I explain the danger of the lake surrounding my Dad’s houseboat in terms of oxygen—”you might fall all the way to the bottom. I won’t be able to find you. And you won’t have any oxygen.”

“Granddad is at the bottom, but I can see him,” says Yusuf, enunciating in a way that has taken him all his three years to arrive at, extra babyish, dragging the words.

We are making our way down the slippery dock. I am pushing the double stroller with the baby in it with one hand and have Yusuf’s hand in the other.

Granddad is at the bottom, if lack of oxygen is any indicator. Still, every day we navigate the treacherous dock to assess Granddad’s current state. Granddad, Dad, is at the end of a row of houseboats. There are sure-footed animals on all sides, but no resident children here.

The wooden dock and stairs which lead down to it are slippery and slow-going. I will never get the hang of how to do this with a baby and a small boy.

Today, the baby was asleep. Because what awaits us at the end of the dock makes me willing to take risks to keep a child asleep, I tried doing what I call the bumpety-bump in the double stroller down the stairs, and we started bumpety-bumping fast… It had not occurred to me until just then that they could plunge into the water while bumpety-bumping, and if they plunged, strapped in that stroller, that’d be it for them. And, alternately, possibly worse, what if only one fell in (if only the baby were in the stroller)? Dive in instantly, leave the other completely alone on a slippery dock with a railing too high for a child to reach let alone be held back by? It’s like imagining being on the Titanic with various horrific options presented all involving snap decisions and the loss of at least one child.

“Granddad is low on oxygen, Mama” says Yusuf. “But Granddad has a tank. He can go under the water to the bottom.”

I nod and squeeze his hand tighter. Fuck oxygen. We think about oxygen all the time now that Dad’s lungs aren’t working properly—duh. He has advanced emphysema. The tank only helps a little. He gets delirious from lack of oxygen. He was knocking on the doors of his neighbors the other night, requesting ice water. I had a brother we lost who did that too. I’d rather say he chose to go than he passed.

“Granddad can go to the bottom with his tank,” Yusuf repeats.

“Ha! Maybe he can.”  I try to present an upbeat world to my son where most things tarnished can be rubbed to a different state. Or at least your rubbing finger will be interestingly hot.

As we walk along, Yusuf finds a stick leaning against a post which he uses to take out spider webs attached to the railing.

We scan the dark water for turtles and beavers and the chunks of wood that can pass for either. We notice swarms of little fish that I believe are called “white clouds”.

Yusuf examines them as I hang on tightly to his little wrist, figuring the little hand might not be enough to hold onto if he slips, just five fat little fingers.

He leans over further, waving his stick. “Can I stir them?”

“Let’s stir the ones in front of Granddad’s”. I realign the stroller, so it’s on a straight course. I have Yusuf ring and ring the frog doorbell.

Dad won’t answer. Every move costs him. I use my key to unlock the door but opening it is another matter. The wooden door is swollen from moisture, so I ram it with my shoulder.

“Dad, it’s us,” I holler as cheerfully as possible. He grunts in reply. I dash into his room just to show my face, see his face. His face looks terrible, but I rush back to the boys anyhow. Next, I tape up pieces of paper over the sun carved into this side of the door. Yusuf fears it’s “watching” him, so he covers his face until I’m done. It’s starting to creep me out too. Why don’t the pieces stay up? Maybe Dad finds the sun cheerful or its being covered up, not. It would take a lot out of him to unwrap the sun day after day.

A houseboat, always the one at the end of the dock, is a cliché Seattle middle-aged divorced male fantasy. It’s a place to romanticize loneliness, bad weather and water. This one, like most, is cramped with the space absorbed by the main room, and no wonder, with its lake views on three sides. The best view is across the lake, the way we walked along the dock, the way Yusuf now faces, gently tapping the glass with his stick. This view is interrupted only by the thin lines of the sliding glass door. There’s a deck out there, but it has no railings. Instead, it is encircled by flowerpots full of mangy herbs. There’s a weathered table there as well.

