There was nothing that could be done. His father was going to die.
- It was October; he was getting married in November.
- He was twenty two.
- His father was fifty four and was going to die because his heart was going to shoot a clot into his lungs like a bullet. His father was going to die by pulmonary embolism bullet from the heart.
- His father was going to be murdered by his heart. He was there in his room in the hospital visiting when it happened. When it did his father screamed. You could hear him way down the corridors of the hospital floor: “Help! Help!” He ran out of the room down the hall looking for the doctors and could hear him still screaming way down the hall where he found them in another room with another patient. "You have to come, something's wrong with my father!" he shouted at them, and ran back down the hall to his room again.
- They walked.
- He looked back down the hall to see if they were coming.…
they were..……walking.
- When they got there they told him to get out.
- He wouldn't.
- His father told him to go on do what they say.
- He wouldn't.
- Then one of the doctors said, “Look, you son of a bitch, get out, now!” So he went out into the hall and sat down in a chair. He heard them call for someone to bring some medical stuff to the room and shortly then saw a black man slowly pushing a cart up the hall slowly towards his room.…
- Death was the only thing in a hurry….
- Death and him….
- He hurried and went and called his mother and told her to get up there fast he's going fast. When he came back he peeked back in the doorway and saw the doctors give him a shot of something (adrenaline he later learned) directly into his heart and they told him again to “get out!”
- And he did and sat down again got back up again and looked in again and seen his father with his mouth wide open head cocked back sweat beads on his forehead his face purple.
- He sat back down then he got up and sat back down.
- He heard them pull the curtain around his bed. Then the doctor who called him a son of a bitch came out and told him he was sorry he's gone and said he was sorry he yelled at him. He told the doctor he called his mother and the doctor asked him if he wanted to come down the hall there's a TV down there while he waited for her. He told him no I'll be alright. They closed the door to his room. He went down to the lobby and waited.
- When his mother and brother came crying they took her in a room gave her a shot of something to calm her and ask her a bunch of questions while his brother and him had to go up and get their father's clothes and things. By that time they had already taken his father out of there down to the morgue. There was just the rumpled up bed and his personal stuff…. a pack of Tarytons his zippo lighter pajamas slippers the clothes he wore at admittance.
- Another sick man gray and white as winter long time patient in the same room asked: “Did he die?” He said yes. The old sick man gray and white as winter said: “I wish that was me.”
- He got married November twenty fifth his life truly beginning right after his father's truly ended fifty Octobers ago….
- And now he's old himself the memory old and white and gray as winter though still fresh as if yesterday of that dark hurtful day of his father's untimely day of death….his mother and brother gone now too the memory of their day of death growing old now….growing old and white and gray as winter.
