“Why?” Carl asks, turning away.“I don’t understand. Why?”
Evan shrugs. “It’s inexplicable.”
Carl repositions himself so he’s facing Evan.
“No, Evan, I think it is explicable. I really do. I just think you don’t want to take the trouble to explain it.”
Carl looks at Evan directly. Evan doesn’t know what to say. That it all started on a cold, rainy evening in November, many, many years ago? That he didn’t want to let them down again, so he didn’t tell them? That he felt sorry for himself, so he tried to hide his own disappointment? No. There is no explanation. It’s inexplicable.
“He’s a good kid, ” Evan says of Dean.
“I know, ” Carl nods, then, suddenly, sobs, trying to suck it back inside, hide it inside, not let it out.“I know.”
Evan wants to reach out to his father, take him, hold him. But he can’t do it. Not because he doesn’t want to. Not because he doesn’t need to. He just can’t. Carl is sitting on his IV tube. Evan can’t move his arm. He can’t sit up. He wants to laugh about life’s little compromises, but he doesn’t.
“I’m sorry, ” he says.
“No, ” Carl shakes his head, shifts his weight. The IV tube is pulled tight. Evan feels a shooting, burning pain in his hand. He tries not to react.
Carl sighs.
“I don’t like getting calls like this, Evan. You’re my son, and I don’t like getting calls in the middle of the night that you’re in the hospital. It makes me feel like I’ve let you down, somehow.”
“You haven’t.”
“I feel like I’ve failed you.”
“No, Dad—”
“I’ve failed you.”
“You haven’t failed me, Dad.”
Carl nods, looks up at the lights hanging from the ceiling.
“We put Ralphy down the day before yesterday, ” he says.
Evan starts. His heart races. Ralphy. Gone.
“He was old, ” Evan says.
“Not old enough, I think.”
“He was sick.”
Carl smiles a tight smile of agreement. He’s a very sad man.
“So, ” Carl says loudly, getting up off the bed, thankfully, taking the pressure off of Evan’s tube, stopping the pain. “Your mother would like to see you before the surgery.”
Evan can see how hard his father is working to keep it all in. All the tears. Evan rarely, if ever, has seen his father cry. This is as close as Carl gets. Using his supreme powers of restraint to bottle it all in, hold it tight, only letting a sob out occasionally, eyes red, nose running, sucking it all back in.
“Why didn’t she come in?” Evan asks.
“Intensive care. Only one visitor at a time.”
Please.
“They would have broken the rules for you, ” Evan says.
Carl shakes his head.
“There are other people to think of, Evan. Other patients. We have to respect their privacy.”
Oh, yeah. Right.
“She wanted to be here when you woke up, but the timing didn’t work out. She’ll be in. They’ll operate on your collarbone this afternoon. No reason to go to Harborview. I know Dick Wald, the chief surgeon here. Top notch fellow. He’ll do a great job.”
“No, ” Evan says.
Carl pauses.
“No? No, what?”
“No operation.”
Carl, seemingly lost, stares at Evan a moment. Then he laughs.
“Why not?”
“I have to go, Dad. I have to go right now. Send in Dr. Boukas. Tell him to unplug me.”
“You have a compound fracture, Evan. If you don’t let them operate now, it will have to heal as it is. It will be painful, it may even get infected. Then, in six months they’ll re-break the bone and reset it. And that will be more painful than anything else, believe me. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t care, ” Evan says. “I have to go.”
Carl is silent. He picks up the plastic tube and presses the button. The pump beeps.
“No—”
“This will help you sleep, ” Carl says, pressing the button again.
“Dad, stop. I don’t want to sleep.”
And again.
“Give that to me, ” Evan says, grabbing for the tube, but Carl holds it beyond his reach.
Beep.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You’ll feel differently when you wake up.”
A fog rapidly descends on Evan; suddenly, he is asleep.
