by Hannah Paige
It had grown, probably expanded to twice the original size that it had started out as. The reception desk at the front of the building looked newly refurbished and modern, with its glass top and pearly, glistening table-legs. Patients in white t-shirts and white cotton pants strolled about, some accompanied by nurses in pastel scrubs, others by themselves.
He waited behind the brunette woman while she gave the receptionist her information, then was instructed to follow a nurse down the hall. “Good luck!” she called, giving him one last shy smile before she left, with her head held high, down the hall to the offices.
“Can I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked.
Ian stepped forward, clearing his throat to use his physician voice, it helped him to become more stabilized and focused. He couldn’t sound nervous if he used that voice.
“Yes, I was hoping to see Dr. Chase today,” He hadn’t addressed his father with that title in a long time, since he’d used it as an insult, and it felt stale on his tongue, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. It wasn’t the right name. “He’s my father.”
The receptionist looked up again, this time with more attentive eyes, “Oh. Oh, I see. He’s in a consult right now, but as soon as he’s done I’ll tell him that you’re here. If you’d like to take a seat?” She gestured to the row of plastic, pale blue chairs by the front door that didn’t look at all inviting: just like his father—cold and misanthropic.
“I think I’ll look around a bit, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not sit. I won’t bother anyone, promise.”
Before the receptionist could argue, Ian wandered to the left of the welcome desk, following a stream of mutterings. He pushed a swinging door open, crossing the barrier between the reception lobby and the patient wing. To his right, there was a long hallway with glimmering white tiles, white walls, and white doors with blue numbers on them. Ahead lie a green carpet that extended out towards his feet like a fat tongue underneath the patients in white uniforms. A young man and a woman sat on the carpet, playing a board game—Monopoly, Ian saw, once he stepped onto the green tongue—but the pieces were strewn all over the carpet and the woman jiggled three in her hands. A solitary middle-aged woman sat at a table near the window, talking to the empty chair in front of her. She looked content, happy even, despite her obvious state of mental instability. Her eyes twinkled, like she held a secret in her heart that no one else knew.
“Ian?”
Ian whipped around to face the white hallway where his father stood. He’d aged considerably. His hair had faded to a soft snowy-white color and had receded, scurried away from his still-bushy eyebrows. His shoulders slumped a little more, instead of drawing up and back, held in place by the overly-confident and overwhelming stature with which he used to hold himself. His hands gripped a file with the name McCann punched into the side with block type, his fingers thick, like wrinkled, pudgy worms. The skin over his knuckles looked like overused sandpaper, sagging and worn.
Ian remembered the sweater his father was wearing just now; it was a brick red, thick and wool and, if Ian remembered right, scruffy to the touch. He was surprised it had lasted this long. That sweater was probably twenty-five years old. He had worn it the night he’d picked Ian up from his eighth-grade dance, early. He looked tired, his father. And not in the I’ve-worked-an-eighteen-hour-shift-with-nothing-but-protein-bars-and-coffee-fueling-me way; that would have made this too easy on Ian. It was easy to explain why you hadn’t talked to someone in ten years when they were the same ego-driven control-freak with the work ethic of RoboCop and the emotional measuring stick to match that you’d seen the last time you’d spoken. But Ian’s father looked old. For the first time in his life, Ian felt like he was actually looking at an elder, not a practiced psychiatrist.
He looked straight at him, “Hey, Dad.” He hadn’t used that word in ten years, but ‘father’ didn’t seem right at the present moment.
His father’s lips parted in an ‘O’ shape as he stood there, staring at Ian for a second. Ian fidgeted, remembering how judgmental his father’s eyes used to feel on him. They still seemed to dissect him, but with more curiosity, now, than before.
“I know it’s been a long time, ten years. Actually, not quite, but that’s not the point. I was hoping we might get to talk. I was going to call you, to wish you Happy Birthday, but I thought maybe—” Ian’s feet stilled the moment his father started to respond to him.
