Irene glanced out the window. The sun would breach the edge of the mini-blind in a few moments. “I don’t know for sure, Wes. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s had a stroke. On top of everything else.”
Wes nodded. “Because of that face stuff he was doing? How one side of it would, like, scrunch up and then … melt back?”
Irene folded her arms across her chest. “Yeah. That and the way he was speaking. I don’t think he was saying what he wanted to say.”
Wes sat up, rubbing his palms on his jeans. “God, I thought he was dead when I heard the car hit him.”
Irene sighed. Part of her hated the minor comfort from Wes. “So did I. I just … I froze. I couldn’t move. It was all I could do to watch him stumble into the road like it was a …” She waved up at the television above their heads. “… a show.”
She hugged herself tight and continued, “I should have acted. I should have grabbed him, but I didn’t process what was happening.” The ebb of her adrenaline rush had left a wake of emotional turbulence, and the tears swelled in her eyes again.
Wes patted her shoulder. “He’ll be okay, Sis. He didn’t seem badly injured, did he? Could have been way worse. I guess he’s got an angel watching out for him.”
She shrugged off his hand and stood back up, shaking her head. “His injuries might be on the inside. If he’s paralyzed from a stroke, if he loses the ability to use his hands, I’m not sure he can still do his Final Release. He’ll suffer until he wastes away.”
Wes released an elongated sigh. He had something to add, Irene was sure of it.
The approach of another physician captured their attention. The woman was short and round, with dark features and a practiced smile. She tugged on her green scrubs, straightening them as she spoke. “Are you Caleb Allard’s family?” Her voice sing-songed and was way too chipper for Irene’s dour mood.
Irene nodded. “I’m his daughter.”
The doctor held out her hand. “Dr. Marybeth Cass.” Motioning toward the chairs in the room’s corner, she added, “Let’s sit. I can update you on your father.”
Irene sat on the hard seat again, her back screaming in protest. She oriented herself to keep the falling sun from blinding her. Dr. Cass sat across from her, shielding her eyes as she spoke. “Caleb didn’t sustain any serious injuries from the accident. He has a fractured wrist, but beyond that, we don’t see any physical issues.”
Irene released her breath. Dad was okay. Physically at least.
“Now, I am concerned,” the doctor continued, her voice taking on an edge. “His behavior indicates some kind of brain trauma. But with the tumors in his head, our data is difficult to interpret. We’re waiting to hear from his oncologist, get a recent scan, and compare them.”
Irene shook her head. “He’s terminal, Doctor. Is that necessary?”
The doctor nodded with enthusiasm. “Of course! I wouldn’t be doing my job otherwise.” A shadow now reached her face, and she lowered her hand to her lap. The sun must have fallen behind the foothills.
“No, that’s just it. My father’s registered for the Final Release. He’s terminal. We had the last appointment with hospice this morning. The equipment is being delivered tomorrow.”
Dr. Cass’s expression chilled, her eyes losing their kindness, her lips moving from a smile to a curt pucker. “I see,” Dr. Cass said, her emotion leveling off. The vibration of Wes’s bouncing leg came through Irene’s chair.
Irene raised her eyebrows at the change in the doctor’s demeanor. The Final Release program didn’t fit with everyone’s moral code. She pressed, her voice lacking confidence, “So you’ll release him—he’s okay to leave here?”
The doctor stood, tugging her clinging scrubs away from her round belly. “I’m sorry, but we need to watch your father overnight.” Her tone had cooled, dropping the concern it contained before.
Irene shot out the chair. “You’re admitting him for a broken wrist?” This wasn’t what she needed now, not what Dad needed. A sideline martyr wanting to make sure her father’s suffering contributed to her moral code.
Dr. Cass swallowed as she shook her head. “No. Not for that injury. We had to sedate your father. So we need to monitor him until he comes out of it.”
Irene clenched her teeth. “I’m sorry, you sedated a terminally ill man? For a fucking broken wrist?” she asked, slapping her thigh in aggravation.
“No, well … yes, a mild sedative.” The doctor’s eyes fell to her wringing hands. “I was getting to that. We had to sedate your father, and … I’m afraid … restrain him too. To keep him from injuring himself.”
