30 Feet Strong

by Hannah Paige

  “You still think I want a future? After all that?”

  He nodded and his bright, fatherly smile returned, “I do.” He patted her hand, “How are your goals coming?”

  Pam’s eyes slid over to the bedside table between the two cots, “I’ve only written one goal so far.”

  “That’s alright, Pam. One goal is still a step in the right direction. You know, that boy came back tonight to see you.”

  Pam felt a spurt of excitement spark in her chest, but it was soon extinguished with one look down at her arms as the shame of who she really was returned.

  “I spoke to him, personally, this evening. He’s quite something. He wants to help you, Pam.”

  “I know. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Some nine-year-old thinks he might be the secret to my recovery.” She muttered, bitterly.

  Dr. Chase withdrew his hands and smoothed them over his wrinkle-free sweater, “I wouldn’t disregard him so quickly, Pam. Often, it’s children who have the clearest minds. They can help the most because they haven’t been affected by the world as much as we have. I’d like you to keep meeting with him, as long as you are comfortable.” He stood up from the bed and moved towards the door.

  “But I don’t even know where he came from or how he found me.”

  Dr. Chase look back at her, “He’s a harmless little boy. Does it matter how he found you? He’s here now and willing to help. Let him help.”

  Chapter Five

  “What happened to your arm, Pam?” William Thomas asked her the following evening, when she was allowed to see her visitor.

  Pam instinctively covered the thick pad of gauze with her other hand. “Oh, nothing. I’d rather not talk about it now. Can we, I mean, can you tell me more about you? About what you meant when you said that you’re going to help me?”

  William Thomas nodded, “You want to know about Darin, if I really can see him or not?”

  She was astonished by the boy’s mysterious insight. Pam wasn’t even sure, herself, if that was what she really wanted until he mentioned it, “Yes. I mean, I believe that you can, I just want to know how.”

  “Did you ever go to church, Pam?”

  The question seemed out of the blue, but she answered regardless, “I went as a girl, but not as an adult.” Too many unanswered prayers for babies that never landed in her arms left her damaged by and dubious of religion. “Why do you ask?”

  William Thomas clasped his hands over his legs and drew his knees into his chest, “Your faith. It’s exquisite.”

  Pam couldn’t decide if that was a compliment. It didn’t exactly have the same ring to it as typical compliments like ‘your hair looks nice’ or ‘I like your blouse’.

  “Thank you?” she tried, sounding as awkward as she felt.

  William Thomas chuckled, “It’s a good thing, Pam, don’t hesitate. I only bring it up because it, well, let’s just say most people that I’ve told about my gift take a bit longer to come to terms with it. It makes me wonder how you believe so quickly.” He tilted his chin up, his eyebrows drawn in like two little question marks on his forehead.

  Pam wanted to laugh at his deeply pondering expression; it looked comical on his boyish face, “I guess I’ve lived long enough, experienced enough, to know that I’m not going to be able to explain everything I encounter. I can’t explain why I feel the way I do. It’s been,” she took a deep breath, forcing the ten-pound weight on her chest to move with her lungs, “It’s been ten years and I know that I shouldn’t be this depressed, this weak. I know that I shouldn’t feel like my insides are getting ripped out of me all the time. But I do. So, if all of that pain and sorrow is possible, even though it shouldn’t be, I have to believe that good things are possible too, without me fully understanding them.”

  He rewarded her with a thoughtful smile, “You should talk more, Pam. You have a lot of wisdom inside that mind of yours.”

  She felt color radiate to her cheeks—a sign of emotion that had been dormant inside of her up until a few days ago, “Oh, well thank you, William Thomas. But I normally don’t really like to talk much. I never know if people will like what I have to say.”

  He shrugged the idea off, “Does it matter? Oftentimes, people don’t like what others have to say because they don’t comprehend it. People fear what is beyond their reach. But those that can connect with you, that understand you, they’ll count themselves lucky that they got to hear what you had to say. You’re a wise lady, Pam. Don’t worry about what other people think so much, or else you’ll never speak again.”

  No one had ever said something like that to Pam. She’d gotten compliments all her life on her hair, her fashion sense, her nose—thankfully inherited from her mother and not her father—even her feet, which she thought quite ordinary, but others deemed pretty. No one had ever called her wise. Though, now that Pam thought about it, why would they? She’d never given anyone the chance to make such an observation. She’d been too worried about what other people might think of her.

  “Thank you, William Thomas. That means…” she swallowed a clot in her throat, “that means a lot, coming from you.”

  He promptly stood up from the picnic-style table, “Are we allowed to go outside? The garden out there looked so pretty from the car.”

  Pam hesitated, unsure of where she stood with privileges after her bad day yesterday, “I’m not sure. I—”

  “Well, let’s ask,” he suggested and hopped over to one of the nurses supervising the visitor’s lobby.

  Pam watched him exchange words with the woman, saw the woman nod, and William Thomas returned to her with approval. “Shall we?” he extended a bent arm to Pam, who took it, cordially. She felt an infant smile spark on her face at the courteous gesture as the boy guided her outside on his arm.

