by C. G. Cooper
Sam fell to her knees. She was a little girl again. Frozen to the spot. Why did her body do this during these awful times? Why did it have to freeze like this?
Too soon he was standing over her. He reached down and stroked the top of her head. Once. Twice.
She went numb. If she died now, it would be okay.
There was a crashing sound behind. The hand on Sam’s head lifted and everyone living turned to regard the disturbance.
That’s when Sam saw Elmore’s face, hard and determined, as he bowled right into the room, right into the line of fire.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Elmore was sure his shoulder went along with the door. Luckily, he’d gone with his weak side, the left. He’d crashed through one door before. That was a long time ago when his body was lithe.
No sooner had he made it into the room when his gaze fell to Sam, crouched behind a man with a gun. He had the look of a historic loser, all worn like the backroads of some forgotten town on the outskirts of Phoenix, cracked and broken.
The gun. Watch the gun.
Elmore stumbled a step, and then regained his footing.
A couple more steps, he willed himself forward.
Elmore took him out with the other shoulder, just right, like a linebacker plowing right through a receiver at mid-field. He felt the wooomf of lost air release from the man’s chest, smelled the breath of a million cigarettes and stale liquor.
But there was nothing he could do about the gun. It was sandwiched between them now. His aim had been perfect if it had just been about making the game-saving tackle. But this was a battle for life itself. The man had no breath in him, but he had a gun, a reliable pistol that pressed into Elmore’s chest.
For a split second, the old Marine thought about twisting to the side, trying to wrench the weapon from the younger man’s grasp. It was too late. He knew that. He knew it as clearly as he’d seen the battlefield years before. He knew it as clearly as he’d known the one and only woman he’d ever loved was Eve St. John stepping into the sunlight in Central Park.
So, he did the opposite. He hugged the man close, pressed the hard metal towards himself. Relief it was. Strange and beguiling relief. This was what he’d been put on the Earth for. To live. To save. To one day die.
Take me now, he said to his Lord, his heart open, wishing he could say goodbye to Sam. But he couldn’t find the spoken words. His lips couldn’t move let alone get the saliva to flow.
The explosion didn’t come as a surprise. Neither did the seer of pain. But he felt the man’s grip loosen. Elmore took the opening and slipped his own hand between them.
The weapon was slick with his blood.
The pistol twisted just so. The man grunted. Sam said something Elmore couldn’t understand. “Let him go,” maybe? Or was it “Go get the hoe.”
The pistol finally worked to Elmore’s pressing, although it expelled another two rounds before he could get it fully pressed in the other direction. He barely felt them. So easy now. So easy.
One. Two. Three times he squeezed the trigger, pressing his own finger over the man’s. They were almost face to face now. The mask he watched, that of a broken man who’d ignored his own doom recognized it now.
Two more shots, two more jolts of bodies intertwined.
A trickle of blood seeped from the man’s mouth, and then, slowly at first, the man went limp and slid away.
Elmore released his hold of the man but not of the gun. Who had it been that’d told him never to let his gun fall? A Marine. It had to be. One of his instructors.
He looked up. Sgt. Franks was standing over him.
“Hello, Sergeant,” Elmore said.
“Oh, God, Nix.”
Elmore looked down, saw the mess there. He’d seen this much blood before, but it was the blood of others. Boys he’d carried through barbed wire. Enemies he’d bludgeoned with e-tools and rifle stocks.
Now it was his. His blood. His life.
Elmore shivered. He wasn’t in pain.
“Sergeant, have you met Sam?”
“Sure, sure, at the banquet.”
Elmore nodded. Happy. He wanted to pat his old friend on the shoulder. There were so many things to tell him. He wanted Franks to know how his confidence had been his school, his graduate studies of what a real man was. Proud in the right way. Always looking out for his men.
But the words… Well, here he was. Such a mess. But there wasn’t pain. That was good.
Someone was talking. Elmore realized he’d zoned out, thoughts drifting somewhere. To eternity? That would be nice. Eve would like eternity. Such a nice place. Was it a place or a thing?
“Elmore Thaddeus Nix.”
His name snapped him back. Sam’s face hovering over his.
“Ah, hello, Sam.”
“Hello.”
Tears. Too many tears.
“Don’t cry,” he said. He wanted to give her a handkerchief, the one in his pocket. But he couldn’t’ remember where his pocket was. Strange.
“I can’t,” Sam said.
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t stop crying.”
“Oh,” he said, almost dreamily. To dream. That would be nice.
“The ambulance is coming. Just hold on.”
His eyes drifted to his chest, to where she was holding something, a blanket maybe, over the growing center of deep red.
“Okay, Sam. Okay.”
“Hold on.”
But he didn’t know if he could. This was it. It had to be. He’d done his duty one last time. And it felt good. Sam was safe. Such a wonderful soul she was. Sweet and smart. He wished she was his granddaughter. Did they have such things in eternity? No, not eternity. Heaven. Wouldn’t Eve have saved him a place there?
