“How are you today, Dad?”

“Pretty good.”

He lifts his drooping lids and smiles. Our eyes lock. He sees me.

His right arm is hooked casually behind his neck as he closes his eyes again. He looks as if he’s sunbathing at the beach.

It’s almost like he reads my thoughts.

“There’s a river just over there at this…beach.”

I know it’s the glare of cold strip lighting on the hospital’s sterile floor that makes him see a river.

And why not? It probably makes for a nicer view.

I smile.

“Shall we read, Dad?”

“Yes please,” He says.

I pull today’s delight from my bag. It comes directly from Dad’s personal collection: David Copperfield, a Dickens classic.

The weather outside provides the perfect backdrop, a grey slashed sky, and large raindrops smattering the panes.

I delve into chapter 1 and get quite lost in Miss Betsey’s ominous presence.

Dad says, “do you think my mother found the documents of the….fortune….at the funeral?”

It’s hard to make out his words, they slur and curl at the edges.

But I know what has happened. I have taken Dad back to nineteenth century England this afternoon and his own memories have fused with the Dickens classic to form something new.

“I’m not sure, Dad.”

“No point in worrying about it now,” he says.

He leans back on his pillows and takes a sip of tea.