  “I saw that, Pam. Careful, or someone might think you’re happy.” He joked, winking up at her as they went out into the evening air.

  It was a warm New York night: the kind of night Pam and Darin might have eaten their dinner outside on their apartment balcony. She used to love lighting candles in mason jars that perched right on the balcony edge. Darin would barbeque—he made the best ribs—and she would always make a fancy dessert, and they would sit outside and he would say that the nearest skyscraper’s lights looked like the Eiffel Tower from where they sat. Pam had laughed at him, then. Now, she wished she could have indulged in his point of view a little easier.

  William Thomas breathed in a deep inhale of the dusk air as they walked past one of the orderlies stationed outside.

  Pam repositioned her loose grip on the boy’s pale arm; she held it gingerly, imagining his limbs to be fragile, based on his untouched character, “Why can you see him and I can’t?”

  His mouth fit into a straight line, “Perhaps it’s because I was born on a day when so many people were taken. I’m not sure, Pam. I wish I had a real answer for you, but the truth is I wonder the same thing.”

  “Does he look…” she was too afraid to finish the question.

  “Like he did when he was taken from you? No.”

  Pam felt herself release a breath she hadn’t realized she’d pent up.

  “No. Darin is a figment of your memories, so he looks exactly how you remember him.”

  “Can he hear me?”

  William Thomas nodded, and Pam felt a fresh well of tears surface to her eyes at the thought of being able to talk to him again. She let go of the boy’s arm and started to wipe at her eyes in anticipation for when the floodgates did open.

  “Why is he here? Does he…is he hurting? Is something wrong?”

  “No, he’s not hurting. He’s here because he needs to make sure you’re okay before he leaves this place.”

  “Does he have to go?” she hated how selfish the question sounded, but she had to ask it.

  “Yes, he does, Pam. It’s not good for him to stay here, it’s not right.”

  She swallowed hard, “What do we need to do? Is there somewhere I have to go? Some
treasure hunt I have to go on to find something that he left for me? How does it work?”

  “No, not hardly so dramatic. I relay the messages that the figment has for their loved one. Or in this case, it’s just the one message for you.” The boy took a seat on the bench. Twinkling lights had been strung up around the tree branches that hung over it, sending sparkles in every direction in the dimming night. Pam hesitated, then sat down next to him.

  A mischievous smile spread over his face, “You know, your husband’s not like you one bit. He’s quite the talker.”

  Pam felt her heart ache at that, but she also felt a reminiscent warmth spread through her chest. She nodded, “Yeah, he never did fear what others thought of him. Probably because everyone liked him. He would walk into a room and instantly heads would turn. Not because of his looks, though those certainly helped, but because of how he carried himself. He was so confident, so sure of himself. He talked and talked, but always welcomed people into the conversation, never dominating it like some people can. He was—” She remembered how she used to feel sitting next to him at the station barbeques or during holiday dinners when all of their friends, their family, everyone that was accustomed to seeing Pam right alongside Darin, would gather round them both with French-window-wide eyes and easy smiles. She used to look at all of them and wish that she could believe that they were really looking at her and Darin, but she knew, oh Pam knew like she used to know that she was a good wife, that she was an attachment. She was ‘and Pam’s here’ to Darin’s awaited arrival—a side note. And when people looked at them, they were really looking at him, she simply counted herself lucky enough to be included in the peripheral vision.

  “He was everything I wanted to be.” It hurt, talking about him. But at the same time, it felt good, like rubbing at a sore muscle.

  William Thomas propped his head up on the bench armrest and smiled at Pam, “You loved him.”

  Pam took a deep breath, feeling her throat catch and her voice crack on the words as she pressed them out, “With everything I had.” She wiped furiously at her eyes as a couple of tears seeped through, not the severe tides she’d expected, “But enough about me. This is about Darin. You said in my case he has a message, singular. He only has one thing to tell me?”

  The blonde boy cleared his throat and sat straighter again, “I was surprised as well, especially after having spent so much time with him, hearing him talk about you, about the life that you wanted, and about the one that he gave you.”

  Pam felt a tinge of pink creep up into her cheeks, “He talks about me?”

  “He never stops. He told me about the apartment that you shared in Manhattan, he told me about how you joked about being on a cooking show together, even though he knew that you had stage fright and having enough cameras for public television’s approval on you would have made you hurl. His words, not mine.”

  Pam remembered the day she’d told him that, sitting on a bench, like this one. She knew that she was terrified of public speaking, let alone going on public television, but Darin had that effect on her; he could make her forget all of her fears just by sitting next to her.

  “He told me about how badly you wanted kids. You would have made an amazing mom, he said. He told me how helpless he felt after every time you two came home from the hospital with more bad news. He said that he wished he could have made you as happy as he was when it was just the two of you on Saturday nights, curled up with some wine and an old movie: the kind with fuzzy voices and dramatic music that sent you scrambling for the remote because it was always a little too loud.”