“Thank you, Sam. You take care of her, Franks. You hear me?”
The old sergeant’s face wavered somewhere on the periphery. “Don’t go talking that way, Marine. That’s an order. We’ll take care of her together, you old coot, you hear me? Now hang in there, the ambulance…”
Elmore didn’t hear another word. But he saw her face. Sam. Sad and searching. So beautiful. So full of... what? Ah yes, life. That was his doing now. It was the right thing.
And then someone called to him.
Sleep, the voice said.
Yes, Eve, my forever heart, I think I should sleep now.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Nurse Edie Tomlinson surveyed the crowd that poured in like a tidal surge. At first, the emergency room nurse thought that maybe the nearby festival had been attacked by some rogue gunman. That was the times they lived in now. The hospital had been briefed about mass shootings. But when she saw that most everyone looked healthy, she wondered if that maybe a celebrity had been admitted.
No, it turned out it was a man named Nix. They were asking for him.
When Edie looked him up, she saw that he’d been flown in. Critical condition. Emergency surgery. A goner for sure. She’d seen plenty of those cases.
So, the police came, and the visitors were told they would be contacted. Who the hell was this Nix anyway?
But they didn’t leave. They found a spot across the parking lot, a grassy patch where they congregated. Soon there was one of those picnic tents and then another. Folding chairs appeared.
“It’s a damn block party out there,” one of the orderlies said.
“Yeah,” Edie said absently.
“Who is this guy?”
“Damned if I know.”
“You think he’s some kind of criminal?”
Edie shot him a look. “Why would you say that?”
“I heard them talking. Something about getting shot and killing someone else. Has to be a criminal, right? Mafia guys have people who flock around them like groupies.”
Nurse Edie put her hand on her hip. “You watch too much TV. Go sweep the damn rooms.”
A criminal? Mafia?
Why the fuss?
Chapter Sixty
Dreams. Such
wonderful dreams. Dreams for days, for years.
Elmore wouldn’t remember them, but he did remember the feeling of being pulled through the end of a vacuum cleaner. The world came back that fast, his hair tingling, his whole body aching, screaming.
He exhaled and coughed. Something in his throat. He was choking. It was one of his only fears. Choking or drowning.
But he was a good swimmer. An expert thanks to all those hours in the lap lanes, cruising by older-timers and their languid strokes. Elmore was almost steady, sure strokes that cut through the pool or waves in the ocean. Eve called him a beautiful swimmer. He didn’t know about that, thought she was being too kind, but he liked it when she said it.
More choking, then a glint of light. So bright. Too bright…
“It’s okay, it’s almost out.”
Elmore gagged, the breathing tube finally coming out.
He coughed, a dry, pitiful sound, even to his own ears. That’s when he recognized the pain again, all over. He grimaced, which made the pain worse.
Then a warm glow seemed to spread throughout his body. The tension left him and back to the dreams he flew. But even though he wanted to see them, he didn’t want to go.
Hours later, he came to again. Groggily, steadily.
“Lookee lookee. Nix is awake.”
He knew that voice. Franks. Sergeant Franks. His old friend.
Elmore blinked. Thankfully the room was dim and manageable for his sensitive eyes.
“How ya feeling, Marine?”
Elmore could see him now, a blob of light, semi-featured.
“What happened?” Elmore just managed to squeak out.
“Oh, you know, young Private Nix just had to go and play hero again.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Doc says that’s to be expected. May come back, then again, it may not.”
Elmore’s gaze shifted to the other figure in the room. Silent. Then the eyes came into focus. Sam.
“Hey,” he said, his voice clearing a bit.
“Hey,” she said. This wasn’t the young woman he knew. This was some timid thing that had snuck into his hospital room.
Then he remembered. Bursting into the apartment. The man with the gun. Someone lying on the couch. Or next to the couch.
“Your mother,” Elmore said.
“She’s dead.”
Elmore gulped, or at least tried to.
“I’m sorry.”
Sam nodded.
What else could he say? Nothing. So he reached out his hand instead. She stepped closer and took the hand in hers. So warm. So full of life. He squeezed her hand, pulled her a little bit closer.
She finally looked at him, really looked at him. That was when she broke and came forward. It hurt when she laid her head on his chest but he didn’t care. This was where they were supposed to be. Something had brought them to this very moment. And in that room, in that very instant, Elmore Thaddeus Nix knew that he would live to a ripe old age, watching the young woman clinging to him grow into something beautiful, something wonderful to behold.
“It’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair though her sobs. “It’s going to be okay.”
And for the first time since Eve’s death, he knew he was telling the truth.
Chapter Sixty-One
They didn’t let him leave for close to a week. There would be three more surgeries. Franks told him his guts had been ripped to shreds and that the doctors had been paid overtime to put the strands back together. Just like a Marine to put it that way.
During that time, he had visitors, too many to count. It was obvious that the hospital staff wasn’t keen to that fact, but it was the head of the hospital, a woman who’d spent her time in the service as a nurse, who finally put her foot down. Elmore was given a private room and visitors were allowed to come and go during daylight hours.
