It was 4.00am on a bitter wintry day. I sat alone in my father's hospital room listening to him struggle to gain every breath. He was on morphine now so able to rest- something both a relief and a catastrophic portend for the rest of us. I adjusted the oxygen tubes on his nostrils; again, more of a reassurance for us, not him. This was his fourth day since admission. He was fading. He was dying.

Since his first major stroke back in 2001, I assumed responsibility for his care. No longer able to drive and with residual weakness down his left side, he has needed assistance for the most basic of things ever since. This dependence on myself, my mother and later the boys increased over time as a heart attack followed more strokes and two more heart attacks. Alas, there could be no further surgical intervention. Even the drugs stopped working now and all his organs were showing signs of failure.

The past almost twenty years I heard the same thing countless times: "Prepare yourselves, the next one (be it stroke or heart attack) will be devastating and perhaps life-ending."

I resisted signing off on the DNR form for a long time. My father kept proving their prognoses wrong. He kept living on, despite half a functioning brain and an enlarged and tired heart.

Late June, he had another heart attack. And a stroke. Dylan and I were cruising back from the tobacconist in Frankston when his phone dinged. Then it rang immediately. He answered, putting it on speaker.

"Pappou isn't well, the ambulance is here," James said the other end. I turned the music down, pushed all the window buttons up despite us both smoking.

"What's wrong with him?" Dylan held the phone between us. My eyes were on the road and the surrounding traffic, foot pushing the accelerator down of its own accord. Speeding and I didn't care; I cared about distance and time and my brain had already calculated-

"Dyls, ask if we should come home or meet them at Emergency." I don't know why I relayed it this way on speaker but that is how it unfolded. Dylan repeated my words, they were again repeated by James to the ambos. We heard a muffled reply.

"Meet us there," James said.

My foot came off the accelerator. We were at the midway point between home and hospital. I looked for a spot to make a u-turn. A police car passed us the other way.

"Lucky." Dylan said.

"Yeah."

I pulled into Emergency ten minutes later and we shared a smoke outside. It was cold, the ambulance taking its time. I paced. We bought coffees. More smoking and pacing. Ambulances pulled up but emptied other people.

We could not text James since he had no credit on his phone. Besides he was copying me more these days, and especially since I'd bought him his own laptop. He rarely carried his phone around any longer. Dylan became the dedicated phone person and his hatred of being stuck with a role was only superseded by his practicality: Things had to be as they were, right now.

Strangest thing, dad remained alert, never lost consciousness. But his poor heart! It went into what they call tachycardia, meaning very fast beats. For six hours his ailing heart thumped at over 180 beats per minute. I paced. Debated. Questioned and paced some more- this new thing, it rattled me. I knew what it was like to have that thump thump thump thump like your heart is trying to break free of your chest wall, pounding itself against your rib-cage. I knew the breathlessness, the exhaustion- and I only lived it at worst for an hour or so each time.

Six hours. I had to pace and watch my father and observe the team of doctors and nurses watching him, for any sign of hope. Frowns everywhere quickly masked by indifference when our eyes made contact. I was the hawk. I was that relative.

"We have no choice but to shock him now, you understand?"

I nodded. The doctor did too but not at me. Suddenly those hovering about all had jobs to do. One's job was to throw us out despite vehement protest and pull the paper curtains shut. Like that made a difference. We could still hear everything!

"Three outcomes," I'd been advised earlier. "He may go into cardiac arrest under even the mildest anesthesia. The tachycardia may not revert despite the procedure. Or he might never wake up. You understand?"

"Why do you all have to make sure I understand? What part of your ass does that cover, my unequivocal understanding?" I only thought this, and only because it had become the sentence-ender in every discussion regarding any past procedure. Yes, I bloody understood. I am not a moron, I can discern meaning from words besides I'd spoken to enough medical staff over the years I spoke their bloody lingo!

"Aaaouuuuu!"

Dad screamed. He'd been put under just enough to give him a decent chance of waking but not so under he didn't feel the paddles surging electrical current. "Feels like you've been hit by a train," a doc quipped earlier, too young and without the residual pain of memory- therefore his callousness, the asshole. Anyone actually hit by that train would not be so asinine. With words.

