by Brent Jones
“I’m Drew Thomson,” he announced. “I’m here to see my dad.”
“Russell Thomson?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“He’s anxious to see you,” she replied.
“But the sign on the elevator said this is the cancer ward. That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“There must be some mistake,” Drew glanced at the laminated identification pinned to her scrubs, “Holly. Dad is fine. I saw him just yesterday.”
“I know this must be difficult.” Her empathy seemed rehearsed, indifferent. “But let’s go see your dad.”
She led Drew through a labyrinth of hallways, moving unexpectedly fast for having such short legs, and he struggled to keep pace with her.
He had always made a point of avoiding hospitals. The last time he had visited one, it had been with Heather two years before. She had broken her ankle on a girls’ weekend skiing trip with the Indiscreet Elite. Her anguish was a trivial detail to Drew. He was forced to endure the emergency room followed by the intensive care unit. It felt like he was there for an eternity. Agonizing hours spent alongside suffering babies, crying children, miserable adults, and a whole host of other invalids and incurables. The wretchedness of his surroundings was rooted as much in emotional as physical distress, each patient bubbling with a mixture of pain and grief.
As far as Drew was concerned, hospitals were chambers of desolation cloaked in the suffocating stench of polyvinyl chloride and diluted bleach. They were tombs for the hopeless, asylums for the irredeemable, and homes for the terminal.
“Your father is ill, Mr. Thomson—”
“Call me Drew. He’s Mr. Thomson.”
“Right. He’s asked to speak with you before I say more.” Holly stopped all at once, knocking on an opened door to announce their arrival. “Mr. Thomson, your son is here to see you.”
Drew entered the room warily. There were two beds, only one of which was occupied. Russell sat upright in the one closest to the door, watching a muted television on the opposite wall. His privacy curtain was pulled back to reveal intravenous lifelines flowing into his body, tubes of oxygen plugged into his nostrils, and a heart rate monitor that beeped callously at his side.
“Drew,” Russell said. “Come here, son.”
“Press the call button if you need anything, Mr. Thomson,” she said.
“I will, but,” he coughed, “just call me Russell.”
Holly forced a smile. “I’ll do that.” She left Drew alone with his father.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
Russell launched into a fit of coughing, his belly heaving. “Nothing is wrong, Drew. I’m sick, that’s all. And they won’t even let me smoke in—”
“You’re in the cancer ward, Dad.”
Russell lowered his head, evidently numb to the gravity of his present situation. “I’ve got cancer,” he said at last.
“So they’re starting you on chemo or radiation or something?”
“No.”
“Surgery?”
“No, son. It’s too late for that.”
“Then what now?”
“We wait,” he said, taking Drew by the hand. “The cancer’s in my lungs and it’s already spread to my stomach and brain.”
Drew felt his eyes well up.
“This is my last stop, Drew. It’s—it’s just a matter of time now.”
“How much time?”
“Months, weeks maybe,” he hesitated, “or days even. There’s really no way of knowing.”
Drew thought of his mother. When she died, he had no choice but to come to terms with it. It had happened without warning, without offering his young mind a chance to prepare. But having to accept that his father would soon die, inevitably and inescapably, seemed unfathomable.
“S’pose all they can do now is try to make me comfortable.” Another violent cough. “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I’m sorry you have to see me like this, but—”
“Are you in pain?”
“Tell you the truth, I’ve been in pain for years. Breathing has always been hard and, well, damn near impossible most days. I just never could be bothered to get it looked at.”
“So why now?”
Russell looked toward the window. “Angie called to me at the cemetery, son. I saw her face. She told me it was time to join her.”
Drew shifted uncomfortably. He wondered if fantastic delusions were a symptom of cancer, or if it was a simple a matter of his father seeing what he wanted to.
“She said you and Logan don’t need me no more.”
His room looked out on Northwood Park, which was adjoined to the hospital campus by an antiquated wooden bridge. Its picturesque landscape poured through the open blinds, an acrimonious reminder of better days—at least for those patients cognizant enough to appreciate its juxtaposition. Joggers, moms with strollers, and families walking dogs occupied its grounds. Young children played tagged, chasing one another around mighty trees, emanating liveliness for all the world to see. But Northwood Park took on a very different meaning for the Thomsons—in its depths is where Angela had met her untimely end so many years before.
Holly resurfaced at the door. “Let’s give you a little something for the pain.” She approached Russell with a cart full of patches and potions.
Drew looked skeptical. “What are you going to give him?”
“A mild sedative and something to ease his breathing.”
“It’s okay,” Russell said, offering little comfort to his son. He looked strangely at home on medical death row, filled with purpose, peace, and belonging. As though it were where he wanted to be.
Holly worked her methodical magic, likely having cared for oncology patients for years. Many of whom had probably been palliative, resigned to face their undignified demise in a room like this one. She completed her intricate tasks then vacated the room with haste.
Russell winced as the medicine began to course through his veins. He coughed into his pillowcase, projecting a fine mist of blood. Drew handed his father a Kleenex from the bedside table and Russell wiped his mouth.
“Did you manage to reach Logan?”
