The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  That thing.

  For an instant, he saw Robbie. He was bent over with a mouth full of blood, only he couldn’t tell it was Robbie. He could only feel it was. He saw only the silhouette of a dark image standing over—

  “Ethan?” The image vanished as Dr. Katharine spoke again.

  Ethan looked at her. The sterile confines of the hospital filled his mind.

  “Are you ready to leave?”

  “Yes,” he replied quickly and loudly, regaining his place in the office and the desk between him and the doctor. He smiled. “I am ready to move on.” Then, without waiting for the doctor to reply, he leaned forward, looked hard at Dr. Katharine, and repeated, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  Quiet followed. Dr. Katharine spoke next.

  “Then it’s done.” She scribbled something on the paper in front of her. “Here’s your release.” She handed him the paper. “You’re something of an enigma, Ethan Jones. I’ve not encountered anyone quite like you in my professional life. But your stay here is over. It’s time for you to take control again.”

  Dr. Katharine smiled. Her expression made him both melt and feel strong; its depth was much more than two weeks in the making.

  “Thank you, Dr. Katharine,” Ethan said, standing up. He shook her hand. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m happy to be leaving you.”

  Ethan left the office and headed back to his room to prepare for his next move.

  CHAPTER 4

  Friday, May 25, 1984

  Strange, the hospital and the room—the place he’d called home for the last few weeks—were actually where he’d been living for almost six months. He’d gone into limbo while the world had gone on. He’d returned from the living dead.

  He was packing the suitcase his mother had brought in, when his father entered the room.

  “I doubt you’ll miss this place much.” His father laughed, approaching Ethan with his hand extended. His father’s dark hair looked grayer like his mother’s, but it was still neat and professionally trimmed. Parted on the right side, it looked thinner than Ethan remembered. His father shook his hand in his hard, nearly crushing grip. “I know I won’t.”

  Ethan smiled. He’d miss a few of the characters the world called crazy but little else. They’d had a little party the night before to bid him farewell. Policy was to make the actual leaving quick and quiet to avoid upsetting the routine of the other patients. That suited Ethan just fine.

  “Yeah,” he said despite his misgivings of what awaited him on the outside. “It’s time. I can’t be here anymore.”

  He could only imagine what his parents had been through over the past number of months, including the uncertainty of whether their son would ever return from the confines of his delusions. Even seeing their son, existing in his other world, must have been heart-wrenching.

  He thought of his mother and their conversation about being ready to leave. After his meeting with Dr. Katharine, his mother had asked if it was okay for his father to come alone to pick him up. She’d gone home to get the house ready for his return. Ethan thought the real reason was so she could be there to welcome him home and pretend for a little while the whole thing had never happened.

  “Are you taking this?” his father asked, holding up a book he’d pulled off the windowsill.

  “If it’s Browning Station, yes,” Ethan replied, squinting to see the cover. Like his longer hair, his eyesight had deteriorated during the time he’d spent in his head.

  “I never read fiction anymore,” his father said, staring at the cover. “I don’t have time.”

  “I can’t seem to stop,” Ethan said, folding his yellow golf shirt into his suitcase. He looked up, expecting to see a blue blazer hanging in the closet, but in the instant it took to raise his head, the thought vanished. Instead, he stared at his father holding up the book. He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. He picked up his green sweatshirt to fold.

  “What’s it about?” his father asked, setting the book on the bed beside Ethan.

  Ethan gave the same answer he’d told his mother only days before.

  At times, the story seemed so real that it felt as if it were happening to him. Dr. Katharine, on more than one occasion, had mentioned his fascination with the book. He had no recollection of the story outside of feelings that defied explanation. The character William Avery intrigued him. What he managed to get away with right in front his family and friends was remarkable. Avery’s understanding of human behavior was extraordinary. His purpose was to right the wrongs of society regardless of the violence required by his methods.

  “A real family man,” Ethan’s father said sardonically. “It’s always the quiet ones. They’re always observing.”

  Ethan continued to pack his suitcase, pulling out his T-shirts and a new pair of jeans his mother had purchased. Each of his T-shirts represented something. One displayed Winston Churchill’s “Never give up”; another showed Van Halen’s 1984 album cover beside George Orwell’s 1984 book cover. Upon seeing the Reebok logo on one shirt, something shifted in his mind. His head started to hurt. Beads of sweat broke out across his forehead. He dropped the T-shirt onto the bed and leaned forward, grabbing the steel headboard with his right hand. It was a shirt he’d worn with Mila. He’d forgotten he still had it. For a moment, he thought he would pass out.

  “You okay?” his father asked.

  “I think so,” Ethan replied, staring at the gray-white linens on the hospital bed. He picked up the Reebok T-shirt and dropped it into the wastebasket beside the bedside table. He had the memory; he didn’t want reminders. “A little nauseated is all. My stomach has to catch up with my head, you know.”

