Crossing Borders

by Z. A. Maxfield

  “Oh, Mom.” Tristan began to cry again.

  “I’m not strong enough to love anyone except you kids. That’s my choice. I feel like I can live with that.”

  “Shit.”

  “On the other hand, baby, everybody dies,” Julia murmured, putting her arms back around him. “Everything ends. It’s not good enough to find yourself a nice, safe architect.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “So you either love or you don’t; the end is out of your hands.” She gave him a hard squeeze. “But how you live and what you can stand, that’s on you, Tristan, and I urge you to make your decision with your eyes wide open and cherish what you get.”

  Tristan closed his eyes and just leaned on her as he always had. Always would. “Love you.”

  “Love you back,” said Julia.

  They stayed like that for a while, until Julia decided Tristan needed to eat and over his protests went to Carl’s Jr. to purchase some lunch for him. He was enjoying a shake when a commotion started at the door, the officers in the room getting up and moving all at once. At first his heart stopped because he thought something might have happened to Michael ‑‑ that he might have taken a turn for the worse ‑‑ and he closed his eyes against the pain of that. Then he felt a strong, sure hand tug at his, and he realized Emma had returned at last.

  “Come on, baby,” she said. “I got your messages. Let’s go kick some ass.”

  “Huh?” Tristan said as she pulled him to the information desk.

  “My name is Emma Truax; I’m Officer Truax’s mother. And this?” she said. “Is Tristan, who for the purposes of this discussion is also my son.”

  Tristan noticed the doctor seemed tired when he’d looked briefly at his eyes, but after that, he found he could focus only on the man’s clogs, which were screaming red polyvinyl and looked like nothing so much as red licorice made into footwear. While focused on the whimsical shoes, critical information that included the words perforated, collapsed, nicked, hemorrhage, the number of units of transfused blood, the nature of each and every lurking danger, and Michael’s prognosis for recovery bounced off of him and around the sterile hallway like little steel ball bearings.

  “Anyway,” the doctor said at last, replacing the pen he was making notes with into the pocket of his lab coat. “It’s a very serious, life-threatening injury. I don’t mean to frighten you, but the only reason he made it this far is that he had an EMT on scene at the time of the stabbing, and he was less than ten minutes away. He’s a lucky man, and I’m counting on his luck to hold a little longer.” He looked at them seriously, wanting them to understand the truth of his words. “It needs to.”

  Tristan blinked at him. The doctor seemed to be done. He wanted to ask the only question he cared about at that moment, but fear clogged his throat.

  “Can we see him?” Emma asked for him.

  “One at a time and for no more than a few minutes.” He looked at Tristan closely. “Are you Tristan?” he asked.

  Tristan couldn’t imagine how he knew. “Yes,” he answered. “Was he conscious? Did he ask for me?”

  “No,” said the doctor. “The ink.” He pointed to his own ankle. “The rules are immediate family only,” he began, and Emma drew herself up into what Tristan could only think of as a fighting stance and pulled him to her, standing as tall as she could at his back, which was not very, really.

  “But you’re not going to be a jerk about it.” She smiled. “Isn’t that what you were going to say?”

  “No,” said the doctor. “I was going to say if you need anything and anyone gives you any trouble, page me immediately.” He gave a card to each Tristan and Emma. “I’ll handle it.” He stared at Tristan. “Love makes people get well faster. But not too much love.” He shook his head at Tristan before he left.

  “What the…” said Tristan. He turned to Emma. “You go.” He gave her a little push.

  “No, honey, I can wait,” she said. “You go on. I think I’ve had longer to get used to the idea of this.”

  Tristan swallowed hard. “I’m…” he began, in a whisper. “I’m scared. You go first. Tell me what to expect, okay?”

  Emma stroked his arm. “All right, baby. I’ll go in. You lean against the wall; you look like you’re going to fall right over.” She slipped quietly through the door.