“I texted him on the way over.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, son.”
Hot tears tumbled down Drew’s face. “Don’t talk like that. You can still fight this.” But the words felt forced and clichéd. Russell wasn’t the type to come back against the odds, and Drew knew it. His tenacity had perished along with his wife years ago.
“There’s nothing left to be done,” Russell declared. “I lived my life, and I’m ready to be with your mother again. That’s just how it is.”
But I’m not ready to be without you. “What am I supposed to do when you’re gone?”
Russell took a deep and painful breath. “S’pose this is the part where I give you some words of wisdom, right?”
Drew nodded. Not because he expected to be enlightened, but because he desired to create a moment he could later look back on. Then again, Russell wasn’t keen on giving fatherly advice. The few times he had in the past, Drew tuned most of it out. But he felt drawn to his father at that instant, as though a piece of him were lying in the same hospital bed.
“Well, I don’t have much to offer.” The intravenous elixirs were beginning to take effect—Russell looked drowsy. “The big one, I guess, is don’t work too hard. Matter of fact, don’t work any harder than you’ve got to. Someone else will always pick up the slack.”
“Uh, okay.”
“We all owe one death in this life, son.” His eyelids were gaining weight. “There’s no need to fear it. It all ends one day, and then we get to rest at last.”
“That’s your advice?”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
“It sounds like you’re giving up.”
“I gave up a long time ago, if I’m being honest. But it wasn’t always this way . . .” Russell faded into peaceful rest, the rhythmic beeping of
his heart serving as evidence that his soul remained earthbound, at least for now.
Drew stood still, unsure of whether to remain at his father’s bedside or take his leave. Russell was gasping, his chest battling for air. He heard footsteps behind him.
“Andrew,” Logan said.
“Look who’s late now, asshole. He’s already asleep.”
“That’s okay. A nurse brought me up to speed when I arrived.” Logan’s voice was somber, and his otherwise pretty face was scraped and bruised from their tussle in the cemetery.
Brought you up to speed? This isn’t a deposition. “What kept you?” Drew asked.
“If you must know, I was at an important briefing. I got here as soon as I could.” He made eye contact with Drew. “Are you going to hit me and call me a faggot again?”
“No, but I’ll tell you this—I wish it were you in that bed instead.”
Logan curled his swollen lower lip and nodded, accepting his brother’s bitterness with composure. He reached out to their father, brushing back his mop of straggly white hair.
* * *
Chapter 10
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand why Logan and I are so different. We grew up in the same house with the same parents—well, the same dad at least. Even went to the same high school for a while and, somehow, that fuck—I don’t know.”
The words usually came to Drew in a natural flow. Even at times when he felt compelled to omit his truest thoughts, his darkest inclinations. He had pulled his beaten up rocking chair out on the balcony and rested his laptop on his legs, the clear moonlight enveloping his face. It created a dissonant effect on the screen—as though his face were that of a pale apparition shrouded in darkness.
“And now, what? Logan shows up and pretends he gives a shit about Dad when he was never there.” A gulp of beer. “Took off at sixteen like he was fleeing a warzone or something.”
Recording an entry in his video diary while drunk wasn’t a challenge. Years of dedication and practice had strengthened his tolerance, and keeping his intoxication undetected while functioning at a high level was his specialty. But tonight was different. Drew teetered on the brink of confronting his fears and insecurities, or simply drinking to escape them all. To go on a bender of unforeseeable magnitude, pushing the line between inebriated and comatose. His best failsafe was to avoid liquor in favor of beer. Try as he might, no amount of ale could incapacitate him.
He crushed his empty can, tossing it to the balcony floor, on top of eight or nine others. He grabbed another from a six-pack near his feet, popped it open and chugged half the can.
Drew recalled his younger years. In a world where appearances counted, he had been portly and lacking in style, his hair seldom cut or washed, his clothing secondhand and tattered. He had never been popular in a desirable sense. His peers knew who he was and some even found his cheerless nature comical, but for the most part, he was labeled a relative nobody. An acquaintance of total insignificance. A disheveled and pimply nonentity without a cause. In time, Drew came to accept these traits as core elements of his identity, damning as they were.
His first kiss happened at age sixteen and by total accident. At his first high school party where alcohol was involved, his peers played a game they had devised that involved lining up the boys on one side of the room, the girls on the other. The lights were turned out, and without saying a word, they had seven seconds to choose a partner from the opposite side of the room. The lights remained off for a full minute after, allowing each newly formed couple a private moment together.
It was on the third round that Drew received some uncoordinated tongue action from a cute girl in his grade. When the lights came back on, she was horrified—a case of mistaken identity. Drew felt oddly gratified and embarrassed all at once. In darkness, he wasn’t so different from everyone else.
Internet porn aside, he didn’t see—let alone touch—a real set of boobs until the following year. Olivia Woods, well known at school for her developed chest, had been an obvious choice to invite to his seventeenth birthday party. He had never actually talked to her, but he had fantasized about her more than once.