HE ISN’T IN a recovery room, which is good. He’s in a private room with lavender walls and tasteful sconce lighting, a television suspended from the ceiling by a large bracket, and a tray table with some food on it: green Jell-O, oatmeal, cottage cheese, juice. Invalid food.
He doesn’t feel differently. He feels angry.
His parents aren’t there. No nurses, no doctors. He climbs out of bed, which is difficult because his right arm is immobilized in a sling that’s held tight to his body. He feels a drug-induced hangover. He’s still got an IV in his wrist and a bladder catheter slithered up his urethra. He checks the label on the IV drip. Saline, thank God, no more narcotics. He reaches underneath his gown and slides the catheter out slowly, not an especially pleasant sensation, but something that has to be done.
He tries the phone, but he can’t get an outside line. He buzzes the nurse’s station. A pretty Hispanic woman soon arrives.
“You’re awake. How do you feel?”
“Did they operate on me?”
“Operate? No.”
“Where are my parents. Are they in the waiting room or something?”
“No one was here when I came on duty. Are you sure you have visitors?”
“Trust me. I have visitors.”
“They must have gone home.”
“Their home is in Seattle. Kind of a long trip.”
“I don’t know.”
No. She wouldn’t know.
“This phone doesn’t work.”
“You have to get it turned on.”
“Is there a payphone around here?”
“There’s one in the basement, right next to the cafeteria.”
“Forget it, ” Evan grumbles.
He looks around the room and immediately spots the cabinet. He’s been in enough hospital rooms to know that in each there’s a secret cabinet with all the good medical stuff. Cotton balls, bandages, rubber gloves, face masks. He opens the door and digs around. Alcohol swab, cotton ball, and a Band-Aid.
“What are you doing?” the nurse asks, concerned by his pillaging of her secret cabinet.
“Removing my IV, ” Evan says.
“You can’t do that.”
Evan ignores her and takes a moment to assess the difficulty of his project. He could ask the nurse for help—she could do it in a second— but she doesn’t look like the type, if he can divine her character from her appearance: all business. His right arm is held tight to his body by the sling, but his hand and fingers are free, so he should be able to manage. It’s like a sequencing test in kindergarten. First, he tears open the Band-Aid wrapper with his teeth and holds the Band-Aid between his lips while he removes the adhesive backing. Next, he holds his left hand to his right and disconnects the vein catheter from the IV feeder tube. Then, he peels the tape off of his wrist, exposing the tube entering his vein. Slowly, he eases out the thin plastic straw. Ah. It feels like someone’s squeezing a balloon inside his arm.
“You can’t do that, ” the nurse says, but she says it without authority; clearly, she’s fascinated by Evan’s sequencing abilities.
With the tube removed, he holds a cotton ball over the bleeding wound. Finally, he takes the Band-Aid from his lips and applies it to his wrist, holding the cotton ball in place. Finally, he takes the catheter and drops it in the red bio-hazard box on the wall.
“I could be in Cirque du Soleil, ” he says ironically.
“I’m calling security, ” the nurse warns.
“Why?”
“You can’t remove your own IV.”
“First of all, it was saline, ” Evan explains.“Nothing vital. Second, I’m checking out and I don’t think the hospital would want me to walk out with its precious portable coat hanger. It probably lists for four hundred fifty dollars or something.”
“You can’t check out.”
“Why not?” With his good arm, he rummages through the closet next to the night table. His clothes are rolled up on the top shelf. He removes the roll and places it on the bed.
“The doctor has to sign off.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
“You can’t leave without the doctor’s approval.”
On the one hand, Evan feels like an asshole, but he’s also a little mad that no one ever teaches these people anything. You can’t keep someone in a hospital against their will. It’s unethical and illegal. If a patient wants to leave, he can leave. The doctor does not have to approve.
“Do you have my insurance imprint?” Evan asks.
The nurse shrugs. That’s a yes.
“That’s all you need. If my insurance chooses not to cover this because I left the hospital AMA—against medical advice—they know how to find me, I promise. The hospital will get its money.”
