Bill was a stonemason, he himself made of ledge. His Carson Family Partner was a patient woman, who knew well the long wait for words from this father with the sharply cut face.
Bill hadn’t been participating in any of Carson’s services for his daughter until his Family Partner, Donna, joined the team. She had a way about her that he trusted. She didn’t talk too much and she didn’t tell him not to be mad at his daughter, who was back in the hospital again after attempting suicide. Bill had worked so hard to give his daughter a good life and she, in return, had ruined every holiday and family gathering since she became a teenager. And now this.
Bill had walked out of the psychiatrist’s office. He felt that only Donna really understood how he’d felt in that meeting. There was a way in which he knew his daughter’s world like no doctor could. He knew what she was made of because he was made of the very same things. He knew Saturday’s music and Sundays’s reading. He fixed her car because she rode the clutch. They both knew where the best gas station and the cheapest milk could be found in town. He knew without saying just why she loved the horses they kept and about her profound disrespect for the chickens. He cooked the meatloaf and string beans that made her very bones— and now he was told that she wasn’t quite right—that she was “imbalanced”—maybe born that way? And she needed to take medicine to make it right. She’d seemed right to him for so many years. How could this world of diagnosis and medicines be more real than the world he’d known with her?
Bill didn’t want to see his daughter; that he knew for sure.
“How ‘bout we just go sit in the waiting room?” the Family Partner Donna asked. Bill thought that seemed alright. They drove to the hospital and together he and Donna sat in the chairs where families wait for whatever comes next. Bill’s head was hanging down; his fists were clenched.
His daughter’s fist, once and long ago, had been grasped around Bill’s thumb as he taught her to waltz while held up high in his arm. Later, she grew big enough to graduate to stepping on Bill’s feet to learn the steps, her hand then a full half of his. He would press the rhythm of the music and moves into her fingers. As they danced, she’d press back.
Donna saw the change in Bill’s grieving face. “I’ll bring you in. C’mon, let’s go.” Donna led him down the hall to the right room and pulled up the chair for Bill to sit next to his sleeping child.
“I’ll be in the waiting room,” she told him.
Bill reached for his daughter’s hand, curved in its sleep, the I.V. bandaged in place. Maybe some of this was true, he considered—she’d had those long periods of sadness, just like his own mother had had. Maybe things were ‘off’ inside of his daughter after all and she needed help.
He put his palm under hers, hand to hand, forming a soundless clap or prayer, fingers matched one to one. He played her fingers like keys, in the rhythm of their life’s beating waltz. He raised his eyes to hers when he felt her softly pressing back. There were new steps ahead for both of them.
By JAC Patrissi
