Clearing his throat with a messy grumble, Pop shook his head. “No, I mean yeah, I’ve heard of it, but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, I saw them. Well, I guess … they were shown to me?” His gaze fell to the sheet on his bed, his face tight. The cuff tethering his right arm to the bed rattled as he tried to point at his ear. Looking up at Wes and Irene, Pop licked his lips and nodded to the right. “I heard a voice. In my ear. My deaf ear. It showed me those numbers.”
After searching Wes’s face, and then his sister’s, Pop continued, “It … it hurt when it spoke. It filled my head. I felt it through my body. There’s a lot of … pressure, it’s paralyzing. Made it hard to walk.” Tears worked their way down his sunken cheeks as he spoke, landing on the blanket in his lap. “I wanted it to stop, and it just kept … insisting.”
“Holy shit,” Wes whispered.
Irene spoke over him, through the hands on her mouth as she shook her head. “Oh my God.”
Wes gulped down the rising tingle in his chest. He was right. For once, he was right. The universe was correcting itself, giving Pop a gift to pay him back for his suffering. Wes looked to his sister with the fire of vindication and pride, but she didn’t see him. She stared at Pop, the terror on her face dampening his itch to gloat over her.
Their father’s tears rolled into breathy sobs, and the three of them waited in a heavy silence. The corner of Pop’s mouth tightened. Wes placed a hand on his blanketed leg. “Go on, it’s okay, Pop.”
“No, this is bad,” Irene warned, moving her hands to the sides of her face.
Wes ignored her. This was fucking amazing. He squeezed his father’s calf, offering him support. Dad had an ally here. More than one, it would seem. Between sobs, Pop’s mouth ticked up into a slight smile, and Wes mirrored it. The moment was warm, a rare connection with his father.
It faded as Dad’s smile grew into an exaggerated smirk. The right side of his face stretched. His lips tightened. The corner of his mouth pursed and relaxed in a spastic rhythm. Pop’s eyes grew wide. Pleading. Wanting. Needing something.
“Hey, Pop?” Wes sputtered, giving his leg a firm shake.
His father didn’t respond.
Chapter 12
Caleb
Caleb’s vision blurred with each heartbeat. He could make out his children’s faces against the distorting ceiling tiles. This time, there was only one Wes, one Irene, and one room as the voice gripped him.
This should be easier on you.
Caleb could still breathe through the tension and pressure in his body. His face formed a fist around his right ear as the voice spoke. The seizure was painful, and Caleb had to focus on the rasps of his breathing to avoid choking on his own spit. His face came back under control, the voice letting go of him.
Irene’s face stretched with panic, eyes wide and focused. Wes bubbled with excitement.
Wes whispered, “Are you … are you hearing it right now?”
Caleb nodded, still focusing on the breath entering and leaving his body.
“Holy shit, that’s amazing!” Wes whispered. His eyes darted around the room. “We need paper. And a pen.” He turned and opened a drawer, heaving wads of gauze and tape onto the floor.
The tickle worked its way deeper into Caleb’s ear.
I’m sorry about before. This is … tricky.
“Irene, don’t you have a notebook in your damned bag? A pencil or something?” Wes was getting frantic. Irene’s attention remained locked on her father. At her lack of action, Wes snapped, “C’mon, Sis, we need to write this down!”
I need to show you a few things, Caleb. I’m not sure I can. You must believe that this isn’t some figment of your imagination or sickness.
Caleb forced out a breath as the voice released him. He sucked in another.
This might feel strange.
Irene’s hands moved into the bed, searching. “We need a doctor,” she cried. “Where’s the damned bed remote? With the call button?”
That’s a superb idea, let’s start with the remote.
Caleb felt a sharp pop inside his head. The room shrank until he could see all of it. Sound evaporated. Irene and Wes were still. Her hands had lifted a corner of the hospital blanket, and his were in the middle of shoving a cabinet door closed. And Caleb saw himself, swallowed up by the gaping bed. There was no motion to see. No odors, no sounds. The moment only existed in front of him.
