Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: PANIC

  After a few hours, someone knocked softly at the door, waking Vince from a light slumber, but not Charlie.

  “Come in,” Vince said.

  “Hey,” Angela whispered with a soft but tainted smile. “How long has he been out?”

  “Probably a half hour,” Vince said. “He wanted to stay a while. I’m sure he’s…worn out after his game. I probably…didn’t help matters much.”

  Angela crouched down next to the bed and gazed at Charlie’s smooth, tender face half-buried in Vince’s chest, his body limp. “How’d he take it?” she asked, letting her fingers wander up and down Charlie’s back, knowing it wouldn’t rouse him. She looked up to Vince for his answer.

  He shrugged before his brow creased and his lips gnarled up. “Can somebody—take him home?” he said in a creaky whisper. “Without waking him?”

  “Of course. I’ll go get Mitch.”

  Angela would have done it herself, but she couldn’t bear to be away from Vince any longer. With unsurprising ease, Mitch hoisted Charlie from Vince’s arms and never woke him.

  “Thank you,” Vince said to his brother.

  Mitch left the room. Vince and Angela heard the front door of the apartment open and shut with the jingling of keys accompanying it.

  “I didn’t—say—enough,” Vince sputtered, not caring if he coughed for a day straight as a result of his oncoming sobs. He was half-tempted to rip out the needle and throw himself out the nearest window. Instead he let Angela help him lie down on his side.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s such a thing as enough in a situation like this,” Angela said, her voice calm and just as soothing as her hand that ran over the very short hair on his head, or the lips she set to his forehead and didn’t move for a long while. “I know it hurts. But…I’m here. Anything you need to say, you can say it to me, okay? You can tell me anything that’s on your mind. Absolutely anything.”

  “Can you make sure—that Charlie gets Chip back—after I go? And the book, too. And…the nativity set,” Vince said in gasping breaths.

  “Of course. I have a list going already. Here—” Angela reached for the tubing that rested in loops over the oxygen machine. She helped Vince situate the cannula and then got the machine running. Rosie had informed her that sometimes oxygen’s effects were mostly placebo. Angela didn’t care whether the effects were real—what mattered to her was that Vince’s shallow, erratic breaths gradually evened out until he looked and sounded like she had shot him up with some sort of sedative. “Why don’t you lie on your back and open up your chest a little?” she said, but Vince shook his head.

  “My back…hurts too much…”

  “Do you want them to up your morphine? I don’t think…I don’t think you should be in pain anymore. You never should have, really, but now…you’ve done what you needed to do. You don’t need to put yourself through this anymore.” Angela swallowed up her quaking lips in anticipation of Vince’s answer. Much to her surprise, he actually gave a slow nod.

  “When do they…get here?”

  “Any minute now, I think,” Angela said. “Think you can stay up a little longer?”

  “Yeah.” Vince’s body seemed to light on fire—not in a feverish way but in a pleasant one—when Angela lay down behind him and locked him up safely under her arm. “Can you talk a little? Keep me awake?” he asked.

  “Sure.” Angela searched frantically for a topic of conversation that wouldn’t be bittersweet for Vince. “Oh, hey…I forgot to tell you. My new credentials came in the last day I was at the office. Special Agent Angela Glasser.”

  Of course, Angela had no way of knowing how that would slaughter Vince just as much as any of the topics she’d decided weren’t fitting. “That’s nice,” he said, trying to put a smile to his words. “Ten bucks says Marshall calls you Hawkins for at least another year.”

  Angela let out a short laugh into Vince’s neck, where she had her face hidden. It was nothing sensual. Neither was her hand smoothing over his chest. A knock on the front door announced that help had arrived.

  “Be right back,” Angela said, taking quick strides down the hall to let in a nurse. This one, Elaine, was younger than Rosie and, unfortunately, probably Vince’s least favorite. Not cheery, not apologetic, not suited for this line of work. Angela didn’t leave her alone with Vince. With a quick call to the doctor, an increase in Vince’s morphine dosage was approved, and not long after Elaine had arrived, she was gone.

