by Brynn Stein
Before he knew it, it was the next afternoon, and he received the call he was anticipating and dreading, all at the same time. His responses were grunts of agreement and not much of anything else, so it didn’t surprise him when the laptop floated up to him as soon as he ended the call.
So, what’s the verdict?
Elliot grabbed the laptop and moved back to the kitchen where he’d been working on plans. He collapsed into the chair, setting the laptop to his right. Crossing his arms on the table, he leaned toward the laptop. “Actually, it’s better than I feared. They think they can get away with just the pacemaker.”
So no bypass surgery.
Elliot could almost feel Ben’s relief blend with his own.
“Not now, anyway.” Elliot shook his head and then dropped it onto his arms. He sighed, taking a moment to release all the tension he hadn’t realized had built up over this. Finally he raised his head and looked at the computer. “But I have a feeling it’s going to be too little too late.”
What do you mean too late?
Elliot realized how that might sound and touched the screen tenderly. “No, I don’t mean I think I’m going to die right now or anything.” He absently picked some crumbs from between the keys. “But with as much damage as they say I have in my heart? As enlarged as it’s appeared in past scans they’ve actually shown me? Not to mention the kidney and liver damage…. There’s no way the pacemaker is going to fix everything.” He rolled a particularly large crumb between his thumb and forefinger, identifying it as toast. That was a problem with having the laptop so close to him while he ate. “All of this is just treating symptoms.” He flicked the crumb away. “It’s not going to cure anything. There is no cure for congestive heart failure. I’m going to die… someday.”
That’s true for everyone, though.
“I know.” Elliot grinned a sad little smile. “But you know what I mean. I’m not going to be a little old man in a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere.”
Elliot actually chuckled at that and recognized it as Ben’s way to get him off the subject. “You’re way too into this computer speak.” He slapped the computer screen with the backs of his fingers.
LOL
Elliot willed himself to put the topic out of his mind for now and allowed himself to laugh out loud too.
If Ben caught that the laugh was forced, he didn’t mention it.
ELLIOT CHECKED in to the hospital three days later and had the pacemaker inserted. After he returned to the ward, he looked around the room—his home away from home—at the myriad of medical junk surrounding him. Cardiac monitor to his right. Embarrassing, but thankfully empty, urinal bottle hung on the bed railing to his left. IV pole beside that, with its twist of tubing draped over the railing, snaking along the blanket, and burrowing into the back of his hand like some sick, carnivorous vine.
Dr. Abernathy came in to talk to him. He grabbed one of the torturous chairs hospitals always seem to have for visitors. Elliot was sure that chiropractors developed the things just to drum up more business. Swinging the chair around to the right of Elliot’s bed and straddling the seat, he began. “The procedure went well. The pacemaker is seated correctly and seems to be doing its job nicely. This should definitely buy you some time.”
“Buy me time?” Elliot could feel his eyes widen. His mouth fell open. It was one thing for Elliot to admit to himself that he wasn’t going to live for decades, but quite another to hear it insinuated by the doctor. “How much time are we talking here?”
“You’re nowhere near the end, but you now have Stage D heart failure, since you’re showing advanced symptoms even with medication and diet and stent. It was lucky that the pacemaker was all we needed this time. We’re keeping an eye on your kidney function, which is slightly reduced. At some point that may have to be addressed. Right now we’ll continue treating it with diuretics. Your liver and heart are both enlarged.”
He leaned his arms over the back of the chair, and Elliot wondered briefly if the doctor’s informal posture was supposed to make him feel more at ease.
“Eventually stents and meds and even the pacemaker aren’t going to be enough. You’re heading toward bypass surgery. We’re trying to put it off as long as possible because it’s risky for the condition your heart is in.”
Elliot fleetingly recognized the irony of not wanting to do heart surgery because the heart’s condition was too bad, but he tried to listen to the doctor, who was still pronouncing sentence on Elliot’s future.
“But, for right now, this should take care of your symptoms to some degree.”
