Then comes the anxiety, the frenzy of getting the operation to happen quickly, locating the best surgeon, trying to find evidence in the experiences of others to counter our premonitions of doom.
My father is nervous. The friend he met in Brazil is nervous. I’m nervous. Though we don’t say so to one another, we know that the worst is here. We’re like performers overplaying our roles. My father, the friend he met in Brazil, and me. My father lets down his final defenses and for the first time accepts my help without reservations, even demands it. He’s grateful, vulnerable. The friend he met in Brazil gets an inkling that I might be useful in the days to come, and for the first time, she invites me to visit whenever I like. With an attempt at a girlish smile she tells me that the only thing that makes my father forget the wait is my company. I’m presented with the opportunity to prove that my readiness for sacrifice is as great as my past demands, and for the first time, I don’t hold back. I don’t stop to consider the consequences presented by the future into which we’re advancing. I think, of course, and on occasion my thoughts are egotistical, but immediately I rebel and make an effort to cancel out any petty calculation with my actions. I suppose I’ve speculated so often about this moment that I proceed like someone who’s been programmed, like a zombie obeying the commands of his master. I call him every day, and if I’m in Madrid, I visit him in the evenings; I try to entertain him.
The time for the operation arrives, and my father prepares for it with his usual resignation. Earlier, he’d begun gradually to involve me in the doctor appointments leading up to the operation. For some reason, he trusts me more than the friend he met in Brazil. It must be that I retain more information, I explain the things he hasn’t understood, I look for solutions, I answer his questions promptly, I’m ready with the most innocuous interpretation. I’m not a caretaker who requires care myself, and he puts his trust in me, responds in kind. The night before the operation, at the hospital, he gives me his bag to keep, invites me to withdraw money from his account if necessary, explains his financial situation, and puts up only a token resistance when I offer to sleep there. Later that same night, as I try to fall asleep in a chair next to his bed, I want to make some pledge in exchange for everything coming out all right, but I can’t. I’m afraid to make a promise that I know I won’t keep. It’s strange. I’m someone who spends his life thinking, trying to keep one step ahead, and I can’t allow myself to speculate. Out of fear, but also because I’m still setting my priorities against his. It’s my final moment of resistance. A testament to times past.
From now on, without realizing it, I become his father. In the morning I help him shower. He’s in good spirits, he wants to do everything right, and my help reinforces his determination. It brings us closer to success. If all is right between us, everything else will be right too. The friend he met in Brazil appears shortly before they come to get him, and I note his impatience with the intrusion of a reality separate from the hospital routine that we’ve become a part of after our night of initiation.
I think this is the key to everything that happens next. I don’t linger on the periphery; I accompany him to the very center of his suffering.
I am his father and he is my son. No one knows what the future holds, but it seems that as long as he’s weak and sick, he’ll seek my protection. Is he following my lead or am I following his? Is he setting the pace or am I paving the way for his surrender with my own?
He holds my hand until he enters the operating room, and I can’t help taking comfort in his deference. While he’s inside, my aunt comes, my wife comes, a friend of his comes. My mother doesn’t come, so as not to upset the friend my father met in Brazil, but she waits at home for news from us. All the promises I didn’t make the night before I make now, walking the hallways, counting the tiles, stepping on only some of them according to a predetermined order.
When the surgeon emerges, I’m the first to spot him. He leads the friend my father met in Brazil and me into his office, and there’s no need for him to speak the words he’s already speaking. The friend my father met in Brazil is sobbing, and I try to contain myself, but in the end I’m overcome when I ask the practical questions, the questions about time that make doctors most uncomfortable. I feel wrenched apart, outside myself. The person speaking, acting, isn’t me. I don’t know what goes through my mind. Everything and nothing. When I leave the office, I hug the friend my father met in Brazil and we promise to forget our differences, to pull together from now on. She asks me to keep after her, to constantly be telling her what she should do, and in the first place we agree not to tell my father how little time the doctor says he has left. It’s clear that this is all too much for her. “What will become of me?” she asks insistently. She can’t hide what for now is her main concern: loneliness.
The worst moment comes that afternoon in the ICU. We enter wearing surgical masks, and my father smiles, flashing a V for victory. He doesn’t seem to consider that the news might be anything other than good. But before the end of the time we’ve been allotted, he asks the friend he met in Brazil to leave us alone. I don’t know why. He doesn’t say anything to me, doesn’t ask me anything. I try to act cheerful, like him, but I’m not sure whether I succeed. I start training myself to dole out information in bits. I explain that they’ve removed the tumor but there are still some nodes that will have to be treated with chemotherapy.
It’s what he would want. Or so I believe. His ancestral refusal to verbalize drama allows me to think so. He couldn’t handle it.
Over the next few days I continue the tightrope walk of preparing him for what’s to come without dashing the hopes that his wide-open eyes plead for, alert to any sign from me. I spend most of my time with him. We’ve made a schedule to take turns by his side. The friend he met in Brazil is supposed to be with him in the mornings, but it’s Christmas, a sister who lives abroad has come to stay, and she begins to cut short her visits. There are even days when she doesn’t come. On Christmas Eve she doesn’t, and my mother and I have dinner at the hospital.