And the funny thing was that Elmore didn’t mind. He delighted in seeing friends and strangers alike. He loved hearing their stories, how’d they’d come home from Vietnam in shock, sometimes falling on hard times, but here they were. Still kicking. Still alive.
There were tears, of course. How could there not be? But they were happy tears. Through it all, Sgt. Franks played sentinel, and Sam played constant companion. Franks had contacted her school and had her work delivered by a group of rotating volunteers every afternoon. Elmore insisted she do her work before they settled in for that night’s marathon of Breaking Bad or Modern Family. They were shows that Sam loved, and had somehow convinced Elmore to watch too.
He knew this wasn’t the end of Sam convincing him to try something new. He felt new, so why not go with that feeling?
It was close to his time of release, his brain going somewhat stir crazy, when Sam’s pencil stopped scribbling and she looked up.
“I think you should talk to your son.”
“I know,” he said.
“I know you know. Are you gonna do it?”
“Let’s put it this way. Maybe brushes with death are different when you’re sixty-seven as opposed to seventeen. I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t want to go to my grave knowing I’ve been an ass for as long as I’ve been.”
“Elmore Thaddeus Nix, that’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say.”
On the morning of his release, Sam made a call.
Chapter Sixty-Two
They met in a coffee shop two hours away. They’d left town against doctor’s orders. It had actually been Sam’s idea. While she’d been on top of all the hospital’s orders, even making sure the nurses were doing their jobs, she’d given this journey a pass.
“As long as we get to treatment tomorrow, I think it’s okay,” she’d said. By treatment, she meant his cancer treatment. While they’d been digging around inside him, they did a little extra prep work in consultation with his oncologist. He was a go for the next round. Thankfully his sixty-seven-year-old body was said to be healing at a rate of a healthy forty-year-old man.
They pulled into the tiny parking lot off the two-lane highway. The coffee shop was situated up a few steps, offering the patrons sitting outside a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside. Sam said the place was called ‘a hidden gem’ by some online review site she’d picked the spot from.
“It’s perfect,” she said as they ascended the stairs.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
He had to hold onto her arm. He was still weak and taking each step up in elevation hurt more than he’d like to admit.
“Of course. It’s beautiful here.”
He didn’t correct her. He knew that she knew what he meant. She was enjoying the process as much as the scenery. This was her element, and he let her play it. If it helped with her own recovery, so be it. Besides, unless it involved her buying some all-too-revealing mini to wear to school, he was beyond denying her anything.
They made it inside, though he felt like he’d just climbed a mountain.
“You okay, Thaddeus?”
Elmore nodded, wiping his brow with the handkerchief he always kept stashed in his back pocket. Though this one was new, a welcome home present from Sam. This one said, ‘Stubborn Marine. Stand aside.’
“I’m fine,” he said, but his insides were jiggling like last night’s Jell-O.
“I think that’s them over there,” Sam said, pointing to the other side of the joint that was no bigger than some shacks Elmore had had the pleasure of visiting.
“Them?”
Sam nodded, smiling. She pointed again.
That’s when he saw his face. His son.
And Elmore cascaded to memories of old, years never forgotten.
Chapter Sixty-Three
They’d prayed about adoption for a long time. As a married couple in their twenties, they’d been positively robust in their desire to have children. They’d tried and tried. Finally, it was Eve who suggested they see a doctor.
It turned out they were physically incapable of having children. The doctor s
aid they could try other methods, expensive methods, and once again, it was Eve who said it was God’s will at work. How had she had such faith? He’d only had faith in two things, and one, the Marine Corps, had let him down in the end. The second, his wife, was what he put all his chips on. She was right more times than not. So why not go along with her vision of God? It sounded good, even if he didn’t totally believe. She would believe for both of them.
So, they’d prayed. He thought it strange. She’d never asked him to pray, but on this she did. They prayed in the morning and they prayed before going to bed. Sometimes they held hands, Eve’s words strong and up cast.
“Please, Lord, if it is your will, bring us a baby. We promise to take care of him or her, to love that child until our last breath.”
There were variations, but the core was the same. She never outright asked. She always mentioned God’s will. Elmore didn’t completely understand that. If he wanted a loaf of bread at the baker he just asked for one. Why not just ask God for a baby?
But Eve said that wasn’t how it worked. You couldn’t just order up a child like you did a burger at the local drive through.
So, the prayers had kept on for a good three years. Eve’s faith never wavered. Elmore kept at it for her. He loved her too much to say that maybe they should give up. He could’ve turned the conversation by saying that maybe it was God’s will that they shouldn’t have a child. But how can you willingly shatter the faith of someone you love?
So he resolved to be the one who held doubts for both of them.
Then, they got a call out of the blue from an old school pal of Eve’s. They’d done some traveling as families, foreign ports of call in expensive ships. Her friend, Melanie Delaphont, still lived in Manhattan and volunteered at one of the hospitals near her high-rise penthouse.