Other times and occasions we have sometimes just sat out there surrounded by midnight blue lake, ate lobster and pasta with asparagus and cream, always seafood and pasta, drank Prosecco. I have felt it was a film of an Italian feast for the benefit of the tour boats that pass by. It seemed unreal then, as now, but the opposite type of unreal, charmed. The tourists waved to us, but we, tipsy and lazy and full, did not do more than look over. It felt like we were part of an amusement park ride like It’s a Small World and nothing more was required of us than to keep doing what we were doing, the same motions, as the boats passed by. Now in my memory it seems cardboardy and fake.

Now that I have children, now that my Dad is sick, now that my parents are divorced, my brother gone, so many moments are irretrievable. Also gone is the little curly-furred terrier who used to beg for the shrimp tails and run from the live crustaceans. Other than the absolute glory of its location and all the contact with the lake, there is nothing much else to it. You are tossed by storms or illegal wakes, or the lake is subdued, soothing, lapping, calm. But it is always out there, surrounding you on all sides, lurking.

I get tired of things.

Something that once seemed so fantastic eventually fails me, seeming dull and foul and drained of something essential, even draining me of something that could be essential?

I have no sense of how it really is. I have no practicality. My Dad lacks it too. He chain-smoked for 40 years, never really expecting the blow. And has it hit yet? Or is this our precious time to be savored, this time before the blow? I don’t know exactly how he feels about the houseboat anymore, but I know he doesn’t plan to budge. He accepts this watery grave.

Now I turn on the cable, to cartoons, something about a tuna, possibly a commercial. I plop Yusuf in the front (so he won’t pull the baby’s hair) and strap him in. I position the stroller sideways facing the TV.

They start to kick and fuss right away as if they grasp the adult horror of doing this to children. Yusuf pulls the stick out of nowhere and flings it over his head to the back seat. The baby grabs it and chews, then drops it on the floor. The wailing begins.

I have to do this. There is the lake. There are spilled pills around, bright and shiny ones. These two can’t be left alone together, regardless. Yusuf could poke the baby’s eyes out. Just like that. Yusuf would. There are thin lines of oxygen crossing each other all over the floor. Even I get tangled in them. The boys, unattended, might unplug Dad.

“Gimme my stick! You promised I could stir the white clouds!” Yusuf’s reaching for it with his feet. I forgot. I push it further away with my own foot.

Dad is propped upright on pillows. He’s not asleep, but this is how he sleeps now, a position allowing for more lung capacity. He’s connected to a tank the size of a garbage can by a long line that comes up behind him, splits, goes over his ears, then comes back together under his nose.

It allows him to travel around the house, creating tangled messes of plastic tubes everywhere. A hissing sound of escaping oxygen and clicks accompanies him, increasing in frequency the higher he sets his oxygen flow.

“How are you?” I ask. I don’t need to know everything. I can tell. But then he looks up and I recognize he’s worse. He has a bruise from his forehead down past his eye on one side, a black hole of a black eye.

“I didn’t sleep well. I think I fell out of bed.” He says, stuffing something behind the headboard while slowly moving out of bed. I know there are crunched up wrappers under his bed, that dark red share particular to Pall Malls.

His feet and legs are so swollen he can only wear slippers, no socks. His body’s swollen because his heart’s got extra duty now. Circulation suffers. It’s harder to pump. I lay out the jeans and the flannel shirt he asks for. Then I turn around while he struggles with the clothes. I am thankful now not to have the kind of relationship that would have me help him pull up his pants. And then I wish I did, wish I could… before I rush to check on the kids, not sleeping, still alive.

“Doughnuts,” Dad mutters when I return, “please.” This I can deliver.