Sheri waltzed into the room right about then and grabbed a chair to Elliot’s left. “What’s the good news, doc?”
“As I was telling Elliot here, the pacemaker looks good.” Elliot had long since given the doctor permission to tell Sheri anything he would tell Elliot. “We want to keep him for another couple of days to be sure. We keep patients at least a day to make sure the pacemaker is functioning well. And I want to run some more tests while we have him here. Check kidney function and some other things. Then he can go home.”
Sheri slapped Elliot’s hand playfully and sat back in the chair. “So, good news.”
The doctor said good-bye and saw himself out. He was barely gone before Elliot sighed heavily and banged his head against his pillow.
“At least two days, Cher,” Elliot whined. “I don’t want to be away from Ben that long.”
“There’s not much we can do about that, Elle.” She wasn’t being flippant this time, as he’d half expected her to be. “You can’t leave yet, and he can’t come here, so….”
“I know. I just hate it. I miss him.” Elliot was almost surprised to find that he was honest in that. He, Mr. Wanderer himself, missed being at home with the man he loved. It made him briefly question wanting to go to Pennsylvania to do the work on Ben’s old house, but it still felt like something he had to do. In fact, it felt even more urgent now. It was as if he was being pulled there, and he couldn’t not go. But at least he could admit to himself now that he’d miss Ben terribly. Exactly like he did at that moment, lying there helpless in that damned hospital bed with Ben stuck at home.
“Can you go check on him for me? Let him know I’m all right and when I’m expected to get out?”
Sheri shook her head in disbelief. “Sure, Elle.”
WHEN HE finally was ready to leave the hospital, Sheri gathered his things and helped him to the car. He was uncharacteristically quiet on the ride home. Elliot ruminated over what Dr. Abernathy had said after the procedure. The pacemaker was seated well and should buy him some time. He thought he’d come to terms with having a reduced lifespan, but he was hoping he still had years, a decade or two even.
“Buy you some time” hadn’t sounded like he had that long. He didn’t say anything to Sheri about that. Thankfully it was one of the few conversations she’d missed. He doubted he’d talk to Ben about it either—Ben always became upset when Elliot talked about things like that.
They had made plans to go out to eat on the way home, so before he knew it, Sheri was parking outside their favorite diner. They went in, ordered, and sat in the booth they often occupied when they came here.
Sheri prattled on about something as they both picked at their sandwiches. Elliot couldn’t have told anybody exactly what she said. He didn’t answer more than uh-huh and huh-uh. He knew he wasn’t good company, but he just couldn’t make himself care right then.
After a while, Elliot couldn’t stand the silence anymore. He took a gulp of his tea, then launched into a subject he knew would meet with resistance. “So, I’ve been thinking about the Pennsylvania trip to work on Ben’s house. I’d almost rather not go, but then I feel like I really need to. Daniel has a good point about me not holing up in the house and just giving up on things I want to do.”
“How soon are we talking about here, Elle?” Sheri was concerned.
Elliot absently pushed a crust
of bread around his plate. “Not until the doctor releases me for travel.”
Sheri pushed her empty plate away. “I wish you wouldn’t go so far away and do manual labor. There’s no one there to watch out for you. What if you need to call for help again?”
“I’m sure 911 works just as well in Pennsylvania, Cher.” He depressed one end of the corner piece of crust. The two slices of bread were held together by mayonnaise, so the other side of both poked up into the air. Absently he made the crust dance this way and that. “And I’m not going to do manual labor. Only painting and maybe putting the molding on. That kind of stuff. And then only if I feel like it. I’ll stop at the first symptoms of anything wonky, and I’ll have my regular meds and the nitroglycerin tabs if I need them.”
“Yeah, but what if it happens like the first time and you can’t get to your phone? Ben won’t be there to help.” She absently scratched her forefinger with her thumbnail, as she sometimes did when she was anxious or upset. “As weird as it is even believing in ghosts, let alone interacting positively with one, it is reassuring that he’s there with you and can help.”