  Tristan stood with his back against the wall. The Jeopardy theme was back. He looked at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, going over in his mind all the things he knew about light as if remembering what he knew about science could somehow tilt the scales of fortune in his favor in this place.

  It seemed like an interminable wait before Emma came out. Her eyes were red. “I think I was kidding myself,” she murmured. “I could never get used to the idea of that.”

  Tristan put a hand out to steady her. “Mom’s out there.” He indicated the waiting room.

  “Thank you.”

  Tristan watched her walk away. It only remained now for him to open the door to the small room where Michael lay injured, yet he found he had little courage to do so.

  Heart pounding, mouth dry, Tristan entered the room, immediately aware of the beeping of the monitors and the stillness of the form on the hospital bed. Michael was connected to tubes everywhere. Bags hung from poles to hydrate and deliver medication, a nasal cannula brought oxygen, and tubes entered his hand from the I.V. and exited from under his sheet carrying urine. Everything was monitored, his heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure glowing green and red on machines. A small sound from the bed captured his attention immediately.

  “Michael?” he asked, taking Michael’s still hand in his. There was no response. The doctor said Michael was medicated and would remain unconscious for a while. That much he remembered anyway. He held Michael’s hand in his, the tanned skin against his own very white and freckly hand reassuring.

  “Did I fail to mention how very impossible it would be for me to live without you?” he whispered. He continued stroking Michael’s hand, murmuring to him, and found the courage to sweep the short hair back from his brow, placing a kiss on his lips.

  “You’re my guy, remember?” he asked. “I need you, Michael.” Tristan continued his soft-spoken and one-sided conversation until he realized his time was up. He kissed Michael one more time, whispering, “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right here,” and then he was at the door, prepared for the interminable wait until he could see Michael again.

  “Back soon, baby,” he said and then left the room. Maybe he felt better than he had since he’d heard of Michael’s injury, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot.

  In the waiting room, Tristan was restless, his legs dancing as he tapped his feet on the hard commercial flooring. It would be hours before they’d let him see Michael again, and he felt he ought to be doing something constructive, not just sitting. His mom had gone back to her work, and Emma was dozing, snoring softly by his side. They’d begun a camp of sorts, with coffee and a box of pastries someone brought, along with books and magazines strewn about.

  At one point Tristan made a half-hearted attempt at some homework, but found he couldn’t concentrate, reading the same paragraph in his philosophy text over and over until he realized it and just shoved the damn thing away.

  “Emma,” he said, forgetting and waking her up.

  “Huh?” She jumped, her eyes wide. Tristan felt instantly contrite.

  “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He swiped tired hands over his eyes. “I’ve got to take off, get some air. I’ll have my cell. You’ll call me if…”

  “I’ll call you when they say we can see him again,” she said. “Stay close by.”

  “No more than ten minutes away,” he agreed.

  “It’s okay, baby. Go get some air.”

  The car still sat where Tristan had parked it that morning, beeping cordially when he opened the door with the remote. He knew he should have stayed. He’d said he would stay, wouldn’t leave Michael, but the war was
lost. He had to move. He’d left his heart and his soul and probably the part of his brain he thought with in the hospital room in that bed with Michael. The part that remained just needed to do something. He parked along Harbor Boulevard, thinking about the last time he’d been here, and purchased coffee that he didn’t want or need at the bakery around the corner from I.N.KD. He stepped into the small boutique and saw Jim looking at him through concerned eyes.

  “Tristan,” he said, leaning a hip against the counter. He had light brown hair, what was left of it close-cropped, and glasses. He had a mustache and a tiny V-shaped beard and was pierced in the crease between his mouth and chin. “How is he?”

  “Bad,” said Tristan numbly. “Not dead, which is good, right?”

  Jim just stared at him, his sad eyes willing him to confide, to trust. “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, I wondered if Meghan was here.” Tristan looked around again and back at the curtain separating the boutique area from where the office must be.

