Everybody's Son

by Thrity Umrigar

  Katherine laughed. “Yup. Nothing wrong with your appetites. I can vouch for that.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. Her mouth tasted faintly of cumin. “Wanna get another one of these?” he said, pointing to the empty dish.

  “Sure.”

  They went through the second appetizer and then ordered their main dishes. As they waited, Katherine asked his opinion about a human rights violation case in Rwanda that she was currently working on. She knew more about human rights law than he ever would but Anton still appreciated her occasionally asking for his counsel. Her auburn hair fell across her face as they talked, and he resisted the urge to smooth it back.

  The chicken sizzled on its platter as it was served to them, and they tackled it in silence. This was another thing Anton appreciated about Katherine. Unlike so many women he had dated, she ate as heartily as a man and didn’t pretend to hide her appetite out of some misguided sense of femininity. After they were done, they felt compelled to look at the dessert menu, even as they swore they couldn’t eat another bite. But the desserts looked fabulous, and they decided to split a mango kulfi. They were waiting on it when Anton’s phone rang. It was Brad. Anton turned the ringer off. “It’s okay.” He smiled. “I’ll call him back tomorrow.”

  “You can answer. I don’t mind.”

  “Nah. He probably wants to hear how the talk went today.” Anton grinned wolfishly. “Besides, I have some other plans for tonight, which involve you.”

  She began to laugh. Other than his father, Katherine was the only person he knew who laughed silently. Anton thought it was the most charming thing in the world.

  His phone buzzed again. Good God. It was Uncle Connor. He checked his watch. It was after ten-thirty. What the heck? Had they all forgotten that he was out of town? He decided to ignore the call. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m gonna turn this sucker off for the night.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Yes, I do.” He reached for the phone when it rang again. Uncle Connor. Anton felt a sense of unease. They sure were being persistent. Something was going on, and it probably had to do with the Right to Life case. He mouthed a “sorry” to Katherine and answered the phone. “Hi.”

  “Anton? Where are you? We’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

  “I’m at a restaurant in D.C. Did you forget I’m here?”

  “No, of course not. Anton. Listen. I have some bad news, I’m afraid.”

  “What’d they do? Firebomb the hospital?”

  “What? Who?”

  “The Right to Lifers. This is about them, right?”

  “What? No. No, forget them. This is . . .” Connor’s voice cracked. “Anton. You need to come home. David’s had a heart attack. It’s not looking good.”

  Anton’s heart fluttered so dramatically that for a moment he thought he was having a sympathy attack. His mind went blank, like a movie screen after the projector had snapped. Katherine was making inquiring gestures, and asking him something, but he couldn’t hear because of the whistling sound of his fear.

  “Anton? You okay, son? I’m sorry to—”

  “I . . .” He tried collecting his thoughts and found that he couldn’t. “Where’s Mom? How is Mom?”

  “She’s okay. She’s with him. You need to calm down, son. Take a few deep breaths and . . .”

  At last, the fearful thought that was welling inside him like a bubble burst to the surface and he asked, “Is Dad alive? Tell me the truth, Uncle Connor. I can handle the truth.” His eyes welled with tears and he looked down at the table, but not before seeing Katherine’s stricken face. “Please don’t lie to me.”

  “Anton. Listen to me. He’s alive. They’re trying to stabilize him so they can do a heart cath to see the extent of the damage to the heart muscle. Okay? It’s serious, but you know your father. He’s tough. He’s hanging in there.”

  Perhaps it was the relief he felt that tore away the blankness, but his mind was his own again, sharp, focused. He signaled to the waiter for the check, pantomiming that he needed it urgently. Katherine was already rifling through her purse for her credit card, and he let her pay. He heard her ask the waiter to call for a cab right away, and he nodded approvingly. “Where is he now?” he said into the phone.

  “He’s at Metro-General. So you know he’s in good hands.”

