Emily screamed when I shouted.
My father was sitting on a plastic stool beside the bathtub. His white shirt was wet down one side. One hand gripped the towel rail. The other trembled so badly that the small blue cup beside him rattled against the tile.
Emily stood in the tub in her pink bathing suit.
She was unharmed, but frightened.
“Mommy, don't yell.”
I crossed the room and lifted her out. Her feet left wet prints on my trousers.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, then looked past my shoulder.
“Grandpa fell again.”
George tried to straighten himself.
“Claire, I can explain.”
“Don't move.”
That was the first sensible thing I said.
The towel rail creaked under his weight. His face was gray. There was a bruise across his elbow and a little blood where he had scraped his hand on the cabinet.
I wrapped Emily in a towel and moved her into the hallway.
“Please sit in your room. I'll be there in a minute.”
She held my sleeve.
“Is Grandpa in trouble?”
“I need to make sure he's safe.”
“Are you angry with me?”
The question hurt more than I expected.
“No. You did exactly the right thing by telling me.”
I waited until she was seated on the landing, within sight of the bedroom door, before I turned back.
George's breath was shallow.
“Can you stand?”
“In a moment.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked away.
I took my phone from my pocket. He saw it and stiffened.
“Don't call an ambulance. I'll be all right.”
“I didn't ask what you preferred.”
That sounded harsh. But I had watched him try twice to push himself upright, and each attempt ended with a gasp.
I called for medical help.
While we waited, I sat on the closed toilet lid and kept the doorway clear.
I had spent the previous twenty-four hours terrified that my father had done something terrible to my child. Now I could see that something was terribly wrong with him too.
It didn't erase the fear.
He had instructed Emily to keep a secret.
That remained true.
“What was the game?” I asked.
George wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“She closed her eyes and counted backward from twenty.”
“Why?”
“I needed a few seconds.”
“To do what?”
“To sit down without her seeing how difficult it was.”
I stared at the little stool.
“Then why were you bathing her at all?”
His answer came too quickly.
“It's our routine.”
“Routine isn't a reason.”
He lowered his eyes.
On the bathroom counter were two unopened bottles of shampoo. A clean washcloth lay beside them. The water in the tub was only a few inches deep.
Everything looked ordinary except my father's shaking hands.
“I asked her to close her eyes when I stood,” he said. “Sometimes my leg doesn't do what I tell it.”
“She says you cried.”
His mouth tightened.
“I did.”
“Because it hurt?”
“Because I was afraid I'd fall in front of her.”
Emily called from the hallway.
“Grandpa, I can count to fifty now.”
George put a hand over his mouth.
I had to turn away.
The paramedics arrived twelve minutes later. One spoke to George while the other checked his blood pressure and asked about pain, medication, and recent falls.
“How many times have you fallen in the last month?” she asked.
“Twice,” he said.
Emily's voice came through the open door.
“Four.”
Nobody answered immediately.
“Four times?” I repeated.
She stepped closer in her towel.
“Once by the stairs. Once in the kitchen. Once in my room when he brought my rabbit. And today.”
George closed his eyes.
The paramedic didn't scold him. She simply made another note.
I called our neighbor, Ruth, who came over with slippers and a cardigan for Emily. Ruth had known me since I moved onto the street, and she understood from my face that I couldn't explain everything in front of my daughter.
“Want to help me make toast?” she asked Emily.
Emily looked at George.
“Will you be here when I come back?”
“We're going to have someone look after Grandpa,” I said. “I'll tell you where he is.”
She accepted that, though she kept glancing behind her.
I rode to the hospital after the ambulance in Ruth's car. George's wallet and insurance card were in my bag. I found his glasses in the downstairs coat pocket where he'd left them the day before.
Only then did I notice the little notebook tucked behind the wallet.
It was bound in brown cloth and worn at the corners.
I didn't open it.
Not yet.
At the emergency department, a nurse asked George whether he felt safe at home. He blinked at her. I realized how much of his private life I had missed even while living under the same roof.
A doctor examined his strength and coordination. She asked when his hands began shaking and whether he had episodes of dizziness.
“Some time ago,” he said.
“How long?”
“A while.”
“Dad,” I said.
He answered without looking at me.
