Not Talking

“I’m a neurosurgeon,” a man’s voice says when I finally decide to pull over and answer the unknown number that’s been calling, calling, calling while I’m driving and lost in a rainstorm. “Your aunt had a routine heart procedure at the hospital, and she’s now in recovery. But we’re concerned she’s not talking.”  

I don’t say anything. It’s blustery, and I’ve pulled to the side of one of the countless small roads that weave like veins through the cemetery. The gate I usually use is closed up tight. Rerouted, I can’t find my dad’s flat gravestone, one of hundreds peppered with rain and small flags for Veterans Day.  

“There’s a drug we can administer to clear her arteries if she had a small stroke, but there’s a risk of death, about six in a hundred.” I sit with those odds a second. If there is a blood clot. If there was a stroke.  

“I’m at a cemetery visiting my dad’s grave,” I share to explain my own not-talking. It’s been a few years now, but I think, One death at a time.  

“You’re dealing with a lot,” the neurosurgeon says. Unfortunately, he says, I need to decide fast due to the window for this drug, which is only a few hours. 

My mind starts and stops, unsteady as the rain. Like Dad, who lived to ninety-two, my aunt lives on her own. Unlike him, she’s not a talker. I have a hunch she is choosing not to talk. I can’t be sure. When does silence become a stroke?  

“Don’t give her the drug,” I say. Having lost Mom too early, I can’t bear the idea of giving her sister something that might quiet her completely. 

“That’s a good decision,” the neurosurgeon says.  

His words are kind, yet I’m certain he would’ve said this either way.  

I step outside the car and discover I’m not far from Dad’s grave. Here’s the flat stone of his marker, the dark-green plastic vase I fill with lavender hydrangeas from our yard. I long for his pragmatic advice, though all I hear is the wind in the cedars and words from the last years of his life, Take care of your aunt.   

Back in the car, I circle cemetery roundabouts to free myself of this place and its layers of fog. People with umbrellas and other drivers navigate slower than usual given the holiday, memories, and rain.  

Just before the cemetery gate, a seat belt warning beeps, steady as a hospital monitor. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Only a lightweight purse rests on the empty seat beside me. I click the seat belt to halt the sensor’s chiming. The shoulder strap across the soft gray covering looks like it’s holding a passenger.  

I drive into the not-knowing. The road is free of traffic blockages and lit by sunbreaks all the way to the hospital and to my aunt, who by the time I arrive will be talking just fine. 

Gail Folkins often writes about her roots in the American West. She is author of the memoir Light in the Trees, a 2016 Foreword Indies nature finalist, and Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit, a 2007 Foreword Indies popular culture finalist. Her middle grade, horse-themed novel Summer Farm is forthcoming with Trafalgar Square Books. Follow her on Instagram @gailfolkins and on her website.    

This essay is a Short Reads original.