“You lost?”
Jason shook his head.
“Better get moving then.”
Jason turned his face away from the strange eyes, but his legs would not cooperate. The orderly’s feet shuffled on the tile, and his uniform made a whispery noise.
He’s coming toward me.
Jason’s slowly turned around, his hands curled into fists. The orderly was gone. The hospital swallowed up the noise of his slow, uneven footsteps. No music played, no voices crept out from behind the closed doors, no equipment beeped. From where he stood, the hallway looked like it went on forever.
Maybe I’m stuck in some horrible place. And no matter how far I walk, no matter how long I walk, there will always be another turn. Another hallway.
His stomach gave a sickening lurch, and he leaned back against the wall, breathing hard. This was stupid. It was a hospital. Not a movie. No zombies, no demented orderlies waited around the corner. He was tired and worried, that was all.
He pushed off the wall. The hallway did have an end, and when he made another right turn he breathed a sigh of relief to find a set of double doors, clearly marked Cardiac Care with an intercom panel set to the right of the doors. He pressed the button and a scratchy, tired voice came out; after he gave his name, the intercom went silent, and the doors opened with a mechanical hiss.
The strange silence followed him in. His shoes made small, slapping noises on the tile floor as he approached the nurses’ station. A short, round woman behind the desk wore scrubs patterned with cartoon characters and spoke to Jason in a voice made only a little less scratchy without the intercom. She sounded like Sailor’s sister. Did everyone in the hospital smoke? That orderly… No, best not to think about him. He was wrong.
Instead of pointing him in the right direction, she grabbed a clipboard and guided him down a quiet hallway with half-open doors on each side. The doors were painted dark blue, the walls a pale shade of grayish-tan. Her shoes made no sound at all as she walked with quick, purposeful steps. Nothing like Sailor’s rolling walk. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone walk like that.
Something dug into his memory and he shuddered. The CCU was quiet but not silent. Jason heard muted voices from one room, the steady beep of unseen equipment from another, and a quiet sobbing from yet another. Each door had a small brass nameplate in the center, with the patient’s last name handwritten on a white card.
And when they’re done, they slide those little cards out and throw them away. Then they slide in the next patient, the next name.
They passed another nurse in less colorful scrubs, and the two women simply nodded to each other.
The whole wing feels like a tomb. Everyone here is waiting for their ride to come along. Their last ride.
She stopped at the last door on the right, a fully closed door with an empty nameplate. Why wasn’t his father’s name written on a little white card?
“Go on in,” she said.
Before Jason could move, she walked across the hallway into the opposite room. He stared at the blank nameplate and balled his hands into fists. He didn’t want to go in. A hard but simple truth. If he stood out in the hallway he could pretend everything was fine. No, he couldn’t deny he was in the CCU, but maybe the room belonged to someone else. Not his father. A neighbor maybe or a nameless stranger. Maybe this whole thing was just a mistake. The door held the answer. He simply had to put out his hand and push it open.
But that empty nameplate…
Maybe they forgot to add the little card. People forget things all the time.
Jason took a deep breath and went inside.
7
His father was a still shape beneath the white sheets; Jason paused in the doorway until he saw the rise and fall of his chest. His mother got up, moving slow, and when he hugged her she slumped forward, sighing against his shoulder. She let go first, stepping back to wrap her arms around herself like a butterfly chrysalis, with growing wings made of nightgown and old sweater instead of kaleidoscopic chitin. The shadows beneath her eyes added several unkind years to her face.
“He’s sleeping,” she whispered.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“Maggie, you don’t have to whisper, I’m awake,” his father said in a thin, papery voice.
But he was alive. That was the most important thing. Jason walked over to the bed and squeezed his hand, ignoring both the cool, clammy skin and the smell of sickness and stale hope radiating from the walls. The steady beep of a heart monitor kept time, punctuated with a drip-drip-drip from an IV bag of clear fluid.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I just had a heart attack. Next stupid question.” Despite the gruff words, his dad smiled. “Sit down, both of you. You’re making me nervous standing around. I got enough of that from the doctors and nurses.”
