The Disclaimer Continues. Ad Infinitum.
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Chapter 5
When Charlie woke up, it was because he was choking on his own vomit. There was nothing mild and gentle about it. His awakening was violent, disgusting, loud, painful and confusing. He lay flat on his back, gagging, acid bile burning his throat and filling his mouth, fighting the fishing line someone had used to tie him down. He didn't understand where the hands came from that finally saved him, rolling him deftly onto his side. Even though the movement instigated a wave of pain that rolled over him like a tsumani and contracted his stomach again, causing dry heaves to follow the bile, he was still grateful for the hands. Left to his own devices for even a few more seconds, he was certain he would have died.
He continued to heave pitifully as the hands persisted in moving him one way, and then another, competently changing the sheets beneath him. He wondered for a while if he was actually throwing up from his eyes, before he understood that he was crying.
At the same moment, almost 40 miles away, his father and his brother wandered the Craftsman-style home like lost spirits, an air of defeat and punishment cocooning each of them. They sought the comfort of each other's presence, yet floated by each other in disheartened huddles. The inability to connect was innate in them both, while the desire for that connection drove them to watch other, covertly and silently, across self-imposed distances.
Don finally succumbed to exhaustion and drug residue on the couch at 3 a.m. Alan started to cover him with a blanket from the closet under the stairs, but at the last second returned it to its storage place. Instead, he walked up to his room. In the corner stood a cedar chest Margaret had brought with her into the marriage. "Hope Chest", they used to call them back then. Margaret's mother had filled it with practical things like towels, sheets…when they had unpacked it, the entire bottom had been lined with rolls of toilet paper. Margaret had uncharacteristically burst into tears, and Alan had laughed until his sides hurt.
Now, he kept things in there he could not part with. Each boy's first pair of shoes, and favorite childhood toy. When Charlie had found Margaret's sheet music in the garage last year, Alan had moved it all into the chest. He pawed through it, and found what he wanted. He brought it out and stared at it for a while, understanding that this was silly; knowing that this was unnecessary; feeling that this was important. He smiled slightly, remembering what it had taken to get Don to give up this blanket in the first place. He had been giving Charlie Brown's blanket-dragging Linus a run for his money, until his baby brother was born. Friends and family had showered them with gifts, and someone had remembered Donnie. Ida, Alan thought now. He nodded slightly. Yes, definitely Ida. She had marched in the house with a Johnny Bench catcher's mitt and a real, regulation baseball, and offered to trade them for the blanket. That night, Alan had washed it for maybe the third time in its life, and tucked it into the chest.
Tonight, he hugged the softness to his chest as he crept back down the stairs. He stood over Don again for a few moments, then finally shook the blanket out and draped it over him. It was pathetically small for the job, of course, so Alan went back to the closet for two more. He covered his son and the blue blanket he had used the first five years of his life with one of the larger ones. Then he took the other and walked a few steps to the recliner. He sat down, put his feet up, and unfurled the blanket over himself.
Then he waited for the sun to rise, and watched Donnie sleep.
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The second time Charlie awoke, thanks to the anti-nausea medication that had been added to his IV, was more merciful. His head pounded, his throat was dry, his arm ached and his foot was caught in a wood chipper; but at least he didn't have a mouthful of vomit. He whimpered softly and wished for something to drink. Magically, the hands appeared again, and spooned ice chips into him. He sucked on them greedily and tried to search the room for his father or brother, without moving his head. He took in the fishing lines again, and understood this time that they were IV lines. He was in a hospital.
The fog in his brain began to clear a little more when he realized he could not find Alan or Don. After the ice chips, he followed the length of the arms attached to the magic hands and eventually focused on a kind female face. "Are you feeling better?" she asked, and Charlie thought he might be watching a dubbed movie. Her lips didn't move in conjunction with the words, exactly, and it made him slightly dizzy. He closed his eyes and concentrated on speaking himself. "I want my Dad," he finally rasped. "Where's my Dad?"
"I'm sorry," she answered, not unkindly. "He's not here right now."
Charlie slit his eyes open again, surprised. "Is my brother here?" She shook her head, jump-starting the dizziness again, and Charlie felt cold tendrils of fear attach to his heart. Neither one of them was here? He was still in a drug-induced haze, but even in that haze he knew the only thing that would keep them away would be if they were hurt themselves. Had they all been in an accident together? Despite the anti-nausea medication, his stomach churned and threatened to erupt, again. He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned. "Are they all right?" He felt the tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.
"Of course," she answered, efficiently wiping the tears away with something. "They're just not here, right now."
Charlie lay with his eyes closed, fighting a growing nausea and trying to figure it out. Either she was lying, and something was horribly wrong with both Alan and Don, or she was telling the truth – and something was horribly wrong with him. If she was telling the truth, he was so wrong, so disgusting, so inadequate and unnecessary, that his own father and brother could not even bring themselves to come and see him in the hospital.
More tears escaped his closed eyes, and he wondered what he had managed to screw up this time.