Doc protested as best as he could as he slid along the hallway to his office with Gar following cautiously at his heels. Doc was trying to imagine what Gar must have been thinking. Doc’s speech was so impaired that he could not be sure that Gar understood anything he had asked. The only goal Doc had now was to reach the sanctity of his office and lock the door behind him.
In Doc’s mind Gar may have been wondering whether it was alcohol, whether it was a bad reaction to prescription drugs, and whether his responsibility was to obey Doc at his word or call for unwanted emergency medical help. Certainly Gar had not considered the awful truth: an embolism had traveled up Doc’s carotid artery and was blocking a series of smaller capillaries in his brain. Even Doc could not wrap his mind around that awful specter. Doc found himself sliding down the wall as Gar eased him to the cold tile floor.
In fact, Gar had already made a choice between throwing Doc in the patrol car to head to the emergency room or calling an ambulance on his police radio. Within four minutes the flashing red lights of the boxy ambulance were reflecting through the glass doors onto the walls of the roll call room and the flood of people, radios and equipment crushed in around him.
Doc was suddenly aware of being awake. He had no idea how long he was unconscious, he was just aware that he had lost track of time. The incessant whirr and click of machines and low voices coming in and out of the room created a drab wallpaper of sound. Nothing seemed to come into focus as fuzzy human shapes approached and receded for hours on end. Ben’s voice was close to his ear when Doc realized that he wasn‘t alone in the room.
“You still with us, Dad?” Ben whispered cautiously.
Doc’s tongue felt thick and his arms were limp as if burdened by heavy weights. There was some kind of a disconnect between his brain and his muscle: his tongue and limbs would not respond to their cerebral commander. Doc could only stare back helplessly at the ceiling when Ben slipped his hand, chilled from the heavily air-conditioned room, into his own palm.
“I need you to wake up,” Ben pleaded. “I know you’re still here.”
Eventually Ben’s hand slipped from his palm and Doc was alone with the muffled voices coming and going in the spare, dimly lit room. Some voices were familiar as Gar and Ben faded in and out, sometimes separately and sometimes in combination. The other voices were totally unfamiliar, speaking in the jargon of the ICU colony in emotionless tones. He only seemed to be able to look straight up at the ceiling without blinking. There was no demarcation between day and night, no sense of how long he had been there. It must have been days since Will and John and Anna were also taking turns keeping a vigil at his bedside.
Doc could tell that it would be a long recovery. He was aware of his body lying on the bed including the heaviness of his arms and legs and the cool sensation of the sheet on his skin under the thin hospital blanket. He wondered if he would have to re-learn to walk and talk. If insurance didn’t cover his physical therapy, he could be financially ruined. He still had Ben’s last year of college to pay for, not to mention two daughters in high school with their college expenses and weddings ahead of them. A medical retirement seemed a likely scenario, but it would not adequately provide for his children’s needs.
“You’ve come a long way from George Clark High, old buddy.” Doc felt a heavy hand on his left shoulder as Gar’s voice proceeded. “You wouldn’t have given me the time of day in high school, yet here we are, best friends for over twenty years, watching out for each other, helping each other back to our feet when we crashed through relationships.”
After a pause he continued, “I think this one’s gonna work for me, Doc. Not that I’m any better equipped to be a husband than the last couple times, but she understands me. I think we’re gonna make it. I learned a lot from you, Doc, and I’ll always be grateful. One of these days we’ll kick back and laugh about old times again. I’ll catch you up on what’s going on in my life.” Gar’s voice trailed off for a few minutes as the machine noise provided filler. “I can’t believe you’re letting go. When Ben gets back from the airport with Amelia, it will be showtime, buddy. You need to give me a sign that you hear me.”
Doc was screaming inside his head yet not a sound passed his lips. The whirr and click of his mechanical breathing apparatus kept a steady beat. Gar kept a slower pace of inhalation and expiration.
