“What’s a coma?”
“Deep sleep. So deep that no one can wake you up.”
“I don’t feel tired now.”
“I should get the doctor.” The girl leaned forward, prepar-ing to stand.
“No. Don’t go away.”
She smiled, and Thomas felt a tingle of happiness.
“Where have you been?” she asked him.
“In my coma?”
“No. Before. Eric said that you went away to live with your father and grandmother but ended up on the street.”
Thomas felt good in his bed. He sat up, and an electric whistle began to sound. He thought about his life in terms of the girl’s question, leaving the house he was raised in and then ending up on the street.
“Is Eric going to come see me?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’d be here now, but he had to take Mona to the doctor for a rash on her forehead.”
“Are you Eric’s girlfriend?”
Raela nodded solemnly.
“Oh my God!” the nurse coming into his room exclaimed.
“You’re awake.”
Doctors and nurses bustled around him soon after that.
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They hurried the girl away and rolled Thomas into a room where they examined him from head to toe. The chief doctor probed his body with her fingers and kept asking how it felt.
They looked into his eyes and ears and talked to one another, expressing surprise.
Finally the woman explained that he had experienced severe trauma to his system. He’d been in a coma for nearly six months, and it would be a while before he would be able to walk or take care of himself.
“Where’s my cart?” he asked when the doctor had finished.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“My shopping cart. That’s where I got all my stuff.”
“I don’t know. Maybe the police took it after the shooting.
That was a wonderful thing you did.”
After a while they wheeled him back into his room. He had hoped the girl would still be there, but she wasn’t.
“Would you like me to turn the TV on, hon?” a plump redheaded nurse asked while pulling the blankets up to his chest.
“No thanks. I don’t like TV too much.”
“I wish my kids felt like that,” she said. “All they do is watch that thing. Between the one-eyed monster and video games, they don’t have the sense to come in outta the rain.”
When she left, Thomas thought about his books and the look in the doctor’s eye when she complemented his bravery.
The room was very quiet and white. Painfully, he pulled himself to a seated position at the head of the bed. This made him a little dizzy, but it was manageable. He realized, a little sadly, that his travels in the valley were a dream.
“Maybe this is a dream too,” he whispered. “Maybe everything is. Maybe it’s not even me dreaming.”
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With these thoughts he fell into a light doze.
As he slept he tumbled down mountainsides, was attacked by feral dogs, and was raped unmercifully by boys from the desert facility whose names he had forgotten. But none of this pained him. His mother died, but she came back to console him. His brother got lost in a wilderness but still made it home in time for dinner. He found himself adrift on a tiny raft in the middle of the ocean, floating in circles and being laughed at by cruel dolphins. In this last ordeal Thomas thought that it might be time to fall over the side, allowing himself to sink under the waves. He wanted to die and be with his mother and Alicia, Chilly, Bruno, and Pedro. He could look for Eric’s wife.
Eric.
When he opened his eyes again he was still sitting upright.
The sun through the window had moved a good six feet across the wall. The door was open, and a moment later Eric was standing there.
“Are you a dream, Eric?” he asked.
The blue-eyed Titan came up to the bed and cupped his brother’s face with both hands.
“I’m sorry I let them take you, Tommy. And for making Mama Branwyn sick.”
“Ahn said that she thought you would hurt me,” Thomas replied. “But I told her that you always saved me.”
Eric pulled up the visitor’s chair, and the brothers talked for hours. In a haphazard, rambling manner, Thomas told his story. He started out with drug dealing and Monique and Lily. Then he talked about his alley and his father’s arrests.
“He isn’t really a bad guy,” Thomas said. “But he was just mad all the time because people were always trying to take things from him.”
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When Eric told his story, it started with the beached green fish that he caught with his hands and unfolded event by event until Raela came to his house and said that they were meant to be.
In the middle of his story, a nurse popped her head in to tell Eric that visiting hours were over.
“This is my brother,” he said. “We haven’t seen each other since we were six. I can’t leave him.”
The nurse, a middle-aged Chicano woman, smiled and nodded, then quietly closed the door.
Eric confessed his crimes against the people he should have loved. He killed his mother and Branwyn and Drew and Christie. He won every game he ever played that was important. He failed to bring happiness into his father’s life.
“But Dad doesn’t think that,” Thomas stated with certainty. “All that stuff is just in your head.”
Eric thought about his self-portrait and the worried look on his art teacher’s face. Something fell together for him. He wasn’t complaining or distraught — just feeling empty.
Thomas took Eric’s hand and asked, “What about that girl?
Do you love her?”
“No. I mean, she’s the only one other than you or Mama Branwyn that ever made me feel something. But it’s a little like I’m afraid of her, the way I used to feel about Ahn, but more.”
“Because why?” Thomas asked.
