Read Online What Happens After Dark by Jasmine Haynes - Free Book Online

closed her eyes to let him do his business.
    “Bree” her mother shrieked, “he’s getting it all over.”
    He was peeing on the bathmat, the seat, the tank, even the little row of flowered plates her mother had hung above the toilet. It was everywhere.
    “Bree, you have to hold it.”
    Please don’t make me, Daddy.
    She wanted to scream at her mother. But she grabbed his shriveled penis, forced it down, held on until there were only dribbles into the toilet water.
    She was going to be sick all over the floor.
    “Help me zip him up, Bree.” Her mother was now close enough to shove him back in his pants, and Bree held the bottom of the zipper as her mom tugged up the tab.
    “I’ll clean up the mess,” her mom said.
    Then her father turned, as if suddenly he was going to move under his own power. And his foot caught. On her mother’s shoe, the bath rug, who knew? He started to go down, and Bree grabbed, pulled, but he was like a dead weight, and her mother was shouting, stumbling back herself, knocking her hip on the countertop. Jesus, Jesus. Bree couldn’t hold him; she just could not hold on, and they went down in a tangle of limbs, his knees cracking on the floor, Bree’s back slamming into the edge of the porcelain bathtub.
    Her mother was crying. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
    He was half on her legs, and Bree couldn’t move him. Was he dead? Had she killed him, letting his neck snap when he went down? God, oh God. She wanted to lay there and die, never get up, let it be over. Please, please, God, I can’t do this.
    Then she heard him curse. “Goddamn bitches.”
    And she would not let him beat her.
    “He’s okay, Mom, we’re okay. We just need to get him up.” Once he was back in the bed, she would never let him up again.
    She pushed his legs off hers, got to her hands and knees.
    It took fifteen minutes, her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her father’s breathing was labored, but they got him back into the bed.
    “Have some water, dear.” Her mother bent over him, putting a straw into his mouth. He sucked like a child with a sippy cup. When he was done, she fit the oxygen tubing into his nostrils and turned on the canister. “You rest.” She patted his arm.
    What about me? Bree wanted to shout at her mother. What about how I feel?
    Her heart still pounding from the ordeal, the terror of that moment in the bathroom, she followed as her mother tiptoed out of the room.
    She was so good to him, so patient. Bree didn’t know how she did it. Sometimes, she almost hated her mother for always doing everything he said. For always taking his side. For always making excuses for him.
    But she couldn’t expect her mother to change now. That was the past; it was all over. Now, she was the one to blame for leaving her mom all alone with him. Her mother was simply coping the way she’d always coped, and Bree was the shitty daughter.
    “I’m sorry,” Bree said in the kitchen. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.” She hadn’t wanted to believe when her mother kept calling to say he was going down fast.
    Her mom patted her arm just as she’d patted Bree’s father in the bedroom. “It’s all right, dear. This whole thing has been very fast. You’re right, we need the hospital bed.”
    “And a bedpan. Even between us, we can’t get him to the bathroom.”
    “What about a walker?” her mom suggested.
    “I don’t know, the carpet could catch on it.” If he fell . . . Bree hated to think about it happening when she wasn’t there to help. “We’re safer if he doesn’t get up at all.”
    Her mother squeezed her arm, sniffed away the last of her fright. “I don’t know what I would have done when he fell if you hadn’t been here.”
    “I’m so sorry.” Her eyes ached, but Bree didn’t cry. “I’ll clean up the bathroom while you call hospice to order the bed.”
    He was already asleep again when she went back in there. She pulled the curtains against the afternoon light,