Can you see the remote?
He became aware of the device. It dangled in the air under the side of the hospital bed. A thick cable tethered it to the rail close to his cuffed arm. He could see it from all sides, in an odd panoramic focus. The grid of buttons. The cable’s stretch to the serpentine knot around the bed rail. The gummy underside that needed cleaning. The scratched-up beveled edge. All visible at once.
Yes, that’s right. There it is. Now, can you tell how it ended up there?
Caleb’s mind knotted. How the hell was he supposed to know how it got there? And yet, he knew. There was a … line. A thread. Leading away from here. He couldn’t hold it, but it was there. Caleb followed as it led behind them, dropping into another moment. Here, in this same hospital room, Irene heaved her backpack off the bed. As she did, the remote nudged through the gap in the bed railing. This must have happened when Irene retrieved her mirror to show Caleb the stitches in his ear. This scene was like the first—quiet and stale. Yet it looked different—there was less color here, everything a similar shade of tepid gray.
Good! That’s good!
The thread went on. Caleb sensed he could follow it as long as he wished, but he resisted the urge to go further. He expected some fear, confusion. There were no feelings in this lukewarm space.
Now, are you able to see what else could have happened?
Caleb focused on the line connecting this moment to the next. He could sense a fray in the thread—a barb. Caleb focused on it, finding it to be another line, attached to the first. He knew he could follow that line forward. He could see where it would go. Irene would leave the backpack on the bed instead of throwing it over the railing to the floor.
Very nice, Caleb. You seem to be a natural at this.
He saw both moments now. In the first—the one he’d lived—Irene scoured the bed looking for the remote, while her brother opened a cabinet door. This scene was full of color, as if it might pop to life and change at a whim. The second moment was colorless and static, like unfinished plaster. There, Irene lifted the backpack with one hand. With the other, she grabbed the remote. Wes still rummaged through the cabinet. Caleb’s accountant mind isolated the difference between the scenes: the backpack.
Sort of. Not the backpack itself, but Irene’s choice of what to do with it. Irene chose to move her backpack. The consequence was the remote dropping from the bed. If she chose to leave it, the remote would still be on the bed. Two moments, stemming from a single choice.
Caleb moved into the colored scene. He was in his bed again, staring up at Irene. He gasped and watched as Irene found the cable to the remote under the blanket. She followed the cable to the knot on the railing and pulled up the remote. Caleb released his breath as the moment slowed to a pause, and he left his body.
No, don’t stop. This is fun, and helpful. Let’s see what else we can do. Should we follow Irene back a ways?
Caleb didn’t want to. Yet he moved back along her thread from this moment. It flowed through the accident, through the visit to the hospice offices that morning, and back through the entire week with Irene. Then the previous week. And the one before. Moments stacked together, books filling an endless shelf that told the story of their recent time together. He watched her record his pain numbers several times a day. The thread wound backward, racing through scenes until it was a month ago. Irene was arriving at his house. Caleb followed the thread to Irene getting her luggage at the Las Cruces Airport. Then further back to her leaving school. Scenes came faster. Patterns of activity. Driving. Cl
ass. Friends. Work. Sleep. Class. Friends. Work. Sleep. On and on. Then the beach. A boardwalk.
The flow calmed. Caleb found himself in a tattoo parlor. Somewhere near Boston. He’d never seen the place, yet knew the name of it was Stinky’s Ink. Irene lay facedown on a padded table. A woolly man—Stinky himself—held her exposed buttock in one hand. The other worked a motionless tattoo gun against her skin. Irene’s face turned away from him, soured in mild discomfort. A fist on her forehead, her lips parting as if speaking to the woman standing in the corner. Her friend, stuck in the middle of a laugh, face round, wrinkles of joy carved into the alabaster of her face. Caleb could see the details of the lipstick image imbued on his daughter’s ass by the needle. He felt the lecherous smile beneath the artist’s burly face hair. Caleb absorbed the regret carried in Irene’s fixed shoulders, her clenched hands, the bead of sweat on her forehead.
