Freedom Road

by William Lashner

  “Love,” she says slowly, with a struggle, her greeting no more than a whisper. “Today.”

  “Not today,” he says, matching the true smile of her chapped lips with a pallid imitation of his own. “Tomorrow maybe, but not today.”

  “Soon, I won’t be talking.” Her tongue moves within her mouth like an awkward toad. “Soon, it will be too late.”

  He sits on the edge of the bed, takes her hand. As always it is thin and gray, venous and spotted and as lovely as the moon. “That’s not for a while yet. And don’t worry, I can read your eyes like a paperback. There’s time. Tomorrow.”

  “Today.”

  He looks around, sees the sunlight slanting through the window. On this day the sun is always shining, one of the universe’s better jokes. “It’s too nice a day, today. I’ll take you outside. We’ll sit in the fresh air.”

  “And then.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You promised.”

  “I did.”

  “My decision.”

  “It is.”

  “Don’t be weak.”

  “I’m good at being weak. That’s all I’ve ever been good at.”

  “Stronger than you know.”

  “But not today.”

  She lifts her hand and points. “Ox.”

  As always, when Eleanor arrives with her blue coat and steady hands she checks the morphine ledger and the amount remaining in the bottle. As Eleanor holds the brown bottle up to the light, she gives Oliver a sideways look. How many times has he seen that warning glance, how many times has he chosen to ignore it? If character is destiny, his whole life can be read in that glance, as well as in his reaction to it.

  “Did she wake in the middle of the night and ask for a dose?” says Eleanor.

  “She was restless. I could tell she was in pain. I woke her.”

  “The protocol is very specific, Mr. Cross. Maybe it’s time for a night nurse. It would be covered by the insurance. And it is a shame if her restlessness keeps you awake.”

  “I handle the nights.”

  “You know the rules. You can only administer the prescribed amount on demand and only after four hours from the last dosage. You need to stay within the protocol. Have you been keeping the written record?”

  “Her tea is ready,” he says.

  “Not too hot,” she calls out to him as he heads for the kitchen.

  Later as Eleanor eats her lunch, Oliver takes his wife outside. There is a wheelchair, but she prefers to go on her own power, wearing her dusky red robe and pilled slippers, balancing heavily on the walker as Oliver holds tight to her elbow and she makes her interminable way. Through the kitchen door, down the steps. Two chairs and a little table are set up on the ragged lawn behind the house. She collapses from weariness into one of the chairs, breathes heavily. He holds her hand while they sit. As always in this moment, the sun slips through the old dogwood, dappling her cadaverous face with light from the heavens.

  There is a ring from inside the house and then Eleanor appears within the frame of the back door. “Your son is on the phone.”

  “Later,” says Helen, her face remaining tilted toward the light.

  “He’ll be so sad,” says Oliver when Eleanor retreats into the kitchen.

  “He’s sad now.”

  “He says there’s a new study opening in Dallas.”

  “No more. Look at me.”

  “You’re too lovely for words.”

  “Look at me, Oliver.”

  “He’ll never forgive me.”

  “Then you’ll be even.”

  “What will I do without you?”

  She raises her hand from his grip and puts it on his cheek, as she always does. “I won’t let you find out.”

  Fletcher comes for a visit after Eleanor leaves for the day. He is still in his white shirt and red tie, his suit pants and shiny black shoes. Fletcher starts talking about the doctor in Dallas he wants her to meet. He’s already set up the appointment, he says. In the middle, Oliver leaves the bedroom to sit in his recliner. He turns on the television with the sound off. It’s his favorite way of stretching time. There is a baseball game. A batter claps his hands together, spits, takes his stance, calls for time, backs out of the box, tightens his gloves, claps his hands together, spits.

  “She looks good,” says Fletcher when he leaves the bedroom. “She seems happier today, stronger. I want her to meet this doctor.”

  “She doesn’t want to go to Dallas,” says Oliver without looking at his son.

  “My client says this doctor performs miracles. There’s a new immunotherapy study she’s beginning. Mom might qualify. Talk to her, please.”

  “It won’t do any good.”

  “Why am I the only one who’s still fighting here, Dad? Why aren’t you helping? All you do is sit in front of the damn television.”

  “I wouldn’t want to miss the game.”

  “Why? You always said baseball went to hell when Ernie Banks retired. And you don’t even like the Phillies.”

  “They lose so much they’re growing on me.”

