She had taken two steps back when she realized: if she was wrong, if it didn’t work, she would be robbing Saul of any chance he had left for a miracle.
The nurse’s squeaky shoes returned. Loreena allowed Dominic to guide her into the hallway and back to her room.
The next day they moved Saul onto the second floor, room 217. They didn’t say he was going downhill, specifically, but as Loreena walked with them, her hand on the side of the rolling bed while the castors rattled over the linoleum, she felt as if she were helping to move her brother to where he would take his last breath, another cold, sterile hospital room.
They walked down the hall, into the elevator, down an other hall, and into the new room on the right. This time there was no roommate, though there was an extra bed. The window faced opposite the one in her own room, the bathroom on the right instead of the left. She stayed while the nurses adjusted the IV and the bedding, while they scratched their observations onto notepads and repositioned the rolling tray and opened the drapes to let the light in. Finally her brother was settled. He hadn’t made a sound the whole time. Two of the nurses left. The last one laid a gentle hand on her arm, in pity, Loreena felt, and then followed the others out, shutting the door behind her.
Loreena stayed another hour, sitting by the bed with her head next to her brother’s, wishing beyond hope that he would wake up. With every hour he remained in the coma, her choices grew more difficult, her window of time gradually closing. When her stomach began to gnaw at her, she returned to her own room and found her uncle there, waiting in the chair. He insisted she eat, a late breakfast of eggs and waffles and orange juice. It didn’t taste bad, as far as hospital food went, and it felt good to be doing something normal, something where her body could take over and she could go along without having to think too much.
After the staff had cleared the dishes away and her roommate had closed his eyes for a nap, Loreena assured her uncle she would be fine if he took a few hours to make arrangements for a longer stay at the hotel. He also needed to place a few calls to sick and hospitalized church members, and Loreena encouraged him to take his time, saying she would enjoy a few hours rest.
About ten minutes after he left, Dominic came in, entering so quietly it was only the sense of someone being there that turned Loreena’s head.
“It’s me,” he said, coming to the bed.
Taking his arm, she was surprised to touch a cotton sleeve. “They’ve let you out?”
“Seems I beat you by one. I think the doctor’s coming for you next.” He sat in the chair her uncle usually occupied, both hands on her arm, one still half covered in the cast. Loreena smelled the fresh scent of shampoo and soap, and knew he must have just gotten out of the shower. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“They moved Saul this morning,” she said. “He’s in room 217 now.”
“Any improvement?”
She shook her head.
“Where will you go,” he asked, “once you’re out?”
“We’ll stay at a hotel. So we can be close by.”
Dominic nodded but said nothing more.
Loreena sat back and stretched her legs. The hospital gown felt like old paper. “What about you?” she asked.
“Nowhere, for a while,” he said.
“Dominic, you don’t have to—”
“I want to. You know, we never finished the interview.”
She rolled her eyes. “There was no interview. You made all that up.”
“But now I need a subject, and I need a story.”
“I didn’t think you were really a writer.”
He scooted closer. “I did write that one article, about the piano professor. I’d like to try it again.”
“If you were to write my story now, they’d probably throw me in jail an hour after it was published.”
“What is it you think I would write?”
“What else? The thing most people would find interesting. The thing you came to me for.”
The clock over her head ticked out a full thirty seconds before he responded. “Do you really think that’s all I could find to write about you?”
Her cheeks flushed. It wasn’t a subject she felt comfortable talking about.
People passed in the hallway, their voices loud and lively. Taking someone home, Loreena imagined. It hurt, listening to them, knowing that, most likely, they would never take Saul home. There would be no celebration, no parties in the basement of the church to welcome him back.
“I know you’re angry with me,” Dominic said, “but that day in September…” His voice trailed off and he sighed. “I didn’t want to meet you just so I could die. I sought you out, came hundreds of miles to see you.”
Loreena sank lower in the bed.
“I was looking at a future where all I’d be able to do was watch my body dissolve before my eyes, and then what? Weeks in the hospital, zoned out on pain drugs, with nurses moistening my lips with a wet cloth. I was beside myself until the day I traveled through the woods with Russell, and he told me the story of the preacher and his niece, the ones who could help.”
She didn’t really want to hear it. She asked him for her coat.
“We rode horses and fished in the lake and cooked what we caught over the fire,” he said, “and Russell talked about the lung cancer, about his surgery and the chemotherapy, and how there was nothing more the doctors could do. He’d heard stories of the misery others had endured, the fluid around the lungs, the pressure in the chest, the inability to breathe, the bone pain. He’d heard of the headaches, the seizures, and always the prison of the bed because you can’t get up, can’t move, can’t do anything but lie there and suffer and hallucinate and lose your mind while you pray for the good grim reaper to come.” Dominic got up and laid the coat over her like a blanket. “Listening to him, I grew terrified.”
Worms crawled up her spine, her chest tight. Was this how it was for Saul, this feeling of being confined to the bed? Could he sense anything about where he was?