“Jack, you’re supposed to be resting,” his mother said, perching on the edge of the chair closest to the bed.
“I’m in a hospital bed, hooked up to who knows what. What else can I do but rest? I can talk and rest at the same time. And why did you wake Jason up? He has to work in the morning.”
Jason hid a smile behind his hand and sat down, the vinyl seat pushing up a puff of cool air around his thighs. “Dad, it’s okay. I’m glad Mom called me, okay?” He turned to his mom. “Are Ryan and Chris coming?”
“I called Ryan, but he didn’t answer. Chris is on his way, and he’s going to keep trying to reach Ryan. Chris said the traffic won’t be so bad this time of night.”
“I don’t know why the damn fool had to move to Virginia in the first place,” his father said. “And Ryan probably turns off his cell phone at night. Jason, you should go home. I’m fine,” he said in that papery, unfine voice. “Don’t give me that look. It wasn’t that bad. They’re going to do a stress test tomorrow and some other things…”
“Jack, please rest.”
Jason’s dad lifted one hand from the bed and dropped it back down. “It is what it is, Maggie,” he said, but closed his eyes, and soon enough, his soft snores drifted up from the bed.
“Mom, what happened?” Jason kept his voice low.
“He didn’t feel well after dinner, so he took a nap and woke up about an hour later with chest pain. He didn’t want me to call 911, of course, but I did anyway because he could hardly breathe from the pain.”
“I wish you would’ve called me earlier.”
She reached over and patted his hand. “I called you as soon as they got him settled in this room. What could you have done? Stand around in the waiting room? Your father didn’t want me to call you at all.”
The door swung open, and the nurse with the less colorful scrubs came in. She checked the monitor and the IV, jotted something down on a clipboard, and nodded at Jason and his mother before she left the room, leaving the door partially open.
“You should just go home,” his mother said. “There’s nothing you can do here. He’s just going to sleep. You can come back in the morning, or you can wait and come over when he gets home. They won’t keep him here for more than a couple of days.”
“I want to stay, okay?”
She nodded in reply, and tears glimmered in her eyes.
“Try not to worry. He’ll be okay, he’s strong. You know that.”
She nodded again.
“Do you need anything? Want me to get you some coffee or something?”
“No, I’m fine. They’ll probably end up kicking you out, you know. It’s past visiting hours.”
“I’ll stay until they do, but I think it’s okay. The nurse would’ve kicked me out before if it wasn’t.”
Leaning back in the chair, she rubbed her eyes. “If you’re going to stay, I think I’ll rest my eyes for a few minutes, but if I fall asleep, make sure you wake me up if the nurse or the doctor comes back in.”
It didn’t take long for her breathing to become slow and even. Jason shifted in the uncomfortable chair, but he didn’t
want to leave the room, not with both of them asleep. Even in sleep, his father’s face wore shadows and gray. A bruise bloomed on the back of his hand around the IV needle, and beneath the thin blanket, his legs weren’t limbs, but twigs. Tubes and wires snaked out from underneath the covers like alien appendages.
His mother’s face glowed ghostly pale in the dim lighting, her lips totally devoid of color. Inside the too-big sweater, she appeared shapeless. She twitched in her sleep, and her nightgown’s ruffled hem rose up a few inches, revealing dry, flaky skin crisscrossed with spidery blue veins, sensible shoes with rubberized soles and mismatched white socks. His eyes were drawn back again and again to the blue veins on her legs.
When did they get so old?
A memory, sharp and strong, raced in. A trip to the ocean when Jason was eight, his brothers six and ten. The sun had set over the water, turning everything gold and red. His parents stood up on the beach, holding hands, while the boys ran in and out of the surf, then his dad whispered something in her ear, and her laughter rang out over the water. Bright laughter. Good laughter.
