“I said there wasn’t help. You think six hours would have replaced everything she did?”
“I want someone to look at what you need now.”
He pushed the phone back across the table when I told him who was waiting on the line.
“I’m not having visiting carers.”
“You can tell Rosa what’s difficult. I’ll be here for the assessment.”
“I’ve told you what’s difficult. My wrist is broken. I need my daughter.”
His cast rested beside the cup I had made him. I could see the effort it took him to shift in the chair. None of this made his pain imaginary. That was what kept pulling me toward saying yes.
“Ring your manager,” he said. “Tell them you’re leaving.”
Instead, I held the phone where he could reach it.
Eventually he agreed to an assessment, while insisting that no carers would be coming through his door. Rosa gave us a time. I wrote it on the kitchen calendar before he could call it a misunderstanding.
Then I checked that it didn’t clash with my shift.
Dad tried to make me answer Rosa’s first question.
“Tell her how much you do,” he said, while she sat opposite him at the kitchen table.
Rosa kept her pen still. “Dennis, I need to hear what you can manage yourself.”
I started to describe his breakfast, then stopped. He looked at me as if I had refused to bring it.
She asked about washing, dressing, using the toilet, getting meals. She watched him stand and move with his usual support. In the bedroom, he demonstrated how he used the aids already there. He needed time. He needed the chair in the bathroom. Those were real needs, not evidence that somebody had to give up a wage.
Then he tried to get his shirt sleeve over the cast. The fabric caught. He swore and pulled harder.
Rosa stopped him before he hurt himself.
“That’s where you need help during recovery,” she said. “We need to arrange dressing assistance. Your usual personal care is manageable with the recommended aids once your wrist has healed.”
“What about the rest of the day?” he asked.
“What are you unable to do during the rest of the day?”
He looked at me again.
I wanted her to find something she had missed. That sounds awful, but a small, frightened part of me wanted his demand to be necessary. Otherwise I would have to refuse him without the comfort of thinking he simply didn’t understand.
Rosa wrote down his difficulties and the proposed help. Dad consented to my having a copy, saying I ought to know what they expected me to do. The copy did not make me his care plan.
When Rosa confirmed the program’s approval, I was with him. Funded visits would cover the temporary dressing needs, with reassessment after recovery. I read the written assessment twice. Neither reading required my resignation.
Celia and I met at a café before we went to his house together. I had asked whether she would come while I told him my decision.
“Not to show you how to look after him,” she had said.
“I know.” This time I waited before saying it.
At the café, she put the old approval between our cups. The original paper was softer at the folds than it looked in the photographs. Six hours a week, approved for the needs assessed then. She had kept it through seven years in which I hadn’t answered her.
I reached for it. She let me take it.
Dad stared at her when we entered his kitchen.
“So you can come back when it suits you.”
Celia stayed beside my chair. “June asked me to be here.”
I put Rosa’s assessment on the table.
“The visits are approved. I’ll help confirm the arrangements. I’m not leaving my job.”
“You don’t know these people,” he said. “You think someone paid to rush through will keep me safe? Only my daughters know how to care for me.”