  “Helping?” Angela asked Vince once Mitch got home, said his goodnights, and retreated to the living room.

  “Yeah,” Vince breathed, lying on his back with a couple of extra pillows under him. It did open up his lungs, making it easier to breathe.

  Planning to keep her promise, Angela readied Vince for sleep. Though pacified by his claim that the extra morphine was doing its job, she soon felt the fear that had been plaguing her nightly.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Vince mumbled, catching a glimpse of her fretful eyes. Then he remembered the conversation they’d had on their short walk outside. “Oh, that…not tonight…don’t worry. Not tonight…”

  “Okay. Thank you.” She curled up under the sheets with him, which were all that lay on the bed. Vince had no chills tonight. She didn’t notice until she searched in the dark for his hand that he held to Chip, and fast, with both hands. He gave up one of them for her, though. Even if he had assured her that he wasn’t going anywhere tonight, she couldn’t help but think, Just in case. “I love you, so much. I don’t know where I’d be if I hadn’t been with you, you know. You’re such a big part of who I am and…I don’t even know where I was going. Just know that I still love you more and more every day.”

  “Me, too…I love you, too…but I think I need to…go to sleep now…”

  “Of course, I’m sorry. Sweet dreams.”

  It wasn’t long at all before Angela heard Vince’s short breathing completely even out. Not wanting to wake him with her typical nightly weeping, she held in her tears and stayed with him, just as she had vowed.

  —

  Angela wanted to hate Mitch for browsing through catalogues of caskets the next morning. She wanted to light the gas stove, hold the offending material over it, and scream at him until her voice was gone, but the alternative was taking care of these matters herself after Vince had passed, during which time she didn’t foresee wanting to do anything but mourn.

  “What do you think about this one?” Mitch said, holding up a catalogue. Angela approached him with a cup of coffee for each of them and eyed his selection. Dark wood, brass hardware.

  “That’s nice. As nice as a casket can be, anyway. Are you…just about done with that stuff?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Mitch said, hastily hiding the materials underneath a coffee table book of landscape photography.

  “No, don’t be sorry. Ugh, I’m sorry…you’re just doing what needs to be done. You’re brave enough to take it on and I’m too chicken.”

  “We’re different people in different circumstances,” Mitch said.

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked. “Of course we’re different people, but different circumstances? Like me losing my husband and you losing your brother?”

  “Not quite. But never mind,” Mitch said, waving Angela off. “He really still sleeping?”

  “Yeah, I can’t believe it. But he needs it.”

  Vince could hear the indistinct murmuring from his bed; the door was ajar. To say he was completely pain free would be a generous statement, but he was relatively comfortable. Comfortable enough to fall back asleep, which he did.

  He drifted in and out of slumber several times over the course of the day, wondering, each time that he was awake, what Mitch and Angela were doing if one of them didn’t happen to be in the room. Sometimes he heard them talking. Once he heard Angela crying in the shower, making him feel like an outsider looking in on a world with which he had no interactions. Yet it was a world
that he, or his death, had created. He despised this feeling, found himself wishing it would be over just so he could put his brother and wife out of their misery sooner.

  Though it didn’t physically hurt him to talk as much as it had before increasing his pain medications, Vince found himself at a loss for words, so he used them sparingly, mostly just thanking whomever it was that came to his aid—whomever sponged the sweat off of him, cleaned up after him, fluffed his pillows, rubbed his numbing feet. While dying peacefully sounded nice, he hadn’t really predicted that it would play out like this, that it meant sleeping for hours on end and torturing his loved ones as he crept slowly but surely toward a moment in time where his eyes would fall shut and never open again.

  His frustrations came to a head the following morning, what he thought was a Friday. After an entire day of doing next to nothing besides sleeping, his heart couldn’t withstand what he heard down the hallway: Angela’s hiccupping sobs, with no words of comfort from Mitch. Not yet.

  “I know he’s comfortable, but ugh…I can’t stand this.” She sniffled. “I’m not ready, Mitch. Maybe he is, but I’m not.”

