Chapter 4

They took a taxi to the hospital the next morning, Charlie refusing breakfast first. It was raining. Charlie began to talk, eyes tracking the drops as they ran down the window.

"Thanks for coming, Dad. I'm sorry about…my meltdown. I just can't believe she's gone. I don't know how I'll tell Sam."

Alan looked at his son. "I don't need your thanks or your apology, Charlie. I just need to be your father." He shifted, unsure how to ask. "You're going to…tell Sam?"

"Well, he's still unconscious, of course, to I don't know what he'll really process. I'll probably have to tell him again, after he wakes up."

"I'm sorry," Alan was confused. "I thought Donnie said that…"

Charlie turned his head from the window to look directly at his father. "They're wrong about that. They are." He turned his eyes straight ahead, began to fidget with the shoulder strap. "They don't know him. I saw him yesterday, I was with him in the room, and they're…they're just wrong."

Alan remembered the class he had taken at the community center, after Margaret. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. The five stages of grief. Charlie had to work his way through that maze, and he had to do it for two people at once. Last night Alan had thought he had seen acceptance, but now he was seeing something else. He sighed without realizing he had. Why was it the process of grief was never as simple as all the books written about it?

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"I can't believe we're tailing a 4-year-old," Don complained to Megan. He grinned. "Probably Merrick's way of getting you for sticking up for Charlie yesterday."

She smiled back, taking her eyes momentarily from the playground. "We lost the coin toss fair and square. Besides," she finished, "it was the truth, and he knew it."

Don looked at his watch, again. Seven minutes later. Still in the sandbox. "That's what made him so mad."

Megan took a sip of coffee, watched the nanny, talking with all the other nannies. Her voice was pensive when she spoke. "I don't know, Don. For all his anal retentiveness, Director Merrick is a patriot. He loves this country. I think what's really making him angry are the choices of other high level officials."

Don drained his paper cup, slowly squeezed it until it became unrecognizable. "I know how he feels, then. This kind of corruption is bad enough. But for them to funnel the money intended for the victims of 9/11 into a yacht, or an island, or whatever they've done with it…we'll probably never even find it."

Megan watched her nanny reach for the bag at her feet, became momentarily interested until a great wad of knitting appeared. "At least we have enough to nail both Alpha and Delta, thanks to Charlie's program. But if we can confirm a pass of some kind between them — a bank account number, a security code, something — we'll have more leverage. We can threaten more time. Maybe one of them will try to outdeal the other, lead us to some of the money."

The 4-year-old headed for the monkey bars. "That's the last time I let Colby handle the coin toss," he mumbled. "At least he and David get the tail an adult."

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Alan thought it was a good line of argument. Numbers could convince Charlie of anything.

"It's important to realize that more than 88,000 men, women and children are currently on transplant lists," the doctor was saying. "Every 12 minutes, another name is added. These are the people your friends wanted to help." He looked away from Charlie, down to a chart he was holding. "I see that the woman could not be revived after the penetrating injury, so we were unable to honor her wishes, but the man…"

Alan had never met Sam and Jenna, but even he felt anger at the doctor's reduction of them, his inability to personalize them — especially Sam, who was, after all, still on life support — but he was totally unprepared for Charlie's reaction. His son had refused to sit in the chair offered, and now sprang across the distance between himself and the doctor in one leap, grabbed the collar of the man's lab coat and shoved him, hard, against the wall behind him. "JENNA!" Charlie's voice was low, and sounded all the more menacing for it. "SAM!" Alan jumped to his feet and got to his son after the other physician in the office had already reached them. Together they managed to get Charlie's attention.

"Please. Dr. Eppes. I promise you that if you let go of my resident, I'll give serious thought to decking him myself."

"Son, son," Alan placed his hand over Charlie's. Charlie turned to him, followed his father's arm, appeared shocked to see his own hand under it, still clutching the lab coat. He took a step back, breathing deeply, and allowed his father to pry open his fingers. He didn't seem to be able to do it himself. This time he sat when Alan led him back to the chair.

The resident was bending to pick the charts up off the floor, where they had landed when Charlie shoved him. As he straightened, his attending physician held out his hand to accept them. "Dr. Henderson. I don't believe your assistance is required on this case any longer."

