Placebo Effect

Nestor sat with his sister Emily and all three of their side of the family in a small room in Emily’s apartment, watching his dad die slowly of lung cancer.

His dad didn’t want to go to the hospital, didn’t want to see Dr. Coffin.

Hospice brought in one of those beds that reclines electronically, as they shifted the pillows under his head, moved him from side to side to avoid bedsores like wading pools filling up in the backyards of his body.

Not just because of his resemblance to various artists’ depictions, but also the fact he owned a small sailboat Nestor and his sister called their dad Captain Ahab.

And there he was, their father, lying in that bed as if aboard a new line of vessel, staring straight into the eye of some new, tickle-proof storm.

This skeleton in a diaper, this beard on a skull.

The stretched-leather sound of carbon dioxide trying to escape his failing lungs in gasps.

The car alarm sound of a telephone off the hook down the hallway, their mom in another room somewhere crying, smoking cigarettes, staring out the window admiring seagulls circling overhead who’d escaped the plucking in preparation for her husband’s bed set, imagining where else she could’ve been just then.

They all loved him, but they didn’t want to watch.

They loved him—why they did.

Loving him was why they didn’t want to watch him live so they chose to not face the choice they couldn’t make and watched him die.

As if the Bermuda Triangle was the only compass they had to navigate through to some unfamiliar place, but at least with a view they’d recognize as:

. . . S h o r e . . .

Nestor’s dad didn’t believe in God until the end.

Nestor sat beside the bed, holding his dad’s hand, thinking, wondering if even he believed in God.

He didn’t know.

He had no idea.

He knew Dumbo’s feather was a fake.

Still, there Nestor was, hoping it didn’t fall. 

Bio: Eric Beeny is the author of Snowing Fireflies (Folded Word Press, 2010), Of Creatures (Gold Wake Press, 2011) and The Dying Bloom (Pangur Ban Party, 2009). His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, LITnIMAGE, Matchbook, PANK, Pear Noir!, and others. His blog is Dead End on Progressive Ave. (ericbeeny.blogspot.com).