“Oh, she’s more than awake. That wasn’t exactly a Hallmark moment, Mrs. Roose.” Jodi sighed and dropped her head for a moment. “I know, but she can be incredibly difficult to rouse, and we really need to get moving.”
“I thought we were going in around 8 or 9.”
Jodi adjusted the band keeping her hair pulled back. “Well, that was the plan, yes. But the ICU nurse called me not long after we went to bed. I was dead asleep so I missed the call. She left a message that left little room for guessing.”
Catherine immediately picked up the brush Jodi had been using and began brushing her hair back. “No wonder,” she said. Jodi stopped fussing with makeup and regarded Catherine. It took almost a full minute for Catherine to realize she was being watched. “What?”
“Aren’t you going to shower first?” Jodi asked.
“Oh. Uh, yeah. Real quick though.” She tossed the brush atop the vanity and turned to leave just as Alina appeared in the doorway.
“Sorry about, you know, back there,” she managed sheepishly. She braced herself against the door frame with her right hand, her left came up to cover her mouth as she gave a wide yawn. “I’m a little cranky without my sleep.” Jodi and Catherine gave each other a knowing look. “You don’t say,” her mother prodded.
“Mom, remind me again why you pulled that little stunt?” Catherine nodded at Jodi and pointed in the direction of the other bathroom. “I’ll send Alina in with some fresh towels.” Catherine passed by Alina and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Mom?”
Jodi recounted the weighty depth of her sleep and the persistent dream that kept trying to wake her. She spoke of the suddenness with which she awoke, startled by a vision in which her daughter sat at a small table with her pink teddy bear, an empty chair next to her; then the uncertainty of a tiny blinking light on her phone—was it part of the dream or was it real? She then repeated, word for word, the message left by the ICU nurse. Her husband’s vitals were becoming erratic. “You might want to get down here as soon as you can” said the woman’s voice in the darkness of her room.
Mother and daughter stared at one another for a long moment before embracing. Both wished they could remember their once idyllic view above the clouds, their perch from which they had once marveled at a sea of dreams but now seemed to be evaporating to an expansive scab of mud flats.
“MR. ROOSE—” Petros began. Hagren timidly raised a finger.
“Yes?”
“I’m okay with Hagren,” he offered meekly. Petros grinned as he gently laid his book precisely between the two of them.
“Very well, then—Hagren.” He gestured toward the book. “Hagren, in a moment we both shall journey through your tree of choices. This tree grows differently for every soul, its growth is determined solely by your discretions—the options you adopt have been a part of you since the beginning.” Hagren sagged slightly. His most recent years of disgrace seemed to dance around him, taunting and piacular. “The recommendations of your counsel—”
“Lauren?”
“Indeed. Her recommendations have been entered and noted. You must understand, Hagren, this is not a court of law as you would understand it. All information we have is documented in this book. It is, all of it, objective.” Hagren nodded slowly.
“This chamber is a place of reason, of applied wisdom—and often of compassion. Tell me, Hagren, do you truly understand the word ‘compassion’?” Hagren cocked his head as he replied. “It sort of means a kind of shared sympathy, I think.”
Mr. Petros beamed. “Well done, sir!” Hagren seemed to relax a little and shifted slightly upon the stool. “It is a beautiful melding of two words: com—that is to say, with—and passion, meant in terms of suffering. So it implies shared suffering. This is what life, as you perceive it, is respective to. Without suffering one cannot completely appreciate true joy. Without fear one cannot know bliss. Do you understand, Hagren?”
“I think so.”
“Then let us discover if you do.” Petros calmly turned up the front cover and proceeded to a section about a quarter of the way into the volume. Hagren stared hard at the pages as they were gently pressed down. He became transfixed by the shimmering effect that seemed to hover delicately above the surface, like the sun’s heat off the roof of his car on a summer day. The thin layer quivered, a translucent, pliable energy comprised not of simple words but of an ephemeral, vital nature—a memento of one’s life. He had not noticed it in Lauren’s office—the book had been kept at a distance from him. But now it was within reach.
