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.