  And there she went. Pam felt her eyes clamp shut as salty, hot tears seeped through her eyelashes, “He did make me happy, more than he’ll know. But I was selfish, and I didn’t know what I had with him, with just him. I had this picture in my head of what my life was supposed to look like: marriage, house, kids. And after marriage, nothing matched up to the picture. But it was so much better, it really was. I know that now, I only wish he did too.”

  “He can hear you, Pam. He’s beside you,” the boy’s voice said softly, and Pam turned her head to look at the space beside her under the twinkling tree branches.

  “I wish I could see him,” she breathed in a thin voice.

  She felt a warm, plush hand take hers and a blurry outline of a person began to shimmer into place beside her. As the outline began to fill out, clear up, Pam’s tears stopped, like she’d finally been corked after so long of spilling all the time.

  It was Darin. He was wearing the red flannel—his favorite one—the jeans with the hole in the pocket, and those ratty, disgusting, beautiful Nike sneakers. He was smiling at her.

  She wanted to say so much but she couldn’t. He hadn’t aged a day and she was suddenly aware of the silver roots that had crept into her hair, of the faded crinkles on her forehead that were slowly becoming more and more pronounced. She reached up to tug on her white t-shirt, a sad attempt to make it look more flattering on her but stilled her hands as she saw a silent laugh cross Darin’s face. His cheeks flushed and his smile grew into a grin as he chuckled, soundlessly.

  “Pam—”

  Pam had forgotten about the boy who sat next to her, holding her hand in his so gingerly, “Oh, yes, what did you want to tell me?” she asked her husband, quieting his laugh.

  He returned to his boyish smile and he walked around to the back of Pam, who craned her neck to keep looking up at him. She watched his arms reach around her, hovering just above her skin, still feeling the warmth of him there, behind her, with her.

  “He wants you to know that you were his world too, Pam. He says that you probably wouldn’t believe him, because you never did give yourself enough credit, but he says to tell you that as long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it.”

  Pam’s hands flew up to her mouth and her body heaved with sobs as a genuine, full smile spread across her face.

  “He said that you would know what that meant.”

  She barely heard William Thomas; she was too focused on the light that surrounded her. “It was our song. That’s—” She turned in her seat to look Darin in the eyes, but he was gone. She stared into the, now dark, hospital garden, with the only light around her being the twinkling tree lights and the stars above her head.

  “God only knows what I would have been without you,” she breathed, steadying her chest. She wiped at her eyes and looked up at the evening sky.

  And breathed.

  Pam took a seat in Dr. Chase’s office that following Tuesday for her weekly visit with him. It was her fourth week in this place and she was hoping for it to be her last. It would be a lie to say that William Thomas had made everything better for her, or that her spiritual—or as William Thomas called it, a figment—visit changed her life. But Pam could safely say that the boy had done what he said he would when he’d first shown up about a week and a half ago. He’d helped her. She hadn’t tried to kill herself since his last visit, since she’d seen Darin. And though that was only a few days ago, it was the small victories, Pam decided, that mattered. She still couldn’t listen to the radio, yet, but the colors red and green didn’t make her cry anymore. For the past three days she had paid at least one person a compliment and each time she had, it felt like a piece of herself was fitting back into place. Or maybe she was finding a completely new piece for herself, to replace all of the fragments she’d lost over the years. She couldn’t be sure.

  “Hello, Pam. How are you today?” Dr. Chase asked.

  Pam sat straight in her seat with her yellow legal pad held still on her lap, “So far, I’m not great but I’m not bad either.”

  He nodded, “That’s quite an honest answer.”

  “I’ve been trying to give them more often, lately.”

  “Good. I see you brought your assignment with you. Would you care to share your goals with me?”

  Her knee started to shake as anxious thoughts rose to her mind. She was afraid he wouldn’t be pleased by her goals,
afraid that his thoughts on them would determine the duration of her stay here, afraid that—She caught her thoughts mid-stream and choked them, jerking her leg to a halt. She felt her nerves tingling in her feet, felt the urge to cross them, to move, but she didn’t. Instead she spread her toes out inside her shoes and planted her feet flat on the floor, a couple of inches apart.

  “I can do that,” she answered finally and propped her pad upright on her legs. “My first goal—you said that they could be long or short term, right?” she asked, wanting to make sure she’d followed the parameters.

  A twinkle sparked to life in Dr. Chase’s eyes and he nodded at her, “Yes, Pam. I told you that you could write whatever you wanted, as long as they were goals for your future. I’m sure whatever you have written down is fine.”

  She pressed herself on, “Right, right. Well, I’m not sure if these are short or long term, but I want them to come true, so—anyway, my first goal is to pay at least one person a compliment every day, because if I can make one person’s day a little better, even if it’s just a little, it’s worth the effort. And, I think it will make me a better person too, eventually,” she added and waited for Dr. Chase to approve or disapprove. He showed no signs of doing either, so she cleared her throat and proceeded down the list, “My second goal is to speak up more, because I have something to say, even if not everyone likes it. I tend to focus a lot on what people think of me and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m going to try not to.”

  Dr. Chase nodded, folding his hands over his chest and Pam went on, “And then my last goal…” She flipped the paper over, “You know, I think I might want to rewrite that one, it’s not very good. Could I—”