The Last Hour

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  I just held his hand as we walked. I knew this couldn’t be easy to talk about. All I could do was listen, I guess, and be there.

  “Anyway ... the thing is. I saw something. A…”

  He stopped again. He was struggling to talk, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, his jaw so tight with anger I was shocked. He stopped walking and faced me, and said, “I witnessed ... a war crime.”

  He looked me in the eye and exhaled as he said the words. I took his other hand in mine. What did he mean? What war crime? What had he seen?

  He looked at me and said, “Carrie. You need to know ... I’m falling for you. Hard and fast. But the possibility exists….”

  His face twisted, and he stopped talking again. I lost patience and said, “What? What is it?”

  He squeezed my hands, closed his eyes and whispered, “Before I left the Army, I ... I put together evidence. Photographs. Notes. And I wrote a report about what happened. And I dropped it in a mailbox addressed to the Inspector General’s office in Washington.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Carrie ... what I’m telling you is ... eventually someone’s going to do an investigation. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “But ... you did the right thing. You reported it.”

  “I didn’t stop it.”

  “Could you have?”

  He looked away from me, his jaw tight, his expression almost tortured, and he said, “I don’t know. I just ... I don’t know. I wish I’d tried.”

  And then he shook. Just once. Like ... an eruption. The emotion that was running through him was suppressed, raw, and bitter. So I did the only thing I could. I wrapped my arms around him, and I whispered in his ear, “We’ll get through this together.”

  No respect at all (Ray)

  It was silent in the waiting room, except for the occasional quiet talk at the nurses’ station and echoes down the hall of people walking, talking. But in here? Nothing.

  Sarah sat in the corner. She had her knees pulled up, feet resting on the edge of her seat, arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees. She stared off into space, not moving. She hadn’t spoken since the doctor left, forty-five minutes before. Every once in a while, she’d look around the room, glance over toward me, then go back to staring into space.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through her head, what she was thinking and feeling. I tried to imagine myself, at seventeen, knowing that they might have to amputate my leg in order to keep me alive.

  I’d be pretty screwed up too.

  In the meantime, I sat next to Carrie, opposite where Jessica leaned against her. Jessica had her phone out. She was online, and as best as I could tell, she was messaging with friends about the accident. Carrie was slumped back in her seat, her head resting against the wall, mouth slightly open, eyes closed. She wasn’t asleep. I knew that because every time we heard footsteps approaching or near the room, her eyes would open, searching out the sound. She was waiting for further word from the doctors.

  I rested my hand on hers. Actually, when I wasn’t paying attention, it was in hers. I don’t know if it helped. I don’t know if it made any difference at all, if she had even the vaguest sense that I was there, that I was thinking about her and hurting for her and praying for her. All I could do was try. All I could do was be here. All I could give her was my love, even if she never knew.

  I guess there was one other thing I could do. I could fight. I could fight to survive. I just didn’t know how. I couldn’t touch anything. I couldn’t change anything. How the hell do you fight to survive when you’re nothing but a ghost?

  She looked so tired. We’d had ... not such an easy time. Was it just two weeks ago she’d come into the condo and collapsed on the couch next to me, and said, “Let’s just run away?”

  I hugged her and said, “Okay. How about the circus.”

  She nodded, her face serious. “Okay. But why the circus?”

  I shrugged. “You’ll be the lion tamer. I’ll be your sexy assistant. They’ll never find us.”

  She laughed, hard. It was the first time she’d laughed in a week or more, and I wanted to savor it, put it in a bottle so we could take it out and listen any time. But her laughter didn’t stay. In fact, after a few moments it turned to tears, and I had pulled her to me in a tight embrace and whispered back to her the same words she’d once said to me. “We’ll get through this together, babe. I promise. I’m here for you. Forever.”

  What if I couldn’t keep that promise?

  I needed to get up and take a walk or something. Sitting here feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help anything. I stood up, and it was odd and disconcerting that I felt no need to stretch, or anything, after sitting hunched over for so long. It drove home my condition more than just about anything else possibly could have.

  My condition: I had no condition. I didn’t exist.

  My eyes fell back to Carrie in her seat, still looking as exhausted as I’d ever seen her. I couldn’t just walk away. I couldn’t leave her alone. I walked back over and got on my knees right in front of her. I put my hands in her lap, and leaned as close as I could, and whispered, “I love you, Carrie.”

  Then I kissed her.

  Her body gave an involuntary shudder, and tears started rolling down her face. Silent tears, as she raised her hand to her mouth and bit one of her knuckles, trying desperately to suppress grief. Her eyes had gone bloodshot, and her expression looked as if ...

  ... as if she’d just lost everything.

  I jerked back. That wasn’t what I’d intended. Oh, Jesus. Carrie bent over in her seat, turning her face away from Jessica, and stifled a loud sob. Jessica dropped her phone, moved forward next to Carrie and whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  Carrie shook her head violently. Then she replied to Jessica. “I’m … what am I supposed to do?”

  “I know,” Jessica said, her voice sad.