  “Actually, I don’t,” his father said, looking at Ethan and smiling. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, despite all the books Dr. Katharine has recommended or given your mother and me.”

  Ethan kept packing, uncomfortable now, knowing his father was watching. He doubted he would ever get used to the careful way people would observe him when knowing where he’d been. Yet here he was saying goodbye to much of what he couldn’t remember. Tomorrow, the room would serve someone else who was somewhere else, just as he had been.

  Leaving had been on his mind for days. He’d slept little the night before. How would he cope with rejoining the real world? How would he fit in? Would something set him off and take him away again, maybe forever? He tried not to think about all that could happen once he left the protected boundaries of the hospital. Doctors and nurses upheld these boundaries; he and his fellow patients lived within them. Those who didn’t see them as boundaries needed to be there. But once the boundaries were realized, they became unbearable. His last nurse, Janice, didn’t agree with the boundaries. She cared too much. She didn’t stay. It took a special kind of person to accept the frailties of humanity and not take them on.

  “I do feel pretty good,” Ethan said, thinking out loud, “except when I think of certain things.”

  As he spoke, Mila’s image surfaced. When he thought of her, he felt a sad tenderness, usually followed by an edge of rage that burned in his gut and moved upward. He wondered if he’d ever be able to think of her without anger following close behind. The evil done to her went forever deep inside him. He might have been able to train his mind to skirt around it, but he doubted it would ever go away.

  Shift your focus, Ethan. He heard Dr. Katharine’s words in his mind as if she were standing right beside him. He turned his head slightly—the shift has to be physical—and then breathed deeply and looked away.

  “Dad?” he asked, trying to think of words that wouldn’t excite his father in his request.

  His father looked up.

  “Can we go to the cemetery?”

  It seemed strange he hadn’t asked before, but before, the question would have prompted more questions—questions he didn’t have
the energy to answer or even know how to answer. He didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to go.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he had phrased the request as a statement, not a question.

  His father’s hesitation was immediate. Ethan watched as logic took over his father’s movements; he straightened his posture, and his head turned slightly to the left, as if his body were trying to smother the intuitive answer he might give his son. His father suddenly looked older; the bags under his eyes seemed puffier. He squinted, tightened his lips, and blinked, as if love and logic—the latter so important in the male dialogue—were colliding in his head.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” his father asked, his hand moving to rub his forehead. Ethan couldn’t help but wonder how the conflict of what his father might want to say and what reason dictated he should never went away. Being right was a human obsession.

  “Do you have a better one?” Ethan asked, an edge of anger in his voice. “Facing your fears—isn’t that what makes us stronger?”

  “You’re always ready with an answer, aren’t you?” his father replied, speaking to Ethan’s words rather than the point in question.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it recently,” Ethan replied, trying to smile, though his patience was thin. The anger was there, waiting to erupt—maybe. “What do you say?”

  “What would Dr. Katharine say?” his father asked, still appearing to search for the right answer.

  “I’m not asking Dr. Katharine.”

  His father continued to vacillate. His hand moved from his forehead to his hip. Ethan didn’t want to admit that his father’s concern was the likelihood of such a visit triggering a reaction that might set his son’s recovery back weeks or, worse, forever.

  “Why not?” his father said finally, rubbing his hands together. His lips pressed into a smile, appearing to question his own words. Being the same height, they looked each other in the eye. “If you want to go, we’ll go.”

  “Great,” Ethan said, lacking some of the enthusiasm he’d just exhibited in the exchange with his father. He was as conflicted as his father seemed about the idea of visiting Mila’s grave, but he had youth and inexperience on his side.

  CHAPTER 5

  Friday, May 25, 1984

  They had finished packing his father’s new brown Honda Accord station wagon by the early afternoon. Dr. Katharine’s caring words were in his head: Give it time, Ethan. He was as ready as he was going to get.

  He’d been outside every day over the past week, walking the hospital grounds both with his mother and on his own. The fresh air helped clear his head. It enlivened him with energy that the hospital squeezed out of him. Carrying his suitcase to the car had the same effect those daily walks had had. He felt good.

  But something still nagged at him. He was not as excited as he’d anticipated he would be upon leaving his temporary place of residence. He wanted to go—needed to go—but now that he was going, unexpected misgivings were creeping in. He was stepping into a new unknown. He was going home, where he hadn’t lived for eight months. It might have been the right thing to do, but still, it felt intimidating. Dr. Katharine had said it herself: she’d have been worried if he weren’t a little nervous. He was facing change, and change was hard always. How hard would it be to adjust to life with his folks again? He was anxious to see his sister, whom he’d seen only once since coming back. He didn’t think of her much. But the change had to come. Prolonging it wouldn’t make it easier. It was time, nagging uncertainty or not.

  “Wanna grab a bite to eat before we go?” his father asked, closing the large back door of the station wagon.

  “I’m not that hungry,” Ethan said, wanting to get on with their trip. He hadn’t been hungry since getting the news from Dr. Katharine that he could leave. “But a coffee’d be good.”

