“Keep your hand on my shoulder,” said the boy.
“Are we heading for the car exit?” she asked.
“No. That was bombed out months ago. Just stay with me.”
She did as he asked. She knew her life was in the boy’s hands now. All she could do was follow. As they moved along, she felt her body brushing past untold numbers of beds while debris fell from the ceiling around her. Long minutes of walking passed before she began to make out the form of the boy before her. She blinked and blinked, trying to clear her eyes. This was no easy task. She reached for her water bottle and then remembered that the boy had taken it.
“Where are we going?” she said, suddenly feeling unsure of any alternative exit.
“There will be time for questions later,” said the boy.
She hoped he was right.
Through her still stinging eyes, the world began to take form again. And as they descended some stairs, her vision crystalized further. Soon enough, their path levelled as they entered a passageway. Now her eyes were functional enough to see that the path ahead was clear. She spat dust from her throat and cleared her plugged nose as they walked. Soon, she realized that they were in no regular hospital corridor. The walls here were raw, unpainted concrete; the floor underfoot the same. She decided that they were in more of a tunnel than a corridor. Could the boy be taking her into the arms of the enemy? Could this be a pathway to a remote ISIS stronghold? She really had no idea. All she knew for sure was that she couldn’t go back to the carpark.
They walked for several minutes in silence. She saw many branches in the tunnel as they moved. The boy ignored them all. She had a sense that he knew exactly where he was going. It was possible he had lived underground here for months. Question after question pushed toward her lips, but none escaped.
Eventually, even the noise of the shelling above faded to nothing. It gave her time to think. Images of Gray dominated her thoughts. The swirling torrent of debris sucking him up into the afterlife filled her imagination. He had been with her since the beginning. He had been the closest thing to a friend she’d had since being deployed. A good man. And now he was gone.
Only when her imagination teetered on the brink of no return did the unexpected happen.
Natural light suddenly saturated her as the boy opened a door and stepped through. With this sunshine came a gust of wind; a taste of air so fresh it almost brought her to tears. And as she followed the boy through the doorway into the sundrenched surroundings, she could no longer restrain her emotion. She wept with relief.
The emerald waters of a large river rolled by in front of them. She could now see that they had exited what appeared to be a remote pumping hut at the river’s side.
“This is the Tigris River?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the boy.
The view of the water overwhelmed her. No one was around. Even the sound of the artillery fire escaped the tranquility of the scene she beheld. She felt a desperate need to be in the river and dashing the dozen yards to its side, she did just that. Diving in, she marveled at the simple bliss of being washed clean again as the tears and dust melted into the torrent around her.
When she surfaced, she found the boy washing dust from his face nearby. He looked so frail to her as he scooped the water up and cleaned himself as best as he could; a pathetic figure portrayed against the gruesome backdrop of a world gone mad.
“What is your name?” She called as she waded back onto the shore.
“My name is Abn,” said the boy.
CHAPTER 2
From the bay windows of her Brooklyn home, Jane watched as the weather lashed at the Wellington landscape. Rain pelted the window before her, threatening to break through. Far off in the distance, white capped waves in the harbor stirred a scene fit for a Master impressionist’s oil painting. Ships crested these waves with apparent boredom. And the steel and glass towers of the city below stood watch over this bloom of nature’s elements.
She often sat watching the city like this after a day’s work. The spectacle held no comparison to her home, Houston, back in the United States. What many took for a storm there, most accepted as an average day here.
Despite Wellington being a large city by New Zealand standards, nature had a way of staying in permanent contact with its residents. She always imagined that it was saying, “Hey, I’m the boss, I’m here and there is nothing you can do about it except love me or leave me.” She decided she loved it soon after marrying a New Zealand Defense Force officer.
The front door upstairs banged closed, startling her from her melancholy. The letter she held dropped from her hand. She pushed the darkness of her mood aside and glanced at her watch. She could hardly believe it was already 4:00 p.m.
“Mum! Where are you?” called a voice.
“I’m down here!” she called back.
She listened to the patter of feet as they descended the stairs. She still had no idea what she was going to say to Abn. His world was about to be shattered and nothing would change that.
“Mum,” Abn said, as he entered the living room.
She couldn’t answer as she watched Abn, who still had his school bag slung over one shoulder. Like always since adopting him three years before, part of her smiled every time she laid eyes on him. But this time her smile didn’t surface. It stayed on the inside.
“What is it Mum?”
She still couldn’t speak.
“What’s wrong?” he said as his eyes moved to the fallen letter.
She felt an urge to retrieve the letter and put it away, safe from prying eyes. She was too late. She had no time to stop Abn as he snatched up the letter and consumed the words. She could only watch as he read. She knew he would understand everything in the document. He was a smart kid; too smart. In the three years that he’d been at school, he’d out learned and outclassed all of the other students up to year thirteen. She was already looking at enrolling him at Otago University, which had been a challenging task considering Abn had just turned fourteen. But she knew him well enough to know that he’d go mad if he stopped learning now.