For some reason, she had showed up. Toward the end of the night, she followed Drew into the kitchen on a dare, a small group of her teenage girlfriends peering around the corner and giggling. She surprised Drew with a flash of her bare breasts. She eventually agreed to let Drew cop a feel, then—after some coaxing—they relocated to his bedroom and she went down on him. Drew was certain they had an audience outside his door. When he came, Olivia had gagged, spitting his ejaculate all over her lap. She was, after all, just as inexperienced as he was.
Then he remembered prom. Although Drew had no official date, it was an unspoken rule that all high school seniors—who had not done so already—had to lose their virginity that night. The pressure to convince a young lady to drop her panties was almost overwhelming. Drew considered staying home, but decided to go at the last minute. He outfitted himself in a checkered suit jacket borrowed from his father’s closet. It looked like something a clown might have worn.
In the wild, animals were known to target weak and sick prey, bettering their odds of a kill. Drew followed their lead, stalking Julie Blair for the night—an above average student with below average looks and nonexistent self-esteem. He brought her punch which, unfortunately, no one had spiked. They danced for an hour or two with all the coordination of an epileptic seizure. They had nothing in common to talk about. Drew was running out of time and too intimidated to make the first move. At the end of the night, Julie cornered him. “We can have sex if you want to,” she said with a sheepish grin. “Just don’t tell anyone.”
They made their way to Drew’s car at the edge of the parking lot—also borrowed from Russell—climbed in the backseat, and undressed in deafening silence. He fumbled to open the condom wrapper and get it on, and because he was confused and under pressure to perform, he used the darkness as cover to slide in without it.
Seconds later after only a few clumsy thrusts, the ordeal was over. Julie, who looked too relieved to express her discomfort, got dressed with haste and left. Drew sat naked in the backseat for an hour, wondering what all the fuss had been about.
In his early twenties, prior to working with The Ascension Group, Drew had started down the slippery slope to alcoholism. One night, when he was at a bar by himself, a tipsy and ordinary college girl bumped into him, spilling his drink all over his shirt. She offered to have it dry cleaned for him.
A few days later, she arrived at Drew’s door to drop the shirt off as promised. Just as she was about to leave, she asked, “Are you free this Friday by chance?”
“Uh, I think so,” Drew had replied.
“Would you let me buy you a drink? I owe you after spilling yours.”
“Sure.”
“Great. And, well, this is embarrassing,” she had said. “I got your phone number and address the other night, but I didn’t grab your name.”
“Drew.”
“Heather.”
They shook hands awkwardly and she left.
I wonder if Heather remembers that she once encouraged me to drink.
Despite occasional social achievements—typically the result of dumb luck—Drew had spent most of his teenage and young adult years in the background, floating freely between social settings—unseen, unknown, unavailable. And most importantly, easily forgettable.
By comparison, Logan was widely regarded throughout his high school years as a pretentious nerd. He worked tirelessly at first to fit in. He settled in any socially disenfranchised clique that would have him—the chess team, the book club, the debate team. Logan lived in denial that he was ostracized from ordinary teens. He preferred to think of it as though he were choosing to exclude others from his more noteworthy endeavors—an approach that made him seem cold and snobbish. Girls thought of him as an egotistical loser even back then.
Drew crushed another empty beer can and tossed it asid
e. He reached down for a new one. Eleven minutes and forty-four seconds had elapsed since he started recording, although most of that footage was his phantom digital face staring into the night sky.
“Thing is, my brother doesn’t have to be a two-dimensional cutout. He could be successful in his career and still be a real person, too. You know, like a normal fucking guy.” He knocked back a mouthful of beer. “I mean, it’s like he picked up one day and just said, ‘Fuck it. Fuck all you guys. I’m out.’ Then he hit the road and forgot all about Dad, until he got cancer anyway. Just like the rest of the world, I guess—deaf to the good news, all ears for the bad. Soaking up tragedy like a sponge.
“I mean, fuck, the least the guy could do is show up and say, ‘Hey Dad. I’m so sorry I was too busy to call for the last ten years. But I’m here now and I’d like to make it up you.’ No. Instead, instead that cocksucker strolls in the hospital room like he’s doing Dad some kind of favor.”
Drew wasn’t especially good at being angry. He was far too dismissive of his own feelings to let rage take control. But whenever an exception was made, Logan was surely the cause of it.
He rose swiftly, surprising even himself, his laptop falling to the concrete balcony floor. “That goddamn motherfucker!” Drew bellowed, tossing his can of beer from the balcony. He heard it thump ten stories below. He dropped his shoulders and let a deep breath out. “I—I needed that.”
He picked up his laptop, examining it, discovering it had survived his outburst without incident. Maybe there is a God.
Thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds elapsed. He felt ready to speak again.
“You know what? Fuck him.” Drew grabbed another beer and popped the tab. “To be honest, I’m scared. I don’t know what I’ll do without Dad. He’s—he’s always been the one consistent thing in my life. Even when I was a teenager and I didn’t fit in. He’d tell me, ‘Son, if they don’t like you, tell them to kiss your ass.’ ” Drew chuckled. “I’m not sure what I should do—I’ve got this new job to start at Transtel. But I feel like I should be with Dad. He might need me.”