“I’m not going to live like an invalid, Cher. If the doctors insist I don’t have my planned-upon sixty more years left, I’m at least going to live what time I do have to the fullest. And that means doing what I want to do.” The crust finally separated and the two slices of bread flopped to either side of his finger. “Besides, the traveling itself will be the hardest part, and I have my own plane and pilot so I don’t have to wait for hours in the airport or deal with crowds of people or, heaven forbid, sit beside them on a cramped plane. That’s where all the stress in flying is anyway.”
Sheri smiled, twirling her straw around in her glass of soda. “Yeah, I can just see you now, sitting in a window seat next to a mother and a six-month-old baby.”
“Or worse, a six-year-old.” Elliot exaggerated his shudder.
“Mister, do you have any candy?” she whined as though she were a bored child.
Elliot affected a high voice and an enthusiastic, annoying tone. “What’s your name, mister? My name’s Johnny. Do you know anyone named Johnny? I’m named after my father. He’s in the Army. Are you in the Army? Do you know anyone in the Army? I—” He was on a roll and hadn’t planned to stop yet, but it was hard to keep going with Sheri all but literally rolling on the floor of the diner in fits of laughter.
“I can see it now,” she said when she regained control.
“Private plane. Private pilot. No jail time,” he deadpanned, and she was in stitches again as he drained the last of his tea.
SHERI DROPPED Elliot off at his house after dinner. “You sure you don’t want me to go in with you?” She reached over the bag sitting between them to unbuckle his seatbelt, like he was five years old. “Carry the suitcase?”
“It’s an overnight bag, Cher.” Elliot playfully but firmly batted her hand away. “It weighs what? Maybe five or ten pounds tops?” When his restraint finally released, he opened the car door and stepped out. “I think I can handle it.” He could see Sheri wasn’t convinced, so he changed tactics. Leaning back into the car, hands on roof and door, he waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Besides, I want to talk to Ben alone.”
She shuddered in exaggerated disgust and smacked at him across the car. “I do not want to know what you want to say to Ben.” She made shooing motions, then pushed the overnight bag toward him. “Go on. Carry your own bag. I don’t want to hear any of your mushy stuff.”
Elliot chuckled, then leaned in to grab the proffered bag. He closed the car door and walked around the vehicle, taking time to notice more of his roses were in bloom, their sweet scent reaching his nose even from the driveway. He stopped at the driver’s side window and gave Sheri an impulsive kiss on the cheek. She smiled and touched the spot warmed by his lips. She still didn’t want to let him go by himself, but she was willing to, since that was what he wanted.
“Okay. Call if you need anything, Ellie. I mean it. Anything at all.”
He grinned as he leaned his arms on the door, peering in at her. “Okay, Mom.”
She slapped him, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. He slipped away from the car without another word and made his way toward the house. He scuffed his shoes along the walkway, noticing a dandelion stubbornly poking its head through the bricks. Elliot kicked at it, but it didn’t seem deterred from its infiltration.
“Damned weeds,” he mumbled. “You probably have sixty of your closest friends hidden under there, just waiting to break up my pathway.”
The dandelion kept its secrets and declined to answer.
Elliot trudged up the stairs and across the porch. The overnight bag in his hands gained ten pounds with every step. By the time he got through the front door, he felt as though he’d run a marathon.
“Hey, Ben,” Elliot called as soon as he was in the door, trying to keep the breathlessness out of his voice. “You around?”
The laptop on the table in the foyer opened and started typing.
Really? Where else would I be?
“It’s a rhetorical question.” Elliot dropped his bag beside the table.
LOL. O. Those again.
Elliot laughed and slumped toward the living room, carrying the laptop. “Yeah. I tend to use them every once in a while.” He toed off his shoes, placed the computer on the stand beside the recliner, and collapsed into his favorite chair. Leaning it back as far as it would go, he looked up.
“Well hell,” he muttered as he noticed the crack in the plaster on the ceiling. “I thought we were finished with everything in this room.”
