by Kris Jacen
“That’s right. I’m not.”
“So…?”
The young man grinned again. “Oh, I sometimes volunteer here, in my off time.”
“Not at this hour of the night, you don’t.”
“No, you’re right. It’s just…well, I have a night job across town, and I come right past here on my way home, and sometimes I stop by and visit with the patients. The ones who are awake.”
“Couldn’t be many of them awake, not at this hour. Anyway, I was asleep. You were sitting there in that chair when I woke up.”
“That’s right. Everybody was asleep. I was about to leave and go home, but when I paused to look in on you, you said something. At first, I thought you were awake, and I came in to see how you were doing, but then I realized you were talking in your sleep, having a dream. A pretty vivid one, it looked like, so I thought probably you’d be waking up in a minute or two. I just sat down to wait.”
“Oh.” Trevor’s mind was still a bit sleep-slow. It took him a minute to think of the obvious question. “What did I say?”
“Just a name.”
“What name?” Trevor asked, but already he had his suspicions.
“Jamie.”
“Damn,” Trevor swore. He struggled to sit up in bed. “You just get straight the hell out of here, what right have you got…” The effort to sit up and his excitement caused a sharp pain to shoot through his left shoulder and across his chest. His angry sputtering deteriorated into a groan, and he sank back down on the pillow.
The young man jumped up, his face etched with concern. “Mr. Harding, don’t get yourself all het up,” he said. He came to the side of the bed. “Here, have a sip of water. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
All het up? What an old-fashioned thing to say. Trevor had said it himself in the past, probably a lot, but that was a long time ago. Nobody said it these days. He took the glass that was offered and managed a long swallow of lukewarm water, and dropped his head again to the pillow. His visitor dipped a white handkerchief into the glass and wiped Trevor’s brow with it.
“Feel better?”
Trevor let his breath out in a long sigh that rattled in his throat.
“I’m sorry. It just caught me off guard, your saying his name like that. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m just a crabby old coot. Everybody here knows that.”
“You’re not a coot, Mr. Harding, and there’s nothing to forgive. Would you like for me to go now?”
Trevor rolled his eyes around and looked into the young man’s face. He really did look contrite. “No,” he said wearily. “That’s okay. I’m glad for the company. Even if it is a weird time for it.”
“Do you wake up a lot like this? I mean, in the wee hours?”
“Too often. I guess I could ring for the nurse, get something to help me sleep. But at my age, you take a lot of pills. I’d just as leave not take any more than I need to. Usually, I lay in the dark and…say, the light’s on.”
“I turned it on when I came in. I can turn it off if it bothers you.”
“No, no, that’s okay. I’m just surprised it hasn’t brought the night nurse in.”
“She’s clear down to the other end of the ward. There was a problem with another patient. Mr. Barnes.”
“Barney? He’s been kind of touch and go lately. He didn’t…?” But he didn’t like to say it. It seemed too much like courting trouble to mention death aloud. One of the superstitions that came with being ninety-one.
“No, not the last I saw. But he was having some trouble breathing.”
“Oh. Well…that kind of goes with the territory, I guess.” As if to demonstrate, he turned his head and coughed, a hacking, phlegmy cough.
There was a moment of silence. It was usually quiet in the middle of the night like this, but tonight, the quiet seemed particularly dense, as if the room, the entire home, was holding its breath. He listened keenly, but there was nothing. Just his own labored breathing, and a swish of starched sheets when he moved his leg.
“Mr. Harding…?”
Trevor had been focusing so intently on the silence, he had all but forgotten him. The visitor might not have been there. Trevor started a little when he heard the voice.
“What?” he asked, more sharply than he’d intended. He felt all disoriented, like his skin didn’t quite fit him anymore. Like he didn’t fit him anymore, whatever that meant.
“Would you like to tell me about Jamie? What happened to him?”
Trevor snapped his head around, glowering. “What makes you put it like that? ‘What happened to him?’ What makes you so sure anything happened?”
“The way you said it. When you were asleep. It was almost as if you were crying.”
Trevor looked away from him, into the shadows in the corner of the room, as if he might see Jamie there. He couldn’t, of course. Not unless he was a ghost. A very old ghost.
“He was my son,” he said, and his voice broke on the last word.
“And you lost him?” It was a statement more than a question.
Trevor’s eyes sparked angrily. “No, damn it, I didn’t lose him. I killed him.”
“Oh.” The young man looked contrite again. Trevor tried to say something more, but he couldn’t. He squeezed his eyes shut. That didn’t help either. He saw an image of Jamie on the insides of his eyelids—the way he’d last seen him. He had been laughing. Looking back from the distance, Trevor thought, as he had thought many times over the years, that he should have known something was amiss, that it wasn’t Jamie’s ordinary fifteen-year-old laughter. That should have told him…
After a long silence, the young man said, “Would you like to talk about it?”
“No,” and then, quickly, “yes, hell yes. It’s been so many years. You’d think the poison would drain away, but it never has. It’s still as bad as it ever was.”
“I don’t believe you really killed him, not literally, anyhow—did you?” A soft, ready-to-forgive voice.
