by Lance Berry
Kim Tan reached out, grasping Mara’s shoulder gently.
“Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
“Of course,” Mara replied and opened the door further, allowing her entry. As she closed the door behind Mrs. Tan, Mara suddenly became very self-conscious about the loaded weapon she had left on her parents’ nightstand. “Just give me a second, okay?” she said and rushed off to the bedroom, where she quickly set the gun back into its holster and closed the closet door securely. As she was about to step out of the room, however, she became fixated on the clock hanging on the wall opposite the bed. Her father insisted on having a clock in nearly every room: the master bedroom, his daughters’ rooms, the living room and even the kitchen. All were synchronized to the same time exactly, so that he would never have a doubt as to what time it was. “Being aware of the time is crucial,” her father always said. “Knowing when you have to be somewhere makes all the difference, because each second passing by is another tick of fate’s timing. Arrive somewhere too soon or too late, and the best thing that was supposed to happen to you might never occur.”
The time was 10:02, and for some reason that stuck in Mara’s head. She tilted her head as she looked at the clock quizzically, half expecting it to come alive and render some hidden knowledge. She had to force herself to look away from it and motivate her legs to carry her out of the room.
Mrs. Tan was seated on the living room couch, staring ahead at the large tv viewscreen which was off. She turned in an almost absent way toward Mara as the young girl approached and sat beside her. “What’s up?”
Kim sighed forlornly, and her eyes welled with tears as she placed her hand on Mara’s shoulder once more and rubbed it gently. “Your father called my house from the hospital. There was a problem with the delivery, honey—”
Mara’s face immediately scrunched up in anguish, and her breath came in short, raspy huffs. Tears were coming, she could feel it, and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
“No, no, no…” she murmured. “My mom—we were looking forward to having a new baby. What, what…?”
Mrs. Tan leaned forward slightly, locking eyes with her.
“The baby is fine. You have a brother.”
Mara looked at her askance. “Then why—?” Tears began to slip from the corners of Kim’s eyes and she shook her head sadly. “Your mother had a sudden rise in blood pressure as she finished pushing the baby through. Her lungs filled with fluid and she had automatic heart failure. The doctors tried everything, but it was too late. She’s dead, honey. I’m so sorry, but your mother’s dead.”
“No…” Mara said weakly, and the tears came. She fell into
Mrs. Tan’s arms, her forceful sobs wracking her body.
“Mara? What’s wrong?” A tiny voice said from the side of the couch. Mara almost didn’t hear it, didn’t recognize it at first. She broke herself away from Mrs. Tan’s embrace and looked down at Sara, whose eyes were wide with concern. “Oh, baby…” Mara said as she reached over, scooping the little girl up in her arms. Mara held her tight, like she used to hold her old teddy bear, Mr. Bumpfries, when she was Sara’s age. She held her close, trying to gain some comfort in the connection to the little girl who looked even more like their mother than Mara did.
For her own part, Sara didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t understand why her big sister was crying, didn’t understand why Mrs. Tan had come…but she wrapped her arms as tight as she could around Mara’s waist, offering what love and support one as young as she was capable of giving.
For Mark Elliot, the evening had been a blur; one moment full of hopefulness, the next an endless chasm of despair and bleakness which it seemed he had inadvertently fallen into.
Before Mtumbe had even left his side to go to the delivery room, two lunar patrol officers had entered the waiting area to deliver the news that Doctor Sterling had been murdered. It seemed that he had been having an affair with a married woman, and her husband found out. The man killed them both—hacked them to death with a machete—and calmly made the call himself from the crime scene for base security to come pick him up. Following that, once Mtumbe actually performed Gloria’s delivery, came the news…the news…
Mark began to cry again. Tears spilled down his face, staining his proud, neatly pressed uniform shirt, and he covered his face to hide his shame as the embarrassed AirKab driver tried not to look at him in the rear view mirror. “Jeez, rough day, buddy?” the ’Kabbie had asked half-jokingly when Mark initially flagged him down, and Mark had no choice but to tell him what had happened. The man immediately offered his condolences, obviously feeling only two inches tall at that moment, and made haste to speed him on his way home. After the news about Gloria’s death, Mark knew he was in no condition to drive.
Eclampsia, Mtumbe had called it, followed by pulmonary edema and succeeded by cardiogenic shock. During the final stages of the delivery, Gloria’s blood pressure had spiked sharply, and her lungs almost immediately filled with fluid. She abruptly fell into a coma, and even as Mtumbe’s team prepared diuretic medicines to combat the edema, Gloria’s heart stopped.