  “Look, I’m going to make an appointment. I just need you to get her there.”

  “She doesn’t want to go to Dallas.”

  “Dammit, Dad. Can you step up, please, for once?”

  “Can I?”

  “I guess not. I’ll have my secretary make the travel plans. I’ll take her. You can stay here in your chair and watch the Phillies lose. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Good,” says Oliver, like he says every time Fletcher visits on this day. “And maybe we’ll play Parcheesi.”

  It’s not a good line, but he’s stuck with it. He would rather rise and hug his son and let their individual trails of tears melt into one stream of misery and loss, but he can’t. Nothing ever changes, time after time, and he’s left with the Parcheesi line that makes him cringe every time it slips out of his mouth. And so his son leaves without an embrace, leaves by slamming the door, slam, slam, slam through all eternity.

  Later, with the dusk making its sly approach outside their window, he is lying next to her in their bedroom when he hears her sigh. He hoped she might fall asleep until the morning, allow them both another day, but the sigh gives her away.

  He rolls over and she is staring at him. He waits for her to say something, but she says nothing, or rather she lets her eyes say what she needs to say, and what they say is, Thank you, my love.

  He puts a hand on her cheek and lightly kisses lips pulled taut by impending death. Then he rises for a final time from beside her. He moves about their room in silence. She doesn’t talk and neither does he, though she follows all his movements with those eyes. Everything to be said has already been said, every declaration has already been declared. There is nothing else to do but the doing.

  He reaches up and pulls down the bottle from the high shelf where Eleanor put it, takes the syringe from a bureau drawer. He walks to the side of the bed and sits. Her eyes grow wide as she watches him fill the barrel.

  She takes the syringe from him. With heavy arms and shaking hands she squirts the morphine into her mouth. He fills the syringe and she takes it again. And then again. She is too weak to put the last bit from the bottle into her mouth and so, as he does each time he lives this day, he gives her the final dose. Then he takes her hand and sits by her side as those marvelous green eyes, the eyes that could have launched a thousand ships but chose to launch only his, close for the final time.

  Her breathing slows, catches, starts again, as it always does. It lasts longer than he remembers. Each time he is taken aback by the length of the wait. Each time he wonders if there was enough of the drug left. Each time he wishes he could go with her. Each time he holds his position and holds her hand until, mercifully, her breathing catches, this time never to start again. He puts his head on her chest. Nothing. He puts his ear to her mouth. Nothing. He kisses her forehead, still warm, and kisses her hand, still warm, before letting her go.

&nbs
p; The emotions overwhelm him and for a moment he is frozen in pain; he is reliving the worst of his days, and no day since has been worth a damn. The sobs don’t last long; the huge tears come and go leaving him simply empty.

  He stands, wipes at his eyes with the backs of his hands, and heads for the bathroom. He needed to go for the longest time, all the while he was holding her hand he needed to go, but he held off so she wouldn’t be alone in those last few moments. Now within the blue-painted room he stands over the toilet like he does within each loop, and each time the spatter is as disappointing as the last.

  But today, now, the spatter forms into a trickle, at first barely drooping into the bowl before strengthening into a pleasurable stream that slaps at the water so that bubbles form. And then the stream widens until it surges out of him, filling the room with its ripe scent even as it empties his bladder, pulling age and bile from his body, releasing his pain. It is the dream flow of a young man, of an army of the young, bold, and pure, the torrent of a generation ready to piss on all the delusions of the deluded world.

  That’s when he realizes how it ended for him on the blood farm. The needle has been jostled from its loop by the violence. He stands before the toilet and lets it go, lets the years pour out of him until he is emptied of all his ache and all his losses. And as he washes his hands of the regrets of the life he chose, he realizes what now might be waiting for him in the bedroom.

  With the raw excitement of his youth, standing once again before a wall of blue, he flings open the bathroom door.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © Sigrid Estrada

  William Lashner is the New York Times bestselling author of A Filthy Business and The Barkeep, as well as the Victor Carl legal thrillers, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages and sold across the globe. The Barkeep, nominated for an Edgar Award, was an Amazon and Digital Book World #1 bestseller. Lashner, a graduate of the New York University School of Law as well as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was a prosecutor with the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, before taking off his tie to write full-time.

  Listen to Oliver Cross’s Final Fatal Freedom Road Playlist at https://open.spotify.com/user/wlashner.