“I didn’t pull the trigger, you mean? I might as well have. If I’d paid him any attention, if I’d been the kind of father he needed…” His voice broke.
“Jamie shot himself?”
Trevor couldn’t trust his voice just yet and only nodded.
“Do you know why? Did he leave a note?”
“He didn’t leave a note, no.” He opened his eyes and looked directly into the ones regarding him so solemnly. “But I know why. He was gay. Some kids had been bullying him after school. Every day, it seemed like. He didn’t tell me, but I knew. I’d see him come in, all scruffed up—one time his lip was bleeding—and his clothes would be dirty and torn, and he’d dash to his room. I’d hear him crying in there, but I didn’t go in. He was in there with his heart breaking, and I didn’t go to him. That’s what I mean when I said I might as well have pulled the trigger. If I had gone to him…”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I knew, damn it. I knew enough. I knew my son was gay. We said ‘queer’ in those days. I said it too, same as those bullies. And I was too chicken to face it. You want to know the truth, I was embarrassed about it. I was ashamed. I didn’t want my son to be queer.”
“Fathers generally don’t.”
“But I didn’t want him dead, either. I loved that boy. If I’d just told him that, maybe it would have chased the demons away.”
“I’m thinking that he knew. That you loved him.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Kids live in a kid’s world, you know. It’s the worst possible time to discover that you’re different, when more than anything else, more than at any other time in your life, you want to fit in. Gay teenagers kill themselves at an alarming rate.”
“It’s better now, though. So they tell me.”
“Not so much, not so much as you’d like to think. There’s been something of an epidemic of late—kids hanging themselves, kids jumping off bridges, kids shooting themselves. The lost ones. I don’t think all of them were unlove
d by their parents. Has to do with their own private world, one they often don’t even want to share with a mother or father. I’d venture to say, even if you had tried to talk to Jamie about it, he wouldn’t have wanted to discuss it with you.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, think about it. You said you were embarrassed. Don’t you think maybe he was too? Fathers don’t want their sons to be gay, but the sons don’t want to be gay either. Especially, they don’t want to be gay to their parents.”
They were silent for a long time. Trevor was remembering—the way he had been remembering since the day decades before, when he’d heard that gunshot, and in his heart, he had known the instant he heard it exactly what it meant.
“Could I have another drink of water?” he asked aloud. His visitor helped him to sit up, and held the glass for him again. Trevor drank, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and remained sitting. “Thank you.”
“You’ve devoted a lot of your life since then to young people,” the young man said.
“How do you know that?”
“Oh, people know. I’ve always known. All that time and energy and money that you poured into helping the young. Since then. Since Jamie. That counts, you know.”
“It didn’t change anything. It didn’t undo what happened to Jamie.”
“I’ll bet it changed things for a lot of other youngsters, though. I think Jamie would be glad to know that.”
“Yes, I think he would,” Trevor agreed thoughtfully. He gave a little bark of a laugh and shook his head. “He was something, my Jamie, a genuine pistol. From the time he was a tadpole. One time his aunt, my sister, she was visiting, and her own oldest was just a baby, and she took him into the bedroom to nurse him, thinking it might not be appropriate to do it around the family, only, Jamie walked in on her, and he asked her what she was doing, and she told him she was feeding the baby. And that boy, he wasn’t but about four at the time, he threw up his hands and he said…”
“‘That’s not the way my mom does it,’” The young man in the chair finished for him, laughing too.
Trevor’s breath caught in his throat. “How’d you know that?” he asked, his eyes wide.
“Oh—maybe I’ve heard that story already.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Lots of times. Sometimes you were asleep, you didn’t even see me, but I was here.”
Trevor blinked and shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I…I’m all befuddled. I can’t seem to think straight.”
“You’re just tired. You need to go back to sleep. And I need to let you be.”
He plumped up Trevor’s pillow for him, and to Trevor’s surprise, leaned down to plant a gentle kiss on his brow. “It’s time, you know.”
Trevor closed his eyes, but they flew open a moment later. “Time for what?”
“Time to let go. Of all of it. The guilt, the pain, the shame. All these years, you’ve been blaming yourself for Jamie’s death, but I’d bet anything if you could ask him right now, Jamie wouldn’t blame you.”
“You really think he wouldn’t?”
“I’m sure of it. And I don’t think you should, either.”
Oddly, Trevor found that he did feel better for hearing that said. He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them a moment later, there was no one there. The light was off. The room wasn’t dark, though. Was it dawn already? It seemed too early, but the window had begun to glow the way it did with the approach of morning. The room was almost as light as it had been before.
He sighed, sorry now that the young man had gone. He tried to remember if they really had talked before. What had he said?—that he’d been here lots of times. He had looked vaguely familiar, too. Trevor tried to catch hold of a thought that slid through his mind, but it slipped past his fingers. Things, thoughts, images, slipping, slipping…spinning and slipping.
* * * *
“Busy night?” The morning nurse, Jean Riker, was preparing to take over for her shift.
“Mr. Harding passed,” Ellen Avery said. “Just a little while ago.”
