My tutu is in the front room

The morphine's every four hours. It's not a pill, it's drops under the tongue out of a little syringe marked to one milliliter, but you only ever pull it to 0.25. There's a second one, lorazepam, and that one's not on the clock, that one's only if she gets agitated. The green folder says write the time and the amount and put your initials, so I write it down, even at four in the morning when only me stay awake anyway.

She's in the front room. We took the door off the hinges in April to get the bed through and the door's still standing up in the carport behind the freezer.

The nurse comes Tuesday and Thursday around one, sometimes closer to two if the Kohala side runs long. I called him da nurse for about a month. Auntie Charlene would come up the steps and ask who's coming today and I'd say da nurse, and then one Tuesday I said Wes and nobody looked up, so that was that.

He's from Oregon. Forties. Gray coming in at the sides and he drives a white Tacoma with a bike rack on it. He counts what's left in the morphine bottle every visit and writes the number on his sheet, and he's done that since the first week, so there's a column of numbers going down the page.

After he's pau he washes his hands in the kitchen and we end up out the back. That started in June. He takes the top step and I take the second one from the bottom because that one's poured concrete. The wooden ones give. I went through a folding chair at Christmas with about fifteen people watching.

We don't talk about anything. Weaning, mostly. Mondays we're moving calves in the lower pasture and I come in Tuesday with my boots still bad and he never says nothing about that. Both knees been gone since I was twenty-four so I take the Mule now instead of riding all day, and the old guys give me stink about that, ho, they no let 'em go, and he thinks that's funny for some reason. His daughter's nineteen, she's in Bend, she wants to do vet school. He drinks water out of a green bottle he brings himself.

The screen door stays open the whole time we're out there. You can hear Auntie Charlene talking to her even when she's sleeping, and the oxygen machine going under it.

In July we had two bad nights. She was calling for my grandfather and she kept getting her legs over the rail, and by Thursday I hadn't slept since Tuesday. Out on the steps Wes put his hand flat on my back between the shoulders and left it there a while. The next Tuesday he put it there again when he sat down.

The bathroom door you got to lift it while you push and it still doesn't catch. Jaylen and them come by after work. Auntie Bernie brings food Wednesday. My mom's up from Waikoloa on her days off from the Hilton, and half the time somebody stay sleeping in the back room. The house is Tutu's. After, it splits. Auntie Charlene, my mom, Auntie Bernie, and Uncle Boy's kids take his third between them.

Auntie Charlene asked me one time if Wes was married. I said I don't know. She said hm and went to check the rice.

Jaylen asked me how come we no give her more when she stay hurting. I told him the four hours and the 0.25 and how you can do an extra one in between if she needs it and you write that one down too, and how the lorazepam is a separate thing and it's not for pain at all, and I was still explaining it when he went out to his truck for his charger.

Wes told me one time I talk different to him than I talk to Jaylen. I didn't say nothing back.

Friday and Saturday I'm down at the resort, six to two, driving the cart. Pool gates at eleven. Mostly I'm telling people from Sacramento the towels have to stay on the property and they tell me about their flight. Coming back up the hill at two in the morning there's nobody else on the road.

Last Saturday in August, Auntie Charlene stayed over because Tutu had been up two nights. I told her I had to go Kona for a rotor for the truck. That was true, I did need one, I just didn't go get it until three weeks later.

He rents the back half of a house in Waikoloa Village, the street where the donkeys come down. I parked around the corner by the mailboxes. Then we went in the bedroom. After, he made eggs and I ate them standing at the counter because of the chairs, and the neighbor ran a weed whacker the whole time.

Coming back up the 190 the fog sits right down on the road past the eleven mile and you're doing thirty-five whether you want to or not, so it was ten to six by the time I came up the driveway. Jaylen's truck was there. He'd slept in the back room and he was out front with a coffee. He said you wen get 'em. I said what. He said the rotor. I said they never had the right one.

Auntie Charlene was asleep in the recliner with the TV going, that show where they buy the storage lockers. Tutu was awake. She had her eyes open looking at the fan and she said, you wen eat. I said yeah. She said good.

It was 5:52. I gave her the 0.25 and wrote 5:52 and my initials and sat on the floor next to the bed until Charlene's alarm went off at six thirty.

Tuesday he counted the bottle same as always. Thirteen. He was in there with her a lot longer than he usually is, and when he came out he asked me to come outside instead of saying whatever it was in the kitchen.

He said her breathing had changed and her feet were going mottled and that's one of the things they watch for. He said at that point it's usually days. Could be a couple weeks. He said go to every two hours now and don't wait for her to ask, because she can't ask.

Then he said the number I call is on the front of the green folder and somebody answers it all night. He said that part twice. I already knew it.

He didn't leave right away. He sat in the truck with the door open and the dome light on, writing on his clipboard, and I watched him from over the sink. Then he backed down the driveway and went.

The old chart only had six lines for a day. I made a new one. Six, eight, ten, twelve, two, four, and then the same again through the night. I had to write small at the bottom.

The rotor's still behind the seat in the truck, in the bag from the store.