His original plan of avoiding the hospital like the plague, maybe just wandering uptown to The Cubby Bear and getting plastered, had backfired. His car was still parked in the garage, and he still wanted to get home somehow. He snuck in and out, not even stopping by the ER, thankful he'd never removed the keys from his coat pocket.
He started driving, but for some bizarre reason he headed southwest, pulling onto the Stevenson. He wasn't ready to go home yet. He just started driving, out of the city, away from the hospital, away from his problems. Too many things had the potential to remind him of Susan. That was what it would be like for the time being Ð every time a trauma came in, or a bounce-back regular asked for Dr. Lewis, or a funny prank was called for, just about anything that made working at County special had in one way or another involved Susan. And all of it was gone now.
It occurred to him as he slipped out of Cook and into DuPage County that he could just keep going. The Stevenson feeds West-bound, into the Old Route 66 system, he reminded himself. "It winds from Chicago to L.A." he mentally hummed, recalling Carter's melodious "Madame X" from two winters ago. He could drive all night and all day, and he'd be in Phoenix. Nothing could stop him, unless he wanted to be stopped.
Two things however were conspiring against him: one, he'd already asked too much of her, attempting to guilt her into staying and throwing her world completely out of order. At first he'd been angry, but one of the things that soothed him was realizing it couldn't have been easy for her. He was the one who'd made it so difficult anyway. Secondly, he was dangerously low on gas.
He managed to find a turn-off into Downers Grove, pulling into a gas station which (just his luck) was right next to a train station with a late-night commuter express dropping off passengers. He pulled out the pump and his thoughts wandered to all of his old college and med school buddies, his acquaintances in the residency program, nearly all of whom had moved on to more lucrative fields in the private sector, owning well-kept houses in villages like Downers Grove, and Hinsdale, and Winnetka, and Lake Forest. He recalled how they thought it was crazy to stay in an urban ER when they could be making quadruple the money for quite frankly far less challenging work. Maybe I should call Dr. Harris and ask if that job offer has a three-year acceptance window, he thought. Working in the ER was a bit of hassle, often asking more than he seemed willing to give. But that's who I am, he recalled with a sense of bitterness where normally there may have been pride. I always do it the hard way.
Finishing up the van's massive gas tank, his eyes now wandered across the train tracks to the bright lights of a movie theater. Maybe something good's playing, so he pulled the van into an empty spot and walked across the street. It was one of the old Tivoli movie theaters, as old as the town itself but less polished. Here you still had gum stuck to the floors, those old-fashioned seats with red cushions, and nothing better than average film presentation and all the films were in their fourth or fifth month of general release. It was Greene's kind of place.
It was approaching 10:00, but the Tivoli was still yet to show one film, part of what they called "After Hours New Classic Film Society". It sounded like a geeky debate club about the finer points of Kurosawa and the ironies of Rashomon. Greene scanned the Society's ad in the window and looked up tonight's film: The Shawshank Redemption.
"I guess that actually did mean new classic", he muttered, noting that Born of the Fourth of July and The Piano were also on the slate for other weeks. He bought one ticket, a large Coke and a box of DOTS. Somehow, it seemed like the most appropriate thing he could be doing right now.
The theater was half full, mainly retirees and couples out for an evening. He snagged a seat in the far backhand left corner, imagining what most of them did and how much they were paying their babysitters that evening. Babysitting's a good gig, he mused. Maybe I should give it a go. He smiled to spite himself. The lights went low and the strains of an old 40s love song began playing over the main titles.
Greene remembered why he loved this movie, cheering and laughing and recoiling at all the appropriate moments, and feeling tremendously proud when Andy Dufresne finally emerged on the other side of that pipeline a free man. Maybe he harbored jealousy, seeing that Dufresne seemed to be at long last getting what he wanted while sticking it to the warden. But mainly it was just incredible.
And then Morgan Freeman, as Red, recalled the bittersweet joy of seeing his friend vanish:
"...I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you're in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone...I guess I just miss my friend."
Greene felt a lump in his throat. The cliched "art imitates life" theme had not been his intention tonight, but it was there nonetheless. It was a bit spooky how much that sentiment applied to his situation. If anybody deserved happiness, it was Susan, and she had not been happy since the loss of Little Suzie. He had an inkling of what that loss must have meant to her, having been reduced to a tertiary character in Rachel's life by his maniac schedule and his manipulative ex-wife. But all that was his own fault. Susan had done nothing wrong, she'd given up just about everything in the way of career advancements and put an abandoned child first, giving her all the care and love she had to give. It was sort of poetic justice that he'd lost Rachel, but it was a grave miscarriage that Susan had lost Little Suzie. So if being in Phoenix, if seeing her niece and her sister and learning to stand on her own two feet was what made her happy, how could he begrudge that? I can't, came the answer, and at the same time he smiled when Dufresne and Red were finally sharing a hug on the beach.
The credits rolled and some thin man in glasses grabbed a microphone and began discussing the film. Here was where Greene's debate club fears were realized. The questions came: What did Darabont mean to show us by showing the before & the after simultaneously in the opening? How does Andy's struggle to maintain hope relate to us as viewers? Greene just sat there, munching on DOTS, listening to the Pauline Kael wannabes offer up their interpretations.
He missed her already. He wanted her to be happy, and had hoped maybe he could be the one to make her happy, but she'd grown out of that timid shell of a second-year who backed away from a fight into a super-confident, mature woman. The choice was hers, and she had made it. He would slowly have to accept it. And in his heart, broken though it was, he smiled at the idea of Susan once again connecting with the happiness that little girl had brought into her life. She deserves it, he reminded himself.
Even so, his life, working at County, his new home in particular...everything about Chicago would be that much more empty now that she was gone.
To be, or not to be, continued? What do you think?