“Ian, I’ve got a patient waiting for me.”
Ian drew in a shaky breath; he felt like his lungs had collapsed in on themselves. He wiped a hand over his mouth, letting his fingers close against his palm as they fell off his chin, and he started to take a couple steps back. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Right, right, I know that. I knew that. But I—it’s your birthday, couldn’t you just take some time off?”
His father cocked his head and suddenly Ian felt like he was a kid again, with his father looking on him with utter disappointment. Always the disappointment. Nothing was good enough. Always looking down on Ian. It didn’t matter if he was one of the best Oncology doctors in the city or if Ian had been taller than his father since he was fourteen. And it especially didn’t matter that Ian believed that ten years of solitude warranted a thirty minute lunch to catch up with your son. It didn’t matter because Dr. Chase didn’t think so. And his name was the one on the building in which they convened. His name carried weight, the kind of weight that made people believe in his opinions, that made people hurry up when he started walking away that made them stumble into one another when he thought it best to slow down. He could have told the whole staff that he was spending the afternoon in the garden and before lunch, every white-clad member would be digging their hands through the soil, pulling the wings off dragonflies for ‘scientific research’, and studying the botany of the available flowers. They would do this because he was Dr. Chase. They would do this because that was the kind of man he was. It is the men that hold the Everest-expectations that people want to please the most. And it was Ian who had fallen for this cosmic trick, his father’s Rook card, for the longest time.
“Ian, you know I can’t do that. They’re my patients, they’ve come here for my help. You’re a doctor, I’m sure you understand.”
Ian tilted his chin up, staring helplessly at the ceiling. He shook his head, now disappointed with himself, in his own stupidity. His father may look different on the outside, but Ian was insane to have thought for even a second, that meant he had changed. He turned around, his hand planted on the swinging door, when he thought of something to say.
“You’re a great doctor, Dad. Always have been. But, you know, you’re a real fuck-up of a father.”
The air snapped in the room and Ian felt the eyes of the nearby patients and nurses on him in his moment of discomposure, “Do you know what your problem is? You never even thought to treat me with half the respect that you give your patients on a daily basis! You spend all this time with your patients and you never—” he lowered his voice, boring his eyes into his father, “You never looked up, Dad. You never did. And I was going to grow up to be just like you. I was onboard, ticket in hand, ready to rumble right into the same neurotic, stony tunnel you’d been leaving breadcrumbs, truckloads of breadcrumbs, for me to follow you down…maybe if I had that would have impressed you. But then I met someone, and I helped people, I started noticing the people around me. Maybe that was your problem. You never took a chance to even spare one second to think of somebody else besides yourself! I’ve waited ten years, I’ve waited my whole life for you to just notice how you treated me, how it influenced me. But that never occurred to you, did it? That somebody who didn’t have a mental illness might take into account how you act around them. Do you have any idea how it felt every single day, to know that the one person that was supposed to support me, that was supposed to hold me up and say ‘that’s my son!’ was disdainful? Do you remember how you looked at me? Do you know how you still do? You never looked at Jackie like that,
never.”
He looked around the room. “I hope you all benefit from this doctor’s attention. I do. But you should know that when he steps out of this hospital, behind all of your backs, he’s a real son of a bitch to the people that matter, that should matter.” He jerked his head back to his father, “Did you even see how badly you ripped me apart, growing up? Did you see? Or did you just choose not to look?”
His father’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed some of the chilled, canned air that pumped out of the AC unit on the other side of the room. “I didn’t know, Ian.”
Ian scoffed and splayed his hands out in a ‘well look at that’ gesture, “Then I take it back. I’m your son, Dr. Chase. I’m your son and you never saw. How good of a doctor does that make you?”
Ian waited a week for a response from his father. He listened for the phone to ring, for someone to knock on his door. He checked in with Judith at the hospital on all of his breaks to see if someone had come and left a message for him. It shouldn’t have surprised him. It was naive and childish to think that Ian’s outburst at the hospital might have finally gotten through to his father; he would finally acknowledge how poorly he had treated his son and would come to his door, a crying old man, and hug Ian. He might even call him son, in Ian’s imagination.
