In Casper, Wyoming, my father fell off a horse and hit his head and was airlifted to the nearest hospital. My boyfriend and I were on vacation from Boston with him, trotting through hilly dry country that smelled sweetly of sage. We felt like grownups, lounging at the ranch house with wine in the evenings, our suncracked skin and dusty boots badges of honor.
   
When he fell off, he was right in front of me. I slid off my horse and ran to him; he was unconscious for a good thirty seconds, making an awful snoring sound while I shouted his name. I saw how he had landed on a sharp outcropping of rock and how his helmet was split all the way up the back like a melon.
   
My boyfriend and I drove the hundred miles across the dry sun-blasted expanse of the state to meet him at the hospital. We passed bleached white desert and billboards telling us to see the dinosaur bones and the jagged teeth of white-capped, unknown mountains.

   
When we finally reached the hospital, the doctor told us, He's had a small bleed but it's contained. He won't be able to form any new memories for a little while. Anything you tell him now, he won't remember. But in the morning, he'll be fine.
   
We went in to see him and he was sitting up in bed with a bandage ruffling his gray-streaked hair, looking a little confused but honestly all right. Where are we? he asked, and I told him, Casper, Wyoming.
   
What happened? he asked.
   
You fell off a horse. You're all right though. I explained what the doctor had told me and he nodded seriously, listening and attentive.
   
And where's Mom? he asked.
   
I looked at the nurse, who was standing in the corner keying something into the room's computer. Do I have to say?
   
You can say whatever you like, she said.
   
I didn't like to lie, and I'm a terrible liar anyway. She passed away, I said. She had cancer. It had been nearly a year since she died, and I still felt a small stab of pain whenever I allowed myself to think about it. Whenever I felt like punishing myself, I could bring up her face in my mind, her voice; the ache was reliable and sweet, something I could depend on.
   
He stared at me, and I saw the shock in his eyes. I don't believe it, he said. I don't believe it. He shook his head, and I saw the grief pass over him again the way I had in little flashes all year long, when someone said her name, or deliberately didn't say her name.
   
Then thirty seconds later he asked, Where are we? And immediately, Where's Mom? And I had to say again, She died.
   
His jaw worked. I was his younger daughter and I knew he was trying to stay calm for my benefit. Let me just try to understand this, he said. You're saying—
   
She died, I said.
   
I don't believe it, he said. I don't believe it.
   
And then, Where are we?
   
Casper, Wyoming.
   
Where's Mom?
   
I turned to the nurse, who was listening to this impassively, tapping at the keys. This is very upsetting, I said.
   
She didn't even look up from the screen. I'm sure it is, she said.
   
Again, and again, we went through the awful play. Each time I had the choice to say something else, I could have pretended for a little while, but each time I didn't; it felt like a betrayal of all we'd been through, the two years of her cancer, the pain and crushing, giant-sized sadness, to pretend that she was here, just in the other room, she'd just stepped away. My boyfriend held my hand and I said for half an hour or more, She died, she died, she died.
   
They told me he wouldn't remember any of it. And in the morning, after we'd found a motel for the night and returned, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed and headachy and irritable, and we drove back to the ranch. I've never spoken to him of the night he asked again and again for his wife and I told him over and over that she was gone, we'd lost her. I don't know if he remembers any of it; I'm afraid to ask. The memory might be just mine and my boyfriend's to keep.
   
The fact that he asked for her immediately each time makes me think that he knew something was wrong, he had a kind of animal memory of her death, the way a dog will not know a fellow dog has died, but will stop hunting for it if he's shown the body. My father knew and did not know. He wanted me to answer, he held onto my hand and demanded urgently, Where is she? And I told him, again and again, what I knew.


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Blair Hurley is the author of a novel, THE DEVOTED. She's had stories in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review and others. Her West Branch story won a 2018 Pushcart Prize.

Read BH's postcard.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of Michael Wong.





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