There's No Place Like Home

by Jasinda Wilder

* * *

  [Conakry, Guinea, Africa; date unknown]

  Dr. James sits beside me, one ankle crossed over his knee. I have been writing, lost in the flow of words, conscious of his presence but ignoring him. Now, he clears his throat, and then speaks.

  “It would not do, I think, to become obsessed with this writing, my friend. You must not force it.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t understand.”

  “What is it I do not understand?”

  “It’s there. It’s there, all of it. I just…I can’t reach it. I can’t grasp it.”

  “It will come,” Dr. James says, his voice deep and calm and reassuring, his accent adding an exotic lilt to his words. “It will come to you, I tell you.”

  I shake my head again. “No, no. You don’t get it. You don’t get it.” I look up at him, twirling the pen between my fingers in an idle gesture of pensive energy. “There’s…there’s something there, just beneath the surface. Something happened, Dr. James.” I’m whispering, now. “I feel it. Something happened. Something bad…very bad.”

  Dr. James rises slowly to his feet, with a soft grunt of exertion. “Well, I will leave you to it, then. But remember that I am here to help you. If you need to talk, remember that I am here. Okay?”

  I nod. “Okay. Thanks.”

  And then Dr. James is gone, and I return to writing:

  [from a handwritten journal; date unknown]

  Two sounds rule our world: the intermittent beep of the heart monitor, and the rush-hiss of the oxygen machine.

  Henry’s hospital room is dark. There is no clock, but inside me there is the vague ominous weight that one only feels at three in the morning. We know this hour, and we know it well: we have sat like this, awake, at three in the morning for…too long. We are intimately familiar with how three in the morning feels.

  You sleep fitfully in a hospital chair, your brows furrowed. There is no need to wake you; you’ve slept little enough in the past weeks.

  There is a window behind me, blinds levered closed, curtains drawn. The heart rate monitor casts a dull glow, the lines blipping up, falling, blipping up, and falling in even intervals—intervals that are too slow. I know the number that should appear on the screen, and the number that IS there…it is far too small. The oxygen machine, on the wall beside the crib, is a green accordion within a transparent cylinder, and the green accordion squeezes downward, whooshing, and rises upward, hissing. It does this steadily.

  Clear tubes run from the machine and into the crib. They loop and twist and tangle, and lead, at last, to the small still form within the crib.

  There is a hook above the crib, and from it hang two bags of clear liquid, one nearly empty, the other half-depleted; one is saline, for hydration, and the other contains high-dose painkillers.

  Palliative care. That is what those drugs mean. Dull the pain into manageable submission, until the end arrives.

  Two more clear tubes lead from those bags, into a rectangular machine with orange numeral readouts, and then emerge once again, looping and tangling into the crib, to an arm, a tiny, frail, stick-thin arm, the needles hidden and held in place by tape and gauze.

  I sit in a hard recliner made from institutional faux leather, and I stare at the crib.

  At the form inside it.

  The body.

  The patient.

  The child.

  My child.

  My son.

  Henry.

  The doctors—oncologists, the experts in this gruesome waiting game—have finally uttered the words we have expected for weeks: “You should probably begin saying your goodbyes. It won’t be long now.”

  These words and phrases are meant to lessen the awful meaning behind them, beneath them:

  It will not be long—he is going to die soon; say your goodbyes—whisper words of love and farewell to your child…whisper them to the small, unconscious, unmoving form…whisper them, and wonder if he can hear you.

  The beeping of the heart rate monitor pauses. A long, baleful, vicious silence…and then it resumes, but more slowly.

  His chest rises and falls, but barely. And so, so slowly. So shallowly.

  Is this it? The crushing burden on my chest tells me it is.

  You are in the other recliner, curled up, knees drawn, brows furrowed in fitful sleep. I have to wake you up.

  I draw a shuddering breath, let it out slowly, and it emerges as a half-muffled sob. I touch your shoulder, just two fingers barely brushing you, and you jerk awake. Blink up at me. You see the torment on my face, and you lurch to your feet, stumble to the crib. Glance at the monitor, at the slowing numbers, the growing space between beeps.