Another nurse poked her head in the door and smiled at Jason, but she didn’t tell him to leave. Instead she pulled the door closed behind her. He rested his head back against the chair and stared up at the tiled ceiling. Underneath the electronic chirp, the heart monitor gave off a steady hum, and he listened to the chirp and the hum and stared at the ceiling and thought about the ocean and the way the waves had swirled icy cold around his ankles as the sun slipped behind the horizon, the shells glistening on the beach, pearly white against the dark sand.
8
Jason dreamed of the white room again. Seashells, not dead animals, covered the floor, and his father stood off to the side in a hospital gown. Heart monitors filled the room, all of them beeping in a chaotic frenzy. Jason knew his father shouldn’t be in the room, but his face wore no fear. His legs were pale below the edge of the blue-and-white-checked gown. As he turned his face toward Jason, he shook his head.
“Son, this isn’t right. Didn’t you read the fine print?”
Jason wanted to tell him he didn’t understand, but a gust of wind blew through the room, hot and fetid, and he choked on his words. The seashells rattled against each other with a thin, bony sound. The wind sucked back out of the room, leaving behind the smell of small dead things with an antiseptic bite. Somewhere, a bird circled overhead, its wings flapping in a deadly arc.
Just a seagull circling over the ocean.
Yes, even the ocean surf was here. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear its steady rush and roar as it gathered up and crashed down.
But it’s only a dream wave. Not real at all. That sunset happened so long ago. The waves came up and washed away our footprints. Washed them all away.
His father shook his head again. “What did you do?”
What did he do? Nothing.
This room wasn’t his making, his design. His father turned around and shuffled away through the seashells, dragging an IV pole behind him, the bag filled with a thick and viscous fluid. Things swam in the fluid, white worms chuckling as they took their turn down the spiral of tubing into his father’s arm.
The rush of the ocean wasn’t an ocean anymore, but the steady hum of voices, many voices, all of them whispering, humming. The voices of the mad and depraved.
Jason wanted to yell, to tell his father to stop, but his own voice didn’t work. It wouldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to speak here. He raised his hands, and as his father moved farther away, the heart monitors sped up to a shriek as they joined together, growing louder and louder. Jason’s father walked on with slumped shoulders. The seagull flapped its wings overhead, and the heart monitors screamed…
“Jason.”
Dad, come back. Don’t stay in that white room.
“Jason.”
This time, the word was little more than a gasping breath.
Jason's eyes snapped open. The heart monitor beeped chaos, and his father’s hand clutched his chest. His eyes rolled wildly in his sockets, his feet danced under the sheet, and he held out one hand toward Jason. His eyes were
scared, he’s scared
cloudy and filled with pain. A strange huffing noise emerged from his throat, a strangled cry for help. His mouth moved as if he wanted to speak, then his eyes stopped. They fixed on Jason’s, and a growl spilled out of his mouth, a growl with words underneath, but they were unintelligible and even more horrible because of it.
“Oh, God, Dad.” Jason jumped up from the chair and moved to the bed.
His father reached out one hand, grabbed Jason’s arm, his left arm, and squeezed. His fingers dug in like claws. “I saw,” he forced out with a thick voice as if he spoke around a mouthful of sand and shells.
He’s speaking through the sunset, Jason thought and knew the words made no sense, yet they were true. Then his father’s eyes rolled up until only the whites were visible, his mouth opening in a silent circle of pain.
No more words, no more sunsets.
Several people rushed into the room, and Jason stepped back from the bed. He had a chance to see his mother’s empty chair before a nurse propelled him out into the hallway. Short, clipped voices followed him out, a strange, controlled routine that sent dread into his heart as he stood against the wall, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
This isn’t a sunset dream anymore. This is real, and my father is dying in that room. That white room. And they don’t know. They don’t know about the things in that room.
