This is the floor by the door of my parents' bedroom.
This is where my dad called me from while I was sipping on my second Mango Lemonade Shaker and where I found him about 20 minutes later when I rushed home doing 80mph on the turnpike after he told me he'd fallen to the ground and couldn't get up. I know I like to focus on scars and physical damages that have cool stories behind them, but I think emotionally-exhausting damages have a place here too right?
Dad's gout is acting up and he spends most the night with a low-grade fever that worries me because I can handle babies without anuses but an old man in pain is a little out of my league. I'll feed him and give him all the medications I can find downstairs because he can't get up on his own let alone maneuver through two dozen steps, and he'll thank me and tell me to sleep after I admit that I've only had four hours of sleep in the past 24. I leave our doors open and keep my TV on low, but I get too anxious to sleep anyway so I gather up my blanket and plop down next to him so I can assure myself that my daddy's alive. I'll wake up every 4 hours to check his temperature and give him more medication and water and sometime around 6 am, I ask myself if this is really something I can keep doing.
