Chuck, as though satisfied that all Trafton could do was stand there and shake, cast a quick glance at Cal.
“You people can wait around for your dead children to come back to you, but it is never going to happen. And if I was a younger man who didn’t have four mouths— living mouths—left to feed, I’d be taking it upon myself to make sure that the dead remained uncorrupted by whatever creatures of hell are planning to take them over.”
He grabbed his wife’s hand and pulled her toward the door. The mayor and the grief counselor called for them to stay, but Barnes’ progress was swift and inexorable.
Cal watched them leave but the scene had ceased to register upon him. Instead, he focused on the memory of his daughter’s voice.
I think I’m in love with him.
When Cal returned home, the first thing he looked at was the answering machine in the kitchen because just about the only person that ever called him was Mandy.
The red light was winking at him.
Without taking the time to take off his coat and hat, or even to let go of his keys, he punched the button with a shaking finger.
“Hello? Hello, Cal?” A female voice, but not Mandy’s. It was Laura. She sounded like she was crying, but there was warmth in her voice, a ray of sunlight piercing clouds.
“Cal, he came back. My boy came back.”
A dull pressure formed against the backs of his eyes...
He was happy for Laura—jealous of course, but happy as well. She’d been the smart one, the one to ignore the “counseling” and the stupid group-hug (or hate, in the case of Barnes) session, to do the only thing that really mattered—stay and wait for her child. He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter where they landed with a jangling clunk.
Maybe Laura’s presence helped her son find his way back, Cal thought. Maybe, from whatever pocket of space that Stevie existed in, he’d been able to hear his mother’s coffee-fueled heart beating, and he followed the sound back into his bruised and lifeless body.
Laura didn’t say anything else, but there was a long pause at the end of the message before she hung up.
Cal picked up his keys and drove back to the hospital.
He woke up, blinking and disoriented. Someone had covered him with a blanket during the night, and he realized that he had clutched it to his chin with curling fingers. His mouth tasted of the gum of a thousand envelopes.
“Hey, Cal,” a voice said. Cal patted his breast pocket for his glasses, but even sightless he knew who the voice belonged to. It was Bill Trafton. “I’ve got a coffee for you here if you want it.”
“Bill,” Cal said, sitting up and pulling on his glasses, which were spotted and dusty. “Thank you.”
“I hate the waiting,” Bill said, holding out a large coffee. “I’m sorry if it’s too cold; I thought you’d have woken up awhile ago.”
“I’m awake,” Cal said. He accepted the cup and took a long sip. Silence stretched out between the two fathers.
“I guess we’ll know in the next seven days, right?”
Cal took another sip. “I guess so.”
“Stevie Davis came back,” Bill said. Cal thought he was trying, and failing, to sound cheery and optimistic. “There’s an article in the paper about it and Laura called Sandy last night.”
“I heard. That’s great.”
“Yeah, isn’t it? I went upstairs and talked to the Franks,” Trafton said. “Amber still hasn’t ... she’s still comatose. Both her legs...”
He stopped when he saw a nurse running toward them, the slap of her sneakers against the burnished floor of the corridor rising in volume. She was young, and not one of the medical staff Cal had spoken to when he’d first arrived. He and Trafton rose from their seats.
“One woke up,” the nurse said, breathless. “You should come. One of the boys woke up.”
One of the boys, Cal thought. But he followed Trafton down the hall anyway. They were running by the time they reached the boy—a large, stumbling figure in a pale blue hospital gown. He was with a nurse who was encouraging him to walk, but the look on her face said that she didn’t really want to touch him. The boy weaved like a drunk. When he turned his face to them, they saw that it was Jake Barnes.
Trafton slumped against the wall, shuddering with the failed effort of holding his emotions in check.
I wanted to see her, but they wouldn’t let me see her. There were still two bodies beneath sheets in the cold room but they were vague, almost shapeless. They could have been anybody at all but I wanted to know. I knew that I was dead and I wanted to see who else was and I hoped it wasn’t Mandy. I tried to approach the bodies but the nurse’s hand was firm on my shoulder as she steered me towards the door. I couldn’t tell that the bodies under the sheets were Curtis’s and Mandy’s but when I saw their parents outside the door of the cold room I knew. I knew and I tried to go back.
When I saw Mandy’s father I tried to return to the cold room and find her and help her come back. I don’t know how I could help her come back but I thought if I held her or if I kissed her she would awaken like Snow White like Sleeping Beauty like any of the fairy tale princesses who’d fallen into a magic slumber.
But what I’d returned from didn’t feel like slumber. There was pain, there was raw ache when I moved, each muscle felt twisted and dry, like overcooked bacon.
But they wouldn’t let me return. “It isn’t permitted,” the nurse said. As though saying so made it real, as though all manner of permissions hadn’t been revoked or granted. I could have forced her but then what? That’s what I thought. I wasn’t thinking about being dead—that would come later—I was just thinking about seeing Mandy again. That’s all.
I tried to speak but I couldn’t make any sound at all. My tongue was like a mouthful of cold meat; I could feel it lying there, pressing against my teeth, but I couldn’t move it at all.
When I fell, it was Mandy’s father that lifted me up. There was something in his eyes, some message, but it wasn’t one of fear like with the nurse.
“Come on,” her father said. “I’ll take you home.”
I followed. But I knew there was no home to return to.
Cal sat in the truck with the engine running as Jake got out of the cab. Cal had started to get out himself, but Jake’s hand—surprisingly gentle—fell upon his arm, and the boy shook his head. Jake didn’t say anything, but Cal didn’t think there was really anything to say at that moment.
I think I love him, Daddy.
Cal watched him make slow, shuffling progress through the snow toward his front door. He was about halfway across the front lawn when the door opened, and his father strode out onto the steps. Chuck was wearing a tattered sweatshirt and paint-splattered jeans tucked into the tops of work boots he’d not had time to lace up. He was holding a shotgun.
“Get out of here!” he yelled. Like he was shooing an animal. He waved the shotgun in a tight arc. Behind him, Cal could see his wife holding back one of Jake’s younger brothers—Andy, he thought—and trying to cover his eyes with her hands, as though she was afraid that he’d turn to salt.
“Go on! You aren’t welcome here!” Cal could see the heat rising from Chuck’s head and shoulders even across the yard, as though there were a tiny furnace being stoked within him. Jake stood rooted in his tracks, motionless. Chuck brought the shotgun up.
“Don’t do it, Barnes!” Cal called out, opening his car door.
“Do not move, Cal Wilson,” Barnes said. “I have a right to defend my property. I have every right.”