Season of Waiting

by Jim Christopher

  Caleb, I think I can work with this.

  Chapter 73

  Emerson

  Emerson didn’t like the hospital like he’d thought he would. It smelled like old people and the bathrooms at school after they were cleaned. He couldn’t remember ever being in one before, even though Mom told him he was born at a hospital. Still, Emerson knew what a hospital was from school and reading stories—it was a building where sick people went to get better.

  The hospital he’d built in his mind was far away from the place he stood now. People here were sad, their lights broken or dim. Some were in bed, their halos fading in and out, or shining in pieces instead of whole. People around the beds sputtered ugly colors. Why? Why wasn’t this place the most beautiful place ever? If men came here to get better, why was every light so wrong?

  Jaime’s Indigo and Violet lashed out as he spoke to the doctor. “This is bullshit. The boy needs to see his mother, see that she’s all right!”

  The doctor’s halo held steady, a bold Copper that seemed to brighten even as Jaime got mad. The doctor replied, “I’m sorry, but until she’s out of the eye-see-you, she can’t have visitors. It’s for her own safety.” The “eye-see-you” must be where doctors watched sick people. But if the doctors couldn’t see halos the way Emerson could, what would they be watching?

  Jaime’s hands came up. They stayed calm, despite the rage spitting out of his light. “Just for a minute, just let the kid see her for a minute—”

  The doctor shook his head, the way Emerson’s teacher did when her mind was made up. “I’m sorry,” he said with a shrug, “but she’s not conscious. She wouldn’t even know he’s there. You’ll have to wait. We can have someone call you as soon as she’s awake and able to have visitors.”

  The doctor turned, but stopped. He looked back up at Jaime. “You’re family, correct?”

  Jaime paused for a moment, Oranges of confusion tainting his halo. He shook his head.

  “Well then, I’m sorry, but this argument is pointless. We cannot allow you to see her. Don’t worry. She’s receiving the best possible care.” The doctor nodded and walked away.

  Emerson wanted to tell him he could fix her, but he kept quiet. Because Jaime told him to “just keep quiet” before they entered this awful place. That they would have to figure out how to get into Mom’s room. Then Emerson would fix her and they could leave.

  His tummy rumbled. Early dinner was hours ago, and he usually went to bed by now. What meal came after dinner? Emerson looked up at the clock again. Almost nine at night. Jaime had been trying to get into Mom’s room for hours. But nobody would let them go in there. Not the doctors, not the police.

  Emerson tugged on Jaime’s pants. The big man looked down at him, his light steadying a bit. “What’s up, little man?”

  Emerson curled a lip. “I’m hungry.”

  Jaime looked up at the clock now too. He smiled and said, “Whoa, I’ll bet you are!” He slid his thick hand into his pocket and pulled out a few dollar bills. As he handed them to Emerson, Jaime said, “Here. Bring me back a soda, yeah?” He reached to tousle Emerson’s hair. Em hated when he did that. He moved away before Jaime could touch him.

  They had passed some vending machines near the elevator, and Emerson walked back that way. His eyes stayed low to avoid the light noise spilling out of everyone in this miserable place. He didn’t know anything about these people. He shouldn’t help them unless he knew they were good people—that’s what Mom always told him. She also told him he wasn’t old enough to know if people were good or not. And then on the way here, Jaime said in the car, “Em, you’re gonna want to heal people in there, but you can’t, okay? Promise me you won’t.” Emerson promised he wouldn’t. But there was so much light noise here. He wanted to make it prettier than it was. Make it more right. Or at least, less wrong.

  Emerson spied the thick railing that ran along the corridor. He pulled the toy car—the funny car-truck the empty man had given him—from his pocket. Holding the car by the sides, Em rolled the toy along the top of the railing as he walked. The railing ended at a door. The car made a gigantic leap over the doorway, landing on the railing where it picked up again.

  It did the same across the next chasm, passing through the rays of Yellows and Greens from the people in the room beyond. Emerson looked up. One last room before the hallway bent around a corner. The car would have to make a hard right to stay on the railing. First, though, it had to make this vault across the last doorway!