Eric smiled, remembering those words from their childhood, because why.
“I guess I don’t want anyone to know what I’m like on the inside. I feel ugly, you know? Except when I think about you or Mama Branwyn.”
*
*
*
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Th ey tal ke d w i th out holding anything back. It had been more than a dozen years and the boys hadn’t had one thing in common since the day they were separated, but still it was as if they’d been apart for only a day. They giggled and awed each other; they played and vowed never to be parted again.
“I will never let them take you away, Tommy.”
“And I won’t go nowhere.”
E ri c d i dn ’t leave the hospital until Thomas was asleep, and he was back the next morning with his father, Ahn, and Mona.
“I’m so sorry,” Minas told Branwyn’s son. “I should have done something to keep you. Or at least to find you once we knew that you were lost.”
“That’s okay,” Thomas said. “It’s really not all that bad. I mean, it’s kinda like a dream. I’m not mad at you. And I don’t care about what happened to me. I mean, even when you get shot it only hurts for a while. And if you don’t get all upset about it and nobody shoots at you again, then it’s okay. Or if you’re hungry it’s like that too. Because sooner or later you’re gonna eat, and then you’re not hungry no more. Right?”
Thomas liked being with the whole family, but it wasn’t the same as his time alone with Eric. With Eric he could say anything without thinking, but with the family it was more like he had a part to play. He didn’t mind though. He liked the role.
“You’re the man who saved me,” three-year-old Mona said during a lull in the conversation.
“That’s right,” Eric told her. “This is Uncle Tommy.”
“T’ank you, Uncle Tommy.”
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“What would you like to do after you get out of here, Thomas?” Dr. Nolan asked.
“I don’t know. The doctor said that they lost my cart.
Everything I had was in there. I had pictures of Monique and my blank book with my writings. I’d like to find that if I could.”
“But what would you like to do? ”
“What you mean?” Tommy squinted for a moment, remembering the brightness that had driven him away from elementary school.
“Do you want a job? Do you want to go to school? Where would you like to live?”
“Could I stay with you guys for a while?”
“Of course,” Dr. Nolan said. “As long as you want.”
“Yaaaaaa,” Mona sang.
That a f te rnoon th e police were dispatched with a warrant to arrest Thomas Beerman, aka Bruno Forman. They sent Pittman and Rodriguez because the officers could iden-tify the young con-man escapee.
“Thomas Beerman,” Officer Pittman announced. “You are under arrest.”
“No. I didn’t do anything. I, I saved the little girl’s life.”
“You presented yourself to the police with fraudulent identification and you escaped from the juvenile facility where you were being detained.”
For Thomas the facility was a long-ago dream. He couldn’t imagine that they would send him back there now that he was reunited with his family.
“No,” he said.
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“No,” Dr. Bettye Freeling repeated. She was standing at the door to Thomas’s room. “This is my patient, and he is far too weak to be moved.”
“We have a warrant for his arrest, ma’am,” Rodriguez said with an apology in his voice.
“I’m a doctor,” she replied. “This is my patient, and you cannot take him without my permission.”
“ I t ’s p ret ty c lear- c ut ,” Nathan Frear, the lawyer, said to Minas Nolan and his son.
They were in Frear’s office at the top floor of a Westwood office highrise.
“He was convicted of assault on police officers in an attempt to keep them from their duty. It says that he was part of an organized group that opened fire on the officers trying to arrest them.”
“He was twelve,” Eric said. “He didn’t even have a gun.”
“But he was part of the group, and he was convicted under a law devised to dampen gang activity.”
“But he wasn’t part of a gang. He was twelve and nearly homeless. He was just trying to stay alive.”
“All of that evidence was presented in court,” Frear said.
“The judge still found him guilty.”
“What will happen if he goes to trial?” Minas asked.
“Either he’ll be returned to the juvenile authority or, more likely, he will be sentenced as an adult and will serve the full term of the original sentence plus whatever else the judge might want to tack on for his further crimes.”
“What crimes?” Eric asked. “All he did was save my daughter from Drew.”
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“He lied to the police; he escaped from custody. He committed identity theft by using a social security card that belonged to Bruno Forman. The prosecutor might even try to implicate him with the man who killed your girlfriend.
After all, Drew Peters used Thomas’s cart to block the door and keep you from saving your wife.”
Frear was tall and extraordinarily thin. His dark-blue suit was made from the finest material, and his aqua tie had a ruby tack that held it perfectly in place.
“That’s crazy,” Minas said. “He’s just a boy.”
“He’s a man,” Frear corrected, “homeless and black. A convicted felon, an admitted drug dealer, an escapee from a state institution, and there’s even some evidence that he was involved in the slaying of a customer of his, a Raymond
‘RayRay’ Smith.
“I can take the case, but it’s going to be very expensive.