  Anton wanted to ask a thousand more questions, but he was wasting time. They had to get to the airport, fast. But then he looked at his watch and realized it was close to eleven P.M. Would there be a flight out so late? “Uncle Connor,” he said urgently. “Can you have someone check about the last flight out? We can leave for the airport directly from here.” He stood up as Katherine hurriedly signed the credit card receipt. “Would National or Dulles be a better bet?”

  “There are no flights from D.C. at this hour. I already checked. Now, listen to me. We have a private plane waiting for you. One of Bradley’s friends has offered it. You need to make your way to the private airport where it will be waiting. Grab a piece of paper and write down the address.”

  SIX MINUTES LATER, they were in a cab tearing through the city. Katherine was on the phone with the hotel, explaining the situation, asking the person to store their luggage until they figured out what to do. Anton was on hold as the hospital staff tried to reach Delores, who was in the ICU with her husband.

  “Hi, honey,” Delores said, and the emptiness in her voice sent a chill down Anton’s spine. He fought back the tears that flooded his eyes. “Hey, Mom,” he said softly. “How you holding up?”

  “I’m okay, baby,” she replied, but he was listening to her tone, not her words.

  “Listen, I’m on my way home,” he said. “Everything is going to be fine, okay? Mom? I promise you. He’s going to be fine.”

  In the brief silence, he could hear people’s voices in the background. When she spoke, she lowered her voice. “The doctor said it was a massive heart attack. He says it’s a good thing your father had the attack at the office. The paramedics were there within minutes, you know. They had to shock him three times.”

  Anton looked out of the cab window, struggling to control his fear. “So . . . did they say what the prognosis is?”

  “They won’t know anything until they do the heart cath. But for that, they need him to be stable.”

  Anton nodded. “Okay. Okay.” Breathe, he said to himself. Breathe. But then his throat constricted as he thought of his father gasping for breath, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being this obscenely healthy while his father lay struggling for his life. “Mom,” he said. “When you go back into the ICU, I want you to tell Dad that I’ll be there in a few hours. Okay? Tell him that.” He paused. “And tell him I need his advice on a legal case before me. So he has to be well enough in a few days to help me with it. Can you do that?”

  “He can’t be thinking of work, Anton. He’s not even conscious.”

  “Mom. I just want him to know that . . . we’re not giving up on him, okay? So can you please do this? Just trust me, right?”

  “Whatever you say. You be safe, honey.” Delores sounded wooden, numb. It’s because she has looked across the river and seen death again on the opposite bank, Anton thought.

  Was it his imagination, or did they have the slowest driver in D.C.? And were they hitting every friggin’ red light in town? Anton fought the urge to kick the seat in frustration. He pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “As we said, this is an emergency,” he said, leaning forward so that the driver could hear him. “Here’s a little something extra for stepping on the gas.”

  The driver turned his head a bit. “Speeding ticket costing over two hundred dollars, mister,” he said. “Cop stop me, you going to get even more late.” That didn’t prevent him from accepting the cash, although as far as Anton could tell, it made no appreciable difference in his driving.

  The phone rang again. It was Bradley to say he’d just arrived at the hospital and not to worry, he’d be with Delores until Anton arri
ved. Uncle Connor was already at the hospital, Brad informed him. “Thanks, man,” Anton said, thinking there hadn’t been an occasion in his life, sad or celebratory, that he hadn’t shared with Brad. Though what he’d give not to have to share this.

  He turned toward Katherine, and she shifted in her seat and snuggled against him. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she whispered, and he was glad that she was with him. He couldn’t imagine being alone in this dreadful taxi, with the incense burning on the dashboard and the slowest driver in the world at the wheel. He kissed the top of Katherine’s head absently as he looked past her into the now-deserted Washington streets and thought, May eighteenth, 2014. I will remember this night for as long as I live. This is the most awful thing that has happened to me in my life so far. Because the person I love most in this world is sick and I am not by his side.

  It was a small private plane but it came stocked with a mini-fridge, and the pilot, who was apparently aware of the situation, told Anton to help himself to something strong. He smiled and declined. He and Katherine had shared a bottle of wine during dinner, and that, along with the two martinis, was enough drink. He knew it was going to be a long night at the hospital, and he wanted to keep his wits about him.

