The waiting room is small. A psych ward room. But in one of the best hospitals in the nation. Not a psych ward room but a waiting room. Ugly green and stark white. Two small, hard chairs beside a small, hard desk. An examination bed. A social worker comes in first. She is frumpy and unconcerned. He tells her everything. The weight loss, the struggle with keeping food down, the attacks that leave him clenching his teeth, cursing, doubled over in pain. The way it feel like a steel band is around his neck, cutting off his breathing.

 I am uncomfortable with his pain. I cannot help him and I know it must be bad. Bad because he never complains of pain or illness and now he is. The social worker explains that her son is coming home on the bus for the first time today and she is very nervous and tells my Father 'fuck you very much, but your problem cannot possibly be as important as my child coming home on the bus'. This is what I hear. She offers nothing. She tells him to have a seat on the examination table and, yes, the doctor will be with you. Rushes off to her child who rode the bus home today (first time!) and was likely breathing a sigh of relief to be free from this woman.

 He sits on the table and, although he is tall-6'2-his feet dangle over the sides. He swings them back and forth. 'I feel as though we are in a spaceship that is hurtling through space and we've no sense of time or place', he says, and I smile. 'You're so weird Dad'. I am thankful for that.

 The doctor comes in, his mouth a straight line. 'So, how ya feelin'?' My Father explains again, almost frantically, pleading for an answer. His feet swing, child-like, back and forth. Doc says, in his opinion, that it is probably 'all in your head'.

 I jump up and grab the doctor by the arm and yank him up from his small, hard chair and scream at him, call him an idiot. I demand tests be done, samples taken, at the very least that someone takes my Father seriously! I add that the frumpy social worker should be fired and nobody gives a shit about her kid on the bus.

 Of course, I don't do those things. I look at my Father and wait for him to say something, to demand something be done. He doesn't. We slink out of the office, defeated. One of the best hospitals in the nation.

 The next night he gets another attack, the worst yet, and says that tomorrow he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. We were going down and demanding they take some tests. Something wasn't right. 'I love you kiddo and don't worry, tomorrow will be a good day.'

 'Tomorrow' he was dead.