“This is not good,” Abn said as he glanced up from the letter before flipping to the next page.
“No,” she managed.
“They called you as well, I assume?”
“Of course,” she said.
“And what did they say?”
“Just what you see there. Ron has reacted badly to his treatment and he now officially has stage four, pancreatic cancer,” she said, the words feeling so unnatural as they passed over her lips.
She watched Abn continue reading, as if he hadn’t heard her. Ron was the father Abn never had, just as she was the mother he’d never had. Abn and Ron were close beyond reason and sometimes she wondered if he loved Ron more than he did her.
She found herself holding her breath. The man she loved, the husband she’d always dreamed of was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it. A physical pain began to accumulate in her heart, starting out as a pinprick, and blossoming into a grenade blast that seemed to rack her entire chest in agony. She wanted to cry, to sob, to let the grief flow, but somehow, she didn’t feel as if breaking down in front of Abn was fair. Abn had lost so much more in his life. He had never met his blood parents. Before his adoption, everyone close to him had been killed. Yet here he was, thriving. And by all reckoning, he had a promising life ahead.
“Does he know yet?” Abn asked as he finished reading the letter.
She could see tears accumulating in Abn’s eyes as he spoke. But the tears didn’t break through and only at that moment did she realize she’d never actually seen him cry. “Yes. The oncologist said on the phone that he had spoken with him,” she said.
“Then where is he?”
She shook her head as she answered. “You know your father. He’s at work. And I don’t expect him to get home until the normal time.”
“He is dying.”
Her voice began to falter as she ans
wered, “…He will work until he can’t. That’s who he is.”
Tears began rolling down her face. She could hold them back no longer. In the same instant, giant sobs began to force their way forth, as if the pain in her chest were forcing its way from her body. A second later, she became aware that Abn was in her arms. She sunk her face into his shoulder. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” she sobbed.
They stayed like that for some time. She felt truly grateful to have Abn there with her. She marveled at his ability at keeping his own emotion in check. Although, she knew that deep down he had to be hurting. Even the anvil of his youth couldn’t harden him completely to such things as this.
“Jane, that bloody cat’s craped in the hallway again!” A voice suddenly bellowed from upstairs.
Jane jumped at the sound of the voice. She hadn’t heard the door open. She knew it was Ron’s brother, Ed, but she couldn’t remember the reason for his visit. “I’ll take care of it!” she called back.
“Goddamn that cat!” Ed growled.
“He sounds like he has been drinking again,” Abn said, disgust reflected in his tone.
“Oh, Hell. I have to take him to his probation meeting. That’s why he’s here,” she said.
“Oh…” Abn said. “I will go upstairs. There are some drawings I am working on that I want to finish. And I also have study to do.”
She watched as Abn moved to the stairs. “You’ll be okay on your own for a while?”
“Of course.”
“One of these days, you’ll show me that artwork of yours.”
“One of these days,” Abn smiled.
She smiled back. Deep down, she knew he would never show her his drawings. She had no idea why. He had to be good at it. When he wasn’t studying, scratching away at his oversized pad seemed to take up much of his free time. But she never pushed him. She took his privacy seriously because she knew it had been a luxury he’d never had before coming under her care.
Then Abn was gone, leaving her alone to face what was to come. She glanced at her watch as she stood and moved toward the stairs. They only had a half hour before the meeting began. She could hear Ed fumbling with something in the kitchen. There was no time to eat. She had to get him to the meeting.
For the one hundredth time, she wondered why she’d agreed to help Ed out by taking him to the meetings in the first place. It always came back to the same conclusion; Ron had asked her as a favor and she’d said yes. Ron’s job as a paramedic gave him no time for driving his brother around during the day. On the other hand, her profession as a forensic accountant had much more flexible hours. It was only right that she did this favor for Ron.
She knew Ron somehow felt responsible for Ed’s state. It was he who had encouraged Ed to join the New Zealand Defense Force in the first place. The brothers’ similarity ended there. While Ron had been posted to Iraq, Ed had seen service in Afghanistan. What happened to Ed there was something of a black box, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Ron told stories of how Ed had been in his youth; a jokester, fun and full of life, always having something uplifting to offer to those around him. Right now, she could only describe Ed as the exact opposite of that.
Even before she’d married Ron and settled in New Zealand, Ed’s life had descended into chaos. Ed had been dishonorably discharged and returned to New Zealand five years ago. In that time, he had incurred a total of seven drunk driving charges, five of them without a license. The only reason why he hadn’t been jailed was because of Ron’s support. But despite everything, Ed still drank. There seemed to be no escaping his addiction. By all appearances, he looked as though he would spiral into oblivion from here on and she felt sure that there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“What are you doing?” she said, as she entered the kitchen.
“I’m cooking eggs,” Ed grumbled without turning around from the open refrigerator.
“There’s no time for that. We have to go. You know what happened the last time you were late for your appointment,” she said.