“I’m not surprised. He’s been getting frailer by the day.”
“Funny thing,” Ellen said, “I went by his room about four in the morning—Barnes had an episode and I was in his room, and when I came back along the hall, I heard Mr. Harding talking. I thought maybe he had a visitor, only I couldn’t imagine who would be there at that hour. So I stuck my head in, but no, he was alone, just lying in bed with his eyes closed, talking to himself, like he was having a serious conversation with somebody.”
“Hmm—dreaming, probably.”
“I guess. Anyway, I came back by a few minutes later, just to see if he was okay, and he had already passed.”
“Should we notify family?”
“There isn’t any. He talked a lot about a son, but his records don’t indicate any survivors. But you know what’s funny? You know how crabby he was most of the time. When I found him, he was smiling. He looked so at ease. Like a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders.”
“Ninety-one,” Jean said. “I suppose that is a burden.”
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Facing the Juggernaut
Somewhere, packed away in a box, and drawn in a book, there is an image I sketched when I wore much younger clothes. It depicts a guy standing in front of a large stone face, and at the time I drew it, I was thinking about escaping the regard of people without compassion.
I’ve been thinking about that picture for the last couple of days since I had the bone marrow biopsy.
Okay, I admit, I made a rather large mistake. I committed the cardinal sin of being happy and excited when I went in for the test. Never mind that it was apparently a bad day at the office.
The phlebotimist was grouchy enough that I asked her point blank when I sat down if she was gonna take it out on me. Reasonable question, given that she had the needle in her hand to draw blood, and justified when I had to remove the wrap she put on to hold the cotton ball in place because the circulation was cut off. (She is always smooth with the stab though, and I rarely feel it.)
Her bad mood should have been a warning and I missed it in favor of trying to make her smile. Granted, we never seem to connect, but still, it’s always worth a try. Especially after I watched her be curt and abrupt with the old lady ahead of me.
Alas, she wasnt having any of my dull wit or dubious charm and I gave up, not *quite* slinking away, but almost.
A few minutes later, I was called in to the next stage, the “bare your butt and lay down” stage.
Christine, a sweetie, leads me into the little room and tells me to unbutton my pants and lay down on my stomach.
“What? Whoa. Hold the phone. I have to be on my stomach?”
“Well, yeah. Is that a problem?” (Ah, the innocence of youthful flexibility.)
“Jeez, yeah. My back is trashed. I can’t lay on my stomach. Especially not arched like that. Can we lose the pillow at least?”
We could, and did, and ended up putting it under my stomach. I was thinking I’d be on my side, like a spinal tap. Dopey me, it never occurred to me to see if YouTube had any vids of a bone marrow biopsy so I could know what to expect..
I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out how I was was going to aim my phone at my butt while flat on my face, and I finally asked another assistant if she could shoot video.
“No. I have to do my job.” The negation was delivered in a way which I perceived as a suggestion that I was an idiot for wanting to shoot video in the first place, and that I was twice an idiot for daring to suggest she stoop that low.
“Okay. I was just asking.”
“I have to move fast and get the samples prepped before it coagulates.”
Ah. Okay. Makes sense. “Well, okay. Can you at least look at the screen and tell me if I have it aimed in the right direction?”
“No! You can’t move during the procedure.” I swear, the
woman sounded horrified. “And you cant lay like that anyway. You have to be flat.”
Christine was off hunting for the practitioner who’ll do the work, and she returns with Jeff.
“Hi. My name is Jeff, and I’ll be taking your sample today.”
“I know you. You do chemo but you’ve never had me.”
“No, I never have, but I remember you though.”
Heh. I’m sure he does. I dont exactly float meek and mild through that place, after all.
Jeff sets about covering my butt with assorted paper and drapes and such, and I look over my shoulder. I spot a dark haired woman out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder who in the hell is so rude as to stand there staring at my butt and not have the *courtesy* to introduce herself. That happens to be a pet peeve of mine, by the way.
So, already I’m losing my happy mood in the face of all the ‘Nos’ I’d gotten (Justified or otherwise, it was the delivery that pissed me off) so I held the phone out to the dark haired woman.
“Maybe she’ll shoot the video for me?”
“I am not going to videotape you.” The statement was delivered in no uncertain terms.
Okay... So much for any vestige of happy. It just collapsed in the swell of rising anger.
I set the phone to record audio (Yes you cranky old bat, I have you on audio) and set it face down on the table beside me. Jeff is busy poking and prodding, presumably looking for the edges of the bone he is about to stab. He’s chattering away, telling me what he’s gonna be doing, etc. I said something about wanting the needle. In my head, I’m wanting to see what it looks like, because I dont have ANY patience with nurses and doctors who try to hide their tools from me. I am not a four year old child, and I dont give a good god damn about what they are used to dealing with.
I have yet to play the recording back to see what I said exactly, but the response I got back, from the first cranky old bat, was “You cant have it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a biohazard. It’s against the law.”
“No no, not THE needle, A needle. I just want to see what it looks like. Gods!”
“Well, we can show you that.”