When he never heard back, he decided that it was time he try his hand at reaching out to someone else in his family.
“I’ll see you later, Baloo. Be a good boy for me,” he called, closing his apartment door behind him. He jogged down the stairs. It was Wednesday again, his day off, at nine in the morning. Ian briefly glanced over the coffee counter and was about to continue on his way to the door when he stopped, his eyes catching on someone in a new brown apron, clamping a lid on a to-go cup. Ian turned around and felt a smile creep onto his face.
It was the homeless teenager, working a real job, not just selling newspapers on the corner. The kid moved around the side of the counter, bringing a panini to a customer sitting at a table, and Ian saw the white shoes, as if by magic, still clean, on his feet. Ian took a couple steps back to his stairwell, where he had a clear view of the worker’s cubbies and sure enough he saw the kid’s leather jacket hanging proudly on one of the hooks.
Ian grinned, pushing the door open. He held it open for a tall woman, with dirty blonde hair: beautiful, and a little younger than Ian, then he continued down the street. He flagged down a cab—something he hadn’t done in years—and climbed in, finding himself a little disappointed that someone didn’t climb in the other side with him.
“Where ya’ going?” the cabi asked. He looked familiar but then again, that wasn’t uncommon for Ian. He was a doctor who saw hundreds of people in a day’s work.
“Second Avenue Cemetery.”
Second Avenue, sometimes referred to as Marble, Cemetery was a small burial lot. It was beautiful, which sounded odd, remarking how pretty a cemetery was, but in truth, the city had maintained this quiet, green plot in upper Manhattan diligently. The grass was trimmed and watered regularly. Pink and purple petunias bloomed along the edges, skirting the black iron gate that bordered the lot. There were several stone benches positioned sporadically around the individual headstones.
Jackie was one of the first plots, near the pink petunias that bloomed next to the gate. She was in the front corner, her headstone inches away from the fence. Under her name, the dates August 13th, 1980–September 11th, 2001 had been etched. Ian dug the heel of his shoe into the grass, standing before his sister, wondering how many headstones in this yard had that same final date carved into them. He’d always thought of his sister as a special person, but the day she died had somehow become common. So many people had joined her.
The gate squeaked open and a woman, probably a few years older than Ian, stepped into the cemetery. Ian was turning back to his sister when he heard the woman stumble, tripping and falling down beside Ian’s feet. He knelt down, grabbing the woman’s arm.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She whisked her blonde hair aside, out of her face, revealing severely blushed cheeks. She gripped Ian’s hands, letting him help her back to her feet. “Yeah, sorry. Here you are trying to have a quiet moment with—” She did a double take at the grave Ian was standing beside. Her eyes darted between Jackie’s headstone and Ian, and she let go of his hands, standing on her feet once again. “How—what are you doing here?”
Ian frowned, thinking for a second that it might be a trick question; wasn’t it obvious what he was doing here? “I’m visiting my sister. Why? What are you doing here?” he felt inclined to ask.
“I come here to visit,” she hesitated, “someone I lost. I’ve never seen you here before. This is your sister? This? Her?” she gestured towards the obsidian tombstone.
“I’ve been meaning to come see here but I just haven’t. Why does it matter to you?”
She covered her mouth and her eyes widened, like she’d just remembered something extraordinary. “Oh my God,” she whispered, sounding out of breath all of a sudden, and dropped the shield of her hand, “You’re Ian.”
Chapter One
June 9, 2011
April
“I never told her my name, I didn’t even think to. Looking back, I should have, I was the last…” April tilted her iced tea back, taking a swig to cool down her throat, “I was the last person she talked to and she never knew my name.”