“That wasn’t my fault.”
She ignored the protests. “Be ready in five minutes. And make sure you turn off that stove top.”
As she turned and went to get ready, she heard Ed hiss a string of profanities from behind her. She knew he’d been drinking. She could smell it. But she also knew that he wasn’t badly drunk. He could still talk. He could still stand up. And he wasn’t screaming abuse at the world; not yet. She could deal with him when he was in this state. Mildly offensive, she could handle. A career around soldiers had conditioned her with that ability.
Despite this, she didn’t feel comfortable with Ed coming into the house on a whim, even if he technically had a right to do so. He and Ron had grown up in the house. Their mother had died when they were only children and their father had willed the house to them both when he’d passed away a few years ago. Ron was in the process of gaining sole ownership of the estate, but this wasn’t easy with Ed being drunk most of the time. Getting Ed to show up for a probation meeting was one thing. Getting him to a meeting with the family lawyer was quite another. And Ron was also worried about what Ed would do with the money from his half of the house. Deep down, she knew that this was the true delay behind any legal settlement. Despite Ed being a text book drunk, intent on self-destruction, Ron loved him beyond reason. She knew he would never cut Ed loose.
But as she got ready in her room, she now realized that everything had changed. Ron would now have no choice but to cut Ed loose. Death had a way of making that happen.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she finished dressing. She knew she would have to tell Ed that his brother was going to die. She had no idea how to do that.
* * * * *
Abn heard the front door open downstairs. He glanced at the clock on his bedroom wall. It was too early for Jane to arrive back home. She would be gone for at least another half an hour.
Feeling a mixture of excitement and worry, he slid off his seat and moved toward the door. “Dad, is that you?” he called.
“It’s me!”
Abn hurried downstairs and found Ron in the hallway, still wearing his paramedics uniform. He flew into his arms and immediately he felt his adopted father return the embrace.
“Good to see you, too,” Ron said.
“Mum told me the news,” Abn said, not letting go.
“I know. I’m sorry, Son.”
He pried himself free for long enough to look up into Ron’s ever-generous eyes. “You are sorry? I am the one who should be sorry,” he said. “It is not your fault.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault.”
Abn resumed his hug. “I do not want to lose you,” he breathed.
Ron pushed back against Abn and looked him dead in the eye. “You haven’t lost me yet. I still feel good. Let’s enjoy the time we do have.”
Abn felt a strange itching behind his eyes as he looked back at Ron. He decided that this is what the seeds of crying felt like. But no tears came. He’d never actually cried before. He wasn’t sure why. He’d seen other people do it. “Okay,” he said.
“Now where is your mother?” Ron asked.
“It is the first Tuesday of the month. You know where she is.”
“Oh… And how is your uncle Ed today?”
“He is drunk.”
“Manageable, I hope?”
“Twenty-five percent manageable,” Abn said.
As they talked, Abn admired how well Ron appeared to be taking the news of his imminent death. Even now, the day he’d received that news, here he was thinking of others. Ron was like that. This was something that Abn had loved since the moment they’d met. Abn had been raised in a dog-eat-dog world that had no room for selflessness. The only other selfless person he’d ever known was the ISIS Doctor. And he was dead. Now, here was Ron who would also soon be dead. He wondered if this was the reward for all good men?
“Twenty-five percent isn’t bad,” Ron said as he ruffled Abn’s ragged mop of hair
. “Now what would you like for dinner?”
“I will have what you are having.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“That is because I always love to eat what you eat,” he said, speaking the truth in the strictest sense. He did love everything his parents ate. While growing up, luxury eating for him had been a tiny daily portion of spiced rice. And as educated as he was, he still felt ignorant to the vast array of foods available to all New Zealanders. Each new meal felt as if it were an adventure all on its own.
“Okay, have it your way. Let me go get changed. We’ll go out tonight,” Ron said.
“What about Mum?” Abn said.
“I’ll call her. We’ll all meet at the restaurant.”
“And Ed too?”
Ron offered a serious look. “And Ed,” he said.
* * * * *
The Newtown restaurant had been their regular spot for over a year now. Jane liked it because the food reminded her of home. It had a continental menu, with steaks, vegetables and all the base foods Texan’s were raised on. They’d eaten at many of Wellington’s countless other restaurants as well, but this was their favorite. And more importantly, this had become a place where family meetings were held. She could tell by Ed’s composure that he was well aware of this detail, despite still being somewhat inebriated. She scolded herself for not having the courage to tell him earlier about Ron’s condition. But he’d been a handful to control when he’d finished his appointment. Their journey in the car had been filled with his cursing about one aspect or another, regarding his case officer.
In reality, she knew that Ed was now sobering up and this was what really had him agitated. So, when Ron gave her the questioning look, which said, “Did you tell him?” she could only answer with a shake of her head.
“What was that?” Ed asked.
She turned to see Ed’s accusing look. “What?” she said.
THE LIFE LEFT: A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Page 2