At that point, it became more crucial for Mtumbe to work on getting the baby safely out of her. He did, but by the time he had gotten back around to trying to help Gloria, it was too late.
Mtumbe told Mark all of this, and as he rode home in the AirKab now, the security commander was amazed he could remember any of it. At the time, he had been focused on how he and Gloria first met years earlier on a military base in Biloxi.
She was dating an acquaintance of his at the time, but the attraction between her and Mark when they were introduced was obvious to all. They agreed to try out a couple of dates, on the condition that both of them truthfully told her boyfriend how they felt. They confessed to him together, but he amazingly was very understanding. He agreed to let them try out their date, which went exceptionally well. There were instantaneous sparks between them, and Mark very nearly proposed to her by the second date. He had the good common sense to wait at least until their fourth, and Gloria immediately said yes. For the most part, their lives were filled with happiness. And now…
The AirKab glided to a halt, and Mark realized he was home.
He looked at the housing unit, and for the first time in his life felt an almost overwhelming desire to not go in. He was so tempted to tell the ’Kabbie to keep on driving that his stomach twisted in knots at his own self-disgust. He pulled out his Unicard from his jacket pocket, readying to pay the driver, who waved him off. “Forget it, pal. This one’s on me,” the man said with a mournful look in his eyes.
Mark shook his head firmly. “No, it’s alright. I’m a…I’m a
United Earth Force soldier. We always pay our debts.”
“Look, I appreciate it, but you’ve had a bad time. You just go on in your house.”
“No, I want to pay…”
“—go on in, your family needs you—”
“GIVE ME THE FUCKING TICKET!”
The ’Kabbie’s eyes widened dramatically. Wordlessly, he turned forward once more, tabbing in commands to his onboard console. On the vid-com set into the dividing partition, a fare total came up. “Please press your thumb against the faceplate for automatic withdrawal from your account, or insert your Unicard into the side slot on the right to accept these charges,” a synthesized female voice intoned dispassionately. “Failure to do either is a violation of United Earth Force law.”
Mark slid in his Unicard, and added a generous tip to make up for his surly attitude. Once the machine thanked him for making the payment, he reclaimed his card and sheepishly stepped out of the ’Kab. He didn’t look back at the driver as he closed the door, but in his attempt not to slam it, he didn’t close it hard enough. He turned back, reopened the passenger door and closed it tighter, more firmly, this time. Their eyes met for a second, and both men looked away at the same time. Mark turned and trudged toward his home, feeling more like he didn’t belong here than on any a
lien world he had ever visited.
“Dad-eee!” Little Sara screamed as the front door opened and Mark entered the bungalow. The little girl ran crying to her father, her face streaked with tears, her breath coming in short, frightened pants as her father scooped her up in his arms.
“Mara said that Mommy’s not coming home again! She said Mommy’s dead! Tell Mara to stop lying! Make her stop, please!” The child broke down into sobs, her little arms holding weakly around Mark’s neck as she buried her face in his chest.
Mark glared at his eldest daughter, who sat across the room on the couch with Kim Tan. Mara had only just managed to get her own tears under control a few seconds before the patriarch of the Elliot clan had stepped into the house. “What the hell is she doing up?” he pointedly asked his eldest.
Kim fielded the question instead, holding her hands up in supplication as she stood. “It’s not Mara’s fault, Mark. I came over to tell her like you asked, and Sara overheard her crying.
We had no choice but to tell her.”
Mark sighed resignedly and waved his arm for Mara to come over. She did, and he shifted Sara to hold her in the crook of his left arm while gently wrapping his right around Mara. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to—”
Sara suddenly lashed out with all the fury a six year-old could muster, slapping Mara across her cheek. “You lie! You’re a liar, Mara! Bad!”
Mara grimaced, shocked more by the fact of the blow than the blow itself. Mark cast a hard, reproving look upon Sara as he sharply pointed a finger at her. “Hey! You do not hit your sister, ever! Do you understand?”
“But—”
“No,” Mark reaffirmed, and Sara cautiously laid her head back against her father’s chest as she swiped at her own eyes with a nightgown sleeve. Mark let out an exhausted gust of wind, wrapped his arm around Mara once more and led his daughters to the couch as he addressed his youngest in a more gentle tone. “Besides, honey…your sister’s not lying. She’d never lie to you.”
The little girl’s eyes widened to the size of saucer plates, as the horrible realization began to settle in. “What happened to Mommy?” The tone of defeat in the six year-old’s voice almost broke Mark’s mental defenses, which he was only just beginning to rebuild in order to face his family.
