Using truck driver speak always, always, always makes me laugh. It always has, since I was a little girl.

Always.

Except for today. Today it’s not funny. And the reason is because my father always, always, always answers right away.

Always.

Except for today.

Like I’ve swallowed a lump of lead, the pit of my stomach feels heavy with dread. Something is terribly wrong. I can feel it like cold breath on the nape of my neck. The skin on my arms pebbles with chills.

“Daddy?” I call again. I know there’s anxiety in my voice and that I probably don’t sound very much like myself. It’s hard to speak past the fingers of fear that are squeezing my throat.

Finally another crackle of static is followed by a voice, but it’s not my father’s. “Who this?” the man asks, his English broken.

Fear erupts into terror. “This is Jenna Theopolis. My father owns this property. I need to speak with him please.”

“The men just now get here. They take him to hospital. Can’t talk right now.”

The line goes dead again.

And panic sets in.

I’m alone. I have little information and a nearly unbearable weight on my chest. And my father is out in the orchard. Somewhere. Hurt.

My heart is hammering against my ribs, threatening to break them into tiny pieces if I don’t find out what’s going on. Taking the stairs two at a time, I race to my room and throw on some clothes. Less than five minutes later, I grab the walkie that never moves and I hit the front door, fully dressed and ready to scour every inch of the orchard for my father if need be.

Something tells me I should wait, that going out isn’t the best thing to do, but I ignore that voice. I’m not a “wait” kind of person; I’m an “act” kind of person. For better or worse, to make a move or to move on, I act. And now, I’m acting. I’m going in search of my father.

Einstein and I stop at the fence. I squat and grab his face in my hands, looking directly into his somber, intelligent brown eyes. “Take me to Daddy, Einstein. Take me to him.”

With a bark, Einie takes off running East. I’m hot on his heels, oblivious to the tears streaming down my face and the ache in my legs as I dodge trunks and branches to pursue the dog as he runs through the trees rather than up the lanes between them.

Another bark and Einstein abruptly cuts left down a row. I hurry to catch him. When I step out into the opening, I see a picker leading the two paramedics toward me, back in the direction of the house. Between the emergency workers is the stretcher. Atop it is my father.

“Daddy!” I yell, my voice cracking with emotion.

Three pairs of eyes are watching me as I race toward them. My father doesn’t move.

When I reach them, they don’t stop. They are walking briskly. They don’t even slow down long enough to let me talk to my father.

I walk alongside the stretcher. My dad is lying prone, covered in a white sheet and strapped in so that he can’t move or fall off. An oxygen mask is covering the lower part of his face, a face that’s unusually ashen. His eyes are closed and, when I reach out to touch the top of the arm closest to me, the lids don’t even flicker.

“Daddy?” He doesn’t respond. His eyelashes don’t flutter. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t move a muscle.

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

“What happened?” I ask in general, speaking to anyone who will answer me.

One of the EMTs answers. I can tell by his kind expression that he’s trying to be gentle, which upsets me all the more. What is he hiding?

“We can’t be sure, ma’am, but considering what this man has said, it sounds like he fell off a ladder and hit his head. We won’t know anything for sure until we get him to the hospital. He’s been unresponsive up to this point.”

The picker falls back to walk closer to me. “He fall off ladder. Doesn’t wake up. We call emergency.”

In my head, I can picture it. The first pick of the season is done by my father. It’s something he and my mother apparently used to do together, every single year without fail. And they always used the same ladder, the ladder that had been used by my mother’s family for generations. That damn rickety, old, wooden ladder.

That ladder, that ritual meant the world to them. And it might have cost me mine.

Einstein leads us back to the gate. I don’t leave my father’s side as they carry him to the ambulance. With a flick, the paramedics lower the legs on the stretcher to let it rest on the pavement while they open the doors to the back.

No one looks at me. No one says a word. I’m terrified.

In shock, I wait while the paramedics collapse the stretcher legs and push my father into the empty rear compartment of the squad. One EMT climbs in behind him.

“You’re welcome to ride along, if you’re comfortable going now. If you’d rather drive, that’s fine, but we need to leave now. Right now,” he says emphatically.

I process very little of what he’s saying. “My keys,” I say, dazedly. I know I need to go get them.

The EMT nods. “Just meet us there.”

I turn on shaky legs to run into the house and get my purse. When I re-emerge, the ambulance is just pulling out. I climb into my car to follow.

My legs feel numb where they dangle below me. My foot feels leaden where it presses on the gas pedal. My hands feel frozen where they grip the steering wheel. Nothing seems to be working right. My thoughts are jumbled and dark, foreboding. Ominous.

In the back of my mind, I keep thinking there must be some mistake. Or that I’m still dreaming, that this can’t be happening. That my father can’t be hurt badly, that he must not have heard me calling his name. Surely he didn’t or he would’ve opened his eyes.

But he was so still. So very, very still.

My mind churns, mixing and remixing my emotions into a thick paste that rational thought can’t penetrate. But one feeling lurks behind all the rest, like a still, black backdrop. It’s the horrific, bone-deep, gut-wrenching certainty that something is so wrong that my life will never be the same again.

Never.

********

At the hospital, the dreaded hospital again, I follow the signs that say EMERGENCY all the way up to two wide, wooden doors that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Still confused by what the morning has held for me, I stare blankly at the sign until constructive thought can get a foothold.

With a muted click, the doors swing open and two nurses emerge. They smile at me as though my father isn’t in a room back there, possibly slipping away from this world, taking with him the only anchor I have left.

As they continue past me, I slip through the doors, unnoticed. I make my way slowly through the labyrinth of identical halls with identical smells and identical workers, my eyes constantly searching for the familiar face of my father.