  Now Mitch spoke. “I know, I know. But maybe he’s not either. I mean…he said his goodbyes to everyone else, pretty much. Just not us or Jenna. We’ll just have to catch him the next time he wakes up and, I dunno, work in what we need to say to him.”

  Although Vince had felt justified in his mentality that maybe it was time to let go, to yield to the hospice staff’s unspoken pressure to let them medicate him, he’d been neglectful. Of course he still wanted to talk to Angela, to Mitch, to Jenna. But he’d assumed he would somehow find the clarity to do so while he was sedated, that he would be blessed with wakefulness when he wanted it. It was now plain to see that reality would not live up to his expectations.

  He didn’t want Mitch or Angela to know he’d heard them, so he waited until the next time he slid out of and then back into consciousness to take action. Angela was at his bedside this time, startled when his eyes opened a crack. “Hey,” she said quietly. “You okay?”

  Vince shook his head. “I want it out,” he groaned.

  “Okay, okay,” Angela said, reaching for the cannula attached to Vince’s nose, but he shook his head again and pushed his bed sheets frantically down his body, scratching at the needle in his thigh, trying to get his fingernails underneath the tape. “Oh, the pain meds? Okay, Vince, you have to wait…stop!” Angela shouted. “I’ll just turn the pump off, okay? But I need you to relax. You can’t just rip the needle out, you could hurt yourself.”

  Mitch arrived after sprinting the short distance across the apartment. “What’s wrong?”

  Vince pried Angela’s hand away and finally managed to free the needle. “Vince, I told you, I’m turning the pump off. I need you to calm down. Mitch, can you call someone?” Angela asked. “He’s panicking.”

  “I’m—not—panicking,” Vince said between sharp breaths. “I just…I don’t wanna be doped up…not anymore…not while you guys…sit around and watch,” he continued.

  “So you’d rather be in pain? Really?” Mitch said in disbelief.

  “I’d rather…be able to talk to you guys,” Vince said, not taking his brother’s bait and getting riled up again. “I’m not ready…”

  Mitch didn’t say anything more before he left the room to call for help.

  “He’s angry,” Vince said miserably.

  “He has no reason to be. It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay. Just relax. Nobody’s going to make you take anything you don’t want to take, all right?” Angela reassured him. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  Vince just looked remorsefully down at his hands, which finally looked yellow atop the fresh white sheets. All three of them had already noticed the change, but no one felt the need to mention it. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  Angela kissed Vince’s forehead first, then his lips. “It’s okay. No harm done.”

  “Can I at least get a…shirt or something? I hate being so exposed when they come. I know I said I was hot…”

  “They left you a hospital gown. That’ll cover you up without making you too hot. Do you want that?” Angela asked.

  “No, I’m not in a hospital. I just want…a shirt. Please.”

  Angela complied with Vince’s every wish, sitting with him once he was settled. Rosie came this time, made sure that a lower morphine dose was what Vince really wanted, and changed out his syringe for one with a new cocktail. Vince wasn’t up for a pleasant visit this time, so she didn’t stay long.

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” Vince said once all three of them were together in the bedroom again. “It’s just…more important to me that I…get my time in with you…than it is for me…to be comfortable.”

  Neither Mitch nor Angela argued. Now Vince had his way. Now the pain sneaked its way back into his chest, his back, and his stomach, making him sweat.

  “Can someone help me…sit up…and maybe we can play…a board game or something?” Vince asked.

  “A board game?” Mitch asked with an amusedly wrinkled brow. “Like Monopoly or something?”

  “I might be out of it enough…for you to shortchange me. Why not?”

  Mitch found the game in Charlie’s closet and doled out their initial allowances.

  “This is fun,” Vince remarked when Mitch landed on his three-house Boardwalk property an hour later.

  “Yeah, it’s a blast,” Mitch said sardonically, forking over some colorful money and flipping over some of his own property deeds to pay the rest of his rent.

  The three of them laughed together, Vince’s eyes clenching in pain when he did. Thankfully, all eyes were directed on the game and nobody noticed.

