“Come in,” he says wearily.

“How are you?” I say, putting the tray on his table and sniffing the bright pink drink before I hold it out to him.

“I hate that stuff,” he says, not looking at me. He’s eaten maybe twenty total bites since he’s come home from the hospital, and his face is sunken in.

“I know, I’m sorry. Can I get you something else?”

“Just sit with me,” he says, turning his head toward the window. “You and your mom and the aides always get me things, but you never just sit with me.”

This sort of guilt feels like being stabbed to death with a take-out knife. I pull a chair up to his bed and look around the room. I don’t know what to say, so I put a straw in the drink and hold it out to him. “How about just one sip?” He shakes his head and I set the drink down. There are flowers on the table and get-well cards, and sunlight is coming through the window for the first time this spring, but it feels like it should be raining.

“There’s a book somewhere on the shelf down there,” my dad says, pointing behind me. “It’s an old paperback with a bright purple spine. If you can find it, will you read it to me?”

“Yeah, of course,” I say, getting up. “I thought you hated reading.”

He smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve seen since before the hospital. “I do. That’s why I want you to read it.”

I get down on the floor to look. After a few seconds I pull out a softcover book with its purple hues slightly faded.

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?” I read.

“I was on a trip up the West Coast, trying to find myself, and I got this book, but then I was too busy riding and messing around to read it.”

I laugh and read the back cover. “‘An inquiry into values’?” I flip through the pages.

“Let’s see if we can get into it,” he says. “Put that light on.”

I do as I’m told and start reading. Every so often my dad twitches and readjusts himself in bed. The shaking in his hands has lessened, but it’s been replaced by these fast, jerking motions. I want to know if he’s comfortable, but I don’t know what to do if he isn’t. There’s only so many times you can fluff up a pillow. And what if he’s bored? I can’t juggle, and I don’t know any dad-appropriate jokes. I guess reading is fine, but if this isn’t the most slumber-inducing book to ever make it to a printing press…

“Wow,” I say after a few minutes have passed and all the spit in my mouth has gone on hiatus. “This guy really has a lot to say about motorcycles. And parts of motorcycles. And how different kinds of weather affect different parts of motorcycles.” I read the back cover again. There’s no way the book could go on like this for three hundred pages. There must be something else here. “So he takes this trip and tries to work out like his life philosophy?”