  The sob that escapes you, then, is the single most heartbreaking sound I have ever heard, and hope to never hear again.

  “Henry, no…please, no.” You sag against the hospital crib, shoulders shaking.

  I crowd against you, my arm around your waist, holding you up. I thought I had wept all my tears already, but it seems I have not. They fall, but silently. My eyes sting and my nose runs and my chest aches so badly it feels as if an anvil is crushing me. My stomach clenches. My heart pounds. My mind is absent of all thoughts except a silent scream of agony.

  The beeping slows yet further.

  You reach into the crib, take his tiny, limp hand in yours. I cover both of your hands with mine.

  Moments pass, heavy, each passing second crashing upon us like two-ton stones.

  BEEP… … … BEEP… … … BEEP… … … BEEP… … …

  “It’s okay, baby. You can go now,” you whisper, your voice ragged, hoarse, shattering. “Mommy—Mommy and Daddy love you. I love you. It’s okay, baby.”

  Those words break me.

  And then, and then…

  Henry’s chest lifts, pauses…falls. And does not lift again.

  The monitor beeps once, and then intones the flatline.

  Normally, there would be a flurry of activity, the rush to resuscitate.

  There is no rush. No hurricane of nurses, no paddles.

  We are left alone in our fractured, ruined silence, alone in our sorrow.

  You sag against me, and I have to lift you and carry you to the chair.

  Someone comes in on silent feet, pushes a button to cease the tone of the monitor, and they vanish again.

  We can only sob.

  I soak your hair with my tears.

  How much time passes, I know not. After a time, you rise up on shaky knees, and creep over to the crib, as if to not disturb him, as if he is only sleeping. You bend over the crib, lean in on tiptoes, and press a shuddering-lipped kiss to his forehead, and then collapse to the floor.

  I kiss him as well.

  His flesh is already cooling, dispelling the notion that he is merely asleep.

  He is gone.

  Frame it as it is: Henry is dead.

  My son is dead.

  I want to scream, but cannot. Want to weep, but cannot weep any harder than I already am.

  If you slice open your finger with a very sharp knife, after the initial slice of pain, there is a brief pause of numbness, before the blood begins to well up and run free, and then the true throbbing fiery ache begins.

  This moment, after the initial racking stab of agony, is that pause before the ache and the blood begin.

  Soon, the real sorrow will take over.

  I do not know if I will survive it.

  I do not know if you will survive it.

  If WE will survive it.

  How can we?

  * * *

  Dear god.

  I sit on the veranda of the hospital, the late afternoon sun beating hot on my face through the screen, notebook and pen on my lap, and I cry.

  Those words, that story about Henry… just poured out of me. In the moment, in the grip of the flow of words, it was as if I was writing a story about something that happened to someone else, but I know…I know in my bones and in my blood that it happened to me.

  I had a s
on, and he died.

  I scream, then. A bellowing wail of raw, shattered agony as I feel that sorrow all over again. I scream, and I scream, and I scream, and I throw the notebook across the room. It flaps and flutters, white pages rustling like the wings of a dove, and lands on the floor. My cramped, all-caps scrawl in blue ink neatly follows the red lines across the page, upside down. I throw the pen, too, and it thumps silently against the screen of a window. I want to break something, as I am so freshly broken, but there is nothing to break, and so I scream again.

  A nurse arrives, a short, rotund woman with inky black skin and white teeth and worried brown eyes. She coos at me, trying to calm me. I have no idea what she’s saying as she speaks in a complex mixture of Susu, French, a few words of English, and Malinké. The words don’t matter; her tone communicates worry and compassion, and then a query.

  I am incoherent. Shouting—No! No! No! Henry!—screaming. Sobbing. Shaking my head and clutching at my hair, yanking at it until strands rip free.

  She grasps at my hands, trying to stop my barrage of self-harm, and then she shouts something, calling for help most likely, and another nurse arrives with a syringe.