  The gap approached fast. The car reached the falling edge of the chasm. It launched into the air; moving in slow motion, the jump built up tension with a rising pitch. Would they make it? Or would they fall into the …

  Emerson ran into something. Someone. He felt the car slip from his fingers, heard it skitter on the tiles below his feet. He looked up at the woman standing in the doorway now. Em didn’t watch where he walked. Would she be angry with him?

  Would Mom?

  “Excuse me,” she whispered, so quiet Em could barely hear her. Her light flickered, unable to hold a color or shape as she continued down the hall. That’s how Mom’s light did when she was upset. Not angry-upset like when she yelled about Dad, but sad-upset like when she’d told him they had to sell Barfly. Emerson could fix Mom when she flickered like that. He could probably fix this woman too. But he’d said he wouldn’t.

  Emerson turned to the floor, searching for his car. It wasn’t at his feet. He peeked around the doorframe, into the room. The weird car-truck had landed upside down near the bed. The bed had someone in it. Emerson couldn’t see much of the person in there. The Cinnamon light was dim, pulsing with the man’s breath. The person in the bed was asleep.

  He padded into the room, heel-toeing to his toy to keep his sneakers from squeaking on the floor and waking up the stranger. He reached for his toy, picked it up, and held it to the light.

  “Whatcha got there?” The man’s voice startled Em. He spun around. The man in the bed wasn’t sleeping. He must be very tired, though. Or hurt. His light struggled out of him where it should have radiated.

  Emerson swallowed and took a step back. He watched the man for a moment, then held up the toy car.

  The man lifted his head and squinted. He tried to point, but a thick bracelet kept his arm near the railing on the bed. He licked his dry lips. “Is that … an El Camino?” he asked. His voice sounded like it needed a drink.

  Emerson looked down at the car and shrugged. He didn’t know. It was the car the empty man gave him. It didn’t have a name yet.

  The man relaxed into the bed. “I used to drive a car just like that one,” he said.

  Emerson smiled. Before he realized he was speaking, Em replied, “It was bigger, though, right? Your car? Because you’d never fit into this one?”

  The man in the bed laughed. A quiet laugh, but his paling light brightened into a happy flicker. Emerson’s smile brightened too, because he could tell the happiness was real. The man stilled in the bed. His chest rose and fell, his light calming to a slow Yellow throb. He slept now, for real.

  Em pocketed his toy, feeling it squish into the money in his pocket. The money Jaime gave him for a snack. Jaime would get mad if he knew Em was in here. He’d think Em tried to help the man in the bed. Emerson turned, walking the few steps to the doorway. He looked around it, back down the hall. His eyes followed the thick railing back to Jaime. He argued with two other doctors now, his hands pointing past them to where they had Mom.

  The man coughed. Em turned in time to catch it ripple through his halo. It would be so easy to help this man. To straighten his light. Shape it right. Make it whole and strong. He could do it too, right now, with no effort. Mom would be angry if she found out, though. She would know, too. She always knew when he helped someone. She could smell it on him, she said. Plus, he promised Jaime he wouldn’t.

  But it wouldn’t hurt to look, though, right? He didn’t have to do anything. Emerson pulled a sto
ol next to the bed, standing on it so he could get a better view of the man and his light. Bandages wrapped his leg and hand. Em could see from the gap in his halo that he was missing his finger. He could fix those things easy enough. There was something else, though—a weird heaviness through his whole body. It made his light crawl instead of run. Emerson knew how to fix that part too.

  A voice. From the hall. Emerson turned his head to listen. It wasn’t Jaime or Mom, but he could hear what they would say right now. They would tell him to wait until they knew it was safe. That the choice wasn’t his to make. Emerson held his breath while he thought about what he would do.

  * * *

  Around the boy, the universe waited. Between this moment and the next, it waited for Emerson to exhale. To fill that infinitely small void between right and wrong, prediction and error, ana and kata, where all of his choices would be made.