He unrolls his belongings. He raises his boxer shorts by the waistband. The leg holes have been cut up the side, rendering them unwearable.
“You need to sign an AMA release form, ” the nurse says.
“No, I don’t. Did they cut all my clothes?”
He unrolls his jeans, which are sliced up the outside seam of each leg.
“Do I get reimbursed for these?” he asks.
“You have to sign a release.”
He flaps his jeans, exasperated.
“No, nurse, ” he says, “I don’t have to sign anything. Listen, I’ve gone through this before, I know my rights. I’ve walked out of bigger hospitals in bigger cities. There’s nothing you can do to keep me here short of trying to kill me with a scalpel, and then you’ll be the one security is looking for. Okay? So, could you do me a favor and help me with this?”
He grabs a roll of medical tape out of the cabinet. He slips into his ripped jeans and tries to tape the seams together as best he can. The nurse doesn’t help. He manages to get them strapped on, but they look pretty silly. He reaches for his T-shirt, but it, too, has been shredded beyond repair. So he takes a pair of scissors from the cabinet and crops his gown at the waist. His socks are cut, as are the laces of his sneakers.
“What is it with you people always cutting my clothes off?”
“Standard procedure in cases of seizure, ” the nurse says. She hasn’t moved to help Evan, but she hasn’t moved to have him arrested either, so that’s a step in the right direction.
“Well, it’s a stupid standard, ” Evan says.
“Have you ever been an emergency medic?” the nurse snaps. “Have you ever been on the floor of an ER? There’s a lot of tension and a lot of stress. The last thing you need to worry about is someone’s blue jeans.”
Evan looks at her coldly. There are a lot of buttons you can push with Evan; that’s not one you should try.
“Have you ever had a status seizure?” he asks her softly.
She shakes her head.
“Then what can you tell me about tension and stress that I don’t already know?”
The nurse withdraws momentarily.
He glances around the room one more time. His wallet and money and keys aren’t there. His parents must have them, or they’re in the hospital safe. There’s nothing else of his here. He’s ready to go. He walks toward the nurse.
“Are you going to call security?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer.
“When I was twenty, ” Evan says, “I had a seizure in a restaurant. A status seizure. Someone called nine-one-one. The medics came. They thought I was choking on a french fry. They thought I was seizing because I was in shock. So they gave me a tracheotomy—they were excited, it was probably the first tracheotomy they’d ever done. After they got the tube in, they saw that I was wearing a Medic Alert bracelet. After they had cut my throat open, they decided to check to see if I had any jewelry identifying my medical condition.”
He pulls down the neck of his gown and reveals to her his tracheotomy scar, the one Mica was so desperate to know about. A thin, two-inch line of scar tissue just below his Adam’s apple.
“Every night, when I wash my face before I go to bed . . . every morning when I shave . . . every time I button up a shirt in the mirror, I look at this scar. And do you know what I think? I think:Why do they need to cut my shoelaces? Why can’t they just untie them?”
“I’m sorry, ” she says, surprising Evan.
“You don’t have to be sorry, ” he says.“But please let me go and find my son.”
She doesn’t respond. He walks past her and she doesn’t say a word. He reaches the elevators and pushes the button. When the doors open, he looks back. She’s standing in the doorway to his room, watching him.
HE RIDES THE clean, spacious, brightly lit elevator to the ground floor and marches down the disinfected hallway. He makes his way through the main lobby, newly remodeled, full of local artwork, large acrylic-on-canvases of tomato fields. He sees the outside beckoning him, the bright sunshine, the air that has not been filtered through the hospital’s superior air-filtering system. He is almost free.
But he’s stopped short. Before he can escape the hospital, he’s stopped by his mother and his father, who are entering the lobby together. They have come for him, but he’s already left.
Evan sees the look of surprise on his mother’s face and the look of anger on his father’s face so clearly, he’s sure he could paint them with acrylic on canvas if he wanted.
