Something Worthwhile

As I lay on the trolley, the Valium kicking in, I felt relaxed and without a care in the world. Susan, my wife by my side, smiled at me.

‘How are you liking the drugs?’ she asked with a giggle.

I held my hand up in the air and watched it move, Susan giggled some more.

‘Ok, Ms Cooper, were ready for you now!’ a nurse said as they began to wheel me into theatre.

Even though I was drugged, I still managed to keep a firm grasp on Susans hand.

‘Sweety, I can’t go with you beyond this point!’ she said sadly.

‘But I love you!’ I said in my medicated state.

‘I love you too,’ Susan said and prised her hand from mine shouting, ‘I’ll be here when you get out!’ before the theatre doors closed.

I don’t remember much, but I do remember the smell of plastic and disinfectant. I was asked to move myself over to the operating table where they asked me to count back from ten. I know I hit nine and eight, as the drugs worded through my system, making me feel as though I was flying, but I don’t think I reached seven before I was out cold.

When I was under, my mind flashed back ten years…to my twenty first birthday. My father had left when I was seventeen and I had little contact with him after that. I did, however, invite him to my party. Fury encompassed my being when I opened the door to him, his tall blonde air hostess who he had left my mother for by his side.

‘What the fuck is she doing here?’ I asked, my face stern, my posture rigid. I was saved when Susan approached and took my hand. She kissed it for support and extended her other hand to my father. He looked perplexed.

‘Hi,’ she said, ‘I’m Susan.’ She looked into the cold, dead eyes of my father as he swatted her hand away.

‘Hey!’ I said with conviction, ‘what did you do that for?’

‘You’re gay!’ his voice boomed throughout the house as everyone else fell silent.

‘Well…. yea!’ I replied with a furrowed brow. I looked around and saw all of my friends and family staring at the man in the porch who was making a scene.

‘How long have you been gay?’ he asked wide eyed, like a rabbit caught in headlights.

‘I’ve always been!’ I stated back to him.

Susan looked at my stern face and then to his and asked him if he wanted to come in. 'Oh Susan,’ I thought as I looked at her quizzical expression. My love for her grew that very moment as she was trying to make lemons into lemonade but forgot about the sugar.

My father handed me the box he was holding that was all wrapped up and stated, ‘it’s a camera!’ before turning on his heels and leaving. I could hear him speak to the leggy blonde as they descended the driveway…’no daughter of mine is gay!’ he said louder than he needed to.

As I closed the front door, tears began to fill my eyes. Susan asked if I was ok and I buried my head in her shoulder, my whole-body convulsing with every sob. She held me and rubbed my hair as I cried for what seemed like eternity.

As the memory of that day faded, I was transported to my wedding day. I remember feeling so beautiful…but there was one thing missing….my father.

When we were doing out the wedding invitations months before, I had written one for him, but never sent it. A dilemma crossed my mind that if I did send it, and he came, would he ruin another memorable day for me? I kept the envelope addressed to his mothers, as I didn’t know where he resided, on the table beside the front door right up until the day before the wedding. I had a strong urge to post it to let him know that I did get married and rub his face in the fact that he wasn’t there. I picked up the sealed envelope and made my way to the post office. It was a snide thing to do but I took pleasure in finally pushing it into the mouth of the tall green post box marked ‘Dublin’.

The wedding went off without a hitch. When it was time to walk down the aisle, Susan felt bad that her father was giving her away. I reassured her that I wouldn’t have asked my absent father to do it whether he was there or not, and that it felt fitting that my mother walked me down the red carpet. It meant so much to my mother to perform the action anyway so I was doubly excited.

Susan wondered if the father daughter dance would be off the table seeing as my father wasn’t there. I knew it was her fathers dream to be there at the wedding, where as I hadn’t seen mine in years so I danced with my mother instead of the emotionally stunted bigot I got to call my dad. Once again, my mother was only too delighted….

As that memory faded, I was brought to the day I found out my father was sick. His girlfriend at the time, Marian, (not the leggy blonde), had found me on Facebook and did what my father was afraid to do…contact me.

When I got her message, my heart went out to the man. The message said:

Sinead, I am writing on behalf of your father because he is a stubborn man who won’t admit when he needs help. He has liver cancer and needs a transplant. The doctors can’t find him a match and have asked us to contact any living relatives who were willing to donate a lobe of their liver to him. I know you both have your issues, but I beg of you to meet us at Starbucks in the Pavilions in Swords on Saturday at 2pm. Please come, I know your father desperately wants to see you!

Of course, as I wasn’t a cold-hearted bitch, went to meet him to see what he had to say, my wife Susan by my side. We got there twenty minutes early and found a table with four chairs, mine faced in the direction of the door.

I was shocked as I saw the once football coach of my childhood arrive in the doorway slumped over with a cane. The woman beside him, I had never seen before. I instinctively stood up and as an unwanted tear escaped, I brushed it away with the back of my hand.

The man I had once called dad looked as though he was eighty years old. His skin was yellow and I saw a trace of a smile cross his face when he saw me. My heart grew warm. Susan looked up at that precise moment and followed my gaze to the man who had swatted her hand away the first time they met.

The woman, who turned out to be Marian, walked my father over to our table and sat him down beside me. He was beaming from ear to ear as she left him there and went up to the counter to order some coffee.

He extended his hand to Susan, who graciously took it as a tear ran down his jaundice cheek.

‘Congratulations!’ he said looking at both of us in turn. ‘I’m delighted to see you happy!’ he said looking at me.

I nodded as tears started to escape like water flowing over a big rock into a lagoon. I couldn’t help it. My dad, my idol as I grew up, finally accepted who I was. He took my hand and squeezed it in his. His hand reminded me of sandpaper and the dam broke. The three of us were crying as Marian returned to the table with a silver stand holding up a laminated piece of paper that donned the number seven on it.

I looked at her through glassy eyes and she smiled at me. I mouthed the words, ‘thank you!’ as she sat down.

We talked for hours, catching up on the last ten years…there was a lot to catch up on! We talked for so long that we were still there at closing time…six o’clock. During those hours we talked about the wedding and dads cancer. We were getting on so well that Susan suggested going to the little Italian restaurant down the street from the Pavilions.

During dinner, dad asked me one of the hardest things a father could ask his baby girl…could he have a lobe of my liver. I just said I’d think about it….

When I woke, I moaned in pain, my eyes still closed. I felt a warm, soft hand on my own. When I slowly opened my eyes, I was met with the soft grin I knew only too well, my wife.

‘Everything went swimmingly!’ she said, before the nurse came in and put something into the canula in my right hand…everything went out of focus and I felt like I was flying on a cloud once again.

I heard people mumbling in the distance as my body brought me back to reality. I could hear Susans sweet voice talking to someone I wasn’t all that familiar with but I knew I knew her from somewhere. I opened my eyes. Marian was there. She rubbed my calf and uttered the words, ‘thank you! You just saved his life!’

My mind shuffled back to three weeks ago, the day I said I would give a lobe of liver to my father. I remembered all the tests that followed and was happy that I did something worthwhile with my life. Even if the relationship didn’t develop into anything, I could always put my hand on my heart and say that even though I didn’t know the man, ‘I saved the life of my father’. Susan kissed me and wiped the tears that were flowing down my alabaster cheeks unbeknownst to me…. I saved his life.

picture from pixabay