s hard work and makes you feel a little depressed. You always get the sense that he thinks you’re patronizing him. But when the arguing went away, so did the sense of intimacy. You figure the last conversation like that must have been five or so years ago in Canandaigua at a bar you had been to once with some old friends from high school. They have good dark beer on tap which gets dad tipsy fast but makes him feel good because its darkness signifies legitimacy. It’s about forty minutes from where you live and forty minutes from where he lives. Feels more like neutral ground than most places. You initiated under the pretense of catching up, which was true, but also because you had two things to disclose, one religious and you thought minor, the other academic and you thought more serious. He saw it the opposite way. You disagreed but didn’t feel angry. You felt respected and friendly.

~ ~ ~

There was that time — it comes back now, flies by unsolicited — when you were a kid, who knows how old, young, and were getting ready to play in the snow outside (a loop forward to that hospice room). It was a process and dad was helping out. Sweatpants. Wool socks over sweatpants. Flannel. Sweatshirt. Snowpants, zip, clip, clip. Jacket, go Bills. Gloves. Here you got hung up. Your fingers won’t go into the right spot. They kept slipping into a space between the glove’s shell and the fuzzy lining and you were hot and whiny already, itching to get outside, climb the hill from the plow, make angels, play with next-door-neighbor Sarah. Sisters already outside. Dad’s trying to help, shoving, pulling, telling you to push. Then you’re crying and dad yells, incredibly, “be a man.” You remember him saying be a man a few times but it might just be echoes in the remembering. You cry harder, say, I’m just a kid not a man.

~ ~ ~

Think about how bad it feels to have come so close to losing dad and not given him a grandkid yet. Think about what a bad reason that is to have a kid. Think about futurity in the academic sense, the bad politics of the nuclear family, and dysfunction, but still you consider bargaining with God about letting dad pull through if you both would just make a kid finally.

~ ~ ~

Why you remembered the incident with the glove.

~ ~ ~

An uncanny, happy intensity when he squeezes back in response to your squeeze.

~ ~ ~

Think about kissing him on the forehead, remember you performed the same ritual for his dad as he lay on his deathbed, and then again in his casket. Decide not to here. Superstitious.

~ ~ ~

Mostly just you wanting. Want him to be comfortable. Want him to feel ok again. Want him to not die. Want him to have to face the fallout of his choices. Want to be able to yell at him. Want him to be honest with you. Want your relationship with him to be less angsty. Want him to not have to feel bad about the stuff you think he should probably feel bad about. Want to recapture a common ground. Want to not put your own partner through this mess of tubes and numbers and sutures. Want to not have to talk to people about this experience. Want to leave. Want to not cry. Want him not to die. Want and want and want.

~ ~ ~

The nurse talking about fluids and temperatures and involuntary twitches due to the sedation starting to wear off.

You think about what it means that he looks beautiful.

Thanks to Charles Matthew Petrie, Rachel Elizabeth Arrieta, and John Stadler for their invaluable feedback.

Jordan Wood is a Ph.D candidate at Syracuse University where he writes about video games and other things.