Petros contemplated the pages with no show of outward expression. He turned pages studiously, seeming to absorb the minutiae of the man’s being, his finger tracing lightly within the gossamer layer of energy; a small mountain stream could not have bubbled over stones in its path any more gracefully. After several pages, and considerable anxiety on Hagren’s part, Petros looked up.
The advocate cupped his palms together and closed his eyes. Hagren wanted desperately to explain but had no idea what for. He fidgeted upon the stool, once again feeling more like a raw nerve than a body at rest. The urge to ask questions rolled over him then receded, pushing a little further to his lips with each renewed wave, tidal impulses that cascaded from his mortal thoughts and broke upon the back of his tongue—his ragged and blistered conscience had, in the presence of the sage’s intuitive lineament, finally achieved the dark mass necessary to become a heaving force of internal gravity, unleashing guilt, despair, passion, and self-indulgence, a Gordian knot which was always attacked with the futile resolve of self serving rationale. Amid the creeping diminishment of his rectitude Hagren’s fear latched upon a puerile thought—take the book and run.
Petros erupted into a warm, throaty laugh and fell back into his chair. “And where might you go, Mr. Roose?” Hagren’s eyes widened and at once felt ashamed for not being more careful with his thoughts; where to, indeed. Hagren’s entire being suddenly felt like a house of cards. Petros allowed himself a final good hearted chuckle before continuing.
“Hagren, come to the edge of the desk, son.” The Advocate’s eyes seemed to bore right through him. Petros waved his hand eagerly, beckoning him. The gesture reminded him of how he would summon Alina to come sit on his lap when she was a child, a warm memory held in control by his own sadness. Hagren cautiously approached the edge of the desk. Petros smiled.
“Good. Now I would like you to lay your fingertips upon the pages.” Hagren stared at him with disbelief, as if he had been asked to submerge his hand in boiling water. “Believe me, Hagren, it won’t hurt.” Lauren’s voice floated to mind: Believe. He knew he’d never be able to climb the ladder without using his hands, so he sat up straight and reached forward.
It began the instant his fingertips broke the surface of the nuanced veil above the pages, then rushed into and filled every finger and traveled up his hand and into his wrists. His every fiber was in tune with the shimmering energy. This was everything. This was the universe in its most personal form, no longer the empiric matter of constellations, stardust, and radiation but the union of ageless myths with nature, of mystery with intuition. This, Hagren surmised, was the very essence of life itself, the authority from which primal and spiritual became an amalgam of self, and it flowed into and through him as a profluent, limpid stream.
“It’s under your skin, Hagren,” the sage said, “but out of your hands. What you see and what you feel are the pinpricks of stars and grit from sands of Time as they scour your substance.” His voice slowly built, rising in tone, becoming purposeful and insistent. “You feel the pull of your malice and the wrenching of your better angels as both compete, fierce and unrelenting, for your precious energy.” The voice loomed and reverberated, dominant without being overwhelming.
Synchronic and undeniable, such were the weight and visions the voice carried upon it, like the compression of a dying star, its inner fuel spent and the external shell squeezing down with the untold force of eternal gravity—a cel
estial machine turned ethereal and at the point of utter collapse.
The stream of energy coursed around each temporal molecule within Hagren creating the sensation of a chaotic internal bubbling, like hydrogen peroxide cleansing a wound. He did not dare lift a finger, not that he felt he could. The advocate’s voice once more rolled like thunder across a prairie. “Look upon these pages, Hagren. Use not your eyes but your feelings.” The thin layer of energy began to swell upwards at the center.