You’re stalling. How did everything go?
Elliot caught Ben up on everything that had happened in the last couple of days, leaving out the buy-you-some-time part. He pulled the computer onto his lap and absently stroked a finger across the top of the screen as he talked. During the day he visualized the laptop as Ben’s face and acted accordingly. He just hoped no one came in to catch him and his laptop in light foreplay. He felt crazy enough as it was and didn’t need validation of that fact. Elliot went on to tell Ben about his latest conversation with Sheri, complete with her emotions on the subject of him going to Pennsylvania by himself.
I wish u’d stay, 2.
Elliot closed his eyes in exhaustion as he laid his head back against the worn material of the recliner and chuckled. “I’m suddenly Mr. Popular,” he grumbled. “Everyone wants me to stay.”
Yeah. The fact that u just got out of the hospital after having something inserted into your heart has nothing 2 do with it.
“I’m not going right away.” Elliot rubbed his weary eyes and ran a hand through his hair. “And as I told Sheri, I plan to get the doctor’s approval first.”
Well, I hope he doesn’t give it 2 u. I don’t want u 2 go.
Elliot’s expression softened as he read the words. Then he dropped his head back against the chair. “I’ll miss you too, Ben. But I will be back.”
The keys were silent for a long time. Elliot could tell Ben was still in the room, so he tried to wait him out. Eventually he couldn’t help but look at the screen expectantly, as if Ben could have quietly answered and Elliot had just missed it.
Finally, Ben typed ok.
“Just okay?”
Just okay.
Elliot smiled and didn’t know if Ben was truly capitulating or if he was just saving up for a lecture that night during a dream. “Okay.”
Elliot dropped his head back a final time, giving in to the sandman before he knew it.
THEY’RE OUTSIDE, sitting on a porch swing that in reality probably hadn’t been there for decades. This is different. Their nightly meetings are usually in the bedroom.
“Outside?” Elliot asks.
Ben’s curled up on the swing with his head in Elliot’s lap as Elliot plays with his hair. “Does that mean we’re not having sex tonight?”
“Not necessarily.” Ben rolls his head back a little and looks up at Elliot misch
ievously. “We used to… I mean, Patrick and me…. I mean, didn’t you ever want to have sex outside?”
“Weeeellll,” Elliot draws out as he leers down at Ben.
Ben laughs and burrows his head into Elliot’s crotch. “I forgot who I’m talking to. Of course you’ve already had sex outside. Probably in every conceivable environment.”
Elliot smiles, trying not to get hard at the motion of Ben’s head. “Not every environment. Never in the ocean. Well, not totally submersed in the ocean, like not in the deep ocean.”
“OMG, just say you’ve gotten it on in the water before.” Ben starts moving the porch swing.
“Really, Ben? You’re going to start talking in textspeak now?” Elliot goes along with the sway of the swing, enjoying the sensations their moving bodies create where they touch.
Ben chuckles and starts petting Elliot’s knee. “I’ve been talking in textspeak. The laptop is talking for me during the day.”
Elliot knows that, of course, so he shrugs and get back to the topic. “Also, I’ve never done it in a barn. No wait, would a stable count?”
Ben rolls his eyes and smacks Elliot’s leg. A slight breeze starts up, and Elliot feels it loosely ruffling his own hair, even as he smooths Ben’s hair down from where the wind puffed it into Ben’s face.
“Okay.” Elliot ticks off on his fingers where they lay on Ben’s head, which puts them partially in Ben’s face and he blows at them like they’re hair he can move with a breath. “There was the ubiquitous car. That’s not even noteworthy. The sand dune. Behind the bleachers. And oh—” Elliot shudders with the sudden memory “—in the poison ivy patch. Now that wasn’t planned. Well, the ivy part wasn’t planned. The doing it in the woods was.”
“I’m beginning to be sorry I brought this up.” Ben moves his head to look up at Elliot, which means he also provides friction to Elliot’s groin.