A head poked out, another hand pulled back the curtain. I saw my father and eyes focussed on his chest. He breathed. His heartbeat- a bloody miracle! Down hovering around a hundred and dropping. Dropping! Now to wake him.

"Dad? Dad?" A gentle shake. How tired he must feel. Ambient noise intruded and I wanted to whisk him somewhere quiet... but he lay attached to machines. Damn machines. Yes, they save him, every time. And the doctors, they are not all callous bastards. There is the odd one not worried about a law-suit. A human still. They put a hand on one's arm, speak gently, honestly. They don't ask if "you understand?"

The problem with 'free healthcare' for those unable to afford private health insurance- hell, the whole system needs to be constantly turning over. Every cog in every machine. And when a body on a bed is not generating any income by way of tests and procedures... it needs to move on. Simple as that. Every bed has a quota to fill. How the fuck else will the wheels keep turning? Everyone has to make a living. Even those dying.

He came home several days later but he was the shadow of the man he'd been. Never asked for a ciggie once. Three weeks went by and he sat at his usual seat by the window watching the documentaries he loved so much. Quiet- too quiet.

"Mum, have a look at papou's legs! Quick!" Dyls noticed first, handing him his evening meds.

"What's wrong?"

"Just look!"

I looked. Both feet and legs up to his knees were a mottled black and purple mess. Swollen too. "What the fuck is this?"

"Looks bad."

"Yeah..." My hand was dialling 000 of its own accord on the house phone. Five minutes later, the ambos arrived.

"No hospital fuck it!" Dad was adamant, the moment they stepped in. "I'm okay."

They examined his feet for all of thirty seconds. Looks passed between them. "You have to come with us but we can't take you without your permission sir, you understand?"

"No hospital!"

Looks passed around the living room.

"You can't take him?" Looking down at his swollen blackened feet-

"Not without permission."

"Is it serious?"

More looks. Not at me. "Can't say, he needs to be checked over..."

Oh.

He never went to hospital that night. Monday morning, as suggested by the ambos, I took him to Michael, our family doctor.

"Looks bad, huh?"

"You have to take him straight away Elise. I'll write you a letter so you don't wait in Emergency."

He did, and I did. Dyls had come with, so we raced dad to Frankston Hospital. No protest from him this time. And no hesitation by the staff. Once examined, I was pulled over by a nice Egyptian doctor.

"His heart is dying."

"What does that mean?" His heart had been dying forever. Nothing new there. I tried to lock eyes. This doctor I'd never seen before seemed compassionate.

"We are admitting him of course. He needs the fluid drained."

"What about all the black and purple stuff?"

"His heart-"

"How long?" The words tumbled out despite that every time they did, no one would answer me.

"Hard to say..." I could sense his dilemma. Very rarely do I spy the man behind the title and the white jacket. I saw him. He was sad. "Maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks or a month-"

"What?" I heard his words but I also didn't hear them. I heard instead, "Your father is dying for real this time."

"No!"

"I am sorry..."

And he was. As was the nurse attaching dad to tubes and oxygen.

"Dylan, we're fucked."

"I know, mum."

"Don't tell yiayia yet. Let me speak with her."

"Okay."

... Thirty potatoes of no breath. Twenty potatoes worth of breath. I counted; putting the Tom Clancy book down for the nth time folded on the same page. The no breath potato seconds were increasing. Yesterday he breathed within fifteen, breathed for a minute or two before I had to count again the no-breath intervals. Now I paused and wondered if each new pause would be his last. Would he draw breath again? The ridiculous action of standing beside his bed rubbing his arm and counting potatoes lived only in my head. My mouth uttered comforting words of its own accord: "Rest dad. Rest." Else, "Dad, breathe! Breathe!"

A dual dead end. Stuck in the middle I took a step in one direction, turned about and walked the opposite way only to wander back to the middle where I again stood over him; one of my breaths expanded telling him to go, the other begging him to stay. Just a little longer. The smell of unfinishedness wafting from both of us.

Thirty six potatoes without breath.

"Damn it! Breathe dad!"