Hagren recalled such bubbles from his boyhood, dipping a wand into soapy water and gently blowing into the circular end. He would hold the bubble to the light and watch the surface tension shift and sway carrying with it an iridescent rainbow. But this sphere was nothing like those of his youth. As it slowly expanded he began to see a flurry of images, quick glimpses that would be wholly unrecognizable to any soul other than its source. Long forgotten memories roared around the interior of the bubble: riding bikes, playgrounds and sandboxes, little league fields, holidays with family members who had long since passed. It was like watching homemade 8m film at high speed. No sound accompanied the scenes, but the resonance of feeling more than compensated for it. The rim of the bubble eclipsed his fingertips sending shock waves of former life through him.
Mr. Petros held Hagren in close scrutiny, watching for the instant the memories hit their mark. They always did. He again took the gold string between his fingers and prepared to turn the pages. He ducked his head slightly to catch Hagren’s gaze before uttering a phrase he had so long lamented not having written himself instead of Shakespeare: “Briefly thyself remember.” His weary deponent looked up to confront the advocate’s stare; Petros gently lifted the string and Hagren’s fingers rose of their own volition.
A little deeper into the tome and once again Hagren’s fingers settled upon the pages before him. Once again came the asomatous tingling, more ardent and emphatic than before. Once more the gossamer layer began pushing upward from the center to form a second bubble, the same crystal clear dome in structure but entirely different in the sensation it advanced. The prior warmth of youthful élan drained away, usurped by a rush of vitality. Hagren gave the spreading sphere his full attention, while Petros, fully cognizant of the scenes to come, watched carefully.
Hagren began to smile.
A young woman appeared in the center of the bubble, her dark hair bobbed as she walked, each step made with an unmistakable kind of confidence. Then a young man appeared, hair hanging just past his collar and a smear of dark stubble under his nose. The pair closed in together and he leaned in to peck her on the cheek before wrapping his arm around her. Petros noted a misty quality to Hagren’s expression as he watched scenes of he and Jodi Byrd play out. An entire act of his life danced before him, divided into scene after scene of playful pursuit. The couple sat upon grassy berms along campus sidewalks, held hands while skating erratically upon a frozen lake, his free arm a wild, swinging weapon to the skaters around him as he fought for balance; dinners and long drives played in a procession within the dome—and then a sudden flash of white that slowly faded like dust kicked up on a windless day. The pair reappeared, only slightly older, both dressed in the attire of matrimony. Hagren sat motionless, rapt by the succession of images as they slipped by, thoughts and feelings he had long since forgotten welled to the surface. Oh, how fervently he wished he could clutch them around himself forever, their indescribable warmth like a towel fresh out of the dryer.
Hagren and Petros sat bathed in the pale luminescence of the chamber, both almost as still as the shelves and books surrounding them. The singular book wedged between them demanded concentration. From afar, Hagren could have easily been mistaken for being absorbed in an intense chess match. His opponent knew every move ahead of time, a complete disadvantage if the goal is total victory—but that same opponent knew the game itself was the key, not the outcome. One could not move forward without the other. The advocate leaned forward, eager for the next exposition of miracle.
The bubble stopped expanding once it had fully encompassed all four edges of the book. Hagren’s hands were completely enveloped up to his wrists under its dome, his fingers affixed to the exposed pages. Its surface swiftly clouded, obscured by cotton candy wisps of pink. As the blushed fog dissipated Hagren leaned his face toward the bubble’s surface, straining to get closer to every detail that appeared before him. His recall of the scene was instantaneous as was the emotional jolt that surged upward from his fingertips.
The delivery room, its light dimmed for both mother and newborn. Two nurses scampered about, an obstetrician performed the rituals of a mortal miracle. Another nurse approached a younger Hagren with a tiny bundle swaddled in a pink blanket—the first time he held his daughter. The stream of energy flowing from within the sphere evoked the same powerful feeling he had at that very moment—not a solitary thing existed around him, there was no violence, no money worries, no sensations of exhaustion or unattended hunger, no business concerns, no fear—only a timeless and transcendent moment, cordate and filled to bursting with indefinable awe.