Lately, Dad’s developed an appetite for sweets. This is kind of strange since he never had a sweet tooth. But I indulge it, of course and note his belly swell along all the physical changes in his body. I locate the box already on the bed. Half a chocolate glazed donut is all that remains. He can’t be discouraged. In fact, he finds another partial doughnut on his bedside stand. This one’s his favorite: plain glazed. He eats both with his shaking hands. Then he clips his oximeter to his finger, a cool little device that looks like a bandage, but costs more than a lifetime supply. It provides his oxygen saturation. Important word, somehow. I record his: seventy-six. I record his saturation at breakfast as well. A normal saturation is in the upper nineties. Mine’s ninety-nine. Always.

Dad wipes away crumbs and begins to write on a notepad, likely a note for the doctor. Dad is fond of his doc.

“I like him,” he says, stifling objections. Dad has agreed it would be better if Dr. Motto returned our emergency calls on those frequent occasions when Dad’s oxygen’s so low he might be dying, when it’s essential to know whether we ought to take him to the hospital, which is by my dad’s orders, only if he’s dying.

His hands shake holding his fancy fountain pen. Dad loves pens, and he always keeps several vintage ones in his pocket. This is the part of getting dressed I help him, transferring the pens to the new shirt. He’s scratched, almost illegibly, “Krispy Dreams” on the notepad. To that brief list, I add parameters, a word I expect to matter.

Dad loves making lists. Me too. We also share the love of pens. Though I lack his physical/technical/ know-how. I can’t fill my pens without getting ink everywhere. And that is nothing beside loading O2 canisters which I am now attempting. I am like a drunk version of my Dad—my Dad drunk doing this—loading up O2 canisters. However, he was often a drunk version of himself and now is not himself. He’s an air-deprived version, though he still gets drunk.

Of course, I happen to know, he smokes too. It’s flammable, though, this compressed O2. It’s all marked up like a tank of gasoline.

The scary diagram is all you get for guidance. There’s no gauge on any of these oxygen tanks to indicate when it’s running out. When I fill the portables, I’m supposed to be able to tell by the sound when they’re full. Fill one up too full and it freezes up. You can’t use it for a while. How long, I don’t know. The one thing you can tell, that’s obvious, is when it’s overfull. I’ve done it now. It’s frozen. Frost’s all over it. You also can’t tell exactly when it has run out of oxygen either. No indicator lights up or anything, but you won’t hear it clicking anymore.

Dad cranks it up for exertion then turns it back down again when he’s recovered. But he forgets and the oxygen goes fast on the high settings.

“All set, Dad?” I hug him and we set off for the doc’s office. But first to visit the spiders, the turtles, the clouds of clouds, so Dad can catch his breath.

We wait through one tank in the doctor’s office (luckily by now, the other has defrosted). Yusuf visits the water cooler every chance he gets. I remember as a child  being warned that you can drown from drinking too much water. But he’s spitting his out into the little catch basin below until it’s overflowing. The next time he moves toward the water cooler, I try to catch him between my legs while I hold the baby in my lap. Yusuf wiggles free, ducks under my chair, comes out from under Dad’s with a closed hand stretched forward “Here Granddad! This will make you better!” He opens his fat little fist and drops a purple pill into Dad’s hand. Dad reports it has a “w” on it, but I don’t know if it’s Wellbutrin or Warfarin or Wonka.

I watch my Dad switch to the second air canister. It’s not just that Dad’s time is under attack, of uncertain remaining, dwindling duration, yet almost certainly running out faster than the rest of ours. So is his oxygen. How long will it hold out?

I nurse the baby every time he cries. What was that about literally drowning in liquid? He looks ready to bust in the tummy and cheeks.

He’s sleeping for the moment, but Yusuf takes up the slack by jumping up and racing around, “Need a doctor!”

I pursue him, stopping at the desk to inquire about the queue. How long now? Will they be able to give Dad more oxygen if he runs out? No, it wouldn’t be “compatible” with the tanks they have. It might be a violation of the law. Obviously, oxygen is a controlled substance, dangerous and coveted, over which so many wars will be fought.

