Gateways. Part 21

Thanks for the help, he thought. He'd feel a lot better if his father would stay just one more day, to make sure his condition was stable. He had to find a way around his reckless stubbornness.

Anya was staring at him. "Switch places. What would you do in his situation?"

I'd get the h.e.l.l out of here and go home, he thought. But he couldn't say that.

"I'm lots younger and-"

Oyv dropped back down into the bag as an anxious looking Nurse Schoch came charging into the room, carrying a tray. She stopped at the foot of the bed and shook her head as she stared at the cardiac leads scattered across the sheet.

"I figured that was what you were doing when the monitor flatlined, but I had to be sure."

A few minutes later, Dad had a gauze patch taped over the spot where the IV had been. He stood and looked around.

"All I need now are my clothes."

"They had to throw them out." Here was the angle Jack had been looking for. "They were too b.l.o.o.d.y to keep. You know what? Why don't you hang out here one more night and I'll come back first thing in the morning with some of your clothes. How does that sound?"

"Terrible. I'll wear this if I have to."

Jack thought of refusing to drive him home, but what would that accomplish? All he had to do was call a cab.

He caught a glimpse of his father's skinny white b.u.t.tocks through the back of the hospital gown as he walked to the tiny closet.

"Well, will you look at this!" he said as he opened the door. He held up a white golf s.h.i.+rt and tan Bermuda shorts. "Just what the doctor ordered."

"Somehow I doubt that," Jack said. He looked at Anya. "Where'd they come from? You were here this morning. Did you-?"

"You think I go snooping in closets?"

His father headed for the bathroom. "I'll be out in a minute."

"Dad, those aren't your clothes."

"I'm claiming them for the moment. I'll bring them back tomorrow."

I give up, Jack thought. I'm licked. He's going home.

While he was changing, Anya puttered around the room, opening and closing drawers, filling a little plastic bag with the soaps, mouthwash, toothpaste, and other necessities the hospital had supplied.

"No sense in letting any of this go to waste," she said. "He's paid for it, after all-probably through the nose, if I know hospitals."

Jack watched as her hand darted behind the headboard. She pulled something out and quickly shoved it into the plastic bag. He didn't see it, but he could guess what it was. She was taking back her painted tin can totem.

Dad, still wearing his hospital booties, stepped out of the bathroom and spread his arms to show off his new duds.

"Would you believe it? A perfect fit."

"Imagine that."

Jack looked at Anya but she wouldn't make eye contact. What was her part in all this? Was that nurse's aide right? Could Anya have had something to do with his father's miraculous recovery? That would be strange, but he was becoming used to strange.

"Are we ready?" his father said. "Then let's go!"

7.

On the ride back to Gateways-Jack driving, his father in the pa.s.senger seat, Anya and Oyv in the back-he told his father what he knew about the accident, including the anonymous call to the police that appeared to have been made before the crash.

"I wish I could remember," he said. "The last thing I recall is leaving the house and driving out the front gate. And that's it. What happened during the drive? Why can't I remember?"

"It's called retrograde amnesia," Jack told him. "You can't retrieve memories of events right before you got hit. There's a good chance over time your brain will sort them out, but then again, it may never."

His father stared at him. "How do you know so much about it?"

Oops. "A sort of lecture I listened to once. Very interesting."

The speaker had been Doc Hargus. Jack had been knocked cold in a fall from a fire escape. After coming to he'd known enough to get to Hargus to have his scalp sewn up, but couldn't remember why he'd been on the fire escape in the first place. The doc had explained about post-traumatic memory loss, both antegrade and retrograde. It had taken a few days, but Jack finally remembered how he'd got there. And who'd shoved him off.

"Well, I hope mine comes back soon. As for the accident being reported before it happened..." He shook his head. "Impossible. So we can forget that. Somebody's watch was way off. That's the only explanation. Wasn't it Sherlock Holmes who said, 'When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth'?"

Jack was sure he'd heard Basil Rathbone state that a hundred times.

"Yeah, I think so."

Except, considering the course of Jack's life these past months, the impossible was not as easy to eliminate as he'd once a.s.sumed.

After Jack parked the car in the cul-de-sac, his father insisted-over his son's protests-on helping carry Anya's groceries into her house. They left her there with a promise to return for c.o.c.ktail hour.

As he preceded Jack into the front room of his house, he said, "I guess I should be saying, Boy, it's great to be home. But I can't. I may have been in that hospital bed for days, but I feel as if I left here only a few hours ago."

He lowered himself into the recliner and stared into s.p.a.ce. Jack watched him and realized he was scared. He'd never seen his father scared, or imagined he could be. He knew he couldn't leave him like this.

"I'm going to stay a few days," he told him. "If that's all right with you."

His father looked up at him. "You? Acting like you're a member of a family? What gives?"

The remark stung, and that must have shown in Jack's face because his father's voice abruptly softened.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm glad you're here. You don't know how glad. It's just..."

"Just what?"

"Kate's funeral. Why weren't you there? I still can't believe you didn't show up."

"I couldn't."

"Like h.e.l.l. A hundred, maybe two hundred people showed up. Mothers bringing the children she'd treated, people she'd treated as kids bringing their own children. All those strangers made it to her funeral, but not her own brother. She touched a lot of lives in her life, Jack, but yours most of all. She practically raised you. You brought out the nurturer in her. When you needed changing or needed to be sung to sleep, she'd take over, she'd say she'd do it. She'd all but fight with your mother to take care of you."