Mr. Petros let the moment linger before reaching again for the golden string. As he lifted the pages the bubble evaporated. The advocate hesitated, holding the pages aloft. Hagren looked up again, the cloak of euphoria slipping away under Petros’s halting gaze. He sensed an obstruction, a slithering despair that started at his feet before the pages were turned.
Petros drew the sheaf to one side and again laid the gold string along the gutter then leaned back into his chair, elbows upon the armrests and hands clasped together. This passage was Fear’s quarter, a mist-shrouded concealment which every soul knew was there but tried eternally to avoid. Fear badgered, fear tempted, fear clutched at the essence of a person—it consumed the weak and fortuned the brave. In this darkest of spaces the heart would be weighed against truth, a soul balanced with a feather. The outcome would derive not from any rule of law but from nature itself, from that which is in rightful or wrongful accord with its being. The book was nature, and nature was the book.
Hagren’s fingers dropped like lead weights upon the pages this time. The energy which before had felt ambrosial and nurturing now pulled his hands fully against the book, by contrast an unsettling engagement. He looked up at Petros and hoped for some utterance of support or comfort but was met with a stare of quiet concentration. He was being watched, likely studied or evaluated, of that he was now certain. He closed his eyes a final time and earnestly replayed Lauren’s words in his head. Shards of reason and insight began to come together, an invisible shield as defense against the foe that approached—a foe of his own creation. He could feel the energy surging upwards again, but this time austere, cool, and distant. He was moving away from where he had been.
Both men locked their gaze upon the elevation forming from the veil, its once magical property of shimmering vibrancy now, instead, menacing and heavy—where once the myriad of tiny waves seemed to dance playfully they now swept and swelled like a storm tossed sea. The sphere surely would have groaned had it the means for sound. As before, at its core a scene began to take shape. Hagren tried to clear his mind and calm his pulse.
A car was parked in his driveway, backed in with the trunk and doors wide open. Its interior was crammed full, almost every possible space occupied by Alina’s belongings. He watched from the living room window as his wife went outside with the last of her daughter’s things, talking as they closed the doors and tied down the trunk. He stood motionless, watching them hug, then saw his wife look at him through the window. She beckoned for him to come out, to say goodbye—her husband hung his head and walked away. Hagren immediately recalled how she condemned him for not seeing his own daughter off. Now he could feel bile mixing in a soup of shame and regret. At the time he’d felt a sense of betrayal because she was leaving him; the loss was palpable, and so too was the equal feeling that rose from the pages and filled his heart.
More scenes and images of arguments and avoidance between he
and Jodi. Times he’d willingly repressed came screaming forth: his wife holding out the phone so he could talk to his daughter, and the times he waved her off or angrily stomped out of the room; heated discussions in the parking lot of his restaurant; scene after scene of tirades against staff, including the firing of his long-time friend and manager, Fitch. When Jodi found out she stormed into the restaurant and confronted Hagren during dinner rush. He berated her in front of customers and staff, many whom had been, up to that point, friends of the family. He watched the surface of the bubble display the emotional exit of his wife and his ill-tempered retreat to the kitchen, and later, his all-night stint at the bar, the first of what would become countless others.
The old Hagren would have blustered and ranted against the play evolving before him. No shred of self-righteousness would have been too small, no person too important to denigrate for his own needs, for support of his misbegotten rationale. Excuses would be plentiful, accountability scarce. That Hagren would have got his way through sheer force of will, or the imposition of it. That Hagren was being deconstructed. An altogether different Hagren was struggling to take form, writhing and grappling with the old one for control. Help was on the way.
Ashen darkness billowed into the bubble, a thick mist of what felt like heated particulates, like ash racing from an angry volcano. Petros watched quietly noting the visible attempt to lift the hands from within the sphere. This was a good sign—Hagren was thoroughly engaged and showing no sign of defeat. There were always some who cracked under the strain. The advocate was inwardly pleased that this one was at least making a show of bearing up. Lauren never ceased to amaze him.