The cool air flooded out of the building and sent my long hair sailing back over my shoulders as I walked through the automatic sliding doors. Though it had been four years since I had last walked through the doors of Mercy Hospital, the smell of alcohol, urine, and flowers still stung my nostrils and flooded my senses with loss.
The waiting room was the same as I remembered it, cheery enough, with a small gift shop and pastel green and pink wallpaper hanging from the walls. Flowers and magazines covered every end table next to uncomfortable looking couches. I crossed the room, forcing a smile for the receptionist as I passed her, and hit the up button next to the elevator. As I waited, I read the sign stating which departments were held on what floors. The seventh floor was my destination, the floor where new babies and mommies rested and recovered. My cousin was there, wrapped in his own little blue blanket and tiny hat covering what was sure to be dark hair and eyes, just like his mom and dad. He was named after my grandpa, James Mikesell, and would have been my grandpa’s first great grandchild. My grandpa would have been so excited to hold him.
I looked out the window to the sunny summer day. It was so hot that the pavement outside appeared to be steaming. One of the few defining moments of my childhood happened on a day like this one, with cement hot enough to turn little bare feet bright red and a sun hot enough to turn the rest of my skin a similar color.

______

I was sitting in my pink flowered swimsuit on the hot concrete of the driveway, my legs stretched out in front of me, my chipped pink toenails pointing to the sky, reflecting on the brilliant defeat the boys had just suffered at the hands of the neighborhood girls in yet another water fight, due of course to my brilliant trickery. I was one of the older girls in the neighborhood, and because of this, I felt that every winning water fight was because of my presence and my presence alone, though this was certainly not the case.
As I looked down the driveway to the road in front of my house, I felt my legs shake as the ground beneath me began to rumble. The leaves on the trees began to tremble, and I could swear that a flowerpot fell over and crumpled on my neighbor’s front porch from the intense rattling that continued to grow more and more intense with every passing second. They were coming.
I got up and started to run, my bare feet burning as they smacked against the hard, scalding pavement. I had to hide until I had an excuse. Something, anything, to get me out of it.
“Paige,” I heard my mom call from the front door. “Come inside. Your grandparents just pulled up.”
“Crap,” I whispered. Slowly, I turned around and walked back to the driveway with my head down, looking at the pavement below.
When I got to my driveway, I lifted my head for the first time and looked at the familiar sight. It was a monster, a big white monster, complete with an “I Love Fishing” bumper sticker. The shadow it made almost covered my entire driveway. But the real problem sat behind the white monster. It looked pretty harmless at first, but I had already spent too many boring afternoons in it this summer. It was a little red fishing boat, my grandpa and grandma’s pride and joy.
I walked inside where my grandparents and mom were standing around the island in the kitchen. I gave both of my grandparents a hug, and proceeded to the cupboard for a glass.
“How ‘bout some fishing, Paige?” my grandpa asked.
This is what I’d been dreading. “I don’t know, Grandpa. It’s pretty hot out.”
“It’s never too hot to fish. I brought the boat and everything. It’s all hitched up behind the RV. I know how much you love riding in the boat.”
He was wrong. I hated that boat. I liked riding in boats when they were going fast. I liked riding in boats that I could go skiing behind. I’d even settle for tubing if skiing wasn’t an option. Fishing boats hardly even moved.
“We’ll have to buy you a new fishing pole first, though. Your mom said you lost your last one,” said my grandpa.
I seemed to lose a lot of fishing poles, but my grandpa never minded. He would just take me to Target to buy another one.
In another twenty minutes, I found myself walking into the mouth of the monster, complete with pink interior, from the dirt-covered floor mats, to the darker pink seats. Behind the seats was a small kitchenette, littered with what was surely last month’s breakfast: two plates covered with syrup, an old waffle box, an empty carton of eggs, and a basket filled with rotten fruits. Also behind the seats, across from the kitchenette stood the bathroom, which contributed to the monster’s bad case of morning breath. Beyond this was a small bed, piled high with pink blankets, resembling a large tongue that would certainly lash out at any time and swallow me whole if I stepped too hard on the carpeting.
Hanging neatly on hooks above the kitchenette were Grandpa’s hats, white with stains, like teeth that hadn’t been brushed in a while. They all had sayings like “#1 Grandpa” and “King of the Sea”. Before he sat down in the driver’s seat, Grandpa plucked the nearest hat off of a hook and put it on over his large bald spot to avoid burning his head in the hot summer sun.
My grandpa maneuvered the large RV and boat out of our neighborhood, and in ten minutes, we were at Raccoon River, putting the red fishing boat into the water. I was going to borrow an extra pole that my grandpa kept, “just in case”. Great.
In another couple of minutes, all three of us kids had our lines in the water. The sweat running down my body had already started to sting my eyes and had turned the fake leather seat beneath me into a wet, slippery mess. The breeze that may have made the summer heat bearable was nonexistent in the small lake surrounded by tall trees. It was going to be a long afternoon.

