by Alan Seeger
When he didn’t come home the second night, or the third, she cried herself to sleep, believing that, somehow, she had driven her husband away.
She had been avoiding the constant question that was on the lips of her son Ricky, who was not quite twelve years old. “Where’s Dad?”
Finally she broke down in tears and told him to come and sit next to her on the sofa. He looked at his mother’s tear-stained face and the dark streaks of mascara that were running down cheeks and it scared him. He came over and sat next to her.
“Your father’s not coming home,” she said.
Ricky wasn’t a particularly worldly kid. He wasn’t privy to the machinations of what made a marriage work, or what caused one to fail; He wasn’t much on understanding romantic relationships, either. At twelve, he’d never kissed a girl, and the only female his age that he had much of anything to do with was a neighbor girl named Kara Smith, and she could both hit a baseball farther than Ricky and beat him up, so he didn’t really think in those terms.
A couple of months after his father disappeared, Ricky was home from school with a stomach bug. His mom had set him up on the living room sofa with pillows and blankets, a bowl of Jell-O and some weak tea, as well as the remote control for the TV. She gave him a smoke-scented kiss him on the forehead and told him that Mrs. Anderson from next door would pop in to check on him later, and went to work.
At first he watched the cartoons that ran in the early morning — reruns of The Jetsons and Hong Kong Phooey, old Superman episodes and the like. Then he found his eyes wouldn’t stay open and he drifted off to sleep for a while.
When he awoke, a soap opera was on the television. He’d never really watched one before — it wasn’t that his mother wouldn’t allow it; he had simply never had any interest in them.
Today, however, was different, somehow. He had been dreaming that he was following his dad, trying to catch up with him as he walked away down the street of a large city, but every time he got close, his father would disappear around a corner. He ran to try to keep up, but it seemed as though every time he got to the corner where his had had been, Dad was a little farther away. By the time he’d followed him around three or four turns, he seemed to be miles away, and Ricky was screaming at the top of his lungs: “DAD! DADDY!”
He woke suddenly and Mrs. Anderson was there, having made him a poached egg and a piece of toast. He sat up to eat, and she saw the program on the television and cooed, “Oh, this is one of my stories.” She sat down on the opposite end of the sofa and began to watch.
As far as Ricky could tell, the two women on the show were both in love with the same man. He was married to one, but “catting around” (Ricky didn’t know what that meant, but he could tell by the woman’s tone of voice that it was apparently a Bad Thing) with the other one. The two women began screaming at each other, and then the TV went to a commercial for Post 40% Bran Flakes.
It was then that it hit him.
His father was out catting around, whatever that was, with some other lady. He was probably drinking booze, too; that seemed to go along with the cat thing, based on what the lady on the TV had said. How could he do that? Didn’t his dad care anymore what happened to him and his mom? Ricky felt like his entire world was crashing down around him.
Just then, the phone rang, a harsh, metallic sound. Mrs. Anderson answered it and said, “Hello, Marie. Yes, he’s doing fine. I just made him a little breakfast. Do you want to say hello?” She handed Ricky the telephone. “It’s your mama. She’s at her work.”
“Hi, mama,” he said.
“Hi, son,” his mother’s voice crackled over the telephone line. “How are you feeling? How’s my beautiful boy?”
“Okay, I guess,” he said. This was a lie. He wanted to say, “I just found out that my dad left us because he’s catting around,” but instead he said, “Mrs. Anderson made me an egg.”
“That’s good,” his mother replied. “You get some rest, and I’ll be home soon, all right?”
“Okay,” he said. He handed the phone back to Mrs. Anderson and turned his attention back to the television. The program had moved on to a scene in a hospital room where a blonde girl was in a comma; that’s how he spelled it in his head, C-O-M-M-A. He lost interest and closed his eyes, and soon he was dreaming again.
He was chasing his dad again, except now his dad was a big black cat, and when he looked down at himself he realized that he was an even bigger brown dog. He thought maybe he was a German shepherd. He began to chase the cat, intent on punishing it for hurting him and his mom.
When he woke up an hour or so later, he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamed; he only knew that he hated his dad for leaving them.
CHAPTER 86
Stephanie led Rick deep into the bowels of the shelter; it was late afternoon, so very few of the facility’s clients were about, but the initial preparations were already being made for the evening feed.
They entered the large kitchen’s prep area in the back of the building, where several workers were busy cutting up vegetables, mixing dough for frybread, and browning up donated hamburger meat from large five pound tubes for the Indian tacos they had planned for that night.
“Hey, guys,” Stefanie said. “This is Rick. He’s volunteered to give us a hand tonight.”
One of the kitchen assistants, a tall blonde woman named Felicia, said, “Hey, Rick. Can you cut tomatoes?”
“Sure,” Rick said, and set to work doing so. He felt another bout of fatigue coming on, but he was determined to muscle through it.
They got dinner ready, and at six o’clock, a stream of hungry people began to move through the line. Rick was set to work dishing up serving spoons of crumbled, fried hamburger onto pieces of frybread, while the other line workers added the various vegetables and a spoonful of picante sauce, assembly line style.
