“Daddy?” I say, my voice shakier than I’d like it to be, scared despite my medical training. He stirs and makes a noise. He flexes his left hand, hanging down beside him, as if reaching for the phone he dropped after calling me. “I came as fast as I could. Can you open your eyes for me? What happened?”
As I grab paper towels to clean some of the blood off him, and an ice pack from the freezer for the swelling distorting his still-handsome face, I run through my options. I have four hundred dollars, and that’s all. My next paycheck will be my last for a while since HR is probably drawing up a letter of termination even now. I won’t mention any of that to him. No reason to worry him when he’s already down on his luck. I grab a towel and run warm water in a plastic bowl.
I try to assess if he’s bad enough we need to go to urgent care or not. The copay on a visit is over a hundred bucks and that’s without x-rays. Just looking at him I know he will need an x-ray. His right hand is laying across his stomach. The wrist is bent in a way that tells me I better ice it and wrap it quickly.
I get to work cleaning him up, dab antiseptic and liquid bandage on his cuts. He hisses when it touches him and does some moaning and cussing but doesn’t offer any explanation. I know better than to pester him with questions at a time like this, but my heart squeezes at the sight of him so bruised and torn up. I can’t keep the ice on his busted lip because I need both hands to bandage him. And nothing he is doing is helping.
When I gingerly wrap his right hand and wrist, he blurts out a stream of profanity and I start to get some information.
Because of his swollen lip and probably some loose teeth, as well as a severely bruised jaw, his words are garbled, slurred. I feel my own jaw clench in sympathy. I’m able to pick out ‘motherfuckers’ and a distinctly sickening, ‘thousand dollars’ before he coughs and then winces.
I’m so busy tending his visible injuries that I haven’t checked his ribs. His reaction to that cough tells me they’re cracked. I go get my tape, shove up his shirt on one side. I probe his ribs with my fingertips, find the sore spot and start taping. Surprising no one, my dad calls me something that sounds like ‘asshole’ for my trouble.
Once his ribs are taped and his hand wrapped, I switch out the water in the bowl and try cleaning the blood out of his hair. I wrap a frozen eye mask around his head and secure it with Velcro to keep my hands free to treat his other injuries. I pry his lids open a second time to check his pupils. He doesn’t have much of a concussion if any, thank God.
“Okay, you’re patched up enough to tell me what happened,” I declare, picking dried blood from his graying, once-dark hair. He grumbles, but I wait. I get him a drink of water and some ibuprofen.
“…lost some on March Madness…kept tryna win back enough to pay it off…” he mumbles.
“You’ve been in the hole for two months and betting on credit?” I say incredulously.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I know that, but it shocks me. How a grown man can be so helpless and impulsive. Like any other addiction.
“How much?” I ask, my hands going still in his hair as I steel myself.
He rattles off a number.
“What?” I ask him to repeat it. I can’t have heard him right.
“Ya heard me, sixteen thousand,” he says irritably.
I drop the rag in my hand, which lands with a splat on my shoe. I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. It’s never been so much before. My four-hundred dollars won’t even buy us a week if it’s the wrong people.
“Who?” I ask faintly.
“Philly Shapiro,” he lisps, disgusted.
I reach for the other kitchen chair so I can drop down into it. My knees are about to give way. Philly Shapiro? I press my lips together. I won’t yell at him, no recriminations. It has to be hard to admit this to his grown daughter, that he owes five figures to a notorious Mafia bag man. A guy who is not going to respond to excuses or sweet talk.
“How far behind are you on the payments?” I ask and my voice seems to float up out of nowhere. I feel like I’m having an out of body experience, floating above us near the kitchen ceiling, hovering as he lies the first two times, swearing it’s just one payment.
“We talked about this. You want my help. You don’t bullshit me,” I say as firmly as I can manage.
“Such a hard ass like your mom,” he says, not too fondly. “It was three payments I missed it, okay? I gave him fifty bucks on Monday. You’d think that’d hold him. It ain’t like I’m the only guy that owes him money. Give a guy a little wiggle room I always say. We’re only human.”
This long speech of excuses takes it out of him, and he slumps down in the chair even more. I don’t bother asking why he was home so early from his job at the factory. He took the day off to convince the Marino crime family to spare his knees and nads. The sorry sight before me got the message across loud and clear. They expected payment on time.
That pitiful amount I have in savings almost makes me howl with grief and frustration, but I reason that it will be better than nothing. I have something I can offer them at least until I work out a plan. I always work out a plan to pay back his debts, but the Mob doesn’t take you to court for nonpayment. They take you to church, or they bury you behind one.
So much for only missing one semester so I can work full-time and earn enough to cover my tuition and his debts. I can’t even think about it without wanting to wail.
This is the first time I look at my dad as a burden. He’s worn out my patience and most of my good will. I’m twenty-four years old still trying to finish a two-year degree because I quit to pay off his debts. Working two jobs, eking out two or three credits a semester when I can. Passing pharmacology is supposed to be a sign my luck is changing. It’s a hard course, and I was proud of myself for two seconds before the shit hit the fan again.
I’ll figure it out. It’s just so much worse this time. I need a plan.
2
JACK