  “No, Meghan’s home today,” he said. At Tristan’s crestfallen expression he added, “I could call her. She’ll want to talk to you.”

  “You could?” said Tristan. “I don’t want to bother her on her day off…”

  “Let’s see what she says,” said Jim.

  Tristan was holding himself together by sheer force of will. He knew he must seem whacked at best; too much caffeine and too little calm. Crazy.

  “Meghan?” Jim said into the phone. “Michael’s friend is here to see you. Do you have time to stop by?” Tristan noticed Jim was treating him like an unexploded bomb, and he didn’t care. Jim seemed to listen and then nodded. “Fine, I’ll tell him.”

  Tristan looked at him as he hung up the phone.

  “She’ll be here in about ten minutes.”

  “Why?”

  “She went to school with Michael. We both did. He’s one of our best friends, Tristan. She’s sick with worry.”

  “Oh,” said Tristan. It had never occurred to him that someone else would feel that way, although he didn’t know why not. Michael was well liked locally as a police officer and by everyone who knew him. Anyone on the force was bound to be anxious and angry that he’d been attacked, but Tristan hadn’t even considered his friends, hadn’t thought beyond himself and Emma, and maybe Edward. “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s tough. He’ll make it.” He cleared his throat and turned to look at the street through the window.

  “Thanks.” Tristan sipped his coffee in order to have some reason to be holding it. They stood in silence, not really aware of the passage of time until a gust of air blowing the back curtain told them Meghan had come. She went straight to Tristan, her eyes red from crying and allowed him to fold her into his arms.

  “Shit,” she said. Apparently she had the same etiquette book his mother had, or at least had gone to the same finishing school. Condolence 101. “This is such shit. In high school he was my rock. When the other kids gave me crap, he was always there for me.” She sniffed loudly, bringing a tissue to her nose and eyes.

  “He’s going to be okay,” said Tristan, his mouth working the words, but his head and his heart were someplace else, so they were hollow in his ears.

  “You can probably tell how easily I fit in at school,” she said wetly, tears streaming down her inked face.

  Tristan laughed.

  “He’s going to die inside when he hears about Mary,” she added, squeezing her eyes shut. “Even though she stabbed him, he’s going to think it’s his fault Mary died.”

  Tristan stared at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He looked from one to the other. “Mary died?”

  Jim and Meghan looked back at him with wide eyes. “How much did you see on the news?”

  “None of it. I was in school, and my mom called me. I listened to the radio on the way to the hospital, and they only said ‑‑” He looked out the front window where the sun was beginning to set between the office buildings across the street. “Was that just this morning?”

  Jim quietly told him how Michael came to be stabbed. “I have a friend who works for the FPD in dispatch; she went to school with my brother, Ian. She filled me in.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Tristan, who knew very well Michael would carry Mary with him until he died. If he…

  “Sparky,” said Meghan, almost as though she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. “He calls you Sparky.”

  “Yeah.” Tristan took her hand in his. He had come up with an idea sitting in the hospital, and the more he thought about it, the more inevitable it became. “Can you mark me?”

  “What?”

  “Can you mark me with the same band that’s on his ankle, the exact same thing? On the small of my back, here?” He turned and pointed to the base of his spine, an inch or two above the crack in his ass. “Exactly like his?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can do that.”

  “Okay. Now?”

  “Yeah. You want his name?”

  “No…yes.” He thought about the police officers with their implacable eyes, the clerks and the rules and the hospital policies. “Put his name, with the lock in the ‘a’ like it is on Michael’s ankle, but put his badge number,” he said. “Put FPD and his badge number, do you know it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I do,” said Tristan. “I’ll write it down.”