  Epilogue

  Irene

  Her phone vibrated as she disabled airplane mode. Hiking her backpack to her shoulder, Irene noted the caller identification: Sierra County Social Services. A groan escaped her lips as she walked out of the jetway. She thought she was done with this, that she left it behind in New Mexico a few hours earlier. The current of deplaning passengers poured her into the concourse of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. She stepped aside and accepted the call with a flick of her thumb.

  “Yes?” Her voice projected more than she intended, giving away her impatience.

  “Hello? This is Kimberly Rogers with Sierra County DSS. I’m calling for... Irene Allard?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Miss Allard, I’m calling about Caleb Allard. We had a wellness visitation scheduled several days ago, but social workers could not locate him at the address on file. I’m sure you are aware that if we can’t verify his safety, we are required to involve law enforcement.”

  Irene feigned a gasp, “Oh my gosh, really?”

  “Yes, Miss Allard. Now, can you tell us where he is?”

  “Oh, of course I can. He’s right here with me!”

  Irene heard the rustling of papers at the other end of the call. “He’s there with you, now?”

  “Mmm hmmm.”

  “May I speak with him?”

  Irene chuckled, “Oh, I’m afraid not.”

  “I’m sorry?” The woman’s voice rose with the impatience of someone with boxes to check. “Miss Allard, we have called you several times this week trying to verify that Caleb is safe and, according to these notes, you have provided no evidence to that fact.”

  “Yes, that is correct,” Irene stated.

  “All I need right now is to speak to your father, ask him a few questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “So … please put him on the phone!” The social worker’s tone became sharp, the shrill in her voice making Irene to clench her jaw.

  “I told you, no. Not right now. Not ever.”

  “Miss Allard, I don’t think you…”

  “I agree, you don’t think!” Irene snapped. “Listen, what was your name? Kimmie?”

  “Kimberly,” the woman corrected, her voice tinny and unconfident. Irene imagined she’d been fighting to outgrow the diminutive nickname for years.

  “Ok, Kimmie. My father can’t talk right now. Because he has no mouth. Or body. He’s just ashes in a fucking urn.” As she spoke, the corner of the box carrying her father’s cremains rubbed against a rib, prompting her to hike the container a little higher. Its compact size was deceptive, as if something heavy and dense filled the void around Dad’s ashes.

  “Excuse me?”

  Irene swallowed down a spark of irritation at having to repeat herself. “My father. He’s dead.”

  “Oh well…” More papers rustled. “Then I’m going to need a death certificate to close this case, Miss Allard.”

  “I know you do. Want to know how I know you need a death certificate?”

  “I don’t see…”

  “Because this is the third fucking call I’ve received from your office this week, and the previous agents told me the same goddamned thing!” Irene’s voice exploded, drawing the eyes of other travelers as they shuffled by. Yet the heat of her embarrassment was a flicker in the inferno of her anger. “Apparently no one in your office can keep track of their own ass with both hands and a map!”

  “Okay, look, I’m sorry about your father, but…”

  “No! I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you to dig a little deeper into that file you have open in front of you before calling me again, you bureaucratic twit!” Papers moved, a shaking breath coming through the line. Irene shifted her weight, releasing a modicum of the tension the flight from Las Cruces set in her body.

  “Um, okay, yes,” the complacency in Kimberly’s tone collapsed to humility. “I see now, there’s a note here…”

  Irene huffed. “And the note says what, Kimmie?”

  The wet clicks of Kimmie’s tongue licking her lips filled the pregnant gap. “It says that the death certificate is being sent over by Vital Records this week. I’m so sorry Miss Allard.”

  “I don’t need your apology. I need you and your office to take care of your own shit.”

  “Yes, I understand. This must be a hard time for your family.”

  Irene chortled. Her family? What family? Dad was gone. And as much as she prepared for his Final Release, she wasn’t ready to watch him blow off his own head. That moment had burrowed deep in her mind: Dad’s head raised, mouth slack, face relaxed and content, his fingers squeezing the gun in his hands. The image of it was a parasite that wormed out of her to feed on good feelings. It haunted her daydreams and nightmares. Irene clenched her eyes, letting the tears sing for a moment before blinking them away. In two days, her family had dissolved into memories and shadows.“Um, Miss Allard?” Kimberly’s tentative voice pulled Irene back to the present.