Irene stared at the doctor in dismay, waiting for some plausible explanation. Dr. Cass fisted her hands together. “Sometime between me and the nurses doting on him, he …” The doctor shrugged her shoulders and sighed, “He apparently tried to tear off his own ear.”
Chapter 10
Caleb
A voice approached him. Not the crippling voice. Someone he knew and loved. The sound of it tickled the edge of his consciousness.
“Hey …”
Was that Ivy? Was she here now?
“You coming around?”
Caleb cracked his eyes, but the scream of lights forced them shut again. Odors assaulted him. Astringent. The violent smells of medicine. Ivy. She’s sick again. Goddammit. We were done with all that.
“C’mon, Dad, open them peepers,” Ivy sang.
Not Ivy. Ivy couldn’t be here. But she was squeezing his hand. Caleb pried his eyes open a slit. Shadows and light. He blinked once, twice, opening his eyes wider. The shadows became a person. The light became a room.
Not Ivy. Irene. She leaned over him and touched his cheek. “Hey there, sleepy. You’ve had quite the night.”
Caleb tried to swallow the paste that stuck his tongue to his palate. He tried speaking through it, but there was no moisture in him.
Irene lifted a tumbler to his lips. “Take a pull.”
Caleb sucked on the straw. The water cleaned his mouth and cooled his throat. When it hit his stomach, his body checked in. His arms ached. The tumor in his belly was angry. His ear—his deaf ear—it itched, but on the outside now. Caleb tried to reach up and scratch it, but his arms wouldn’t move. Looking down, he saw that his left arm disappeared into a thick roll of gauze. A Velcro cuff secured his right arm to a rail.
Caleb was in a hospital.
“Am I okay?” he croaked.
Irene smiled at him. She was on his right side, and Caleb turned his head to better hear her.
“Yeah, you’re lucky,” Irene said. “Do you remember what happened?”
The monstrous words. The crippling effect their sound had on him. The world breaking to pieces when the voice spoke. Caleb’s gut churned.
“No,” he lied. His voice broke again.
“That’s okay.” She brought the straw to his lips, and the few sips Caleb took lapped away the fog in his mind.
He glanced around the room. Wes sat in a chair, leaning his head against the wall. He looked from Caleb to the television mounted in the corner.
“Dad, can you squeeze my hand?” Irene asked.
His grip pressed on her fingers, and a modicum of tension melted off Irene. “Thank you,” she whispered through a calm smile.
Her brother shot Irene a scolding glare. “Subtle,” he mumbled, before turning his attention back to the television.
The itch on Caleb’s right ear became aggravating. He tried again to rub it, but neither arm moved that far. “It itches,” he said, pointing a thumb toward his ear. “Can you help?”
Relief came as Irene tenderly massaged the skin behind his right temple. “Yeah, so, what happened there?”
Caleb shrugged. “What do you mean?”
Irene paused. “Do you remember what you did to your ear?”
Fireworks of panic burst in Caleb’s head. His ear. The voice. Did he do that to himself? He shook his head.
> Irene turned and reached to the floor, pulling up her backpack. Rummaging through the front pocket, she fished out a compact mirror and let the pack fall back to the floor. She spun the mirror toward Caleb. “Can you see your ear?”
Caleb shifted his head, following his face in the mirror. He gasped when his ear came into view. At the top, a ragged wound ran under several clean stitches and a thin line of tape. The skin was bruised and angry.
“What happened, Dad?”
He looked away from the mirror. Caleb held his breath for a moment, unsure what to say to his daughter. Her eyes waited on his words. He sighed, “I’m … Look, I don’t really understand what happened.”
Irene’s warm hands wrapped over his. “It’s okay, Dad. Start at the beginning.”
The beginning. When was that? The restaurant?
Irene cleared her throat. “Wes and I were having a … passionate debate over things, and you, sort of, fell out of the restaurant. Do you remember that?”
Lunch. When everything split apart. Caleb nodded.
“You were shouting at us, to be quiet. Do you remember that too?”
He didn’t remember. Yet he nodded.