Words spoken as my hand caressed a dry cheek with a week's worth of stubble. Mum and the boys were awake and on their way, a Facebook message told me. Dylan's "Damn," to his "How is Pappou?" question and my subsequent request they all get here soonish since he was not breathing more than he was breathing now- damn potato pile growing on the damn wrong side of the scale of life, "Ye." I replied. What else to say?

"Elsa..."

My name (he remaining adamant I was Elsa, despite the many variations used by others over the years)  rasped through cracked lips in-between rattling breaths. I dipped the pink foam swab in thickened raspberry-flavoured water and urged him to part his lips. Instinctively he sucked on it; akin to a baby seeking and suckling a teat. I held the end in my hand since his mouth was now devoid of dentures and some of the liquid made it in; the rest dribbling down his chin. Twice more and he shook his head pursing his lips. No more, I understood.

He moaned. I watched the pulse at his neck. Erratic as always. My eyes strayed up to his. Twin vertical creases deep above the bridge of his nose. Eyelids flickering open for a moment and he stared but he stared through me. I was transparent! I did not quite comprehend. I knew his stares. His glares. I knew his every wrinkle forming every expression. I didn't know this.

What did he see past me? His eyes had intent, his gaze neither glazed nor vacuous, displayed focus.

"What is it, dad? Dad?"

Whatever had him beyond me was not relinquishing him. Yet I wanted him back. There was possessiveness as I reached for his hand. How cool his limp fingers felt despite the fever evident on his flushed and sweaty brow! My own perpetually cold ones were on par with his. Our hands felt as one. Weird. I rubbed a spot between his knuckles and wrist. A dark purple bruise spread up from the underside. Another bruise, I'd noted earlier. Doses of pain by needles seeking viable veins. Failing. Trying elsewhere. Failing there too.

He saw me?

"Elsa..."

"Yes dad?" The question hung. Eyes locked. My hand spread over his much larger one and cupping it. "What is it, dad?" Another question assuming the hanging between us. Silence. His eyes on me. Staring. What was he seeing? The unfamiliarity of my tenderness? What was he thinking during my long vigils alone at his side?

"I am tired..." Words whispered into air. His eyes faded away from mine and his head turned into the support pillow. I reached up and raised his face. Willing his eyes to open again. No response.

Whatever transpired, whatever was exchanged those moments, it remained secret to my conscious mind. I did not understand how my intuition failed me; why it didn't speak in the background as always. What did I hear? What happened between us, eyes locked?

Lost in my head I almost missed it. I leaned in to his face to catch the echo and it is then I heard it: "I am sorry."

His right arm lifted and dropped around my shoulders. I leaned in further, suddenly finding myself in an unfamiliar place: A father's embrace. My father hugging me! Our hearts beat close; I felt his, fluttering against my chest. Heart to heart I stretched sideways across him; mind rewinding decades. Peeling back layers, sorting through forced occasions (dances where I was compelled to waltz or tango with him, assorted celebrations where greetings and other traditions were exchanged, times of familial grief...) to some place where he and I shared a father-daughter embrace. Empty. Echoes maybe. Torn remnants from memories so early on they could not be relied upon as truths, else, passed on comments adopted as childhood truths.

This man must have hugged me. As a baby. A toddler. A young child. Before the nightmare descended and change everything. Those years before, my father must have hugged me. I watched him with his grandsons. The affection. I observed time after time despite his addled mind, the warmth pouring from him to them. Denied me. The war begun during my early teens disallowing any but the smallest of truces over time.

Not that I ever encouraged or welcomed it. Not even that I sought truce. I bought the premise he was of no further use to me as a father therefore he failed me consistently and failed me still. The question on his lips most often these final days was, "When is your brother coming, again?" Again I mouthed whatever new (sometimes decreased by mere minutes) time remained before his plane landed.

"It's okay dad, it's okay! Rest. Rest dad..." His mother tongue flowing unchecked from my lips- what was this? And why did he feel so bloody frail? When did my father become frail? The thought of my having ignored signs- worse, that I may have contributed to his being here, now, because I dropped the ball... because I became complacent riding the wave of steady-no-drama and forgot how every wave ends the same way: Back and forth, back and forth, whether lapping or crashing.

Lapping in the past. Definitively crashing this time.