Inklings 2020

TO MY FATHER Rogelio Munoz-Franco The first time I visited you in the ICU, I didn’t know what to expect. Within twenty minutes, I knew I never wanted to return to one. The bland and lifeless tile floor matched the equally dreadful walls, and the massive light panels on the ceiling awkwardly lit up the room. The machines surrounding the bed beeped, gurgled, and groaned. The air was cold, and I wished I had brought a sweater. “What’s happening, Mamá?” “I don’t know,” she replied. “Will he be okay?” I asked, trying to get an answer. “I don’t know.” She clutched her violet Avon bag to her lap. I retreated behind my phone and saw it was Monday, July 10th, 2017. I remembered that I had to write an introductory paragraph for an essay assignment. “Do you have any homework today?” Mamá asked me. “No,” I lied. I didn’t want to leave just yet. I repeatedly glanced over to the monitor on the heart rate machine that loomed over you with its incessant beeping. On the televisionMamá and I watched telenovelas, where the main characters die via a sudden ceasing of the heartbeat while the machines emit a sound of death. Families surround them and howl in grief. My brother Vince was also there. I tried not to mind him murmuring to himself as he paced back and forth on the other side of the room. Because he is not my mother’s son, he and my mother have always had a rocky relationship. Since he moved out, he and mama don’t have much fuel left from which to start a fire.Vince’s aura of bitterness and impatience, my pending homework, and being confined in a room smaller than my bedroom with four times the people made the apparent lack of nurses and doctors in this miserable hospital all get to me. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything? Here you were, probably dying in front of your