The Vanishing Expert

by David Movsesian

  It was light when he arrived at the hospital. He parked in the visitor’s lot and he scanned the parking lot and the hospital entrance for Kate, though he didn’t expect to see her. Assuming he hadn’t arrived too late, he knew Kate would be at their father’s side. He knew also that Kenny, and possibly Gloria, would be with her. He waited a moment as people hurried past his Jeep to get out of the rain. He glanced about nervously, half-expecting to see someone he knew, and then he stepped out into the rain and ran to the hospital entrance.

  It was just before seven o’clock when Eleanor walked into the room. She approached Kate, who was still sitting in the chair at her father’s side where she’d been all night, only now she was leaning forward and resting her face on the mattress near her father’s hand. Eleanor thought she was sleeping at first and didn’t want to disturb her, but then she heard Kate whispering to her father, still assuring him she hadn’t left him. Eleanor stepped forward and, placing her hand gently on Kate’s back, she leaned in close to Kate’s ear.

  “There’s someone here to see you, dear,” the nurse informed her.

  Kate sat upright and looked at Kenny, who had awakened from his nap and was sitting in a chair on the other side of the bed reading the sports section of the Providence Journal.

  “I’ll be right back,” Kate told Kenny as she stood up. “Please stay with Dad and let me know if anything happens.”

  Kenny agreed and took Bud Moody’s right hand just as Kate released his left. Kate stepped out into the hallway, expecting to see her brother waiting for her around the corner. She was surprised to find Tracy waiting for her instead.

  “I’m so sorry,” Tracy said when their eyes met. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Kate in a big sisterly embrace. “He’s upstairs,” she whispered in Kate’s ear. She felt Kate’s body tense. “He won’t come down until I tell him it’s safe, but he’s a little frantic. He wants to know how your dad is.”

  Kate drew back and looked over her shoulder at the door to her father’s room. “Kenny’s with me,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to get him out.”

  “Edward had an idea,” Tracy told her.

  When Kate returned to her father’s side, she sat down in the chair where she’d spent the last seventeen hours and she again took her father’s hand.

  “Everything okay?” Kenny asked her.

  Kate nodded.

  “You look exhausted,” Kenny told her. “You should really try to get some sleep.”

  Kate shook her head. “What I could really use is a shower and a change of clothes, but I can’t leave.”

  Kenny sat up, grateful to finally be of some use. “Do you want me to go by the house and bring you some things?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Kate said, almost apologetically.

  It was Edward’s suggestion to send Kenny on this errand, knowing it would give him over an hour to spend with his father, longer if Kenny took a shower at the house, which he expected he would.

  Kenny stood up and walked around the bed. He stooped down and put his arm around Kate’s shoulders. “Are you sure you want me to go?”

  Kate nodded. “Very sure,” she told him.

  After speaking to Kate in the hallway, Tracy had gone upstairs to find Edward. She found him pacing in the third-floor lounge.

  “How is he?” Edward asked her as she approached.

  “He’s hanging on,” Tracy said. “But it won’t be much longer.” She stepped forward and took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Edward said. “Who’s with her?”

  “Just Kenny,” Tracy told him. “She’s gonna try what you suggested to get him out of the hospital for a while.”

  Edward began to pace again, and then he stopped and glanced at Tracy. “What about Gloria?”

  Tracy shook her head. “She wasn’t there,” Tracy assured him, but she suddenly realized it might not be assurance he was seeking. “I’m gonna go back down to see if Kenny left yet.” She looked hard at Edward. “You’ll wait right here?”

  He nodded, and she was gone.

  While he waited for Tracy to return, Edward stepped into the men’s room to splash some water on his face. He peered at his reflection in the mirror, and he suddenly became aware of his disheveled appearance. His clothes were rumpled and he needed a haircut. He pushed his hair back from his face with his fingers and then he ran his hands over his chin. His beard was thick and in need of a trim, and he decided right then to shave it off as soon as he returned to Southwest Harbor. For now, it served as an adequate disguise since he hadn’t worn a beard since college, and no one was likely to recognize him looking as he did, perhaps not even his father.

  When Tracy returned a few minutes later, they took the elevator to the second floor and she guided Edward to his father’s room. Tracy didn’t go inside with him. She decided to wait near the elevator in case Kenny or Gloria showed up.

  Edward took a deep breath and pushed open the door to his father’s room. He saw Kate first, sitting in her chair at their father’s bedside. She stood up when he entered and went quickly to him, throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. As Edward held his sister, he peered over her shoulder at the figure lying in the bed, so small beneath the sheets. His father was so still that, at first, Edward worried he was dead, until finally Bud drew a deep labored breath. It seemed an eternity until the next one.

  “Is he having trouble breathing?” Edward asked his sister.

  Kate drew back from him and stood at his side, both of them observing their father. “It’s the morphine,” Kate told him. “The doctor said it’ll slow his breathing like that. He only takes a breath every ten or fifteen seconds, but he seems comfortable.”

  Kate turned and studied her brother’s face. He looked as tired as she was. “You look like hell,” she told him.

  “Thanks,” Edward said. “So do you.”