Irene smiled. “Okay, good. So our fighting upset you?”
Caleb thought back. To the feelings. Not anger. Just fear. Helpless under the compressing immensity of the voice. He shook his head. “No. No, I wasn’t … It’s not …” Caleb racked his brain to find a plausible explanation. A story that made sense. Something that Irene wouldn’t find insane.
Irene rubbed his hand, encouraging him to continue. When he couldn’t, she offered, “Okay, so if we didn’t agitate you, then what did?” She sat for a moment, waiting for him to speak. “Did anything happen in the diner? After me and Wes left?”
Caleb swallowed and nodded.
Irene’s face brightened. “Okay, good. Let’s start there, Dad. What happened inside the restaurant?”
Caleb’s eyes darted around the room as he debated his answer.
“Did someone say something to upset you?” she offered.
Caleb coughed out a few huffs of uncomfortable laughter. He met her pleading eyes. She wanted to understand, but there was no way she would. Caleb had only memories of feelings. Irene required facts.
The snapping of Wes’s fingers pulled Caleb’s attention from his daughter. “Pop, what were those numbers? The ones you were yelling at the accident?” Wes was standing now, gawking at the television.
Irene let go of Caleb’s hand and turned to her brother. She snipped, “Why? What the hell does it matter?”
Wes’s finger-snapping had shifted into an excited hand-flapping. “Two seven, one, eight two … eight, one eight … three, right?” His face turned from the television, eyes white with excitement and his mouth open in joy. His flailing hand formed into a pointed finger jabbing at the screen. “That’s right, isn’t it!” He danced, tapping his finger on the television screen.
The screen, made up of millions of pixels, each luminating a single spot of color, when viewed together displayed the day’s winning numbers for the Four Corners lottery: 27, 1, 82, 8, 18, and 3.
Chapter 11
Wes
Wes’s fingernail tap-tap-tapped against the glass of the television screen.
“That’s right, isn’t it!”
The crease in Pop’s brow deepened; his mouth drew to a frown as he looked from Wes to the television and back. Irene stood next to Dad, glowering.
“Irene!” Wes called. “You’re a numbers girl, right? You remember the numbers, don’t you?” He turned back to the television, where a dog-food commercial had replaced the lottery numbers.
“What numbers?” Pop asked. “I didn’t see any numbers, son.”
Wes felt the excitement peak, beginning the hard fall into frustration. “The … the jackpot numbers? They were just on the TV! They were the numbers you were repeating when you …” Wes waved a hand at his father. “When you … were on the ground. They’re the same!”
Irene heaved out a breath, her irritation on her face. “I don’t remember the numbers, Wes. What the hell does it matter?”
He turned to his father, flapping his hand for some show of support. Dad faded to a lighter shade as he swallowed and looked away. “Come on,” Wes pleaded. “I know one of you remembers!”
Irene released Pop’s hand and crossed her arms. A defensive gesture. She was prepping for a fight. “The numbers. Are you sure you remember them right?” she asked.
The question surprised him. Wes had been expecting an insult. He straightened, the tingle of embarrassment in his cheeks. “Yes, I’m sure,” he said.
“How?” she pressed, tightening her arms.
Shame blossomed in him, but he swallowed it down. “Well, Irene,” Wes said, running a hand through his hair, “Dad repeated them, and there was this kind of rhythm to it, and …” He licked his lips and swallowed. “Well, I made up a little tune around ’em.”
Irene’s face was stone. Pop’s concern broke into a patronizing smirk as he looked down at his bandaged hand.
Wes groaned. “Dammit, you’re going to make me sing it, aren’t you?”
Irene’s eyebrows rose with expectation, while Pop’s face lit with amusement.
Wes sighed, weighing his need to be right with the humiliation of proving it. He swallowed his pride and cleared his throat. His voice came out in a jitter. He half sang, half spoke the Numbers Song he’d composed in front of the diner. “Two seven one, eight two eight, one eight three, that’s all there be.” He caught himself bouncing from foot to foot with each line of the tune.
