The Island - Part 4

by Michael Stark

  “Go on. We’ll heat you some water.”

  Denise came again later that night. She didn’t come for sex though. She sat with my head in her arms while I cried. Not many things can make me cry. I’ve seen people hurt and seen some die. I’ve seen some emotions rage and some wither. None came close to reaching down in a crib, finding my son cold and realizing that the only person I had ever allowed myself to love was gone.

  I told her how the doctor had talked genetics and the increased risk given history in Becky’s family, how she had put him to bed, how I’d always check on him half a dozen times every night, how I’d check the monitor to make sure it was on and working, how the fear had always played in my mind every time I tiptoed in his room during the wee hours. But that night, we had fought, like we had so many nights before, like we would so many nights after. The argument had been stupid, borne of some silly thing as most of them were. Years later, I couldn’t even remember the reason. What I do remember is how late it ran, how heated the words were, how exhausted we both were by the time it was over.

  It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. I could have bought lottery tickets for a thousand years and never hit the numbers as perfectly as I did that night, the one night I’d forgotten the monitor, the one night I’d been too tired to walk in and check on him. You don’t have to wait to feel guilty when something like that happens. The little bastard of an imp responsible for that particular emotion starts tapping you on the shoulder the instant you’re awake enough to process a rational thought the next morning. I’d opened my eyes with the little arrow of fear and guilt shooting through me when I remembered and walked into the nursery minutes later. There are no words for that kind of pain, no words that can describe the cascade of emotions that rip out your heart, your soul, your hopes and your dreams and grinds each of them into dust, leaving holes that will never be filled again. With the grief had come the crushing burden of the knowledge that I’d left him alone to face his own demons, something a parent can never take back, can never forget, and can never rationalize away. My son died in the early hours. A part of me died along with him.

  Pain comes and goes in much the same way the tide wanes and waxes. At times, it swallows you. At others, you can keep it at a safe distance even though you can never truly put it away. It swallowed me that night, wrapped me in an embrace stronger even than Baby’s vise-like grip.

  Life too follows a curve. For some, the graph looks like a sine wave trailing off in the distance. For others, the peak is early and the down side as sharp and abrupt as the face of a cliff.

  Billy Joel once said that only the good die young. He was wrong. Around the world, death took people of all types, all persuasions, and all personalities. With The Fever set loose, billions would die and among them, young and old, good, bad, and indifferent. The singer’s words did carry a prophetic sense when it came to the island, though.

  Jessie was, by far, the most kind-hearted of the lot marooned at the life-saving station.

  She started coughing two days later.

  Author’s note:

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  MS