  Even though he’d tried to prepare himself for this image of his father, he found it far more disturbing than he imagined. He thought back to his mother’s death, and what he remembered most was the suddenness of it. She was removed from their lives quickly and all at once, while their father was taken bit-by-bit until now there was almost nothing left of him. Standing at the foot of his father’s bed he observed that there remained so little of his father that there was barely a bulge in the blankets that covered him to suggest his presence. Were it not for his father’s head resting peacefully upon the pillow, and the sound of his sparse and labored breaths, he might not have known that the bed was occupied at all.

  Kate squeezed Edward’s hand. “I’ll give you a few minutes,” she said, and then she kissed her father’s forehead and stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Edward stepped around the bed and sat in the chair that Kate had relentlessly occupied since the previous afternoon. His father’s skin was the color of ash, and as Edward drew closer he thought it might be as brittle, as if it would crumble away to dust if he were to touch him.

  He touched his father’s hand which was lying at his side atop the blankets. He expected it to be cold, but it was surprisingly warm to his touch. He gently caressed his father’s thick fingers, studying them as if he was trying to memorize them. It struck him as odd that although his father had wasted away to a fragile skeleton of his former self, his hands were still the large mitts he’d always known. Edward stood up and leaned closer, kissing him on the forehead.

  “Hey, Dad,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Edward.”

  He watched his father’s face for some response, some small hint of recognition, but there was no change in his father’s expression, no change to his slow but steady breathing. If he’d come to the hospital to console his father, it appeared he’d wasted his time. And if he was looking for any small consolation for himself, he could see in his father’s peaceful and unaltered repose that he wouldn’t find that either.

 
Still, he hoped to offer some comfort to his father, and he hoped that if he spoke to him— even if his father gave no indication that he could hear him— that the sound of his voice might somehow find him through the morphine haze. And so, he pulled his chair closer and sat at his father’s side, holding his hand and speaking to him in whispers.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me, Dad,” he whispered. “I hope you can, because I want you to know how sorry I am that I left you. I know you needed me, and I wasn’t there. I hope you can forgive me for that.” His voice trembled, and he looked away from his father’s sallow face, trying to compose himself. He didn’t want to cry in front of his father, even if Bud wouldn’t see. “It’s too late for me to change anything. I can’t come back. But I want you to know that I think about you every day, and I wish we could be back together again. I wish we could be back on the boat like we used to.” He smiled faintly, but it was a mournful expression. “Those were the best times.”

  James’s felt his father’s fingers twitch in his so slightly that he thought at first he must have imagined it, until it happened again. He looked at his father’s face, and he saw that he’d opened his eyes, just barely, and they were filled with tears.

  Bud Moody was only vaguely aware of the presence of the visitor at his bedside. Through the medication, he could see him only as a shapeless mass that seemed to hover over him, drawing close to his face and drifting away as if it were floating upon his shallow breaths. He could hear the voice speaking to him with an oddly comforting quality that seemed both foreign and familiar to him. Though he couldn’t understand everything he said, he soon became aware that the voice he heard was that of his son.

  It was Edward speaking to him.

  Just down the hall, Kate was standing with Tracy, pacing nervously, when the elevator doors opened and Gloria stepped out. Gloria’s expression was grim, and she reacted to Kate’s shock in seeing her with a sympathetic smile.

  “Kenny called me,” she said as she approached Kate. “I would have come sooner if I’d known.”

  She stepped close to Kate and the two women embraced. If Gloria was aware of the tenseness in Kate’s body as she held her, she attributed it to Kate’s concern over her father.

  “I’m so sorry,” Gloria whispered to her.

  “Thanks,” Kate said.

  As Gloria drew back, she acknowledged Tracy, wondering to herself how Tracy was able to get to the hospital before her, and deciding if she should feel slighted that perhaps Tracy was notified first. She touched Tracy’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “You got here fast,” Gloria said.

  Tracy was uncertain how to respond, but before she could speak, Kate rescued her. “I called Tracy right after Kenny called you,” she lied.

  Gloria pretended to be satisfied with the explanation.

  “Where is he?” she asked. “I’d like to see him if it’s okay.”

  Kate turned and peered nervously down the hall at the closed door to her father’s room. “The doctors are with him right now,” she said, her voice shaking. “That’s why we stepped out here.”

  “I don’t want to disturb him,” Gloria said, which greatly relieved Kate. “I’ll just wait here with you, if that’s okay. I just want to look in on him for a minute before I go to work, unless you want me to stay with you.”

  Kate was panic stricken, expecting her brother to emerge from their father’s room at any moment. “The doctors are gonna be a while, so we were just on our way downstairs to the cafeteria. I need to eat something,” Kate said. She could hear her own voice quivering as she spoke. “Why don’t you join us?”

  Gloria nodded and the three women stepped into the elevator. Kate held her breath as she gazed down the empty hallway, watching for her brother as the doors slowly squeezed shut. When he didn’t appear, she relaxed for the moment, but still she had to find some way to get word to Edward that Gloria had arrived at the hospital.