Irene’s eyebrows crawled farther toward her hairline. Dismissing Wes with a shake of her head, she uncrossed her arms and turned back to their dad. She paused for a moment before turning back to Wes. Her face pursed in confusion, she asked, “Wait, can you sing … say those numbers again for us?”
Wes repeated the Numbers Song, this time without the bouncy jig. “They were the same order as the lottery numbers!” He thumbed toward the television. Turning to his father, he asked, “Why did you say those numbers, Pop?”
Irene waved Wes off. “That’s Euler’s number, isn’t it?” She turned to Pop, and he shrugged.
Wes didn’t know what Oiler’s number was, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his sister. She stared up at the ceiling, a tell that she was scouring her brain for something. Blinking her eyes, she said, “Yeah, two point seven one eight two eight, blah, blah, blah. Euler’s number.”
Her eyes fell down to Pop, and she looked back at Wes. His face must have betrayed his ignorance. “So, it’s a well-known constant, like pi, but another value. It’s denoted by a lowercase e. The base of the natural logarithm?”
Wes tucked his hands into his jean pockets and shrugged.
Irene elaborated, “It comes up in interest calculations and statistics. That’s probably why Dad was using it.”
Pop chimed in. “Using it? For what, honey?” His voice was dusty and dry.
Irene lifted the water sipper from the tray to Pop’s lips, saying, “Well, you were in a lot of pain, right? It’s a common tactic, to repeat some mantra to distract from the pain. That’s what you were doing, right?”
She was taking the conversation to the wrong place. The muscles in Wes’s neck tensed from shaking his head in a tight arc as he spoke. “No, Irene. That’s not the point. That doesn’t explain the lottery numbers!”
His sister waved him off. “There’s nothing to explain. It’s a coincidence.” Irene moved to the sink to refill the tumbler. “And besides,” she continued, “I’m not sure what numbers were on the television. I missed it.”
Wes pulled his phone from his pocket, incensed. “Well, Irene, that’s why God invented the Internet.” He opened his web browser and thumbed in a query for the Four Corners Lotto. The first result linked to the website for the local news station they were just watching. In bold, stylized numbers, it showed that Wes
was right.
The rush at proving his sister wrong spread to a grin as he pushed the phone to her face. Turning back toward him, Irene glanced at the phone and shrugged. “Christ, Wes, it doesn’t matter.”
“How can you think that!” he pleaded. This was important—he would not let her overthink this one. As she put the water on Pop’s bed tray, Wes pushed his phone back in his pocket with a huff. “The universe is trying to tell us something!”
Irene turned to their father. Her shoulders dropped; her head lilted. Wes recognized the movements. He knew what a dismissal from Irene looked like, from any angle. She had rolled her eyes, made a grimace.
Before Wes could call her out, his sister chided, “It’s telling us you’re an idiot who can’t see what’s important.” Her voice dripped with condescension. “What matters is getting Dad back home.”
Heat rose in his throat. “Fuck off, Irene!” Wes shoved a hand into his sister’s back. She spun around, hands up to her face in a defensive stance. In the haze of anger, Wes raised his voice. “Do you hear yourself right now? Look where we are, Sis! We’re in a hospital, and you wanna get Dad out of here … get him home … just to kill him!”
In a flash, Wes faced the floor. Irene gripped his wrist. She twisted his arm around. Pressure built on his elbow and shoulder, teetering on injury as Irene pressed her other hand into his back. The shock of his sister’s physical reaction, along with the excruciating pain in his arm, froze Wes to silence.
“Keep your fucking voice down,” Irene said, her movements at odds with her calm. “Trouble from the hospital staff is the last thing we need. And if you keep making a ruckus, trouble is what we’ll get.” His shoulder and elbow protested as she continued, “I’m here to help Dad get what he needs, Wes. I will not let your dumb ass get in our way.”
“I saw those numbers.” Pop’s voice was distant, quiet.
Irene rose from Wes’s face. He felt the blood rush from his pounding head into his arm as she released him with a shove. He stood, rolling his tender shoulder as he took a few steps away from his sister.
“What do you mean? Like, you’ve seen Euler’s number before?” she asked as she turned toward their father. Wes moved to the foot of the bed so he could see Pop’s face.
Season of Waiting Page 5