“But as the sun went down and the fish sat warm and salty in our stomachs,” Dominic went on, “Russell told me a very different story. I laughed at him at first. I did. I think it was just as much from the fear he had placed in my gut as from disbelief. He spoke of another way to face what we both had to face, though he knew nothing of my diagnosis, and wasn’t aware he was speaking to someone else marked for death. Sitting by the glowing fire, he told me of a peaceful passage to the afterlife, a gentle closing of the eyes and a step toward the light.” He paused. “I swear even the foxes and the wolves were listening as he told that story. I’ve never heard the forest so quiet.”
Loreena’s mouth was dry. She pressed her hands into her thighs.
Dominic leaned on the railing. “I don’t know what Frank did to you,” he said, “but I have some idea. He may be paying for it now, but Loreena, you haven’t won yet. He’s managed to twist the nature of who you are and what you can do. He probably hurt you physically—maybe in more ways than I know. But I think what he did to your mind was much worse.”
Loreena thought she should say something, assure him she was fine, but scenes were replaying in her mind, like the fight with Charlie and the long recovery in Mrs. Markos’s house. Could there have been worse damage than that?
“If I were to write a story,” Dominic said, “it wouldn’t be about killing and death and crime and wrongdoing. It would be a story of mercy and peace, of hope replacing the most terrifying fear, of friendship and guidance in our most isolated moments. What you have is a gift. I know, because I felt it, in the tunnel with you.”
Lifting her head, Loreena remembered that moment, holding hands as the lights darted around them.
“The thought that it could be like that at the end, flowing through that darkness, the meadow ahead of me, your hand in mine.” He smiled with a soft breath. “Even if you hadn’t cured me, I would be a new man, for I know where I’m going now, and with your help, how I may get there, without pain
and without fear.”
Loreena reached for him and he wrapped his arms around her. Pressing her face into his shirt, she squeezed him tight, hoping her embrace would show him how she appreciated his words, for she did, way down deep inside her heart. But now the tears came not because she was grateful or somehow redeemed, but because she knew what she had to do. She had promised herself she would never go there again, but this was her brother, and his time was running out. Soon, there would be no choice. She had to do it—and quickly, before her uncle returned.
21
When the doctor came to grant her release, Loreena complained of stomach pain, telling him it had bothered her through the night. After a few more questions, he decided to order additional tests, just to be safe. Dominic, who sat quietly by during the conversation, seemed concerned, but once the doctor left, Loreena told him of her plan. When she’d finished with the tests, they would ride the elevator together to room 217.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked her, and she’d nodded, though she felt anything but sure. Once in her brother’s room, she could still change her mind. Until then, she just needed to get there with Dominic at her side.
Saul wasn’t alone. Dominic stopped her at the door. “Your uncle’s in there,” he said.
She drew her hand to her mouth, unsure how to proceed.
“I’ll be in the waiting room. Come get me when you’re ready.”
“I don’t know how long it will be.”
“It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
She squeezed his arm and stepped inside. Nothing had changed; her brother’s breath still came shallow and faint, the air heavy with the scent of rubbing alcohol and detergent.
“Loreena.” The chair scraped back as her uncle stood up. “Are you ready to go?”
She walked toward him, her backless slippers slapping her heels. “They decided to have me stay one more night. Run a few more tests.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m sure it is. I made the mistake of telling the doctor I had a little bellyache. I didn’t realize when you’re in the hospital that means a potential emergency.”
He put his hand on her shoulder and drew her close, so they were both facing Saul’s bed.
“Has there been any change?” she asked.
“He’s weaker, they say.” He sat back down, still holding onto her arm.
“What does that mean?”
A long exhale escaped his lungs. “They don’t think he’s going to come out of it.”
She took hold of the back of the chair. “Who said?”
“The doctor. He was here a bit ago.”
It was another few moments before she could speak again. “Are you okay, Uncle?”
He let go of her arm. “Just regretting, kid. The last exchange I had with him. It wasn’t a good one.”
Loreena thought back to the day in the Pearsons’ house, when Saul and Uncle Don had traded barbs in the living room. “It was nothing,” she said. “Silly words. You raised us, Uncle. He knows that. You gave us a place to go when we had nowhere else. I see now what a gift that was, how hard it must have been for you.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “It was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Loreena walked around then and sat down on her uncle’s knee, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and leaning her head on his. He held onto her waist, his other hand loose at his side, and she felt the coolness of his hair against her cheek, and the gentle movement of his breath.
“I’ve tried to do as God would have us do, but even after all these years, I keep coming up short.”
Loreena shook her head but said nothing.
“I should have been more patient with him. Then maybe he would have come back, instead of going to someone like this Frank.”
“Saul made his own decisions. I don’t think they had anything to do with you.”
“But if I had talked to him, that day. Welcomed him back. I was just so angry.”
“Isn’t that the way it is, between fathers and sons? You were a father to us, Uncle.”
He pulled her closer, and together they rested silently, listening to Saul breathe. Beyond the closed door, the hallways grew noisy again as the nurses rolled carts back and forth and families walked by mid-conversation and somewhere a patient’s call bell rang, but in the little room it was just the three of them, and for a few precious moments, time agreed to pause.