Whoops. Um … maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
Caleb snapped back to the hospital room. There was color again. He could breathe. The remote clattered against the bed as Irene pulled at its cable. Wes slammed the cabinet door with a thud.
“Stop!” Caleb said. Irene paused, remote in hand, thumb over the nurse call button, and locked eyes with him.
“Dad,” she said, her eyes still wide with panic, “are you okay?”
“Just hold on a second.” Caleb stopped to take a breath. The scene still vivid in his mind, feelings of shame bloomed in him at his intrusion into her privacy. Still, he couldn’t reconcile what he saw with the Irene he knew. “You got a tattoo?”
Irene dropped the remote, her eyes widening. They collapsed to a squint as she asked, “How do you know about that?”
Wes stopped scouring the other cabinet. His face turned toward them, eyebrows raised with interest. “Irene got a tattoo?” he parroted.
Irene waved her hands, silencing her brother. “How the hell do you know about that? It was months ago.”
Caleb shook his head. “Just … seriously? Irene!”
“Wow, what did you get?” Wes cajoled. “A tramp stamp of a spreadsheet or something?”
Irene put a hand on the railing of the bed, squeezing. “What the hell! How … Did I tell you about it?”
“I saw it. I saw you getting it,” Caleb replied.
Wes rushed over to the bed. “Oh shit! The voice! It showed you, didn’t it?”
Caleb nodded, appalled at his daughter’s choices. “It’s … it’s a tattoo of a lipstick kiss.”
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Wes said. “Where’d she get it?”
Irene’s hand shot from the bed to her left buttock. As if covering it would prevent further discussion. Wes drew the implication and cackled.
Irene blanched, covering her gaping mouth with her other hand and turning away from the bed.
“This is amazing,” Wes sputtered. “This is just all-around perfect.” He looked up to the ceiling, his hands splayed in offering. “Thank you, Lord, for these gifts we are receiving!” he clucked in a dramatic Southern accent.
“Stuff it!” Irene spit, as she turned back to Caleb. “I told you about it, I must have. I just don’t remember.” Her voice was tentative, lacking her natural confidence.
Wes chuckled, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Pretty sure one of you would have remembered that conversation, Sis. This has to be something else.”
Caleb shook his head. He was fading. This … whatever it was … it drained him. Between that and the growing pain in his gut, Caleb wanted his meds and then he wanted to sleep.
His pain management. Anxiety lapped across his broken body as he looked around the room. What happened to his ATC prescription? Christ, if he lost it ...
I can help with that, hang on a sec.
He was outside himself again. Color dissolved as he followed the thread back to the accident outside the diner. The street and the cars were a sickening taupe color, a muted canvas stretched over a frame. Caleb saw the statue form of himself in the street. His left arm cradled on his chest, his right hand pulled on his ear, his body captured mid-writhe. His face was chiseled in a mask of terror—eyes bulging, mouth stretched wide. Irene stood over him, hands quiet in the air as she either approached him or moved away, Caleb couldn’t tell. He followed the invisible thread into the diner. It spiraled through the tables and frozen patrons, most of whom were standing to look at the scene in the street. The thread led to the back table of the diner where Caleb had first heard the voice.
There was Wes. His lumpy plaster form knelt by the table, his head cocked toward the diner entrance. His fingers delicately lifted Caleb’s bottle of ATC medication off the diner floor.
Chapter 13
Wes
“Pretty sure one of you would have remembered that conversation, Sis. This has to be something else,” he chuckled.
“Oh, fuck off,” she retorted. “It’s the only logical explanation.”
Wes lapped up her discomfort. He eased into her personal space. “What the hell about any of this seems logical to you, Irene?”
She kept her face turned to Pop. Her brow tightened. “Dad?” She touched his arm.
Wes looked at Pop. “He’s passed out again. It must take a lot out of him.”
“What?” she asked, her tone shitty. “The cancer? Or being hit by a car?”
Wes huffed. “This—” He waved his hand toward their father. “Whatever is happening to him. You can’t shrug it off or explain it away.”