  “No. No, you don’t. I’ve spent my entire life taking care of other people. And for a second there, it was like ... it was like he was right here. Like I could feel him.” Her chin started to tremble, and then her whole body shook. “I finally found someone who took care of me. And I’m so afraid I’m going to lose him.” And then she broke down completely, almost wailing, her face buried in her lap.

  I gasped, and watched. Helpless.

  Hopeless.

  Jessica threw her arms around Carrie. And that’s where I needed to be. Protecting her. And I couldn’t. God damn it!

  “Way to go, Einstein,” I heard a mutter behind me.

  I spun around, and for the first time I felt a hammer of rage at Sarah. “Sarah, will you just shut up?”

  She sighed and gave me a look that would have frozen my balls into icicles if I’d actually physically been here.

  I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath to calm down. Finally, I said, “Sorry. I just don’t know what to do.”

  She nodded. “I know. I tried with Jessica, too.”

  I stared off at the wall. “I hate being helpless.”

  She looked at me and said, “We can affect some things. You saw that. I think I figured it out. It’s ... strong emotions. That’s all that comes through.”

  “I don’t know what good that does me. Or her,” I said.

  “I don’t either. Let’s go find out what’s happening, then.”

  “What?”

  “The operating room.”

  I felt a shudder. The thought of seeing the surgeons cutting into my body ... operating on my brain—I couldn’t get my mind around that. I slowly shook my head.

  “Come on, Ray. We’re not doing any good here. If anything, we’re making things worse.”

  “I need to stay with Carrie.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a skeptical look. “You may need that, Ray, but does she? Look at her! You keep touching her, and it’s driving her insane. You heard what they said! We’re both as good as dead. How th
e hell is she supposed to get through this if you keep touching her?”

  In all my years, I’ve never hit a woman. Never even wanted to. But it took everything I had to not scream at her. My fists were balled at my side, and I shouted back, “She needs me, Sarah!”

  “She needs to survive this, Ray.”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to run out of here and howl at the doctors and the idiot driver who had hit us. I wanted to find all the people in the Army and NIH who had made our brief lives together such a miserable struggle, and hurt someone. But I couldn’t do any of that. Even if I’d been here physically, even if I’d had the opportunity ... I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  I looked up at the ceiling, struggling to contain my rage. I tried to breathe, and calm myself, and let the emotions just flow out. It was almost palpable, almost real.

  But not quite.

  My shoulders sagged, and I said, “Look, why don’t you just go on without me, all right?”

  And then Sarah did something completely unexpected. She looked away from me, and wiped her right arm across her eyes, and said, “Because I’m afraid to go alone.”

  I closed my eyes. All right. I could do this.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  I grabbed her hand, and we walked together out of the waiting room, right through the sliding doors that you needed an electronic pass card to open.

  Beyond the doors, it was crisp and brightly lit.

  “How do we find ... us?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “I feel gypped. Aren’t we supposed to get a spirit guide or something?”

  I suppressed a laugh. “They must be all booked up or something. We’ll find it.

  And we did. We walked down the hall, looking in the small window in the doors. The first door was an office, but the second opened into an anteroom, filled with equipment on tables and sinks that looked suspiciously like something you’d see on television, where surgeons would wash their hands on their way into an operating room.

  “In here,” I said. We slipped through the doors. Another set of sliding doors was beyond. We walked toward those and peered through the glass.

  Bingo. An operating team stood around a small body draped in sheets. They were doing something to the leg. I looked closer, and in between the surgeons, underneath an air mask, I could see Sarah’s pale face, badly bruised on the left side.

  “You sure about this?” I asked. “This is you.”

  I looked at her as I asked the question. Her eyes were wide, scared, and she chewed on her lower lip.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Her eyes darted to me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said.

  She nodded rapidly and said, “Let’s go.”

  So, we stepped through the door. I was immediately assaulted with the sound of quiet music. It wasn’t the volume that struck me, but the music itself.

  Disbelief spread across Sarah’s face. “Are you serious? New Kids on the Block? Do these people have no respect at all?”

  “Someone must have lost the coin toss,” I muttered, trying hard not to laugh.

  “This music is probably destroying my immune system as it plays. Are they trying to kill me?”

  The music continued, despite her disbelief. At that moment, the boy band on the radio was singing something like “oh ... oh ... oh ... oh…” and she screwed up her mouth into a sneer and quietly sang, “Oh ... oh ... no, you don’t. Will you turn that off?”

  She took her hand from mine and approached the table, carefully, her expressive face showing fascination. I followed.

  Her left arm must have been broken and reset. It was immobilized now in an inflatable cast, but I could see a long line of sutures where they’d already operated and closed the wound.

  Her leg ... I had to look away. From calf to mid-thigh, it was swollen to twice, maybe three times, its normal size. Her skin was red, bulging, and the doctors had cut a slit the entire length of her leg, exposing muscle and bone and blood, a three-inch wide open wound.

  Sarah stared at it, frozen in place. Her eyes didn’t seem to be focused.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She muttered, “I would be if they’d play some decent music.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “I know this is scary. But if it keeps you from losing your leg….”