He took a step closer to the resident and spoke quietly so that Charlie wouldn't hear him, but Alan was closer, and he did.

"Working a transplant harvest team may be the procedure in your jacket that would put you over the top in next year's residency pick, but at this hospital, you will not dehumanize medicine." The attending shot a look at Charlie, who was still staring at his own hands as if they were foreign to him. He turned back to the resident. "You even think about making an issue out of this, Dr. Henderson, and I assure you, your own bedside manner will come back to haunt you."

The resident straightened his jacket, and had the courtesy to look embarrassed. "Of course, Dr. Martin." He looked at Charlie, but Charlie wouldn't look at him, so he tried Alan, instead. "I'm very sorry. I apologize if I offended you."

Dr. Martin waited until the door closed behind him to drag a chair out from behind the desk and sit directly across from Charlie.

"Dr. Eppes."

Alan saw Charlie struggle with something, finally look up. "I'm sorry." He had missed the last several minutes, and now he looked around, confused. "Where is he? I should apologize."

"Don't worry about him. He needs to worry about me." Dr. Martin glanced quickly at Alan, then returned his eyes to Charlie. "Dr. Eppes, I am very sorry for your loss. Mrs. Carver must have been an extraordinary individual, to inspire such devotion." He waited, but Charlie just nodded his head. "I understand that this is extremely difficult," Dr. Martin continued. "Mr. Carver has no pupiillary response to light, no corneal reflex. There is no motor response to fifth and seventh cranial nerve pressure. No gag or cough reflex. Two separate EEGs led us to conduct an aponea test, during which we disconnected the ventilator. Respiratory movements remained absent and the level of arterial carbon dioxide reached a critical point. He suffered head injuries in the explosion, and remained under water for some time. Discontinuation of the ventilator at this point should not be viewed as withdrawing life support, but rather as ceasing a futile intervention."

Charlie's hands were still not part of him. He looked at them, One clasped the other so tightly the knuckles were white, but he couldn't feel them. He looked at his father. He looked at Dr. Martin.

"The issue of organ donation does remain. Already some organs will probably not be viable for transplant, and that is what Mr. Carver indicated as his desire."

"But there are 'miracles'. All the time. You read about someone waking up after 10 years in a coma…"

"Mr. Carver is not in a coma, Dr. Eppes. He is in a vegetative state."

Charlie finally made one of his hands move. He reached over and grabbed for Alan's. "But I don't have the right," he said, voice breaking. He looked at Alan, all the fear and heartache and confusion he felt in his dark eyes, so bottomless with despair that Alan felt his own heart crack. "Daddy, I don't have the right. Who am I to say this?" Charlie's voice was rising. "Who am I?"

Alan let go of his hand so that he could pull his head into an embrace. "This is not you, my son, you are not doing this to anyone. Your friends, they made this decision." He took a deep breath. "And they trusted you to honor it."

Charlie straightened in the chair, brushed at his eyes with one hand. "Please," he said, to no one, to everyone. "Please."

The doctor spoke again. "If you would care to be in the room, Dr. Eppes…"

Charlie shuddered. "No." He looked at the doctor for a long moment. "How long would this take?"

"The teams are already assembled. We can proceed right away. Considering the results of this morning's aponea test, during which we administer oxygen, I wouldn't think that Mr. Carver will sustain very long."

Alan was afraid. Was Charlie going to try to watch this? "Son, you don't need to be there," he started, but Charlie suddenly stood up.

"Let me sign whatever I have to sign," he said to the doctor, and then looked at Alan. "He wanted a brother, so he wouldn't have to be alone. I can't let him be alone."

In the end, Alan stood in the hallway, watching through a window. So many people crowded around Sam's machinery, Sam's head, that he didn't have to watch it happen. That wasn't what he was trying to see, anyway. He was watching Charlie. Standing near the end of the bed, one elbow propped in the other hand so that he could hold a hand over his mouth, rocking slowly from his heels to the balls of his feet and back again. Alan saw him when he squeezed his eyes shut, slid his hand up to cover them. The flurry of activity started again, but someone led Charlie to the door, and Alan received him. Charlie's eyes met his, and he reached out to caress his son's face, rough with the day's stubble, wet with the day's tears.

He led him down the hall, and out into the rain.