Irene turned to face him. She crossed her arms, waited a moment to respond. “There’s nothing extraordinary here, Wes. This is just his illness. Or his meds. Or both.”
“Or something else,” Wes interrupted. “Something we can’t understand.”
Irene sighed, “I prefer not to make up stories where a sensible set of facts will suffice. Occam’s razor, you know?”
Wes didn’t know. Irene knew he didn’t. She was baiting him. Trying to get him to say something stupid so she could jump on it. “Is there any room in your head for things like hope?” he redirected. “Or wonder? Don’t you ever just ditch the facts and imagine how things could be?”
“You keep your hope. I’ll stick with probability theory. We’ll see who lands on their feet,” she sniped.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Irene smirked, and her eyes fell. A look of pity.
“What?” he demanded. “If you don’t have hope, what’s the point of doing anything?”
“Like rehab?” she chided. “What did you say earlier? Something like, ‘There is no false hope’?”
Wes rolled his shoulder into a shrug. It was still sore from Irene’s death-hold ninja grip.
She licked her lips and continued, “Because statistically, you will relapse. You know that, right?”
He tried to swallow his unease.
“I mean, in all probability, you will end up killing yourself. Maybe directly, via an overdose. Or indirectly, given the company you keep. Can you name a single person in your life who would stick around if you cleaned the fuck up?”
Wes tightened his lips to cover their tremble. Irene cut deeper into him. “So, hope all you want, little brother. Because the numbers don’t lie. I’ll bet hard money against you. Every damned time.”
Silence wedged between them. Wes wanted to speak. To tell Irene to piss off. To get bent. That all he could do was prove it. To himself. To Pop. To her. Every day from this point on. He knew if he said any of it, tears would come. And Irene would lash out harder. A cycle, highlighted by his therapist, which ended with Wes self-destructing. They’d put a plan together for this. Ways to disengage with her. Irene didn’t owe him the benefit of a doubt, and Wes owed her zero promises. He gulped down the lump in his throat and broke eye contact. “Well, Sis,” he said, “you’re a numbers person and all. I guess it must be a solid bet.”
Her eyes crawled on him. Judging. Her mind working out ways to make him feel dumb. He ignor
ed her. He could not control her words or actions. Only his own. Wes focused on the bed. On Pop’s relaxed form lumped up under the blanket. His face wore a dour expression of slumber. After a few moments of uneasy silence, Pop’s eyes blinked. Wes realized he wasn’t sleeping at all.
“Pop?” Wes cracked an uncomfortable smile. “Sorry you had to hear that. We thought you were asleep.”
His father glared at him, his frown deepening. “Where is it, son?” he croaked.
“Where’s what?” Wes asked.
“Don’t,” he scolded. “Don’t do that. Give it back to me, please.”
Wes knotted his brow, confused. “Pop, I’m not sure …” Wes turned to Irene, who offered a shrug of her shoulder.
“Stop it!” Pop spit. Wes jumped at the anger in his voice. Where was this coming from? “I’m giving you a chance here! A chance to come clean and explain yourself!”
The tingle of anxiety rose in Wes’s gut. “What the hell are you on about? I haven’t done anything.”
“Stop lying!” Pop yelled, rattling the arm cuff on the bed rail. “I saw you! I saw you back at the restaurant. While I was lying in the street!”
Oh shit. Wes knew exactly what this was about.
“Look, it isn’t what—” he started.
His father snapped over him, “No! Just stop! I don’t want to hear it! What did you do with my medication, Wes? Where is it?”
Wes bit his lip. Irene unfolded her arms, her face turning rotten. She balled up her fists, and he raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, look, it’s right here, okay?” He stepped over to the armchair where his denim jacket lay. He unzipped the pocket in the lining. His hand wrapped around the thick prescription bottle, and Wes pulled it out, rattling it in front of his dad and sister. “See? It’s safe! I picked it up after your accident. I just forgot about it, is all.”
“You piece of absolute shit,” Irene hissed. “Two hours out of rehab, and you’re seeking? From your dying father’s pain management?”
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