"I know," Jack whispered through a constricting throat. "Don't you think I'd have been there if it had been possible-any way possible?"

"Then why weren't you?"

How could he tell him it was because BATF and FBI people were there too? Taking pictures. Because of the way Kate died, and the events leading up to and connected to her death, they'd camped outside the funeral home and cemetery with their telefoto lenses. Jack had spotted them just as he was about to turn into the funeral home parking lot. He'd driven on. He couldn't let them take his picture and have it end up pinned to a corkboard wall with a question mark beneath it. Who he was was a question he didn't want them even asking, let alone answering.

"It wasn't...it just wasn't possible."

"Why not? Were you in jail? In a hospital in a coma? Those reasons I'll accept. Anything less..."

"I was there. I couldn't make it to the ceremonies, but I visited her grave after the funeral."

"If you could show up then, why couldn't you show up before?"

Jack remembered the anger he'd felt at spotting the feds outside the funeral home. But it had been an anger tinged with guilty relief. Their presence meant he wouldn't have to face Kate's kids, her ex-husband, and his father. Because there'd be too many questions about Kate's last days and he couldn't tell them anything because there was so much she hadn't wanted them to know. But most of all because he felt in some ways responsible for her death. In her last moments he'd soothed her while she bled, held her cooling hand after she died.

"Through the whole ordeal," his father said, "everyone kept asking if the long-lost Jack would show, and I said of course you would, especially since she'd just been taking care of you while you were sick."

"You know about that?"

"She called Ron the night she died...told him. She was still looking after you, even after you'd grown up." Tears filled his eyes. "She brought Kevin and Lizzie down for Easter week last spring. I didn't know it would be the last time I'd see her alive. I was supposed to go up and stay with her awhile in July. Instead I went up for her funeral." His voice hovered on the edge of a sob. "I miss her, Jack. Even though I moved down here we still talked. We phoned each other two or three times a week."

Jack took a step closer. He reached out a hand to put on the old man's shoulder, hesitated halfway there-would he shrug it off?-then pushed past the doubt. He gave his father's bony shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Kate was a wonderful person, Dad. You can always be proud of her. You and Mom deserve a lot of credit for that."

He looked up at Jack. "I wonder. Kate turned out great, but you and Tom...where is he, anyway?"

That reminded him: He should call Tom and let him know Dad was out of the coma. Not that he seemed too worried. He'd yet to call for an update.

"He couldn't make it. He told me he's tied up with some legal thing in Philly."

He shook his head. "Figures. Tom's always got something else to do; we all know who's number one in his life. And then there's you...the vanished son. I suppose your mom and I deserve credit for the two of you as well as Kate, don't we."

He sounded so bitter. Maybe he had a right to be. Jack started to slide his hand off the shoulder but his father grabbed it and squeezed.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I had to let this out. It's been eating at me since the funeral. And since you never returned my calls..."

"Yeah, sorry about that." Again, he hadn't known what he could say.

"...I never had a chance to get this off my chest. I still don't understand, and I guess I never will. You're holding back on me. I don't know why but I hope someday you'll tell me the real story." He released Jack's hand and slapped his palms against his thighs. "Until then, I'm through with this kind of talk. It's putting me in a funk."

He sat in silence for a moment, Jack standing beside the chair, trying to come up with something to say. But he didn't have to. His father broke the silence by rising from the chair and heading for the kitchen.

"I'm going to have a beer. Want one?"

"Do you think you should? I mean, you were in a coma this morning and-"

"Do you want one or not?" he snapped.

If you can't beat him, Jack thought, join him.

"Yeah, okay. Pop me one."

His father opened the refrigerator door and pulled out an amber bottle. "What's this?"

"Oh, that's an Ybor. It's a Florida brew I discovered."

His father gave him a hard look. "What did you do? Move in while I was out cold?"

"Well, Anya said you'd want it that way."

"She did, did she?"

These mood swings between friendly and hostile were getting to be a bit too much. "Look, if you want me to move out-"

"I wouldn't hear of it."

He popped the caps off a pair and handed one to Jack. They clinked the bottles.

Jack said, "To letting bygones be bygones?" At least for now.

"Not always as easy as it sounds, but I'll drink to that." His father took a sip and then studied the label. "Ybor Gold, ay? I like it."

Jack took a long pull. "Yeah. But they should have named it Ygor Gold. Then they could have had this sneaky-looking hunchback on the label. Would have been very cool." Gold. Then they could have had this sneaky-looking hunchback on the label. Would have been very cool."

His father stared at him. "Now why on earth would you think of that? Why would anyone think of that? You know, I used to worry that all those monster movies you watched as a kid would warp you. Now I can see they did. I swear they did."

"Hey, I've watched lots of romantic films too, Dad, but they didn't make me romantic. And I know I must have seen hundreds, maybe a thousand comedies, but they didn't make me funny. I haven't committed stand-up yet and, trust me, I'm not not the life of the party." the life of the party."

His father laughed for the first time since he'd come out of the coma. That was a good thing.

8.

They hung around the front room for about twenty minutes or so, sipping their brews and making small talk, then his father dozed off in his recliner. At first Jack worried that he'd lapsed back into coma, but he responded when Jack shook his shoulder. He left him sleeping in his chair and went outside.