  Bud Moody was only vaguely aware of the voice beckoning him through the fog of the morphine. He’d dreamed about his son often, always emerging from those all-too-brief fantasies confused and uncertain. Once he realized he’d been dreaming, he would wonder if perhaps he’d also been dreaming when they came to tell him that Edward had died. He was never sure how much of what he knew was true and how much was just his mind playing its cruel tricks on him. But now, the voice that spoke to him and the blurred figure that hovered over him in his bed seemed so real to him that it was as if Edward was right there in the room with him.

  Edward squeezed his father’s hand. His father’s dull expression suddenly appeared confused and frightened, a brief moment of clarity through the narcotic haze. Bud Moody’s eyes grew wide, but they were glassy and unfocused as they darted about the room, searching for the source of his son’s voice. Edward stood up and leaned over the bed so he was directly over his father’s face looking down upon him. “Everything’s okay, Dad,” he assured him. “You don’t need to be afraid. I’m here.” He squeezed his father’s hand.

  As Edward spoke to him, Bud Moody appeared to grow calm again. Edward was surprised at how quickly it seemed to come over him, but his father’s sunken and sallow face seemed suddenly peaceful. His eyes, though still unfocused, gazed up at him serenely.

  “You don’t have to fight it anymore, Dad,” Edward told him. He kissed his father again on the forehead. “It’s okay to let go. I’ll be right here.”

  Bud was convinced he’d seen an angel. He’d been overcome at times with a fear of dying. It was terrifying to think about it, not knowing what awaited him. Would there be pain? Would everything just go black and come to an end? Was there something more after this life? And if there was, would there be anyone there waiting for him? Now he knew the answer— that Edward was watching over him, and that his son would wait for him and guide him the rest of the way. And if Edward was there, Joan, his beloved wife, must be there, too. Edward would help him find her.

  For one moment, his gaze fixed on Edward’s face, and Edward was struck by the sudden clarity in his father’s eyes. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, hoping to find Kate, but they were alone.

  After that brief moment of lucidity, his father’s head seemed to sink deeper into the pillow as he faded quickly off to sleep. He sat for quite some time listening to his father’s slow, labored breathing. During the long gaps between his breaths, Edward found himself wondering if each would be his last— and then suddenly his father would draw another. The breaths were deep but they were slowing. It wouldn’t be long. He stepped out into the hallway to find Kate.

  The three women had spent only a short time in the cafeteria. Kate ordered a cup of coffee and a pastry she didn’t particularly want, and she sat down to eat it, hoping to keep Gloria away from the second floor for as long as possible. But Gloria was impatient. She ordered nothing for herself, and she watched while Kate sipped at her coffee and nibbled at her pastry.

  Tracy excused herself from the table on the pretense of using the ladies’ room, issuing Kate a quick look as she stood up. “You’ll still be here when I get back?” Tracy asked her companions.

  “Sure,” Kate assured her.

  Gloria glanced at her watch again, as she’d done every two minutes since they sat down together, and then she stood up. “I just want to poke my head in on your dad,” she said. “I promise not to wake him, but I have to get to work and I really want to see him before I go. You stay here and finish your breakfast.”

  Before Kate could object, Gloria turned and walked quickly out into the lobby. Kate had no choice but to follow her. Now, as the two women stood in the elevator, heading toward the second floor, Kate felt a wave of dread pass over her. Her heart pounded. She felt dizzy.

  When Edward couldn’t find Kate, he grew concerned. He paced the hallway for a moment, trying to decide what to do next. He didn’t want to leave his father alone, but he had an uneasy feeling that something had happened. He decided to retreat to the third fl
oor waiting room where he’d initially waited for Tracy to bring him word of his father’s condition, certain she would know to look for him there.

  Edward pushed the elevator button, and waited impatiently for the elevator doors to open. It took an inordinately long time, he thought, but finally he heard the low hum of the elevator in the shaft.

  A door swung open to his right, and Tracy appeared, waving frantically at him, motioning for him to follow her. “We have to go now!” she urged him.

  Before he could respond, a bell chimed, announcing the arrival of the elevator.

  “It’s Gloria!” Tracy said.

  The elevator doors opened slowly, and Kate drew a deep breath as she and Gloria stepped out onto the second floor. Kate searched nervously for her brother, but she didn’t see him. She jumped as the door to the stairwell banged shut just a few feet away.

  “Are you okay?” Gloria asked her.

  Kate nodded. “This whole thing is just getting to me,” she said.

  Gloria put her arm around Kate’s shoulder. “Everything will be okay,” she said.

  Kate tried in vain to force a smile. As they walked toward the closed door to Bud Moody’s room, Kate wondered what awaited them on the other side.

  “Let me just check to see if the doctors are finished,” she told Gloria. She pushed the door open and peered inside, finding her father alone in the room. Edward was gone.

  Bud Moody was sleeping soundly when Kate and Gloria approached his bed. Kate took her place in the same chair where she'd sat since the previous afternoon while Gloria stepped around the bed and stood over him.

  Gloria leaned forward and touched his fingers. “Hey, Bud,” she said, trying to sound cheerful for his benefit. “It’s Gloria.”