  The shaking started as soon as they were buckled in and the plane began to taxi. It was as though now that there was nothing to do but sit and wait, the iron control with which he had commanded his body thus far began to slip. Please don’t let Dad die, he prayed. Please. Please don’t let him. I need him. Katherine took his hand and held it in her lap, held it until his trembling subsided, and he felt a profound gratitude. He wanted to tell her this but found that he couldn’t, couldn’t talk without totally losing it, so he merely squeezed her hand and turned his head to look out the window. Washington looked beautiful at night, lit up like a carnival, but he knew that he would never again visit it without remembering this terrifying night. Pappy had been dead for almost two years, and he still missed him so much. But Pappy had lived away all of his life, an influential but ultimately distant figure. His father had loomed larger in his life than any other person. Every happy memory he had of his boyhood and teenage years featured him. As if in a fairy tale, his dad had taken him out of the projects and turned him into a prince. It was he who had opened up his home, his alma mater, his entire way of life, to Anton; who had given him his last name, which came along with two hundred years of family history; it was he who frowned if anyone ever referred to Anton as his adopted son. He’s my son, period, he’d correct them. And if he ever asked for anything back, it was that Anton marry a woman who would make him happy, that he find a fulfilling career, that he attend a college that was challenging and worthy of his intellect. In fact, in all their years together, his father had made only one personal request: On the way home from the courthouse after signing the adoption papers, David had asked to be called Dad.

  It had been a simple enough request, and once they’d adopted him, Anton had been so grateful to be able to jump-start his life that it was easy to acquiesce. He’d started calling Delores Mom around the same time. And he saw the pleasure it brought them as a couple, this simple thing on his part, and that alone made him realize the magnitude of their love for him. He was theirs. Permanently. No red-faced cop, no kindly social worker, was ever going to take him away from them. He knew, of course, about James; someone (although he couldn’t remember who) had told him about the car wreck on prom night, and it made Anton feel good, so good, to take the sadness out of their lives. He couldn’t tell which felt better, needing them or being needed by them, but by then he knew the phrase “win-win situation,” and by God, that’s what it was.

  He picked up the cell phone and dialed Brad’s number. “Hey,” he said when Brad answered. “We should be landing soon, I think. How is he?”

  “He seems stable at the moment, Anton. Try not to worry too much. The State Patrol guys will meet you at the airport. They have orders to bring you straight to the hospital.”

  “Thanks.” Anton’s hand was beginning to cramp, and he retrieved it from Katherine’s lap. “So what happened?”

  “Nobody seems to know. He’d just gotten out of a meeting with a state delegation. He escorted them out of his office and told Ashley to go home. Said he planned on working for another hour or so and then packing it up for the night. Thank God Ashley hadn’t left yet, because five minutes later, she heard this loud crash and found him on the floor.”

  “So he fell? Is he hurt elsewhere?”

  “His right hand’s pretty bruised. He must’ve hit his desk on his way down. But they don’t seem to think there’s a brain bleed or anything like that, thank God.”

  “Thank God,” Anton repeated. The pilot’s voice came on. “We’re about to land,” Anton said. “I’ll call you from the car.”

  “Right-o.”

  “Take care of Mom until I get there.”

  Bradley gave a low chuckle. “Your mom is already taking care of the relatives of the other ICU patients here. She’s unstoppable, that woman.”

  Anton smiled. “That sounds like her.”

  “Oh, Anton? Before you hang up. Word’s gotten out to the media. There are already a few reporters in the lobby and more on their way, probably. I’ve told the Patrol guys to escort you right up to the hospital entrance, but you may want to just make a dash for it once you’re in the building.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the heads-up. See you soon.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  Brad said it automatically, their old childhood sign-off. It cheered Anton, this familiar, ritualized response, on this night when everything else felt uncertain and uncharted.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ICU.