A sensible voice piped up in his head. Shut up and wake up. There is no white room. This is the hospital, and your father is having another heart attack.
A nurse raced by, pushing a cart into the room—an evil-looking thing, with knobs and paddles and plastic-wrapped syringes. Jason wanted to walk away; fear held him immobile. The heart monitor stopped its frantic chirp, and the sound became one long tone. Flatline. It meant his father was—
Lost in the white room.
“Clear.”
A male voice, gruff and practiced. An odd, jumping noise. The smell of static heat. The monitor droned on without pause.
Lost and gone.
“Clear.”
What did you do?
His father’s question. Like an accusation. The monitor went on and on. Muffled voices, then the same male voice.
“One more time. Clear.”
Come on, Dad. You can do this.
Tears burned in Jason’s eyes. His father’s traitorous heart had abandoned ship. The double doors swung open at the end of the hallway, and his mother walked through with two cups of coffee in hand. She stopped five feet away, locked eyes with Jason, then her mouth dropped open in a silent O. The coffee cups in her hand tipped forward in slow motion, landing on the floor with a liquid thud. Coffee sprayed out in all directions; the smell cut through the antiseptic hospital stink.
The heart monitor droned on, still that steady
flatline
single tone.
His mother looked down at the coffee puddled around her feet and stepped over it as her mouth closed. Her chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath.
She knows. She’s steeling herself for the news. It’s that sad, sure knowledge when the phone rings in the middle of the night. Nothing you can do but hold yourself tight and wait for it all to be over.
Someone turned off the heart monitor. Hushed, matter-of-fact voices filled the ominous silence. His mother stepped forward again. Once, then twice, and when a nurse came back out of the room with a grim expression on her face, a low wail emerged from her lips. Jason rushed over and grabbed her before she sagged to the floor.
“No,” she said and shook her head. “No, oh, no.”
The nurse walked over to them, and his mother held her hands out in front of her as if she could push the nurse away, push away the news, and pretend for just a little while longer. Her hands dropped, her shoulders shaking as she cried silent tears in his arms. Jason held her close, trying t
o forget the look in his father’s wild eyes before the chaos started.
Didn’t you read the fine print?
9
Jason didn’t like the funeral director, a prim, dour-faced man named Edward Vaughn, on sight. He didn’t like his prissy way of speaking or the way he rubbed his right earlobe from time to time. Mr. Vaughn ushered Jason, his mother and brothers into a room with thick, dark carpet and pale walls. The dark coffin at the far end of the room gleamed under the lights. The scent of several large floral arrangements masked the stink of the funeral home, but it lingered underneath—the sharp, chemical smell of suppressed decay.
His mother, her eyes red-rimmed but dry, held onto his right arm as they walked in. This was their private goodbye. Soon enough, the room would fill with people paying their respects, but for now, it was theirs alone. Soft music, meant to be soothing, drifted down from speakers set into the ceiling, but it wasn’t soothing at all. The hair on the back of Jason’s neck stood up and screamed as the high-pitched notes trickled down.
My father’s de—
He couldn’t even think the word.
Who’s going to ask me if I’m really doing okay now?
Prissy Mr. Vaughn said a few words to his mother, then slipped out of the room, walking like he had a rod of iron in place of a spine. They walked up to the coffin together: he on the left, Ryan on their mother’s right, holding her arm, and Chris halfway behind them both, with his hand on the center of her back. At first, only the dark wood of the coffin’s side and the white satin lining of the opened lid were visible. Then the edge of the fabric inside the coffin. Another step revealed the top of his father’s head, yet another, the dark blue shoulder of his suit.
His only suit. The one he wore to funerals and weddings. Such is life, but it isn’t. It’s not fair. He wasn’t old enough to d—
That word again. That awful, ugly word.
He wasn’t old enough to go away.
His mother stopped, turned her face into Jason’s arm and sighed heavily.
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