  “Yeah, I get it, Ray. I’m kind of wishing I could vomit right now.”

  One of the surgeons spoke, giving instructions to a nurse. I didn’t understand half of what he said, but what I did get was reassuring. They’d stabilized her, and she was almost ready to come out of surgery and go to the intensive care unit. They were going to leave the fasciotomy open for at least several days, and monitor for infection and damage to the muscles. He talked about urine samples and kidney damage and elevated enzymes and something called rhabdomyolysis, which I gathered was something to do with the leg muscles dying. The nurse took notes, writing them up on a chart.

  As we watched, the surgeons began wrapping up the surgery. The open wound on Sarah’s leg was loosely packed with bandages that looked almost like foam.

  “I think I’m done,” she said, her voice considerably higher pitched than normal.

  I nodded and followed her as she very quickly moved for the exit.

  Outside, in the hall, I asked, “You sure you’re okay?”

  She stood there for a second, not responding. One side of her lower lip was curled inward as she chewed on it. “Yeah. I am. In a way that helped a lot … I mean ... it looked like I was almost stable.”

  “So you think you’ll live?”

  She smirked. “Yeah, I just might. Although I bet my leg is gonna hurt like hell for a long time. Did you see that? They cut it open like it was a freaking sausage.”

  I blinked, then said, “Nice image, Sarah.”

  I don’t think she caught the sarcasm because she just kept going, still talking fast and high pitched. “I mean ... yeah, it’s going to suck. I bet I’ll have to go through physical therapy. But I’ll probably keep the leg. That’s something.”

  “That’s a lot,” I said.

  “Your turn.”

  I sighed. “Not sure I’m gonna get as many warm fuzzies from this as you did, Sarah. You heard what the doc said back there.”

  She looked at me, her expression sober. “Don’t you think ... knowing ... might help a little?”

  I grimaced, then shrugged, helpless. “Yeah, all right. Let’s see if we can find it.”

  The next operating room wasn’t me. An older guy, in his sixties, lay on the table with his chest open. “Not here,” I said, peering in the window.

  The operating room after that was mine. It was obvious, because all the action seemed to be around the head. I really didn’t want to go in there, but at the same time, I did. What happens if you see yourself die? For that matter, what happens when you die? I didn’t know the answer to that. Somehow the whole question of pearly gates and clouds and angels playing on their harps struck me as so much bullshit, and part of me was terrified that this was what happens when you die. Either oblivion, or worse, being stuck out here alone forever.

  I didn’t want to think about that.

  All the same, I found myself entering the operating theater. I felt a completely irrational urge to tiptoe in; as if there was any way my presence could disturb the surgeons within. But we knew that wasn’t the case.

  Inside, a deep, flowing classical music piece was playing. A surgeon with magnifying goggles sat on a stool at my head, with a nurse reaching over his shoulder. The surgeon had what appeared to be a tiny pair of tweezers, and the nurse some kind of suction device.

  Sarah spoke. “Thank God they have better taste in music. I was half afraid they’d be in here listening to Justin Bieber.”

  I ignored her. Instead, I slowly walked around the table. My left arm and leg had received the same treatment as Sarah’s leg, both of them crushed in the ac
cident. I couldn’t even see my face underneath the chest tube and cloths that covered it.

  I winced when I got to the other side of the table and got a good look at what was going on. The surgeons had completely removed the top of my skull at my forehead. As the nurse steadily sucked blood out of the way, the surgeon reached in with the tiny, tiny tweezers and extracted a bone fragment from the grey, folded matter underneath.

  Then the surgeon said, in a matter of fact voice, “It’s times like this I think the family would be better off if we just stopped and let the patient go. Even if he lives, there’s not going to be anything in there.”

  One of the other surgeons, working on my left arm, said, “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “No,” the first one replied. “But I wouldn’t take a bet on this one.”

  I winced.

  Sarah put her hand on my arm. “Maybe we should go.”

  “Yeah.” The words felt weird coming out, my lips numb like I’d been to the dentist. I could feel a nasty headache coming on, a blinding one, and that begged the question: how the hell does a ghost get a headache? It was like a bad joke where I was the punch line.

  As we exited the operating room, Sarah gave me a worried look. “If it will help you feel better, you can go look at the goo coming out of my leg again.”

  I coughed and said, “Um, no thanks. I’ll pass on that.”

  So we headed back to the waiting room, and I was so distracted I didn’t even notice the little boy at first. But I heard him, loud and clear, when he said, “Excuse me, mister? Can you help me find my mom?”

  It was the kid I’d seen from the elevator. About four feet tall and thin as a rail, he wore sweats and a Spider-Man t-shirt. He had a Mets baseball cap on, twisted sideways, the brim pointed off toward his right shoulder.

  Stupidly, I said, “You can see us?”

  The kid looked at me like I was nuts. And then he said, “Well, yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, and said, “You’re the first person who answered me. Why wouldn’t anyone answer me?”