Three hours later, after watching everybody else catch at least two fish, the boat was once again attached to the back of the RV and we were on our way home, a waste of another Saturday afternoon.
“Wasn’t that fun, kids?” asked my grandpa, as he peaked back at us through his rear view mirror.
My brothers both answered enthusiastically and then began arguing about who had caught the biggest fish. I continued to stare out of the RV window without answering his question.

______

“DING”.
The opening elevator door drags me out of my memories, and I enter the elevator, wiping a tear from my eye as I hit the number seven. I remember riding in this elevator a few times to visit my grandpa as he lay in the hospital, but I usually chose to stay home when my family went to visit him. I always told my mom that I hated the smell and seeing all of the sick people, but that wasn’t completely true. I did hate the smell, but I could have gotten over that. The real reason I stayed home was because I wanted to watch television or play with my Barbies or American Girl Dolls. My grandpa’s sickness wasn’t that pressing; I was too young to understand that my grandpa would not always be there. I was too young to understand that I needed to grab every minute that I could with him before it was too late.
Regret was enough to pull me back to April of my sixth grade year.

______

“Here honey, we bought this for you,” said my grandma, with a look of excitement in her eyes as she handed me a small pink bag with purple tissue paper.
“Thanks, Grandma. It’s cute,” I said, as I pulled the ugliest purse I had ever seen out of the bag. It was made out of some kind of hard plastic with flowers on the front. I exchanged a look with my mother, and she silently nodded that we would send the purse to Good Will along with old clothes, toys, and books that I would no longer use. I set the purse down on the coffee table and tried to hurry out of the room but couldn’t quite escape my grandpa’s grasp as he pulled me down onto his lap.
“Well, my doctor says I need surgery next week,” said my grandpa. “Pretty routine, though. They’re gonna do it in the morning and the doctor said I’ll be home by dark.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t get a second opinion, Jim? I know some good doctors and it would be easy to get you an appointment,” said my dad.
“No, no. I’ve been going to Doctor Murphy for years. He knows what he’s doing,” said my grandpa.
Later that afternoon, I yelled good-bye from the top of the stairs as my grandparents hugged my brothers. I didn’t want to walk all the way down the stairs just to say good-bye when I would be seeing them again in a week or two.

The following week, my mom drove up to Boone, where my grandparents lived to be with my grandma while my grandpa was in surgery. “I’ll be home for supper, Paigey,” she said. “We’ll probably go out to eat so you should get your homework done early.”
But she wasn’t home early. My grandpa had suffered a complication during surgery and was taken to Mercy Hospital. That is where he stayed for the last summer of his life.

______

Another ding as I landed on the seventh floor. The mirrors around the elevator showed my tan skin, blond disheveled hair, and muscular legs, but all I could see when I peered at my reflection was a monster. A selfish monster who could never put anyone else before herself. I put my head down in disgust and quickly exited the elevator.
Unlike the receptionist’s room on the first floor, this floor had sky blue wallpaper with multicolored hot air balloons scattered throughout. The sounds of laughter and babies testing out their lungs could be heard in the distance, and grew louder as I turned the corner. How different this floor was from one just two levels down, where the walls were white to match the tile floors and the receptionist’s desk was a dull gray. The intensive care unit, where my grandpa stayed all summer, seemed to be decorated to remind families that their loved ones probably wouldn’t make it. There were no flowers on that floor, only harsh fluorescent lights and the soft glow of television screens turned on in every room even though most patients weren’t conscious enough to watch.
______

The phone call came late at night from a nurse that my grandpa was fading fast. My brothers were already in bed, but my dad drove me to the hospital to be with my grandpa on his last night. My mom was already there.
“Lee, why did you bring her?” snapped my mom through her tears. “She’s too young for this.”
The truth is, my mom might have been right. Seeing my grandpa lying there in his hospital bed, almost as white as his sheets, is a picture that I will always carry. But no matter how hard it is to think about the way he looked, it is even harder to picture all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins standing around him, tears in the eyes of every single person as they stood around the hospital bed. The room was dark, sterile, and even with so many people in it, lonely.
As I left the hospital early the next day with my parents, the sun was beginning to come up and the heat of another late July day was already setting in. I don’t know what made me start thinking about it. Maybe it was the heat or the sunrise or maybe I was just thinking about my grandpa, but as I walked to the car, I suddenly realized that I would never get to go on another fishing trip with my grandpa. In fact, I realized that I had spent most of his visits during the last year of his life trying to get out of fishing trips.

______

“Paige!” came the cry of my overjoyed aunt, now a grandma.
“Hi,” I said. “I had some trouble finding the room.”
“Oh, well it’s right over here,” she said, laughing with her rosy cheeks and frazzled hair. Aunt Deb had surely been at the hospital since the morning before, but she didn’t look at all tired.
As I walked into Stacy’s crowded hospital room, I saw my family, so happy at having a new baby in the family. In that moment I realized that I had been carrying such a large amount of guilt for so many years on the time I had missed with my grandpa, but that wasn’t really what was important. The important thing was that I was here now, and I was there for my grandpa when he needed me the most. Whenever I have thought back to that night when I watched him take his final breaths, I have felt that he was so lonely, but now I realize that that couldn’t be further from the truth. My grandpa died holding the hands of his wife and children, with a room full of people who loved him; not very many people are that lucky.