  Vince was beginning to wonder if he had sent Charlie away prematurely, but then he was caught off guard by a cough and then spent the next several minutes trying to stop the onslaught of more. The fits had been easier to handle when he wasn’t crippled afterward. Mitch swept the game board, pieces, and money into the box and set it aside, helping Angela lay Vince down a little.

  Vince didn’t see or feel himself bouncing back this time. The attack and the subsequent searing pain weren’t temporary setbacks like the others had been. It was more like a leap toward his grave.

  “Are you sure about this, sweetie?” Angela asked, lowering her voice and intertwining her fingers with his. “You don’t have to be in pain. Nobody wants you to be. We can call and they can come back and give you more. I know that coughing must’ve really done you in.”

  Vince, his throat too raw now for a drawn-out conversation, shook his head woefully.

  “Why not?” Mitch asked somewhat harshly. “How on earth is this better?”

  “I wanna be able…to talk to you,” Vince said, his words a slur mixed with a rattling deep in his chest.

  “Then say something, Vince!” Mitch barked. “If you wanna say your goodbyes, then say them. Stop doing this to yourself. You’ve gone through enough.”

  “And you’re not making things any easier,” Angela snapped at her brother-in-law.

  “Stop,” Vince begged. “Stop.” His head lolled to the side and his hand reached for his brother’s. “I’m just…not ready…”

  “When will you be? What can we do?” Mitch asked, his voice quavering. “What can we do to help?”

  “Nothing…I’ll be ready soon…just not now…I’m tired.”

  “Try and get some sleep, then,” Angela said.

  Somehow, Vince did fall asleep. Perhaps the pain knocked him out. When he came to, it looked to be about five, judging from the evening sky. He went to call for somebody, just for the sake of having a familiar face to look at, but his breath caught in his throat and he couldn’t take another.

  So this is how I’m going to die, he thought, currently not having the strength in his arms to move one to the nearest hard surface and bang on it. But his breath returned to him in spurts. He couldn’t help but think that this near brush with death was God
looking at his watch and tapping the face of it. It’s time. Stop stalling.

  So this was it. Vince’s face was a soggy mess when Mitch happened to walk into the room to check on him. Instantly a look of shame crossed his face. “I’m sorry, man. What I said earlier—I didn’t mean it. This is up to you.”

  Vince shook his head weakly, just enough for Mitch to know it wasn’t he that had Vince so upset. Charlie’s name rolled through his scratchy throat before he could stop it.

  “You want Charlie?” Mitch asked just to be sure.

  Vince nodded. He knew, just as Angela had said, that he could never say enough to Charlie for either one of them to get full closure. But he knew he could do more. Had to do more. “I want him…to read…”

  “You want him to read to you?”

  Vince nodded, his eyes squeezing waves of tears free.

  Mitch had enough common sense not to insist that Vince’s fever was talking for him. It was a simple thing, really. Vince wanted his son. His son surely wanted to see him, too, even if seeing him would be unsettling. Neither one of them would ever be ready.

  “Want to sit up?” she asked Vince, whose eyes were clear, at least for now.

  Vince shook his head. “Just one more pillow.”

  Charlie climbed up into bed with a sad curiosity in his eyes. Vince had forgotten to take the cannula off, but he wasn’t sure he could do without it anyway this time. “Hey, buddy,” Vince said slowly once the door was closed.

  “Hi, Daddy,” Charlie said, his countenance warming a bit as he settled in next to Vince. “Auntie Jen said you want me to read to you.”

  Vince’s pale lips formed a smile. “I do. Would you, please?”

  Charlie nodded, not questioning the urgent nature of this visit, a visit that was never supposed to happen. He seemed to understand that his father had just had a last minute change of heart. He comprehended that his father would still be leaving, and now sooner, but that he had merely wanted to see Charlie one more time. He set the book in his lap and leaned his cheek against his father’s shoulder.

  Vince couldn’t remember the title of the book Charlie read to him. It sounded familiar, but it had been a long time since they had read it. It was no matter, though. All Vince wanted was to hear his son’s sweet voice. He knew he couldn’t let himself sleep, but oh, how he wanted to. He wanted to fall asleep with Charlie right next to him, reading whatever book this was over and over again. Praying it wouldn’t be for the last time, Vince closed his eyes. “I love you, Charlie.”