Unremarkable door after unremarkable door goes by and still no sign of my father. I reach the end of the hall and turn the corner. Up ahead, I see the nurse’s station to my right. As I walk toward it, I pass a room with a flurry of activity inside. Nurses are shuffling quickly in and out, carrying different things. A harsh male voice is barking orders, demanding different things. I realize as I watch that I don’t need to ask anyone to help me find my father anymore.

I’ve found him.

The excruciating ache in my chest tells me so.

I stop just outside the room, staring through the window, watching the scene like I might watch a train wreck. A train wreck where my whole world is lying on the tracks.

I hear the word “clear” followed by an odd tapping sound. I know what it is. I’ve never heard it before, but I can guess. It’s the machine that shocks a dying heart back to life.

I stand, mute and motionless, listening, watching, crumbling inside as the commotion dies down and I hear the same male voice, not so harsh anymore, pronounce time of death.

Like a silent movie, somber faces file out of the room, one by one. Some look at me in question as they pass; others don’t meet my eye. It seems they know who I am. Maybe they can feel the agony coming off me in waves.

Finally, the doctor emerges. I open my mouth to speak, to tell him who I am. I hear someone say my name. But surely that’s not my voice, that broken sound. Surely not.

But it must be. The sad look of sympathy on the doctor’s face tells me so. It says that he’s the bearer of bad news. And he knows he’s delivering it to me.

His words come to me from a long distance, like he’s speaking from the other side of a large, empty room. I see him reach out compassionately and lay a hand on my arm. I feel his touch like I’m wearing layer upon layer of thick wool.

He takes me by the shoulders and turns me around, leading me to a tiny private room tucked away in a quiet corner of one hall. The soft blue furniture and soothing taupe walls are clearly meant to calm, but I feel only desperation.

Devastation.

Heartbreak.

I watch his lips move as he explains to me what happened. A few words echo through my mind in a disjointed way, things like basilar skull fracture, fatal and instant.

I think he asks me about other relatives to notify and someone I can stay with, but I can’t be sure. Like a radio with bad reception, I’m fading in and out of the world around me.

I hear that voice again, the girl’s voice, the broken one. It asks to see “him.” It spills my thoughts into the air, but it’s nearly unrecognizable to me.

I watch the doctor nod solemnly. Then he’s touching me again, leading me back through the halls into a now-empty room. Well, not completely empty. It’s only empty of the living.

Gentle hands position me at my father’s side then push me down into a chair. And then I’m alone. With my father. One last time. To say things he’ll never hear and to beg for things he can never give.

His hand seems small and pale when I slide my fingers over the cold palm. He’s always seemed larger than life, even his hands. But that’s no longer the case. They’re tiny in the face of death. Everything is.

I lean forward in my seat and brush my fingertips down his cheek. It’s firm and cool. Still. Lifeless. Never again will I see the smile that graced his face so often. Never again will I see the love that shined from his eyes. Never again will I hear the voice that soothed my worried soul.

Never.

That’s a word I’ll have to get used to.

All the things I took for granted, all the things I thought there was plenty of time for, all the things that carried a tag that read someday, now reads never. All the some days and one days, all the maybes and ifs are now nevers. Never is the new constant. The only thing that will always be true now is that he’s gone. He’ll always be gone.

I let my head fall onto his shoulder one last time. The spreading wetness beneath my cheek makes no impression on me. Nothing does.

I don’t know how long I’ve been like this when a nurse comes to help me to my feet. She explains something about having to get him ready for the funeral home and then tells me I need to get some rest.

Something in me says that’s funny—rest. Rest? Who could rest at a time like this? And what kind of person would even suggest it?

My radio fades in and out again, taking the nurse and her silly words with it. Absently, I wonder if I’ll be able to experience true rest ever again. Right now, I’m not even sure I’ll be able to experience true feeling ever again, much less rest. Or peace. Or happiness. Only numbness. Blessed numbness.

She leads me to the door and I look back, back at my father one more time. And then, with the one step that takes me from the room, I’m as gone from him as he is from me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO- Rusty

I’m surprised when I see Mom come back through the door. It’s Saturday, so she stayed home most of the day, stopping in after lunch to see me before she went downstairs to catch up on some paperwork and then go back home. Only she didn’t. She’s here instead.

“I thought you were going home?” She doesn’t answer me right away, which gives me time to notice her expression. She’s got bad news. I can see it in the way her mouth pinches in at the corners. “Please don’t tell me they’ve decided to keep me another week.”

“Son, I’ve got some bad news.”

“Well? What is it?”

There’s a long pause and a sigh before she answers. “I was going over some reports with the unit manager down in the ER when they brought in Cris Theopolis.”

Using my good arm, I push myself up in bed. “What? What happened?”

“Evidently he was in an accident at the orchard. He passed away, honey.”

I throw back the covers and climb quickly out of bed. I don’t hesitate. Not for one second, not for one heartbeat.

“Jeff, listen to me. I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but you need to stay put until they let you go.”

“To hell with that! I’m going.”

I walk to the closet to get the clothes Mom brought me a few days ago.

“Jeffrey, this could set you back. It could—”

Angrily, I whirl toward her. “I don’t give a shit, Mom. It’s Jenna.” When she does nothing but stare at me, I repeat. “It’s Jenna.”

I pull on the jeans I was going to wear when they let me go. Turns out I’m going to wear them today.

When I go find Jenna.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE- Jenna

I hear the honking again. I wonder vaguely why people keep honking at me. I’m driving straight. I’m within the lines.

Another car goes flying past as though I’m standing still. It’s then I realize that I am. Again. For the fourth time, I’ve stopped in the middle of the road and not even realized it until a car honks its horn angrily and then speeds by like a bat out of hell.