He sat down with his two daughters, Kim having moved to the chair across from the couch to hear what had happened as well. Mark slowly told the story, leaving out the part about
Sterling’s affair and murder, amazed to himself that he could manage to get through it. He also explained that he had left the newest addition to the family—Peter was his name—at the hospital, and would pick him up the following morning.
Between his wife’s death and having to tell his two girls about it, Mark knew he would be in no shape to immediately take care of a newborn that would more than likely cry throughout the night. As Mark told the story of Gloria’s complicated surgery and death, there was a lot of crying from both of the girls. He held onto both of them, as much as support for himself as to make them feel better, and finally managed to get them both to sleep around one in the morning.
Kim was nice enough to stay and help Mark get the girls to bed. She stayed until just after they fell asleep, and Mark then walked her to the door. “Mark, if you need anything…please let me or my husband know.”
Mark nodded absently, a deep frown creasing his lower lip.
“I need my wife back, Kim.”
There was really no type of reply the young woman could give on that account, and she didn’t want to try to offer any supposedly helpful thoughts on how he still had the rest of his family to live for, for fear of sounding clichéd and maudlin.
Instead, she reached up and gently kissed him on the cheek.
“Take care, Mark. If you need help with the girls or the new boy when you bring him home, let us know.”
Mark nodded once more and stood in the doorway as Kim headed back down the path toward her own husband and two kids. He stood in the doorway long after she was gone, staring at nothing at all, his mind a fractured blank slate…beyond feeling anything but numb and empty. Finally, he came to and closed the front door. He locked down the house for the night and went into the bedroom that until only a few hours before, had belonged to him and his wife. As he started to undress, he looked at the bed and suddenly became violently nauseous. He raced to the bathroom, the beginning of the torrent pushing between the fingers of the hand covering his mouth and dribbling into the other cupped beneath his chin. He threw himself to his knees, spewing what little he had eaten that day into the toilet. He had thought himself done, when his body chose to find just a bit more bile to come up. He shuddered with the forcefulness of expulsion. After what seemed an hour —though it was truly only minutes—he managed to pull some toilet paper from the roll and wipe his hands to form some semblance of clean. He flushed the toilet, rose on uncertain legs, and finished washing his hands and mouth in the sink. He walked back down the hall, briefly stopping to check on the girls, who had curled up together in Mara’s bed, then headed back to his own bedroom.
As soon as he saw his wife’s side of the bed, he felt unsure of his constitution once again. He did a one-eighty and went to the hall closet, quickly pulling out a thick blanket and spare pillow. He retreated to the living room couch and set himself up. He found himself saddened by the fact that the lingering scent of Kim Tan’s body comforted him a bit, but at least it got his mind just barely off of his wife. He lie awake for a long while, staring out into the darkness without a single thought passing through his head. He could feel nothing, could think nothing at the moment…and he wasn’t even aware until he woke the next morning that he had ever fallen asleep.
Chapter 2
“There are obviously going to have to be some changes around here,” Mark explained at the living room table the next day. Mara and Sara sat across from him, listening attentively.
Somber, serious looks clouded both their faces, casting a sad maturity upon them both. Mark reflected for a moment on how strange it was that of all the things in the universe, only death could mature a person in a matter of moments.
He pushed the thought away to focus on his girls once more as he continued. “With your mother gone, it’s going to be very hard for me to raise three kids on my own, especially since I have to work. Mara, when you’re on leave from the Citadel, I’m going to be relying on you a lot more to do chores around the house, as well as looking after your sister and brother. I’m going to need help with the cooking, and other things around the house as well.”
“Of course, Dad.”
“Sara…you’re only six, but Daddy’s going to need you to be a little more grown up now. Do you think you can do that for me?”
“Of course, Dad,” Sara replied in perfect imitation of her sister.
“I want you to be an especially good girl, and do what you’re told. When I’m not home, Mara’s in charge, and you should always do whatever she tells you. That’s important. She’s your big sister, and looking out for you is her job. So I need you to promise that you’ll always listen to her, do you understand me?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
Mark nodded in satisfaction. “Now, there’s one more thing that you should understand, and it’s very important. After what happened with your mother last night, you may find it hard to look at your new brother. It’s understandable, given the circumstances of his birth, but I want to make it clear that you are not to blame him in any way. Yes, your mother died while giving birth to him, but what happened is not his fault. It was a set of circumstances no one could have known about. So I want you to do your best to love him like you love each other. He’s never going to have the love your mother would have given him, so it’s up to all of us to fill in that gap and make him a part of this family. Understand?”
Both girls nodded obediently. Mark rose and gestured for them to stand, which they did. He went to his girls and brought them into a tight embrace, which they eagerl
y returned. He sighed gently and released them. “Let’s go pick up your brother.”