I’ve always liked doctors and nurses and the hospitals where they war against real enemies. I have this thing for heroes.

I walk back to Dad, depleted. I stuff both boys in the stroller and let them holler.

And then we get the go ahead. In the office at last, Dad and I are dreamy, the boys strollered, asleep.

Dr. Motto is all robotic briskness. For certain there’s no prospect of heroics, just ego. I imagine him washing his hands before we arrive and after we leave even though he won’t touch us.

“You look terrible,” he says to Dad.

“He shouldn’t have to come here to wait this long.” I say.

“I agree.” He says, looking at me. “He shouldn’t be coming here at all.”

I get it now. He’s not on our side, the side of heroes. Dad and the doctor haven’t been communicating.  Dr. Motto has been playing the wise sensei so I’ll have to keep asking whaddyou mean. Dad likes the sensei master crap. While vague, it sounds wise, works for him.

“Whaddyou mean?”

“At this point we should focus on his comfort.”

Pause for the sensei. My silent what do you mean?

“He should stay home.”

I find this comfort word distasteful.

“I don’t need to come see you?” asks Dad, delighted.

“Right,” says Dr Motto.

The appointment could be over right now if we let it…

“My office can arrange for caretakers who can visit you at home.”

Dad looks stupefied, black-eyed and stupefied, confused but alert. “And they can…supervise my care? That’s enough?”

“They can make you comfortable.”

I determine right then not to mention Pall-Mall slip-ups, even under oath.

He’s given up on my Dad.

“But,” I manage, trying hard to wedge myself into their conversation. I stop short of the next word trying to remember something I’d written down. On my sheet, in my hands, near the illegible Krispy Dreams, there it was, that excellent word, parameters. Numbers…

“But can you tell me at what point we need to go to the hospital. The other day his oxygen saturation was in the sixties, and you didn’t call us back. We need to know when to call and when to just take him to the hospital.”

“It’s not about the numbers—it’s about how he’s feeling.” Dr. Motto says, but this seems wrong. This doc’s the robot. We’re the ones with hearts and guts.

“How he’s feeling? But he’ll be delirious? Do you mean how he’s acting—because if he’s delirious and hallucinating from lack of oxygen, he won’t want to go.”

“First of all,” Doctor Motto interrupts, “it’s not about oxygen.” He sighs.

Carbon dioxide is what causes hallucinations. Dad’s lungs aren’t expelling it. He’s filling up with this bad gas.  But why tell us it’s not about oxygen now? It has become all about oxygen for us, all my imaginings. I never considered the bad gas.

Dr. Motto stretches his lips into a smile and delivers, “And he doesn’t have to go to the hospital.”

Dad’s mouth drops open.

“But what will happen?” I ask.

“If he goes to the hospital, they’ll put him on a respirator. He doesn’t want that.”

“I don’t like those,” says dumb Dad. I know how he fights to pull it off, how he begs for help with his eyes and desperate mumbling, the terrible odds every time that he’ll never make it off. I know the longer you stay on the respirator, the more likely you’ll never come off. They blow out your lungs or something. Lungs are fragile and his are in tatters. I know with his stats, his numbers are such, so terrible, he could walk into a hospital right now and they’d force it on him. But somehow, he breathes and his heart doesn’t collapse or whatever hearts do under that pressure. It will, of course. Something will happen, time and numbers, floating out there, out there but unknown to us.

“But what will happen?” I ask.

The boys of all miracles are still sleeping. Their fat sticky angel faces press against the sides of the double stroller, the baby sleep nursing, Yusuf deeply breathing air.

The doctor’s face remains blank. “It will be comfortable, even pleasant. Then there will be a little discomfort, but this will pass quickly.”

Dad’s nodding rhythmically.

“Discomfort?” I say. “When he suffocates, you mean?”

Dad’s nodding ceases. His eyes move frantically between us. Dr. Motto’s eyes make brisk contact with mine.

