Waiting.

All the leaves are down. A great wind swept through the Wolds and left the landscape grey, the sky a flat white. Outside, on the pavement below, a woman speeds by on a burgundy mobility scooter in a green wig. She is smiling broadly.
Dr Hauser speaks to me in impenetrable words, his European accent hinting at American education. We are in a world of consultants and hospitals, scans and drips, an elderly man with dementia shouting from the bed next door to dad's - 'nurse, nurse I want a drink,' 'where are my family?' He gets up periodically, puts on his black padded coat that is covered with vomit and food, fragrant with dried urine, and heads for the door with his white plastic sack full of belongings.
Dad lapses in and out of consciousness, his mouth dry, cracked and immobile. He comes to - focuses for a moment, says a few words, laughs maybe - and then slips away again. The hypercalcemia is making him confused. Dr Hauser tells me he may be hallucinating. Along the underside of his forearm, his shirt is stained with blood. The drip was inserted as soon as he entered the Emergency room - no change of clothes since Monday, no wash, no shower. Yesterday I cleaned the dried blood from his hands.