“Where are you going?” Carl asks.
“Where were you?” Evan asks in return.
“We were getting lunch, ” Louise explains.
“Where are you going?” Carl repeats.
“I’m leaving. Where’s my wallet? Where are my keys?”
A moment of silence.
“Here.”
Louise has Evan’s personal affects. She hands them over.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
Evan hesitates. He doesn’t feel comfortable with them because they are the enemy. They want to stop him, make him stay in the hospital, keep him from doing what he needs to do. He doesn’t want to be near them. Still, they look so tired; they’ve been up all night.
“To get some clothes, ” he says.
“Where?”
“At Tracy’s house.”
“How are you getting there?”
“Taxi, ” Evan says.
“Let us drive you, ” Louise offers.
“No.”
“Please, Evan.”
“No.”
Louise moves to Evan’s side and touches his arm.
“Please.”
Evan would rather take a cab, leave his parents behind. But it’s hard for him to refuse his mother, especially to her face. So he nods, and they all go out to the parking lot to find Carl’s black Mercedes.
• • •
NO ONE SPEAKS as they drive to Tracy’s. He’ll take a cab to Walla Walla; he has no idea where his car is, but he imagines it isn’t in very good shape. And he really can’t drive now, anyway. It was pretty stupid of him to have tried it before. He’s lucky he isn’t dead. Look at the bright side.
Evan directs Carl to Tracy’s house and they park out front. Evan starts to get out of the car.
“Can we come in?” Louise asks timidly.
Funny, he assumed they would. Nice of her to ask.
“Yeah, ” he says, heading up the walk, his parents following.
They step inside.
“It’s quite nice, ” Louise says, surveying the living room quickly. Carl is silent, smoldering.
“Make yourselves at home, ” Evan says as cheerfully as he
can. “I’m sure there’s some spoiled milk in the refrigerator, and I know I saw some Cheerios the last time I looked.”
Louise smiles painfully at Evan’s bad joke, while Carl ignores it, settling himself heavily on the couch.
Evan goes into Tracy’s room to change. Fortunately, he has a shirt in his bag that’s large enough to fit over his sling. After he struggles into his clothes, he calls Ellen. But as he anticipated, there is no answer at the Smith’s. Not even an answering machine. Which leaves him no other choice. He has to go and find Dean himself; he opens the Yellow Pages and calls a car service.
He returns to the living room in time to catch Louise examining a framed photograph she’s picked up from the mantel. It’s a shot of Tracy and Dean outside somewhere, a horse ranch or something. It’s a pretty recent picture. When she hears Evan approach, she guiltily replaces the frame.
“It’s a lovely house, ” she says.“Tracy did a nice job decorating it.”
Evan smiles. His mother is such a liar. Tracy didn’t decorate it, she used it. It’s a house of comfort and utility. It isn’t decorated. Not like Carl and Louise’s house with its color-coded rooms and door knobs that match the cutlery.
“Dean is very good-looking, ” Louise goes on, gesturing toward the photograph.“That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s very handsome. Carl, did you see?”
“No, ” Carl grumbles, unmoved, making it clear to Evan and Louise that he has no intention of seeing.
“And Tracy took quite good care of herself, ” Louise blindly continues, pushing through Carl’s antagonism, ignoring Evan’s impatience, just trying to get a firm hold on the situation, which, after fourteen years of secrecy, is suddenly, awkwardly, writhing in her lap. “I don’t see a wrinkle on her face. It thinned some, didn’t it? Her face, I mean. It thinned out since you were in high school. She had a layer of baby fat then, didn’t she?”
She glances back at Evan, who stands motionless, struck by his mother’s odd presence. She seems old in a way that he’s never noticed before.
“Say, ” Carl blurts out, grabbing the attention of the room.“That sure was a fast one you pulled, Evan. Leaving the hospital before they could reset that bone. That’s a real ‘I gotcha!’”