  “I love you too, Daddy. Want me to read it again?”

  “I would love that” were the very last words Vince spoke to his son, who read the book three more times without checking to make sure his dad was listening. He finally felt the need to do so, and when he did, he saw Vince’s eyes closed and his lips slightly parted. He let out a tiny whine and rushed to the living room, into the arms of the first person he found.

  “What is it, honey?” Angela asked, squatting down and picking Charlie up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Daddy’s dead,” Charlie blubbered.

  Angela’s heart stopped. Mitch and Jenna followed her and Charlie to the bedroom, where the three adults detected the shallow rise and fall of Vince’s chest. “Charlie, sweetie, he’s not dead,” Angela whispered, though the tears that made her eyes so hazy weren’t entirely convincing. “He’s breathing, see? He just fell asleep.”

  “That means you did a good job reading to him,” Jenna whispered, stroking Charlie’s back. “Like when one of us reads you bedtime stories until you fall asleep.”

  Charlie’s crying ceased and he rubbed his eyes clean. “Do you promise?”

  “I promise,” Angela said. “Shhh. Do you want to give him a kiss goodbye?”

  Charlie gulped and nodded, letting Angela set him down gently on the bed so as not to awaken Vince. He leaned over carefully and put one hand on the other side of his father’s chest, kissing his forehead just as his father had done for him so many times. “Bye, Daddy. I love you,” he said, holding his arms out for Angela again. “It’s okay, everybody, Daddy’s not dead, remember?” he said when he saw the streams of tears rolling down everyone’s cheeks. “He’s just sleeping.”

  Angela nodded and kissed Charlie repeatedly on her way out of the room. Jenna followed, but Mitch stayed behind.

  Angela couldn’t decipher the look on Jenna’s face. It appeared to be some mixture of a longing to leave this place and never come back, and feeling like she hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to Vince. All Angela could really bring herself to care about at the moment, though, was the little boy in her arms.

  It was lucky for Jenna that Charlie didn’t seem ready to leave Angela’s safe embrace yet. Mitch came out and subtly beckoned Jenna down the hallway without Charlie taking notice.

  Vince lay half-awake in bed, smiling softly when he saw Jenna’s bewildered face. “Charlie…woke me up when he kissed me,” he explained once Mitch left and shut the door. “I didn’t…want him to know…that he woke me up. Can we talk?” And there it was—the gift he’d been looking for. The ability to communicate like he already had with Charlie, with his team, with his pastor, with his in-laws.

  Jenna nodded and sat down next to Vince, holding on to both his hands, knowing she’d never have the same opportunity.

  “I know I’m not great…at acting like it…but I do love you,” Vince said first.

  “I love you, too.”

  “I would be surprised…if it didn’t happen tonight…and if I would’ve woken up…after you’d already left…I would’ve called…for you to come back.”

  “Slow down, take it easy,” Jenna said when Vince had to stop for a few more beats than usual.

  “Thank you…for everything…I know you’re gonna do so…well with him. He loves you so much…”

  Jenna simply nodded, some tears falling from her chin to her lap.

  “And I’m sorry…about Kate…”

  “Vince, don’t. I don’t blame you. I did at first but only because I had to blame someone. You need to forgive yourself, okay?”

  Vince nodded. He supposed she was right. “I’m sorry that you and I…haven’t always gotten along.”

  “That’s okay. Vince, listen to me. You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. Just be at peace. You and I…we’re good.”

  “We’re good?”

  Jenna nodded. “We’re perfectly fine. Thank you for letting me say goodbye. I was beginning to wonder,” she said with an uneasy grin.

  “I’d never leave without saying goodbye,” Vince said, his arms rising slightly out of the bed. He lifted them and held Jenna when she closed in. “Take good care of Charlie,” he said, his voice faltering. “Never let him forget…how much Kate and I loved him…”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Vince received another kiss on the forehead before Jenna hugged him one last time. “Goodbye, Jen,” he said, blinking his tears from his eyes.

  “Goodbye, Vince.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT: DE