  Tristan lay face down on a clean white towel, listening to the crunch of the paper that covered the vinyl-padded surface of the table. He could hear the grinding buzz of the needle as Meghan applied it to his skin. He needed the sting and the burn and the almost-pain that she was inflicting on him. It was like a hard hand holding him down, anchoring him to the earth when his biggest fear was that he would fly apart and drift away with no one the wiser. The pain held him in place like a drug he needed.

  “This hurts too much in one place, you say so. I can move away and then come back to that spot later.”

  “No,” said Tristan, gritting his teeth, liking the tears that burned his eyes and the ache in his throat. “It’s fine.”

  Meghan put her head down and kept going, stopping every so often to look at her work and dab specks of blood away with a piece of rolled-up gauze. She sniffled every so often, but other than that made hardly a sound unless she spoke, periodically, to see how he was taking the procedure.

  The white towel beneath Tristan was damp with sweat and drool and the thousand tears he shed as he lay there. When Meghan was finished and had covered his new ink with a dressing, she helped him rise from the table, giving him the same talk about aftercare she’d given Michael only a couple of weeks before. He nodded every so often, his mind wandering.

  “And that means the ink will still be there when the skin finishes peeling, so don’t be thinking your tattoo is peeling off and panic, okay?” she said finally, squeezing his hand in hers. He hadn’t paid much attention until that moment, and she probably knew it.

  “I’ve got to get back,” he said. The sky outside was full dark, and he had no idea what time it was or when Jim had left, although he clearly had.

  “Hey,” she said quietly. “Can you leave your phone number so we can call and check up? We don’t have Emma’s; I tried earlier. She must have changed cell numbers.”

  “Sure, but I can’t have it turned on in the hospital. I’ll check it periodically.” Tristan wrote his number down on the appointment book for her. “Thank you for seeing me today,” he said.

  “You’re welcome. I hope you never regret having Michael’s ink on your ass.” She looked at him, her sad eyes going sadder. “Seems like every day I’m changing Sarah to Sherry or scratching it out and putting Nancy next to it.” She blinked back tears. “I did a Larry to Harry on a guy just the other week with a little Harry Potter face next to it.”

  “Oh, man,” said Tristan, picturing picking up a guy and finding out he had Harry Potter’s face on his ass. “Look, whatever happens…I’ll never belong to anyone else the way I belong to Michael r
ight now. I know that. I just hope…” He trailed off. Tristan was thinking he hoped he had the balls to stay with Michael. He was thinking that if he lost Michael, he’d never smile again. He was thinking of the very real possibility that Michael might not make it and what that would mean to him, when his cell phone rang. He looked at the number and saw it was Emma’s.

  “Emma.” He told Meghan, just looking at it. She gripped his hand hard. “Hello,” he said, swallowing.

  “It’s time,” said Emma. “They say we can see him for a few minutes each.” She seemed to wait for him to say something.

  “Any change?”

  “No, baby, he’s still unconscious. But he hasn’t taken a turn for the worse.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Ten minutes, fifteen if parking is a problem.”

  “Fine.” She hung up. He smiled at Meghan mechanically.

  “I’m going to see him; there’s been no change, better or worse.”

  “Go,” said Meghan simply. “I’ll call you.”

  He began to remove his wallet, tensing when he felt the rasp of his trousers against his new tattoo. “What do I owe you?”

  “For heaven’s sake, go!” she said. “I know where Michael lives. We’ll worry about that later.” She tugged his hand one more time and then let go, and he left.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A warm spring breeze scented with onions and peppers cooking rushed past Michael as he rode his Harley out old Route 66, past the business district and the little gas stations and restaurants and souvenir stands that went mostly belly-up when the powers that be decided that Interstate 20 would be a good idea, and relished the feel of his Sparky holding his waist as they sped up. How he loved the feel of the road beneath him, his boy behind him, and the sun on his shoulders. It just didn’t get any better than this. They passed a small historical car museum and dumpy hotel, and he could hear, although he really didn’t know how, Tristan keeping up a steady stream of chatter in his head about all the interesting places along the side of the road.