2009 Short Story Outstanding Entry

Voula Adamopoulos

Breathe

I sit up unable to breathe. The red numbers on the alarm clock flash 2.16. I will myself to fill my lungs with vital oxygen. An act which ordinarily requires no effort or thought. But tonight no matter how hard I try, I cannot get my body to do as I want. An invisible weight settles on my chest and refuses to budge. Ever so slowly, quiet panic enters the room.

I imagine calling an ambulance to take me to the hospital where my father is waiting to die. The pneumonia is slowly taking away his breath. The old man’s friend, is what the oncologist called it. My father will die comfortably. This death deprived of oxygen, means avoiding the slow, painful alternative. A death from cancer, which begun in my father’s prostate five years ago and now invades his bones.

My father was admitted to hospital three days ago. I sit with him for hours in a tiny cubicle with my mother and watch him drift in and out of consciousness, waiting for a doctor. When his dose of methadone is due late afternoon, the emergency nurse advises us he cannot take it, without being seen by a doctor first. The familiar fear returns. He needs this medication to quell the pain. For two years my father laboured through an ascending order of pain management drugs. He has earned the right to methadone, unlike the addicts who use it recreationally.

I threaten to administer the methadone myself, if the nurse does not. I have become my father’s protector. A self-appointed advocate of sorts, endeavouring to keep the bone cancer pain away. Yet if medications fail, I fear I maybe the one required to execute some lethal action to end my father’s pain. I do not allow myself to think how I might do this.

The morning my father is transferred to hospital still lucid, I do not know it is the last time I will argue with doctors. Nor can I know I have had my final conversation with him.

“Dad I’ve spoken with Dr. Martino. He says to call the ambulance. OK?”

”Mmm,” my father resigned.

“Dad, can you hear me? Did you understand what I said?”

“Yes”. He pauses, adds softly.  “OK.”

These are the last words my father utters to me. In the oncology ward the following day, the registrar informs me my father is dying. I manage words through tears of acceptance.

“But how do you know for sure?”

I listen to her response but cannot hear the words. I am overwhelmed by the finality. Despite years of preparation, watching my father deteriorate, knowing he is dying – it is now happening too fast.

I read somewhere that the last sense to falter for the dying is their hearing. For the next two days I visit my father and talk. Simple words spoken urgently. I love him. He is brave. I will look after my mother, his wife of over 40 years. I am trying to unburden him of life’s responsibilities. To cast him free and allow him to die. When I ask him to summon the strength he has shown through years of illness to make his final journey towards serenity, he issues a loud moan. A longing to acknowledge the passing of his life, and to tell me he loves me. But he cannot make the words.

Over the four days it takes my father to die, I leave my crying for the privacy of a hospital corridor. I cry because I cannot endure his final days of life. A life reduced to a white hospital room, with drips for pain relief and a catheter to drain his urine. I cry for the indignity of his death and his absence from my life and that of my children’s. The birth of his second grandchild, a baby girl, only seven months away.

I cry mostly because I want him to leave his decaying body - to be rid of it, and the cancer that has bought a proud man to tears. Watching my father cry from breakthrough pain is unbearable. It is a pain that no amount of medication can hold back, one that bursts the floodgates of its own will, like a swollen river. To feel helpless in alleviating this pain is intolerable. Finally I cry because despite being 39 years old, a wife and mother, I am still a little girl who needs her father.

On the fourth night, moments after midnight, the telephone cuts through my exhausted sleep and pronounces my father dead. As my father stops breathing, my lungs fill with life giving air. My chest no longer feels heavy - he and I are free.

I walk out the back door to the car to visit the hospital one last time. A balmy night, fragrant from the jasmine growing next to the carport. Like Greek summer nights. I imagine my father transcending death and travelling to Greece, the homeland from which he immigrated 42 years ago and never returned.

He sits in his beloved Platia Lonia, the square of his youth. An earnest young man, drinking with friends and dreaming of his future. It is the perfect night for my father to depart. I think he would be pleased.

For Michael Adamopoulos (10/4/29 – 13/3/06)

Judge's Comment

A beautifully written story distinguished by its clarity, honesty, moments of poetic expression, and a great ending: ‘I walk out the back door to the car to visit the hospital one last time. A balmy night, fragrant from the jasmine growing next to the carport. Like Greek summer nights. I imagine my father transcending death and travelling to Greece, the homeland from which he immigrated 42 years ago and never returned. He sits in his beloved Platia Lonia, the square of his youth. An earnest young man, drinking with friends and dreaming of his future. It is the perfect night for my father to depart. I think he would be pleased.’

Judge: Arnold Zable Author

Short Story Commendations:

Angela Allan    Equal Second
Andrew Parker    Equal Second
Beverley Tong    Equal Third
Ranjana Srivastava    Equal Third
Jen Connelly    Highly Commended
Tracey Cromby    Highly Commended
Heath Forsyth    Highly Commended
Robyn MacKenzie    Highly Commended
Aislinn Andrews    Commended
Robert Baldwin    Commended
Aleesah Darlison    Commended
Glenice Duffy    Commended
Yvonne Fein    Commended
Glyn Howitt    Commended
Habib Maarbani    Commended
Claire Manuell    Commended
Maris Rose Morton    Commended
Sue Polites    Commended
Sallie Ramsay    Commended
Clancy Tucker    Commended
Robbie Wesley    Commended
Niki Wetherall    Commended

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