“Had the funniest call last night, Doc. Stolen Chevy four door, broken passenger window, punched ignition. So I had the dispatcher call the owner and she came out. It was a nun, Doc. A real nice lady with about twenty years on us. Anyway, I show her how to pull the alligator clip in the turn signal pod with a screwdriver - in fact, the screwdriver the bad guys left on the floor mat - and she is thrilled. She’s all excited about how now she knows how to ‘hotwire’ a car. So I ask her if she’s thinking about a job change with her new skill. She says probably not right now, but if they ever knock out that pesky commandment about stealing, she’s already trained for a new career…you had to be there, I guess.”
Gar searched for another story until he settled on a more serious vein. “You used to tell me that sometimes the longest road was the most direct route. It was a hard saying to understand, but I think I know what you meant now. We have to take all the detours and roundabout routes to appreciate the different experiences life has to offer. Otherwise we just keep going back and forth between point A and point B and never get to our final destination.” He added a final note, “How about that? Sometimes I even think like you after all these years.”
Gar heard the rustle of John and Anna at the door and faded back to the recesses of the room. John and Anna moved up to the bedside as they had for several days, almost used to the spontaneous changing of the guard between themselves, Gar, Will and Ben. Words were not spoken, words were not needed. Quiet tears washed Anna’s cheeks while John choked emotion back. They stood vigil until Will moved into place allowing John and Anna a chance to decompress from the hours of standing watch. When the room was cleared, Will began to speak softly.
“How you doing, Dad? I never called you that before. In fact, I never asked you what you wanted to be called: Dad, Doc, Bill, hey you. It sounds crazy, but I was afraid that if I called you Dad, you would tell me to call you by your name instead. I didn’t want you to take that away from me, so, if you noticed, I never called you anything after the first night we met. Calling you Dad just now doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s because you can’t tell me if you want me to stop.”
Nothing more was spoken until Ben arrived from the airport with Amelia. When they walked into the room, he could hear her voice in the background. Amelia kept her distance although Doc could feel her presence. His two daughters would not fly down to Texas for this moment. Amelia came only for Ben’s sake.
“Would you like a few more minutes?” an unfamiliar woman’s voice inquired. Will and Ben had spent many hours hoping this moment would not come. Ben looked back at Amelia who stood her ground biting her lower lip with her eyes closed. John and Anna stood on the other side of the bed in quiet resignation.
Ben murmured, “No, we’re ready.” The whirr and click stopped. Ben’s wet face was framed in Doc’s view. Will’s right arm was around Ben’s shoulder, but Will wore an expression that did not betray his emotions. Doc could feel the fingers of Anna’s hand on his face. Her own face was beginning to betray her courage. Doc felt his lungs deflate except for the residual breath held in as his focus began to blur. Sparkles of light danced in his eyes.
“You had no other choice, Ben,” echoed Will’s words in Doc’s head. Doc could no longer hear his heart pounding in his ears and the ringing of his tinnitus had vanished. He was no longer feeling the bone-cold chill in his feet from the heavily air-conditioned room.
“What do I do next, Will?”
“You just savor the last few moments and then we’ll work the other problems out later with John and Anna, Ben. He’s my father, too, but I really don’t know him. But that’s on his shoulders. All that’s
important now is that we’re brothers. Flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.”
Doc faded into a montage of Halloween with Rose and Patty and Rachel on a brisk October night laughing and chattering as the snow mushed under their feet, of John Scott in his beat up red and white Blazer waiting for the last glimpse of Doc on the bus trudging off to boot camp, of the long hike up the Blackhorse trail overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene. The scar on his soul was still visible, but there was no longer any power in its pain. A gray haze fell on the room, escalating to the darkness of a moonless winter sky.
More great novels by
Michael English Bierwiler:
MIST ON THE RIVER
THE COLOR OF DARKNESS
HIDING IN THE SHADOW OF HEAVEN
NOVEMBER SNOW
Living in Quiet Rage Page 19