“Yes,” says Dr. Motto’s.

“But he doesn’t want to die.”

Dr. Motto says nothing. Dad keeps looking from one to the other of us as if between us we are determining his fate, his “outcome” in doc parlance. I feel that too, that we are bitterly negotiating the specifics, the unfolding of Dad’s “comfortable” outcome.

“No!” howls Dad, my dispassionate Dad. His bruised eyes at last absorbing everything. “Put me on the respirator!”

He looks right at Dr. Motto. “I didn’t think we were there yet.”

I burst out, “You didn’t check his stats. How do you know where he’s at?”

“I don’t need to,” says Dr. Motto. “I can tell.”

“You look bad,” he adds to Dad.

“How long?” asks Dad.

Dr. Motto shrugs. “I’d guess a couple weeks, but I don’t know precisely.”

Dad gets up and stumbles out.

As I follow with the stroller, I think I hear the doctor whisper or hiss something or maybe he’s washing his hands, but when I turn around, I see he is signing something. Of course, he doesn’t need to wash his hands. He didn’t touch us or anything else or come near us even. He has perfect control. He never intended to touch anyone today. And he didn’t.

My Dad is full of crap and denial, but that’s okay. I feel him. He wears his tenacity like a perfect old robe. Anyone ought to be able to tell what he wants and doesn’t want. Who knows what all they failed to communicate in previous sessions.

Dad’s hands are shaking. I’ve never seen him look worse. He dragged himself here. We’ve all dragged ourselves here to discover his doctor’s ready for Dad to say no to the respirator and die with a dignity Dad lack.

“I don’t like him after all,” says Dad.

Damn, I used to love doctors, but I never ever loved them all. I don’t have so many air pockets left…CO2 pockets…the dreamy escapes.

We get Dad back home—God knows how—I’m not hearing the clicks and hisses. I doubt he has oxygen but there is some kind of hope or prospect of momentum that we’ve got now. The boring part of dying has receded. Maybe that’s the worst part even—the part that keeps you smoking. Now there’s a project—find a doc Dad respects, a doc for Dad to die with. The reverse may be the trick though, find a doc who respects Dad.

Since I’m not practical and don’t get practical, I keep going over it in my head. Is this practical? Is there any such thing? If not, is it wrong to do an impractical jig of denial with my old man? I have never really done much of anything with him. I have never danced with my dad, for instance, been whirled around in his arms or been interrogated about whom I was dating or even had him inquire. No, I’ve not been overprotected or even held very tightly. He never seemed to particularly notice or care that I was a girl or later, a woman. To his dubious credit, he was never there for his son either. This is our only dance, me propping him up as he dies his way.

Anything can be made to seem practical and anyone tricked who wants to be. I can run circles ‘round the practicals. There are infinite arguments.

At last, for once, finally, I am proud of my bad dad. A rhyme comes into my head, Oh that Dad is bad, that Dad is a cad, but at last, at last, I am proud of that bad bad Dad. I’ve been reading too much Dr. Seuss lately.

My brother rushed to death at 21. Is that cowardly?

Dad’s too cowardly to go even a little before his time. But even that cowardly course begins to look brave. It’s all unavoidably brave. I feel—right now—won’t last—that we are all heroes. We’re all fucked, we’re all brave, the smokers, the neglected daughters, the tenacious parasites, the suicides, the shitty moms and shitty dads.

Once I succeed in getting the boys and the stroller to the top of the stairs, I give myself a quick little squeeze and breathe out the bad gas.

Wendy Rasmussen is a Seattle writer who, along with her young sons, was a caretaker of sorts to her father, fictionalized in this story. Her father went on to receive a double lung transplant ( but that’s another story of heroes). She always begins stories by writing the end. Endings thrill her. The New York Times ( Modern Love), Glimmer Train, Seventeen, the Vassar Review and Zymbol have published her writing. She is working on a story collection but doesn’t yet know how it will begin.