PART 2
“Help!” I screamed into the hallway. “I need a nurse in 108! He’s not breathing!”
Rochelle ran.
She shoved past Bea and out the door. I didn’t chase her. My father mattered more.
The charge nurse, a woman named Gail, was there in seconds. She took one look at his pinpoint pupils and his gray lips.
“This is an overdose,” she said. “Get me the naloxone.”
Another nurse ran in with it. Gail sprayed it into his nose.
Nothing.
She started rescue breaths. Counted. Waited.
Bea was standing in the corner with both hands over her mouth.
Then my father gasped.
A huge, ragged breath. Then another. His eyes fluttered open.
He looked at the ceiling. Then at Gail. Then at me.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“Tammy?” he whispered.
Nobody had called me that in fifteen years.
The paramedics took him to the hospital. Two police officers caught Rochelle in the parking lot, trying to start her car. Her purse was full of other residents’ credit cards.
The investigation took two months.
The “sleepy pills” were oxycodone. Stolen from a resident on hospice care down the hall. Rochelle had been drugging four residents on Thursday evenings, so they’d sleep through the weekend, while she used their cards.
She’d taken more than $14,000.
My father was her favorite target. No family ever visited him. Nobody ever called. Nobody would ask questions.
Nobody except a ten-year-old girl with an instant camera.
The prosecutor told me Bea’s photos were the reason the case was airtight. Every one of them had a date printed on the back.
Rochelle pleaded guilty to elder abuse, theft, and drug charges. Six years.
The ombudsman’s office investigated Maple Grove. Two supervisors were fired.
My father spent four days in the hospital.
On the third day, I brought Bea’s travel chessboard.
He looked at it. Then at me.
“I have been sober for nine years, Tammy,” he said. “I wrote you a letter every year on your mother’s birthday. I never mailed them. I didn’t think I had the right.”
“What you said to me at the funeral—”
“Was the worst thing I’ve ever said to anyone,” he said. “I’ve regretted it every single day.”
He set up the pieces with shaking hands.
“I’m sorry. I know that isn’t enough.”
“It’s a start, Dad,” I said.
He moved into the spare room at my house in January. He doesn’t need much help. Mostly he needs company.
Every Sunday afternoon, the three of us play chess on my porch.
He lets Bea win. Then he pretends to be furious.
Bea knows.
So do I.
Last week, she asked him why he always does that.
He smiled at me across the board.
“Because I did it for your mom,” he said. “And look how she turned out.”
THE END.
──────────────
It’s never too late to make the move you’ve been afraid to make. Sometimes it takes a child to remind us.
Would you have forgiven your father like Tamsin did? Tell us in the replies.