  I am mad. Utterly mad.

  A sharp poke, and I blink, and my screams and shouts fade.

  Darkness snatches at me, reaching up from the shadows beneath my wheelchair to tug me down, down, down. I hear voices, Susu words, Malinké phrases, French. Then…nothing.

  I don’t fight it.

  When I awaken, I am in my cot. I hear a rustle, a flap of paper, and a deep cough, a snort. I roll my head, still dizzy and foggy and drowsy and weak.

  Dr. James sits in a chair nearby. He is tall, thick of shoulder and burgeoning at the middle. He has enormous hands, the palms slightly pinker than the rest of his dark skin. His eyes are brown, and kind. He wears spectacles—and I say spectacles because they are very old, deserving the anachronistic term, thin gold wire frames with thick lenses that distort my view of his eyes. He is wearing chocolate brown slacks and a pale blue, short sleeve, button-down shirt with pens in the breast pocket, and a stethoscope casually forgotten around his neck.

  He is reading my notebook.

  I am angry at this, at seeing my writing in his hands. That is my soul, my very heart, the naked essence of me. I am exploring myself in those pages, and it feels like a violation to see someone else reading it.

  He notices I am awake, and peels off his spectacles, a sideways tearing motion, turning his head the opposite direction as he pulls them free, then folds them and puts them in his breast pocket, next to the pens, one arm hooked over the pocket.

  He lifts the notebook. “My apologies. I only read this to know why would you cause such a scene. Such strong emotion from you…it is most unusual.” He speaks with a thick, lilting accent, and his voice is deep, with a mellifluous timbre.

  I roll my head away, resume staring at the ceiling—his words require no response from me, and I am still nursing anger at him for the invasion of my privacy.

  “You remembered something, I think? Something most full of sorrow.”

  “Yes.” I jerk my chin at him, intending the gesture to mean the notebook. “You read it.”

  “I only look quickly here and there to determine the nature of the writings. Until I come to the most recent entry.” He pauses, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingertips steepled together, touching his lips. “Would you tell me what you remembered?”

  I shake my head. “You read it, damn you. Don’t make me talk about it.”

  He nods, a slow bobbing of his head, shaggy graying hair glinting in the dusky golden afternoon glow. “Yes, very well. Perhaps it would be too much.” He leans back again, perusing the final entry once more. “This is a true memory? We have spoken sometimes about not knowing for certain if you remember truly or if you invent memories.”

  I sigh. “It’s real.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes it’s fucking real! Why would I freak out like that if it weren’t real, if I didn’t feel how real it is? I had a son, and he died of brain cancer.”

  “And your name? Your past?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing but that.” I reach out my hand, and he gives me the notebook. “I think it’ll come, though. I remember so much about…about her, Ava. About us. I remember so much about us.” My words come slowly. “I’ll remember. I feel it all, it’s in there—” I tap the top of my head with the corner of the notebook, “I just have to get it out.”

  Dr. James is quiet a while. “I am so sorry you have endured such a great loss,” he says. “But I am also glad you have remembered. Strong memories will bring with them many smaller ones, I think.”

  “What if—what if there’s something I don’t want to remember?”

  Dr. James sighs deeply. “You cannot fight it. You can only accept it, and let it be. You are very strong, very resilient. You will be good as new before you know it.” He pats his knees with his hands twice, and then pushes himself to his feet. “Well. Get some rest. It will do you good.”

  And then Dr. James quietly walks away, leaving me to my thoughts.

  Which I’m not sure is a good thing. I don’t know if I want to be left alone with my thoughts. With the memories of Henry that are now, as the doctor predicted, bubbling up, one by one.

  I write them. Sniffling, throat raw from screaming, scalp aching, fingers cramped, I write the memories as they come:

  [From a handwritten notebook; date unknown]

  Ava, rounded belly leading, climbing laboriously into bed beside me, clad in a voluminous nightgown which is too big around the shoulders and arms, tight around the belly, and loose around her thighs. She would breathe heavily for a few moments after getting in bed. I loved the way she would curse and complain about being pregnant one moment, and then rub her belly with her hands and coo lovingly the next.