  “Coffee it is.”

  Ethan climbed into the car, looking at the front entrance of the hospital. Disappointment wasn’t helping his appetite. Other than a couple of goodbye waves from the nurses on duty and a hug from Jackie, he’d left according to protocol. The floor was operating as it did on any other day. Strangely, the place he’d so badly wanted to leave now had melancholy tugging at his heart. He fastened his seat belt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a car. He’d never been in his father’s new Accord. With leather seats and polished wood-grain panels across the dashboard and door, the car exuded his father’s exaggerated style.

  “I don’t suppose you’re up to driving,” his father said, putting the key into the ignition switch.

  “Later maybe,” Ethan replied. “I have to get used to the confinement of the box before I start driving it.”

  “Ethan,” his father replied, his tone disdainful, “this is not a box.”

  Ethan smiled, uninterested in debating the merits of his father’s new car.

  They had just started away from the curb when something hit the side of the car beside Ethan. He jumped and sucked in air audibly. His head banged the headrest.

  “Shit!” he said, turning to look out the side window. “What the fuck?”

  A man in a white T-shirt and jeans was standing beside the car, holding some sort of cardboard tube. He was motioning for Ethan to roll down the window. Ethan didn’t move until he recognized the dark eyes of a bearded Randolph Baseman.

  “Dad, it’s Randolph,” Ethan said, all but shouting in relief, lowering his window.

  “Randolph? Who’s Randolph?”

  Ethan felt his father lean over against him to see who was there.

  “Oh, you mean—”

  “Hey, Mr. Jones! How ya doin’?” Randolph said through the open window. His father had become acquainted with Randolph during Ethan’s time away.

  His father said hello and said he’d grab the coffees to give Ethan a few minutes with his friend.

  “This is fucking awesome!” Randolph said, putting a hand on the sill of the passenger door.

  Randolph smiled widely, which was his usual expression with Ethan. Ethan pushed open the door and climbed out. They shook hands and locked thumbs.

  “You’re escaping without saying goodbye?”

  “Apparently not,” Ethan replied, closing the door, “’cause you caught me. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Heard you were heading out and thought I’d pay the Actor a visit before he skedaddled.”

  He’d become friends with Randolph after coming back. No one called him the Actor but Randolph. Janice, his nurse, had used the nickname a few times before her departure, but that was all.

  “You got lucky,” Ethan said, leaning against the side of the car. “We’re on our way out.”

  Randolph had admitted himself to the hospital and had left a couple of weeks before. He no longer wanted or needed to be there. He had problems, he’d told Ethan one night, but he needed to face them. Hiding in the hospital wasn’t resolving anything. He was taking from those who, as he’d witnessed firsthand, really needed help. His energy was better spent doing what he loved than worrying about the countless other things his mind picked up. There was a balance; anxiety was only part of it, not the sum.

  “Glad I caught you then,” Randolph answered. He was smiling and banging the cardboard tube against his thigh. “I’m getting my life and my art together.” He held up the tube. “The art was never the problem.”

  “Your comics,” Ethan said, figuring out what was in the tube.

  “Graphic art, my boy,” Randolph said, directing the tube at Ethan’s chest as if it were a sword. “Have I taught you nothing of culture? Your words cut deep.”

  “Whadaya got there?” Ethan asked as he watched Randolph pop off the metal lid and shake the cylinder like a bottle of Heinz ketchup. Randolph let the pages of a brand-new comic unravel in his hand.

  “I’m published, man. Got the
first copy yesterday.”

  Randolph held it in his open palm. His face lit up like that of a proud father holding his firstborn. In a way, Ethan thought, he was a father.

  “I had to bring it by. Hoped I wouldn’t be too late.”

  Ethan looked at the cover. The face of a madman dressed in a tuxedo stared back at him.

  “That’s fucking cool, Randolph,” Ethan said, almost breathless. Something in the colored image connected with him. The cover was disturbing to look at but impossible not to. Randolph had hit a chord. “I know him, and I don’t know why.”

  Randolph smiled. “I’m relieved. You inspired him. You and that book.”

  “William Avery,” Ethan said without hesitating. He’d read some more of Browning Station when he woke up that morning.

  “Yeah,” Randolph said excitedly. “Your afternoon performances made him real.”

  Randolph paused and took back the new comic. He carefully rolled it up and inserted it back into the cardboard tube.

  “We were treated to some pretty amazing performances,” Randolph added, grinning. “Forget television. Everybody watched, even the doctors. Christa loved watching you.”

  Christa?

  The name stopped the conversation for Ethan. He’d heard her name only once or twice, but it triggered something deeper. His heart beat faster, yet the name made him sad.

  “Sure, Randy,” he said. As soon as the words left his mouth, he could tell something was different.

  “You fucking called me Randy all the time.”

  “When did you get back from Japan?” Ethan asked.

  “Just this morning,” Randolph replied. “How’d you know? Do I look that tired?”