Chapter 34
Labor Day weekend had passed in a blur of fully-booked rooms and perfect September weather.
Kate stood in the kitchen at five-thirty on Tuesday morning, watching the sunrise paint the harbor pink and gold.
The inn was quiet, just a handful of guests still sleeping off their long weekend indulgences.
She was thinking about Ben, about the way he'd kissed her goodbye last night after their beach walk, about how natural it felt to be with him after all these years of careful friendship. Her phone sat on the counter beside her coffee, and she was debating texting him when it rang.
The number was from Coastside Memory Care. Her stomach clenched immediately. They never called this early unless something was seriously wrong with Pop.
“Miss Perkins? This is Nancy from Coastside. An ambulance just left with your father. He's being taken to York Hospital with suspected pneumonia. He was having difficulty breathing, and we couldn't wait.”
Kate's coffee mug hit the floor, shattering across the old linoleum. “Is he… how bad is it?”
“He was stable when they left, but you should get to the hospital. Do you need the address?”
“No. No, I know where it is.” Kate was already grabbing her keys, stepping over the broken ceramic. “Thank you for calling.”
She called Marcy first. “Pop's being taken to York Hospital. Can you and Rosa handle things today?”
“Of course, honey. You just go. We've got everything here.”
Then her siblings, rapid-fire calls. “York Hospital. Now. Pop has pneumonia.”
Tom didn't even ask questions. “On my way.”
Dani: “Leaving now.”
James: “I'll drive Dani. I’m sure she’s a wreck.”
They converged in the emergency room within forty minutes. Tom arrived first, already pacing when Kate rushed in. Dani and James came together, Dani's eyes red-rimmed, James's jaw tight with worry.
“Daniel Perkins,” Kate told the desk nurse. “He was brought in from Coastside Memory Care.”
The wait felt eternal but was probably only twenty minutes before a doctor appeared, young enough to be their youngest sister, wearing scrubs that had seen a long shift.
“Family of Daniel Perkins?”
“Yes,” all four said in unison.
“I'm Dr. Hartley. Your father is stable. He has aspiration pneumonia, which is unfortunately common in late-stage dementia patients. We've started him on IV antibiotics and oxygen support.”
“Can we see him?” Kate asked.
“Of course. But I should prepare you, he's quite weak. And this type of pneumonia...” She paused, choosing her words. “His body is forgetting how to swallow properly. Food and liquids go into his lungs instead of his stomach. We can treat this episode, but...”
“But it will happen again,” Kate finished.
“Yes. I'm sorry.”
Pop looked smaller than ever in the hospital bed, dwarfed by machines and monitors. Oxygen tubes in his nose, IV in his arm, chest rising and falling with labored effort. Each breath sounded wet, struggling, like drowning in reverse.
Kate took his hand, cold, papery thin, nothing like the strong hands that had hauled traps and built boats and held her when nightmares came.
“Hey Pop,” she whispered. “It's Katie. We're all here.”
No response. Not even a flutter of eyelids. Just that terrible breathing.
Tom stood at the foot of the bed, gripping the rail like it might hold him up. “He looks so small.”
“When did he get so old?” Dani asked, voice breaking. “When did we miss it happening?”
“He’s not old, it’s the illness. We didn't miss it,” James said quietly. “It happened one day at a time, too slow to see.”
They arranged themselves around the bed, Kate holding his hand, Dani stroking his hair, Tom and James on the other side of the bed. Four children watching their father fight for breath, remembering the man who'd taught them to swim, to fish, to tie knots, to weather storms.
“Remember when he taught us to read the weather?” Tom said suddenly. “Red sky at night, sailor's delight.”
“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Dani finished. “He made us memorize all those old sayings.”
“Mackerel sky, not twenty-four hours dry,” James added.
“Mare's tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships carry low sails,” Kate contributed.
They sat there reciting Pop's weather wisdom like prayers, like maybe if they said enough of his words, he'd wake up and correct their pronunciation or add another saying they'd forgotten.
The hours blurred together. Nurses came and went. The antibiotics dripped. The oxygen hissed. Pop's breathing gradually eased from drowning to merely labored.