And without remarkable luck, he’s looking at anywhere from six to ten years in a maximum security prison.”
B et tye F re e l i ng coul d keep the police from taking Thomas for three more weeks. Minas decided to retain Frear.
The initial fee was fifty thousand dollars. The lawyer visited Thomas twice but received little help from his client.
“I just took a walk,” Thomas said, answering Frear’s question about how his escape occurred. “I just meant to go around the block, but then I kept on walking. It was such a nice day, I remember. The sky had those big white clouds that everybody likes so much.”
When Frear wanted to know about the shooting, all Thomas could recall was Tremont coming out with his Uzi and the police opening fire.
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“He went crazy, I think,” Thomas said. “He was mad that the police wanted to be messin’ with him.”
“Did you know about the Uzi?”
“Sure. We all did.”
“Did you know that it was against the law to have that weapon?”
“Tremont was the law in that alley,” Thomas said. “That was the first time I ever saw a cop down there in the three years I worked for him.”
“So you worked for him for three years?” Frear asked.
“Yeah.”
Frear decided not to put Thomas on the stand.
R a e la , i n th e meanwhile, emptied a special account that Kronin had set up for her. Using her ATM card, she took out five hundred dollars a day for twenty days.
She spent the afternoons helping Eric with Thomas’s physical therapy and the evenings sleeping with Eric in his childhood bed.
Her mother and father threatened to call the police, but she knew they wouldn’t. Eric’s father told his son that Raela was too young, but after a few dinner conversations with the dark-hued girl, he gave up his arguments.
Minas Nolan blamed himself for Christie’s death because he made Eric move out. He wouldn’t kick his son out again.
Raela spent long evenings talking to Ahn and Minas. She had read thousands of books since the age of eight. She was considerate and mature. She helped with the dishes and explained that she and Eric would be married one day soon.
“He needs me,” she said to Minas one evening while everyone else was in bed.
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“Eric doesn’t need anyone,” Minas replied. He was embarrassed by the mild note of contempt in his voice.
“No, Dr. Nolan,” Raela said, sounding more like fifty than fifteen. “He’s afraid of people. He thinks everybody is too weak and that if he isn’t careful he’ll hurt them. He blames himself for you losing Mama Branwyn. He even thinks that he caused Tommy to get lost.”
Minas felt the weight of her words in his chest. He realized, maybe for the first time, how closely physical heart disease was connected to the emotional heart. The girl was telling him a truth that he’d always avoided. He knew that Eric had been forced to carry the weight of his broken heart.
He knew that his son had lived with Christie because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
“How do you know all this?” he asked the child.
“Because I’m just like him,” she said. “Or almost. My life has been just like his, only I don’t worry about people like he does.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Because you can’t save anyone.”
“I save people all the time,” the doctor said, wondering at his need to argue with the child.
“But when people die on your operating table, do you believe that they were going to die with or without you?”
After that evening Minas could not remember if he’d answered her question. He’d lost eight patients under the knife. Eight lives that he could not save. He’d forgotten most of their names and didn’t attend any of their funeral
s. He’d washed his hands vigorously after every failure, gone home and got into bed. He wondered how a child knew all of that.
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*
*
*
At th e e nd of three weeks Raela gave the ten thousand dollars she’d collected to Eric. The next day Ahn and Raela went with Eric to the hospital and helped Thomas down the stairs and then to the station, where the brothers boarded a train bound for Phoenix.
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On the trip to Phoenix, Thomas said to his brother,
“You didn’t have to come with me, Eric. If you just gave me a ticket and a couple a bucks I coulda gone on my own.”
“But what would you do when you got there?”
“I don’t know. There’s always somethin’ to do. It’s not that hard.”
“I know, Tommy,” Eric said. “But we just found each other. The only reason you would even go to jail is because you were looking for me and because you saved Mona.”
“But what about her?” Thomas asked. “She needs you to be with her.”
“It’s not gonna take long,” Eric explained. “We just need to set you up somewhere where the police won’t find you.
Then I’ll go back home. I promise.”
Thomas stopped arguing. He was happy to be able to spend time with Eric. He knew that Eric could use his help, that he was somehow lost and needed Thomas to lead him out of a dark corridor. He could tell by the way Eric looked away so often. There was even sadness in his smile.
So they took a room in a Phoenix residence hotel and began to plan for Thomas’s future.
*
*
*
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Th e f i r st th i ng they did was go shopping for clothes.
They cruised through Banana Republic buying sweaters, shirts, pants, jackets, underwear, socks, and even a hat for Thomas. The young man was amazed by the variety and cost of these things. He hadn’t been to a clothes store since his days with Monique and Lily when he’d buy a new pair of pants and a T-shirt at JC Penney once every six months or so.
At the same mall they bought walking shoes and a big suitcase for the trip that Eric had planned.
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