She looked up and saw Ian hunched over in the wire seat across from her. The coffee shop in which they sat was crowded but her eyes seemed to block out everyone else around them, focusing on the man that needed her help. His shoulders were pulled in, his long neck drooped like a flower that’s too tall for its vase. His eyes, that looked so wide moments ago when they had met in the cemetery, were now giant pools of dejected sorrow, gaping with hopelessness. She sat straighter, wanting to help him, give him back the joy that had resided in his eyes. “But she told me your name, and hers. She said that her name was JJ Chase, the last name—”
Ian’s inhale sliced through the air between them, startling April. He wiped a hand over his eyes.
“What is it?” April asked.
“JJ. That’s what I used to call her when we were kids, but she got older and she didn’t want me to call her that anymore, she thought Jackie sounded more mature.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I hadn’t called her that in years.”
April reached out a hand and took Ian’s on the table. Most people wouldn’t feel comfortable with such an act of physical compassion towards someone they had only just met, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation and April never felt uncomfortable when it came to helping people. “You must have meant a great deal to her, if you had been on her mind in her final moments.”
“We’ve been close ever since we were kids. She was the younger sister, but I always felt like she was looking out for me too, you know? It was a two-way street between us. I helped her when she was little, my dad wasn’t around much. Then we got older and she was…” he paused, visibly filtering what he would let himself say or maybe what he could say. “Family was so important to her. It always was. I wish I had shared her passion, but I couldn’t. I looked at her and our father and I saw people. And yeah, sure I knew they were important, of course I did. They were important in the way that most little kids think a house is important or their bed or their dog. I didn’t think I was ever going to have to live without them. I just—”
April nodded because she did know, she knew exactly how he felt. “You just wish that you had paid a little more attention to the last moments you had with them. You’re never ready for the day that you lose them. I lost my brother that day too. He wasn’t nearly as young as JJ, Jackie, your sister.” She wasn’t sure how she should address her, now that she knew all of the woman on the phone’s titles. “Not that that makes it any easier. But what I’m trying to say is that if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.” She scribbled her phone number down on the paper napkin and folded it into his hand.
“I’m serious. Anytime, just give me a call and we can talk, or you can talk, and I’ll listen, or you can yell and scream and then hang up.”
That got a little chuckle out of him, still edged with sadness, but not dripping with sorrow anymore. The moment of shock had passed. “Thank you, April. This,” he looked like he wanted to say something else, but bit it back, “thank you.”
She gave him the encouraging smile that she’d perfected over the years, “You’re welcome, Ian. I’ll see you around, maybe. It’s a small town.” She winked at him and was rewarded with another laugh, this one a little longer and more genuine, not so forced. That was what she lived for these days, the little signs that she had made someone’s day a little brighter.
On her way out of the cafe, her cell rang, and at the sight of his name on the screen her heart tripped on her own excitement, “Hey, long time no see.”
April picked out Rick’s low, gravelly chuckle on the other line. It was a new sound, one that he was still working on, but she was going to help him with that too, if he would let her, “Well, a man has to fix his phone if he’s going to ask a beautiful woman on a date.”
April tripped on the sidewalk, jostling into the man crossing the street in front of her. “Sorry,” she mouthed to him, holding the phone to her shoulder, then brought it back to her mouth, “You what? You’ve decided to enter the dating pool at forty-five? Gutsy. So, who’s the lucky girl?”
Though April knew exactly who it was, she wanted to stretch this moment out as long as she could; she’d been waiting for it long enough. Besides, Rick was not a talkative guy, and if there was one thing she couldn’t stand it was a quiet moment between two people, so she simply embraced her gift to fill the air between them, “You calling me for advice? Don’t take her to Mexican. Burritos are messy and sometimes the salsa can be too hot. Also if you get really unlucky, then the mariachi band might show up and you can’t even hear a screeching goat over that crap, let alone the sound of your date’s voice.” She hopped inside a cab and in her moment of pause while she gave the driver instructions, she heard Rick say something, but she couldn’t make it out. “What?” she asked him.