“Eight months.”
I felt as if the room tilted.
Eight months of helping Emily with breakfast, taking her to the park, carrying laundry up the stairs, and saying he was perfectly fine.
The doctor explained that his condition could have several causes. She wanted tests and careful assessment before making conclusions. She also said he should not supervise a young child alone until his falls were understood and a safe plan was made.
I agreed.
George said nothing.
When I finally stepped into the corridor, Ruth called.
Emily had eaten half a slice of toast. She was coloring the same blue rabbit over and over.
“She keeps asking whether she's the one who made him fall,” Ruth said.
It was only after Ruth took Emily downstairs that I noticed the bathroom window was open.
A cool wind moved the curtain against the tile. George had opened it because the room had grown too hot. He said the steam made him dizzy.
That explained the damp shirt, but not why he had risked standing beside the bathtub when he could barely balance.
I asked him whether he remembered the first time he fell in front of Emily.
He pressed his lips together.
“She was reaching for the yellow boat. It had drifted under the stool. I bent to pick it up and my knee gave way.”
“Did she have to help you?”
“She ran for a towel.”
“Why a towel?”
“I told her I had spilled water. I didn't want her to know I'd hurt myself.”
He looked toward the hall, where the sound of Ruth's voice floated up the staircase.
“I thought I could turn it into something funny. She liked our boat stories so much.”
His explanation was painful because I could imagine it happening. Emily loved his elaborate stories about a captain named Pepper who sailed a yellow plastic boat across imaginary seas. She had once made him a paper flag for it.
But the stories had become a cover for something she was too young to understand.
“Did she ever tell you she was afraid?” I asked.
His answer came slowly.
“Last week she asked whether people can die from falling.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her not to think about such things.”
I held my breath to keep from shouting.
“Dad, she was trying to tell you what she needed.”
“I know that now.”
I wondered how many times she'd tried. How many little questions I'd answered too quickly because dinner was burning or my phone rang with another message from work.
A paramedic asked whether I could gather the medicines George kept in his bathroom cabinet. I found vitamins, a blood pressure prescription, and an old bottle of pain medication. Nothing established a diagnosis, but the clinician wanted the list so George's medications could be checked.
Under the bottles was a folded receipt from a pharmacy dated three months earlier.
It was for a cane.
I had never seen the cane.
When I asked where it was, George said he'd stored it in the garage after a neighbor spotted him using it.
“He asked if I was all right,” George said.
“That's an ordinary question.”
“He looked at me like I was finished.”
I understood the feeling even if I didn't agree with what George had done.
He had spent decades being the person people called to repair a porch step or carry an old refrigerator. The idea of someone holding a door open because he might fall frightened him more than he was willing to admit.
Before the ambulance left, I went downstairs to get my coat. Emily stood beside Ruth at the kitchen sink. She had already changed into pajamas. Her rabbit's ear was tucked under her chin.
“Will Grandpa be angry because I counted wrong?” she asked.
I knelt in front of her.
“No. You didn't make anything happen by counting.”
“I stopped at twelve when I heard the noise.”
“That was okay.”
“He said the game only worked if I didn't look.”
“I know he said that. It wasn't true.”
She frowned.
“He lied?”
“He made a wrong choice because he was scared. Grown-ups have to tell the truth, even when they're scared.”
She accepted this with the seriousness children give to rules that suddenly seem different from yesterday.
“Can I keep my eyes open now?”
I kissed her forehead.
“You always can.”
The ambulance doors closed softly behind him.
I stood on the pavement with my house keys in one hand and the brown notebook in the other.
Only an hour earlier I had thought I knew exactly what I was walking into.
I had never been more relieved to be wrong about one thing, or more afraid of what else I didn't know.
I leaned against the wall.
“No,” I said. “Please tell her no.”
After we hung up, I opened the brown notebook.
On the first page, in my father's tidy handwriting, were the words: Things I must remember to tell Claire.
Underneath was a date from six months earlier.
The next line read: Ask for help before Emily gets frightened.
I turned the page.
It was blank.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: At the Hospital I Learned How Long My Father Had Been Hiding His Falls From Us
The Bathroom Door Opened and Everything I Thought I Knew About My Father Became Uncertain
Part 1 of 12