  But what do you see, really? The shell of a man, unshaven, suddenly old, uncharacteristically gaunt and dull-eyed. And the fear in those eyes, a fear masquerading as sleepiness, so that one moment the eyes flicker on and the next they shut. The indecipherable, drug-induced mutterings, at once desultory and insistent.

  The heart was designed to be broken, yes, but broken by others—by girlfriends and spouses, even children. What to make of this self-betrayal? This bright red organ, so elegantly efficient in its simple task of pumping blood, suddenly dribbles blood instead, its electric circuitry gone haywire. Ventricular fibrillation. The heart quivers, and just like that, you go from being the most powerful man in the state to an elderly man being kept alive by machines.

  One good thing about being in the ICU—it took away Anton’s fear. And replaced it with a clean, oxygenated anger. Get up, he wanted to shout at his father. Is that stubble on your cheek? Drool on your chin? You want people to see you like this, lying butt-naked beneath that stupid hospital robe with these tubes attached to your chest? Dad. Dad. Remember when we hiked the Appalachian Trail for two weeks for my twenty-third birthday? When you took me parasailing in Florida? When the storm blew in from the Atlantic that evening on Pappy’s boat and you sang old Irish folksongs as you fearlessly steered us home? Or the night in Madrid when all our money was in your wallet and we got held up? You didn’t panic even then, just calmly figured out the way back to the hotel. That’s the father I know and respect. That’s how high you’ve set the bar. So don’t expect sympathy from me as you loll around playing dead in this hospital bed. Come on. Get up. Get up. Don’t you pull a Pappy on me. Don’t you die on me, Dad, I’ll be so pissed, I swear I’ll haunt you in your grave.

  Now that Anton was with his mom, now that he’d held her close to him longer than he perhaps ever had, he was angry with her, too. Look how easily she appeared to have accepted the situation, sitting in the waiting room with the relatives of the other patients, some of them knitting sweaters, for cryin’ out loud, as if this goddamn hospital was their damn living room. He watched Delores get up to fetch an elderly man two sugar cookies and the coffee that the hospital provided; saw her put a consoling hand on another relative’s shoulder. He stood as she introduced him to the young cardiology resident, n
oticed the breathless quality in her voice as she spoke. He hated how resigned she seemed, how docile her demeanor was, how she nodded acceptingly when the resident explained the risks involved in the heart catheterization, how willingly she signed the forms that they put before her. The resident seemed singularly unimpressed with the fact that his patient happened to be Governor David Coleman, the man to whom Anton owed everything. If the doctor had been obsequious, Anton would’ve hated him for that, but he was also irked by this matter-of-fact normalcy.

  He was being absurd. He knew this. Everybody was behaving wonderfully well. Mom was her usual thoughtful self, and he could see the wonder and appreciation on the faces of the other people in the waiting room. The doctors were professional, keeping the family in the loop every step of the way. The nurses were competent, cheerful, with the right combination of sympathy and efficiency. No, the only person he had a beef with was the man lying in that hospital bed who would most likely need bypass surgery and may not come out of it. Someone who, the doctors said, probably had destroyed over sixty-five percent of his heart muscle wall. Someone who was getting ready to break Anton’s heart. This he could not forgive.

  They were all staring at him; they were asking him to sit down, for God’s sake, he was driving them all crazy with his constant pacing. The nurses were beginning to get that “God, what a dickhead” look each time he walked past their station. Bradley had tried putting a hand on his shoulder; he had shaken it off. Katherine had tried to console him; he had told her that it was late and she should go home and he’d call her if there was any news. He ignored the hurt look on her face, and if he was gratified by the fact that she disregarded his advice, he wouldn’t know it. Nothing registered except the purity of his anger. It was his saving grace, this anger, because without it, he would’ve lost it. Would’ve sat down like the rest of the dazed and confused sheep in this waiting room, or howled in sorrow. But until his father got up from that hospital bed instead of lying there with his eyes closed like some goddamn Christian martyr, he would not sit down.