One by one they came, the homeless, the unemployed, the underemployed, each one getting a tray of food and a cup of juice, until a tall, unwashed, almost skeletally gaunt man in a filthy tan coat moved through the line, collecting his tray of food and beverage. Suddenly, Stefanie was there at Rick’s elbow.
“Artie,” she said to the man, “would it be all right if I came and talked to you in a few minutes, while you eat? I want to introduce you to someone.”
Artie gave her a blank look, but nodded, albeit somewhat uncertainly, and went walking shakily toward the table area.
CHAPTER 87
Time is not a static thing, nor flows it at a constant pace;
It ebbs and flows like rivers fed by mountain springs and rain.
It slithers serpentine and sinuous, and its secrets always keeping,
Ever touching all that lives with pleasure and with pain.
— Unknown
CHAPTER 88
Stefanie pulled out a chair from Artie’s table. “Is it okay if we sit down with you, Artie?”
Artie glanced up, nervously, but didn’t say anything.
Stefanie pulled a chair out and sat down. She let Artie eat for a moment, then said, “This is Rick. I’d like you to meet him.”
Artie continued to eat for a moment, then glanced up at Rick and nodded tentatively. Rick began to wonder if he could communicate in any other way. He pulled out a chair and sat down as well.
She looked back and forth between the two men. The resemblance was remarkable, particularly those brown eyes. The longer she was with Rick, the thinner the wall seemed to be between what she knew and what she had forgotten.
“Rick…”
He looked at her. Something was happening.
“Rick…?” She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“Stef,” he said with a broad smile.
As they stared at each other, suddenly Artie said, “Rick?”
They both stared at him.
~~~~~
“Artie, you said Rick’s name!”
Artie looked at Stef but was silent once again.
“Artie? Do you kno
w Rick from somewhere?”
“Rick,” he said, looking back at him. “Ricky.” To Stefanie’s surprise, tears began to roll down Artie’s cheeks, forming little streaks on his dirty face.
Stefanie looked back and forth between the two men, who were now staring at each other.
Rick’s eyes became wide.
“Daddy…?” he whispered.
~~~~~
An hour later, Stefanie had arranged for Artie to receive a bunk for the night, and she and Rick went out to celebrate the reunion of father and son. Artie didn’t have all of his memory back — he was utterly unable to tell Rick what had happened to him or where he had spent his time for all of the missing years, other than that he had been on the streets of San Francisco, but Rick was able to piece together through his father’s nods and mostly monosyllabic responses that it had not been an easy time for him.
Rick wanted to take his father somewhere that he could rest in comfort; put him up at a nice hotel, but he saw fear in Artie’s eyes when he suggested it. They decided to take it one step at a time, thus the shelter bunk was decided to be the best place for him for that first night as his healing began.
Rick said good night to Artie and started to step out of the barracks room when Artie shocked everyone present, stopping Rick with one word:
“Son?”
Rick turned back toward him. “Yes, Dad?”
“I love you.” It wasn’t clearly enunciated, but it was absolutely the most wonderful thing anyone had ever said to him, save perhaps for the same words coming from Stefanie’s lips.
He embraced his father in a crushing bear hug. “I love you, too, Dad.”
~~~~~
A short time later, Rick and Stef were seated at a table at a small, elegant Italian restaurant in the bayside area of the city. They had picked at green salads and sipped red wine, and the food was good, but the conversation was better.
Rick smiled at Stef, knowing that if her memory was not yet fully restored, it was well on its way. She smiled at a comment he had made about Rick and Terry.
“You remember?” he asked her.
“St. Louis… we lived in St. Louis… I was… no, I am a teacher…”
“At Washington University,” Rick said.
“Yes!” She gave a little shout. It was becoming clearer and clearer.
They stayed until the restaurant closed at midnight, and walked back to Stefanie’s little apartment. Rick did not presume to invite himself in; he figured that he would call around and find a room in a nearby hotel and come back to see her in the morning.
She wouldn’t hear of it.
~~~~~
The next day was, by chance, Stef’s day off, so they slept in. Rick woke up at about half past seven, and she was next to him, cuddled close, her body just as warm and soft as he remembered. He lay quietly, listening to her breathing. He never wanted to be apart from her again. Not ever.
He pulled her closer, running his hand softly over her bare stomach, and he heard a familiar sigh of satisfaction.
Once again he thought to himself, I am the luckiest man on the face of the planet.
Then he felt an all-too-familiar cold chill like ghostly fingers gripping his spine, and a sudden wave of nausea swept over him. Oh, shit, he thought. This is the worst one ever.
Rick sat up on the bed, his heart pounding. He felt his gorge rising, and realized he needed to try to get to the bathroom; he suddenly realized that the shared bathroom for all four apartments on this floor of the building was at the far end of the hall, and he wasn’t even dressed.
It was too late. Just as Stefanie woke up and started to say good morning, Rick lost the battle to keep his dinner down, and vomited onto the floor. He started to try to explain himself, but there came another wave, and another.