“It's working,” Dr. Hartley said when she checked in that afternoon. “The antibiotics are helping. But you need to understand, this is temporary. The underlying issue, the swallowing dysfunction, that won't improve.”
“So what do we do?” Kate asked.
“We treat this episode. He'll probably recover enough to return to Coastside in a few days. But next time might be worse. Or the time after that. Eventually...”
She didn't need to finish. Eventually, the antibiotics wouldn't be enough. Eventually, Pop would drown in his own lungs, forget how to breathe the way he'd forgotten their names, their faces, his whole life.
“We should talk about end-of-life directives,” Dr. Hartley said gently. “DNR orders, comfort care measures.”
“He has a DNR,” Kate said. “He signed it two years ago. No extraordinary measures.”
“Good. That helps. For now, we continue treatment. This is still considered standard care.”
After the doctor left, no one said a thing until Tom broke the silence.
“He wouldn't want this,” Tom said finally. “Being kept alive by machines, not knowing us, not being himself.”
“But he's not on machines,” Dani argued. “It's just antibiotics. Oxygen. That's not extraordinary.”
“Where's the line though?” James asked. “When does treatment become prolonging the inevitable?”
They didn't have an answer. There was no good answer.
Ben arrived at six, still in work clothes. He brought coffee, real coffee from the good place, not the hospital’s coffee, and sandwiches no one had asked for but everyone needed.
“You don't have to stay,” Kate told him, though she desperately wanted him to.
“I'm exactly where I need to be,” he said simply, pulling a chair next to hers.
The evening nurse was kind, letting them all stay past visiting hours. “Sometimes families need to be together,” she said. “I'll be right outside if you need anything.”
They kept vigil through the night, taking turns dozing in uncomfortable chairs.
Pop's breathing improved gradually. The terrible rattling eased, the oxygen levels stabilized.
By morning, he was breathing almost normally, though he still hadn't woken, hadn't shown any sign he knew they were there.
In the early morning, Ben left to get to his job which, as it happens, was close to the hospital.
“Promise to call me if you need anything?” he asked Kate.
“I promise.”
“You should all go home,” the day nurse said gently. “Get some rest, shower, eat real food. He's stable. We'll call if anything changes.”
“I'll stay,” Kate said automatically.
“No,” Tom said firmly. “We take shifts. You go first. Shower, check on the inn, come back this afternoon. I'll stay now.”
She wanted to argue but saw the wisdom in it. They couldn't all fall apart at the same time. The inn still needed tending, life still needed living, even while Pop lay suspended between worlds.
Kate drove back to Kennebunkport in a daze. The world looked too normal, people getting coffee, walking dogs, living their lives while her father lay in a hospital bed forgetting how to swallow.
The inn ran smoothly under Marcy and Rosa's care. Guests were at breakfast, unaware of the drama. Marcy hugged Kate the moment she walked in.
“How is he?”
“Stable. For now.” Kate's voice sounded hollow even to herself. “The antibiotics are working, but...”
“But it's not fixing the real problem.”
“No.”
Marcy held her tighter. “Your mama went through this with her father. The long goodbye, she called it. Hardest thing she ever did.”
Kate wanted to ask how her mother had handled it, what wisdom she'd had for watching a parent disappear by degrees. But Mom was gone, taking her advice with her.
“You need to eat,” Marcy said firmly. “Shower. Rest. Then you can go back.”
Kate obeyed because it was easier than deciding for herself. Shower, clean clothes, force down some toast, check that evening's reservations. Normal tasks that felt surreal when Pop was lying in York Hospital, lost in the failing machinery of his own body.
Her phone rang. Tom checking in. “He's the same. Sleeping. Breathing better though. You okay?”
“I don't know. Are you?”
“No. But I'm here. James takes over at two.”
Kate found herself at Pop's desk in the office, looking at old photos.
Pop young and strong on his lobster boat.
Pop and Mom on their wedding day, ridiculously young and hopeful.
The four kids at various ages, gap-toothed school photos and awkward teenage years.
A whole life documented in snapshots, now dissolving into nothing, one forgotten moment at a time.
That afternoon, she returned to the hospital. James was there, laptop open, working remotely from Pop's bedside.
