The hospital was twenty-eight miles away, down Route 6, through farm country and two little towns that barely had a stoplight between them.
During the drive, Grandma barely spoke.
That wasn’t like her. Grandma is a talker. Usually, when I drive her anywhere, she gives me a running commentary on everything we pass. Whose barn burned down in 1982. Which church has the best fish fry. Which farmer’s son married the wrong girl.
Not that morning.
She just sat there with her hands on that envelope, looking down at it. Every few minutes, she’d smooth the corner with her thumb. Then she’d look out the window. Then back down at the envelope again.
About halfway there, I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Are you feeling okay, Grandma? Really?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart.”
“Then why are we going to the hospital?”
She was quiet for a long time. The wipers thumped. A semi truck went by in the other lane and threw a wall of water across our windshield.
“There’s somebody I should’ve visited a long time ago,” she said.
That was all she’d say.
I tried a few more times. Who? Why now? Why so early? She just patted my hand on the gearshift and said, “Watch the road, Daniel.”
So I watched the road. And I thought about all the things I knew about my grandmother. Which, I was starting to realize, maybe wasn’t as much as I’d always thought.
I knew she’d been a nurse for almost forty years. She retired when I was in elementary school. She still had her old white nursing cap in a box on the top shelf of her closet.
I knew she married my grandfather, Frank Walker, when she was twenty-one. He was a carpenter. He built their house, their furniture, and most of the cabinets in half the kitchens in our town. He died in 2010 of a heart attack, while he was shoveling snow. Grandma found him in the driveway.
I knew they had one son. My father. Michael Walker.
My dad died when I was fifteen. A drunk driver ran a red light on a Friday night in November while he was driving home from work. He was thirty-eight years old.
After that, my mother kind of fell apart. She did her best, but she worked double shifts at the hospital in our town, and most nights she was too tired to do much more than sleep. So Grandma stepped in. She picked me up from school. She made me dinner. She sat at her kitchen table with me every night and made me do my homework, even when I told her I didn’t care about algebra and didn’t care about anything anymore.
“You don’t have to care,” she told me once. “You just have to do it. The caring comes later.”
She was right. It did.
My mom remarried when I was nineteen and moved down to Florida. We talk on the phone. It’s fine. But Grandma is the one who raised me, really. Grandma is the one who came to my college graduation in a purple hat and cried so loud everybody turned around. Grandma is the one who held Sarah’s hand at our wedding and told her, “If he ever gives you any trouble, you call me.”
I thought I knew everything about her.
We pulled into the parking lot of St. Andrew’s Medical Center a little after seven.
It’s an old hospital. The main building is red brick, four stories tall, with a big white cross on top. Over the years, they’ve added new wings in glass and steel. There’s a big shiny one on the east side with a name carved into the stone over the door. CALLOWAY PAVILION.
Grandma looked at that name for a long moment as we walked past it.
Her mouth went tight.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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