  “Have an awful day, Kimmie.” Irene disconnected the call and slid her phone into the front pocket of her jeans.

  She needed a drink. A quick check of the flight monitor revealed her connecting gate was only a short walk away, so she had the time to spare. She scanned the concourse and made a beeline for the first bar she saw.

  The space was tight, just a few open stools around a wandering bar top shaped to maximize seating capacity. Irene dropped her pack to the floor in front of the high seat, then debated what to do with Dad’s cremains. Setting him on the floor seemed wrong. Not that she believed it would offend his ghost, or anything like that. It just felt impolite to drop him on the floor. So she set the box in the open seat next to her, gingerly balancing the weight of it on the small chrome stool.

  As the young bartender approached, Irene fished her wallet out of her backpack and showed him her Massachusetts driver’s license. He nodded, asking what she wanted to drink, and her eyes drifted to the glass castle of liquor displayed behind the bar. She debated the relative effects of each variety against her shitty mood, and decided something simple and safe was the best choice. She ordered a gin and tonic.

  While the bartender fixed the drink, Irene pulled her day log and pen from the front pocket of her pack. As spent as she felt, she still wanted to be productive. To do something—anything—that was normal. Thankfully, colleagues back at the university were open to discussing the drug proliferation model Irene developed while scouring for Wes. They encouraged her to pull on those mental threads and see where the ideas could take her. Data sources discovered working with Sheriff Dietrick would allow her model to track arrests and seizures in real-time. And the information from less urban areas provided decent power to predict the flow of drugs along major highways. She opened the notebook to the attached bookmark and scanned her notes. It took her a moment to decrypt her own sloppy shorthand, then another to set her mind into the context of the last problem she was thinking through. The clunk of the thick glass tumbler on the wooden bar top distracted her.

  “Here you go,” the bartender said wit
h a thin smile.

  Irene lifted the drink to her lips, the pungent aroma of juniper and lime carried on the vapors of alcohol tickling her nose. She pulled a slow sip, the cool burn blunting the edge on her nerves. The liquid landed in her empty stomach, and she relished the moment of warm satiation.

  “Hell of a thing, eh?” the bartender asked.

  Irene looked up from the beverage, finding his name tag. Kevin. “The drink? Yes, it’s delicious, thank you.”

  Kevin shook his head. “No, I mean that.” He thumbed over his shoulder, turning his face to the television mounted above their heads. Irene followed his gaze. A news anchor’s lips flapped silently on the screen, above a chyron reading Uvalde Hospital Exodus: Another Patient Found Safe. “You following this story?” Kevin asked, not taking his eyes off the screen. “It’s crazy.” The meaning of his words were disjoined from the airy wonder and awe on which they were conveyed.

  Irene gulped another thick swallow of the cocktail. She hadn’t been following the story as much as the story was following her. Hell, she lived the story. She had been there, at Uvalde County Hospital, trying to help police cobble together the events of the previous two days from her brother’s morphine-greased ramblings. All she could get out of him were disparate pieces of the picture. The voice Dad claimed to hear, pushing him east. First to find a child. Then to kill the child.

  Her composure dissolved when Wes broke down, blubbering that he didn’t know Dad was evil, that what was happening to him was evil. It was classic Wes—deflection of fault, abdication of responsibility. But for him to lay blame at the feet of their dead father, after stealing her last precious moments with him? Taking what should have been his gentle passing and churning it into this public riot? It was too much effort to contain her anger. The impulse to beat her brother bloomed in her. The desire to choke him as he lay in that hospital bed carried through her blood the way a scent arrives on the air: overwhelming at first, then suddenly normal, her mind adapting to the notion that this is the way things needed to be. She had to get away from him. So she did. She carried her rage out of the room. Across the hall. Down the stairwell. And outside, where she collapsed on a bench in the hospital’s small courtyard.