Home...The Other One IV

You can see the smoke billowing out of the smoke stacks from miles out of the city and my anxiety clutched my gut. Joseph was whistling away to some Irish song, completely oblivious to how much I absolutely hate going home. I still know my way around the city, it seems so much smaller than I remember; the long walk up the hill to the convenience store was now only about a block away and I could cover that much ground in a couple of minutes...but back in the day it seemed to take forever. The laundromat my mother used to go to is just down the block next to the Polish market and other than everything looking a little worse for wear not much had changed and that felt sad to me.

We pulled up to the hospital and I asked Joseph to wait for me; I thought about telling him to go on but I wasn't sure what I was walking into...my father has been dying for quite some time. He parked in the almost vacant lot and walked in with me. We each grabbed a coffee and I ordered my father a tea and Diet Pepsi...those along with cigarettes are his staples of nutrition. We were standing at the elevator watching the floor numbers count down when he looked over at me, "Want me to come up with you?"I smiled but shook my head no, I wanted him to come with me but I don't know what the other side of the door holds for me and right now I want to do it alone. "No problem", he pointed to a chair in the corner, "I'll be over there when you're done and we can get something to eat." I nodded again, this time in agreement. I gave him one last smile as the elevator doors closed...shouldn't he be fishing?