Nicotine Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I’m here, honey,” she says. “Go back to sleep. I love you!”
    Norm rolls his right hand from side to side.
    â€œI haven’t seen him move his hands in weeks,” Penny exclaims.
    â€œOh, your kitty misses you, too,” Amalia tells him. She pulls Schubert from his carrier on the floor and seats him on the bedspread facing Norm. Holding his forelegs tight against his rib cage, she shoves him toward Norm’s hand for petting.
    Very slowly, Norm raises both hands and closes them around the cat’s throat as though to strangle him. His thumbs press hard on Schubert’s trachea.
    The cat snarls and scratches him deeply on top of his right forearm.
    â€œFuck,” Penny says, moved by her father’s display of physical effort and will.
    â€œOh my god,” Amalia says, moved by the blood that streams from his torn flesh. Norm does not wince or make a sound. His hands drop to the blanket. His right forearm gapes like a split pomegranate, and he seems to fall asleep. Schubert escapes and hides under the bed.
    Penny is entirely sure—100 percent certain—that he was trying to communicate to Amalia that she should strangle him. That he does not trust her, Penny, to carry out such a wish, but that he wouldn’t put it past her mother.
    â€œHere, kitty, kitty, kitty,” Amalia says, on her knees on the floor. “I should never have put this poor kitty in the car. Now he thinks he’s at the vet!”
    THE NEXT MORNING, NORM’S WOUND is badly infected. A spike of sepsis reaches to his shoulder. Under a thick wad of bandaging, his arm continues to bleed.
    â€œBlood poisoning a-going to kill him now,” an orderly tells Penny. “This man got no immune system.” He smoothes a fresh sheet with his hand while two nurses support Norm, who has been rolled over onto his side. His skin, soft as silk and drained of muscle and fat, lies draped over his skeleton like a shroud.
    Soon after, the assistant deputy hospice director surprises Penny by inviting her to sit down in the foyer between the baby grand piano and the flickering gas hearth. “I spoke with your mother,” she says, “and we’re discharging him to home hospice this afternoon. He’s had no events requiring intervention. His vital signs are good.”
    â€œYou are kidding me,” Penny says.
    â€œWe admitted him expecting a bleed-out. His platelets are minimal, but there simply hasn’t been sufficient trauma. He hasn’t been eating or getting up. At this stage we anticipate death from kidney failure, assuming he doesn’t start drinking again. I would strongly advise against intubation or intravenous fluids.”
    â€œRight, right,” Penny says. “No painkillers because they hasten death, and no fluids because they prolong life.”
    The assistant deputy hospice director places a hand on Penny’s shoulder. “This must be hard on you.”
    â€œIt’s harder on him!”
    â€œIt gets easier. He’s going to die fairly quickly of systemic sepsis, with that arm.”
    Norm’s advance directive—an end game far too much like Final Jeopardy for comfort—rejects antibiotics.
    Penny bites her lip and says nothing.
    SHE SITS WITH A SOCIAL worker in a cramped office behind the reception desk and discusses the equipment and assistance she will need in Morristown.
    She will take delivery of an adjustable bed just like the bed in the hospice. Twice a day, a nurse’s aide will help her change Norm’s diaper. She will learn to administer the “e-kit” in emergencies.
    Penny agrees to everything, and the social worker makes a phone call. She asks Penny whether anyone is at home, because the bed is already on the truck.
    Penny retrieves her bag and the laptop from Norm’s room—he is sound asleep—and drives to Morristown to wait for the bed.
    She clears space in his library, the only room on the