“Any change?”
“He opened his eyes once. Didn't focus on anything, but they opened.”
Kate took over the vigil. Pop looked better, less gray, breathing easier. But still absent, still gone in every way that mattered. She held his hand and talked to him about the inn, about the perfect September weather, about anything except the fact that he was dying in slow motion.
Dani arrived for the evening shift, bringing decent food from town and updates from the inn.
“Two new bookings for October,” she reported. “And the Hartwell-Chens want to book their anniversary party next year.”
Normal news. Life continuing. It felt wrong, but what was the alternative? Stop everything until Pop finally let go?
That evening, Dr. Hartley had what she called good news. “He's responding well to treatment. We'll probably be able to send him back to Coastside tomorrow or the next day.”
Back to Coastside, where he'd sit in a chair not recognizing anything until the next infection, the next crisis, the next step in the long goodbye.
“Is there...” Kate started, then stopped. “How do we know when enough is enough?”
Dr. Hartley sat down, her young face suddenly serious.
“That's the hardest question in medicine.
The DNR helps. When his heart stops, we won't restart it.
But until then, treating infections, providing nutrition, that's considered basic care.
Some families choose comfort care only. No antibiotics, just pain management, letting nature take its course.
But that's a decision only you can make.”
After she left, the siblings sat with that weight. The power to let their father go or keep him tethered to a life he no longer recognized.
“What would Pop want?” Dani asked.
“Not this,” Tom said immediately. “He'd hate being helpless.”
“But he can't tell us,” James pointed out. “We're guessing.”
“No,” Kate said quietly. “We know. Remember what he said when Mom was dying? 'When it's my turn, don't let me linger. Let me go with the tide.'”
They all remembered. Pop standing by their mother’s hospice bed, making them promise not to keep him alive when his time came. But that was before the dementia, before he lost the ability to make his wishes clear, before the long gray area between living and dying.
Kate's phone rang, jarring in the quiet room. The inn's number.
“Kate?” Marcy's voice was strained. “I hate to bother you, but we have a situation. The Brennan wedding on Saturday, they just called. They want to add 25 more guests. I told them it was impossible, but they're insisting.”
“I'll handle it,” Kate said, then realized she couldn't. She was here, Pop was dying, and she couldn't be in two places at once.
“Actually,” she said, “talk to Dani.”
She handed the phone to her sister. Watched Dani shift into event planner mode, handling the crisis with calm efficiency.
“Tell them we can accommodate twenty additional guests, but the tent rental and catering additions will be rush charges.
If they agree to the amended contract I'm emailing now, we can make it work.”
It was seamless, professional. The inn didn't need Kate specifically. It needed someone competent. Her siblings were that now.
Thursday morning, Pop was stable enough that Dr. Hartley started discussing discharge. “Tomorrow probably. The infection is under control.”
Under control. Not cured. Not fixed. Just controlled, until next time.
Tom pulled Kate aside. “We need to talk about what happens next time.”
“I know.”
“Do we treat it again? Keep doing this over and over?”
Kate looked at their father, breathing easier now but still lost to them. “No. Next time, we let him go. Like he wanted.”
Tom nodded, eyes wet. “Okay.”
That afternoon, something miraculous happened. Pop opened his eyes, and for just a moment, they seemed to focus on Kate.
“Pop?” she said, heart racing. “It's Katie.”
His lips moved, no sound, but she could read them. “Katie-girl.”
Then his eyes drifted shut again, and he was gone back to wherever his mind lived now. But he'd seen her. For one second, he'd known her.
“Next time,” she said quietly to her siblings, “we let him go with the tide. Like he wanted.”
No one disagreed. They sat together through another evening, four grown children learning the hardest lesson, that love sometimes means letting go, that honoring someone's wishes matters more than the need to keep them alive, and that the long goodbye is still goodbye, just stretched thin over time.
Pop would go back to Coastside tomorrow. He'd sit in his chair, be fed pureed food, stare at nothing. And someday soon, the pneumonia would return. When it did, they'd hold his hand, tell him they loved him, and let the tide take him home.
It was what he'd want. It was what love looked like now. Not holding on but knowing when to let go.