By the time Uncle Don returned to the hotel and Loreena retrieved Dominic from the waiting room, it was early evening. Thankfully the nurses were engaged elsewhere, the hallways much quieter as the patients gradually settled down for the night. Closing the door, the two of them crossed to Saul’s bed.
Her brother’s breath was so faint as to be nearly inaudible. Reaching across his body, Loreena placed her hand on his chest, feeling his weak heartbeat under her palm. Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. He was trapped in a broken body, alone wherever he was, in some dark tunnel or vast space of nothingness, with no one to guide him or help him through. Trembling, she lifted her left hand until it was near his open palm lying still on the sheet.
She pulled back. How was she going to do this?
“It’s okay.” Dominic put his hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to try it tonight.”
“I do.” She paused. “The doctor said he didn’t think Saul was going to recover.” Her brother’s arm was so still in her grip. “He seems a long way away, like he’s already gone. I don’t want him to be alone. He could…go, and I wouldn’t get the chance…” She couldn’t say it.
The room fell quiet. Even the radiator hadn’t made a sound. Saturday evening. It seemed everyone had gone home. At any other time, Saul would be getting ready to go out dancing or partying or riding his bike. That he was here in this bed quickly fading away was surreal, and Loreena had to keep touching him to remind herself of the truth. He was young. His life was supposed to be ahead of him. She lowered her head.
Dominic took hold of her wrist. “Maybe it’s too early,” he said.
She clung to her brother’s arm with her other hand. She wanted to believe Dominic, to imagine she could heal Saul, but if they were wrong…
“Loreena?”
All day she’d been thinking about it, preparing for it. She could wait, but then the nurses would come. At eight o’ clock, they would make her leave. She’d have to stay away until the next morning, and if Saul wasn’t alive then, she would never forgive herself for robbing him of the chance; the chance for life, or the chance to say goodbye.
Slowly, she reached forward, slid her hand down her brother’s arm, and sealed her palm against his.
Navy-blue light surrounded her, her body floating, weightless. Sensing a brighter glow ahead, Loreena looked up. They were approaching the new world, what looked like a suburban neighborhood, flying in on a lush lawn to meet a golden yellow house. They moved quickly, evidence Saul had already made most of the journey on his own. She looked to her left and sucked in a breath.
He floated beside her, his gaze focused on the house. “Home,” he said.
Loreena stared. For the first time in over ten years, she saw her brother. He looked much older than she remembered; he was taller, his chest filled out and his arms sinewy with muscle. His face was thinner, more masculine than his little boy face, his hair combed back and wavy, a bit of blond stubble showing on his cheeks and chin.
He looked at her with gray-blue eyes and smiled, one fang tooth just visible behind his curved lips. “Hey, Sis.”
She smiled back, but it quickly faded. He looked so…adult.
“Remember this house?” he said. “This was our house, before.” He dropped her hand and stepped forward as they landed on the paved road. “That pear tree over there. I helped Mom plant it when we got here. And we made the flowerbed too, and we built the fence.” Trotting ahead, his long legs had the spring of an antelope’s, even in his heavy leather boots. “And the screen door. We put that on. See?�
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They shouldn’t be here already. They had come too far, too fast. Loreena stood at the edge of the lawn, torn between her brother’s happy reminiscing and the urge to grab his hand and try to run back. Dominic was by her side right at this moment, poised to make a miracle happen, but they had already arrived, had already left the tunnel far behind, and now Saul seemed elated about where he was. Darting about the lawn like a kid, he pointed at this and that and something else, showing her the patch of dirt where they used to dig with toy dump trucks, and the window he had accidentally broken when they were playing baseball, and the corner of the property where he had waited for the bus on his first day of school, and the spot against the side of the house where he always parked his bike. Then he knelt down by the rosebush standing alone to the left of the front door, protected by the short white fence, the branches rising up above the wooden slats. Collapsing on the grass, he cupped the one lone bud peeking out between the leaves.
“Loreena, look!”
She had already seen it—the same one she had seen on the shoreline in Russell’s afterlife. The same one she had hoped to see on every trip since, and had not seen until now, here, in Saul’s world.
“It’s Salvador,” Saul said. “He has a flower!”
As they had so many evenings after their mother died, they tended to the rose, pulling small weeds from around its base, examining the leaves for insects and disease, and bringing water from the outside faucet, Saul hooking up the hose that lay curled up in the corner. As they worked Loreena remembered her mother’s hands, and for the first time in years recalled that she always wore gloves when caring for her roses, the flower-print kind with rubber on the palms and fingertips.
When they could do no more for the plant but admire it, Saul went back to his reminiscing. The fence posts were redwood, he explained. They had stained them before stuffing them into the ground. Did she remember? She was very young then, maybe only four, but she tried to help, and their mother laughed when she got the stain on her nose and Saul said she looked like Rudolph. The pear tree near the driveway always bore fruit, but the insects ruined most of it. Sometimes a few would come through unscathed, but they never quite tasted right, either too sour or too mushy by the time their mother got them washed and cut up.
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