The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings Page B

giving him the middle finger. The dining terrace gasps, but I realize it’s because of the sunset and the green flash. We missed it. The flash flashed. The sun is gone, and the sky is pink. I reach to grab the offending hand, but instead, I correct her gesture.
    “Here, Scottie. Don’t let that finger stand by itself like that. Bring up the other fingers just a little bit. There you go. That’s the cool way to do it.”
    Troy stares at us and smiles a bit. He’s completely confused.
    “All right, that’s enough.” I suddenly feel sorry for Troy. He must feel awful.
    I place my hand on Scottie’s back to guide her. She flinches, and I remove my hand, remembering that she’s hurt all over.
    “Can we go to the hospital?” she asks. We make our way past the locker rooms to the parking garage.
    “I’m going to take you home,” I say.
    “I have a story, and I want to tell Mom.”
    Her voice is loud in the garage. She stops walking.
    I stop and look back. “Come on.”
    She shakes her head. I walk to her and grab her hand, but she pulls away from me. “I want to see Mom! I’ll forget what I need to say to her.”
    I grab her wrist, more forcefully this time, and she screams. I look around and walk away and she keeps screaming and then I scream and we’re both screaming in the garage, our angry shouts bouncing off the walls.
     
     
     
    SCOTTIE IS SULKING in the car. I decide to call Dr. Johnston. I don’t want to go back to the hospital. There is too much to do. I ask a nurse to page him, and he calls moments later. Scottie presses the horn. I ignore her.
    “Matthew,” he says.
    “Can you tell me now?” I ask. “Just tell me everything.” I stand in the garage and watch Scottie in the car.
    “There’s been an increase in pressure to her brain,” he says. “We’ve drained fluid, and we could do surgical intervention, but with her GCS, I’m afraid it wouldn’t help. You may have noticed that lately, she’s had no eye movement or any movement whatsoever. The damage to her brain is very severe. I’m sorry,” he says. “We’ve spoken of this, the possibility of this…”
    I want to help him. I don’t want him to have to say every word he has to say to a boy he has known his entire life.
    “Plan B?” I say. This was the term I used.
    “Yes, I’m afraid. Plan B.”
    “Okay,” I say. “Okay. I’ll see you then. I’ll see you tomorrow. Is it all starting now? Are you going to take everything away right now?”
    “I’ll wait until I see you tomorrow, Matthew.”
    “Okay, Sam.” I close the phone, afraid to go to the car. There’s a girl in there waiting for me to make things better, a girl who thinks her mother is going to be okay so her father can retreat once more, appearing at night to entertain and dine, and in the morning to eat breakfast around the kitchen island, stepping over schoolbooks, bags, gadgets, and clothes, then heading out the door. I stand still in the parking garage and think about Plan B. This plan means that my wife is in a persistent vegetative state. She has severe neurological disabilities. I will be approached for organ donation. Plan B means we’ll stop feeding her, caring for her, helping her breathe. IV fluids will be removed, medications will stop. It means we will let her die.
    I hear a car’s tires turning the corners. I see the car driving down to our basement level. The tears come, and I wipe them away. The driver stops when she sees me. She’s an old woman who can barely see over the steering wheel of her Cadillac. I can see her fingers gripped around the wheel, and I think, Why do you get to live so long? I see her window going down and I stand there, curious to see how she’ll get me to move.
    “May I get by?” she asks.
    “I’m sorry,” I say and move out of the way.

 
     
    11

     
     
    WE DRIVE ON H1 and sit in traffic behind a lifted truck, its back window airbrushed with an image of a woman with breasts as round as dinner plates. I