When it finally stopped, he wiped his mouth with a towel Stef handed him and said, “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “Did something just not agree with you from dinner last night, or — oh?” She stopped suddenly, staring at him. “Rick! I remember! You’re —” She stopped again, staring at him. His face had gone ashen. “Honey, are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “I think I just need to go and wash up.” He started to get up. “Let me go down to the bathroom and I’ll be…”
In mid-stride, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor.
CHAPTER 89
Rick woke up on a bed in the emergency room at San Francisco General, the same facility that had treated Stefanie after her accident. He was groggy and disoriented, and uncertain of where he was or what had happened. There was a curtain pulled around the exam area, and nurses were going in and out; no one was communicating with him about what was going on with his health.
There was a gap in the curtain, and Rick lifted his head, trying to see what was going on; this made him dizzy all over again, but before he laid his head back on the pillow, he saw Stefanie standing out in the hall. A dark-haired man in a lab coat was standing with her, and it looked like they were discussing something very intently. His face was familiar, somehow. Then it hit him all at once.
Dr. Geister.
Was he seeing things? Rick raised his head and looked again. Yes, it was definitely him; a younger Dr. Geister, to be sure, his silvery hair seemingly having undergone a treatment with Just For Men. What were the chances that his oncologist from the St. Louis of 2016 would just happen to have been on the staff of a hospital in San Francisco fifteen years earlier, just at the time when he happened to need him?
Dizzy again, he laid back and closed his eyes.
~~~~~
A few minutes passed, and then he heard that sweet, bell-like voice, the sweetest sound in all the world.
“How are you feeling, honey?”
Rick opened his eyes and Stef was standing there, a warm, compassionate smile on her face, the same smile he’d seen on her face at the shelter, the same one he remembered from late night conversations over the last fourteen months (sixteen years in the future), when she talked about striving to help certain students who were struggling in her classes. He loved that smile; he loved her.
“Doing a little better. I’m still kinda dizzy, but the nausea is gone.”
“They said they gave you some Zofran in your IV to help with that,” she said.
“Well, it worked,” Rick said. “What else did Dr. Geister have to say?”
She gave him a curious look. “How did you know his name?”
He gave her a weak smile. “You don’t remember him, huh?”
“Where should I remember him from?” she asked.
“Fifteen years from now, he’ll be my oncologist in St. Louis.”
“Your…” her eyes grew wide. “Oh, my god, Rick! I remember!” Her eyes were welling up with tears. “I remember everything!”
Stefanie’s hands trembled as she took hold of Rick’s.
“Before this, I just remembered bits and pieces, but it all crystallized when you told me that Dr. Geister was your doctor back in 2016,” she said. “But…” She averted her eyes from his.
“What’s the matter, baby doll?” Rick asked.
“It’s what the doctor told me just now, before I came back in here…”
Rick shot her a puzzled frown. “What did he say?”
“Oh, Rick… he said that your blood tests are indicating that your leukemia is very advanced, as if you haven’t had any kind of treatments in ages. He said that if you hadn’t come in this morning… you could have been dead within a week.”
Rick lay still, his expression looking as if someone had slapped him.
“Do you think it has anything to do with traveling through the Gate?” Stefanie asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said, dazed. I have no idea.”
~~~~~
Dr. Geister insisted that Rick needed to be admitted, despite his protests. He didn’t feel as if he had the energy to refuse, since that would involve walking out of the h
ospital under his own power. Rick was frustrated beyond belief, but in the end he bowed to the doctor’s request and found himself in a semi-private room on the third floor.
Stef sat by his bedside, discussing their various options for getting home. Rick was feeling better than he had that morning when he collapsed in Stef’s apartment, but still nowhere near normal. At this point, he didn’t think that he could even handle a cab ride back to the location of the Gate without becoming nauseated and losing what little remained in his stomach.
In the end, they decided that he would remain in the hospital for a few days; however long it took for him to gain his strength back.
What Stefanie didn’t tell him — what she found herself utterly unable to tell him — was that, as they stood in the hallway, Dr. Geister had told her that Rick’s condition was so serious that it could take weeks for him to regain enough health to resume a normal life. He had suggested that after a hospital stay of several days to a week or two, Rick might be best served by a stay in a rehabilitation center where he could gradually gain his strength back, possibly over a period of four to six weeks.
That part didn’t bother her too much. After all, she reasoned, she had already been here in the past for nine months.
The really distressing thing was what Dr. Geister had said after that: “I do have to tell you, Mr. Harper’s condition concerns me. Not only is it a very serious case with a very high degree of abnormal blood cells present, but I am seeing some other changes in his system that lead me to think that the condition may be approaching a stage where it would be nearly irreversible.”
CHAPTER 90
Stefanie continued to put in her time at the shelter, but each time her shift ended, she made her way to Rick’s hospital room and sat with him, talking, watching television, and, whenever no one else was within earshot, discussing various strategies for getting back home to 2016.