  Ava giving birth is something I will never forget it; it was one of the most important moments of my life. I remember her hunching forward, hands gripping the bed railings in a white-knuckle grip, teeth gritted, snarling rather than screaming, and then collapsing back against the pillows, gasping, sweating, hair smeared against her forehead. Breathing, just breathing, until the next contraction came, and then she’d lean forward again, growling past bared teeth, vulpine, lupine. I would slowly count to ten as she bore down, and on ten she would stop, fall backward, gasping.

  Finally, the wet, bloody, effluvia-smeared wiggling form slipping out of her, and I wept and laughed at the sight of such a miracle. The doctor placed our baby on Ava’s chest, still messy, and Ava laughed and wept and called him precious: “hello my love, yes, hello; hi there! Welcome to Life, little one.”

  The bustle of activity as he was cleaned and weighed and measured under the heat lamp, and then he was diapered and swaddled in a blue and white blanket, and handed to Ava, who cradled him to her breast, which he latched onto immediately and began suckling hungrily, nuzzling and crying and quieting as he found her nipple.

  Then followed all the sleepless nights at home, the vile, yellowish, seedy diapers at four a.m., handing him to Ava to feed, her on her side and him cuddled up against her ribs, one hand resting possessively on the outside of her breast, long little fingernails scratching now and then. Bringing him over to the crib, his tiny warmth resting on my shoulder, patting his back gently until he burped. Rocking and bouncing him to sleep, and ever so gently snugging him, all swaddled with his little hat on, in his bed.

  Then, amazingly, he began to crawl, wobbly at first, and then there was no stopping him.

  His joyful babble as he lay on his back on a play mat, batting at the large, colorful plastic shapes dangling over his face.

  He was so sweet. So perfect. So joyful, except when he was hungry, or had messed in his pants.

  The moment I saw him, the very instant he emerged from Ava’s womb, I knew he was the most important thing that could ever happen me. He became, in that instant, my reason, my purpose, m
y life.

  Ava’s, too.

  He was our everything.

  6

  [From Ava’s handwritten journal; November 16, 2016]

  It’s four in the morning. There’s a storm raging outside, and it has been raging for so long that I’ve lost track of the hours. I thought for sure it was a hurricane, the kind of thing that slammed Ft. Lauderdale and nearly killed me—the thought of going through another hurricane actually caused me to have a minor panic attack.

  Dominic only laughed at me. “This is just a little squall. Nothin’ to be scared of.”

  It doesn’t feel like a little squall, it feels like a damn hurricane. The boat is getting tossed around like a toy in a bathtub, rocketing down the side of one massive wave only to course up another. We twist and tilt this way and that, and my heart is pounding in my chest fit to burst. If I close my eyes, I’m back in the bathtub all over again, trapped in by rubble, hearing the storm howl like a maddened god. I don’t close my eyes.

  I don’t dare.

  I haven’t slept in I don’t know how long.

  I’ve watched every movie on the boat, one after the other, on the tiny, aged TV in the common room of the boat—I don’t know the terminology of boats, but I’m sure there’s a nautical term for it. I watched all those movies, and then tried to read to distract myself, and then I tried cooking—I’ve baked three batches of cookies, made a giant pot of stew, and another pot of soup. The men are working through the storm, taking turns to catch sleep, and the ones on shift make frequent trips to the galley to wolf down bowls of soup or stew, and to shove cookies into their mouths chased by gulps of coffee—the coffee pot on this boat is never, ever empty, which is the first thing I learned when I came aboard.

  And now, it’s four in the morning and I’m scared and bored at the same time, which is a bizarre mixture of emotions.

  So, I’m journaling.

  I don’t want to. I feel a million thoughts and feelings simmering just below the surface, things I’ve put off, buried, bottled up.