Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland
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was in. What came over me? It was nearly eleven years since I'd last spoken with him, me shouting<br />
curses while he lay on the blue rug at the old house with his shattered knee. We hadn't spoken at Kent's<br />
wedding, the funeral or yesterday's memorial. I figured he must have learned something between then and<br />
now.<br />
The hospital's central cooling system was malfunctioning, and guys in uniforms with tool kits were in the<br />
elevator with me. When I got off on the sixth floor, I was invisible to the staff, while the air-conditioning<br />
guys were treated like saviors.<br />
I found Reg's room. The odor outside it reminded me of luggage coming onto the airport carousels from<br />
China and Taiwan - mothballs, but not quite. I had a short moment of disbelief when I was outside the<br />
door and technically only a spit away from him. Yes? No? Yes? No? Why not? I went in — a shared<br />
room, a snoring young guy with his leg in a cast near the door. On the other side of a flimsy veil lay my<br />
father.<br />
"Dad."<br />
"Jason."<br />
He looked awful - bloodless, white and unshaven - but certainly alert. "Here's your stuff . . . the hospital<br />
asked me to get it."<br />
"Thank you."<br />
Silence.<br />
He asked, "Did you have trouble finding anything?"<br />
"No. Not at all. Your place is pretty orderly."<br />
"I try and run a tight ship."<br />
I shivered when I thought of his hot dusty lightless hallway, his mummified TV set, his kitchen cupboards<br />
laden with tins and packets and boxes of rationlike food, and his cheapskate lifestyle, in which not tipping<br />
some poor waitress is viewed more as a way of honoring God than of being a miser with one foot in the<br />
grave. I held out the bag. "Here you go."<br />
"Put it on the window ledge."<br />
I did this. "What did the doctor say?"<br />
"Two cracked ribs and bruising like all get-out. Maybe some cardio trauma, which is why they're<br />
keeping me here."<br />
"You feel okay?"<br />
"It hurts to breathe."<br />
Silence.<br />
I said, "Well, I ought to go, then."<br />
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