Part 2
Song accompaniment: Laughing With, Regina Spektor
"I don't know what to pack," Christine said.
Her plane to Atlanta left early the next morning. The ticket had already been purchased before her mother had even been able to get in touch with her. There was no return flight booked.
Her father had been shot. The bullet had punctured his left lung and severed an artery. He had come through surgery all right, but was now in a coma. They didn't know if he would live.
"I don't… uh…"
She walked from her closet back to her bed without grabbing any clothes. Her suitcase looked too big for her to ever fill it. The task felt so daunting, she wondered if she could crawl inside of the case and never come out. She was making a second journey to and from the closet when Melanie came up behind her, wrapping Christine in her arms. Guiding her within the embrace, Melanie walked Christine back to the bed and sat her down.
"I'll pack some things for you and you just tell me if I miss anything," she said.
Christine nodded and Melanie smiled and kissed her on the forehead before heading to the room's dresser. Christine watched as Melanie placed six pairs of socks in the suitcase, laying one pair out on the bed. She watched as Melanie packed various articles of casual clothing—sweaters, t-shirts, shorts, and jeans so Christine would be "prepared for all kinds of weather." Then Melanie went to the closet and pulled out a pair of black dress pants, rifling through the rest of the clothes until she found the darkest color blouse Christine owned—an almost black navy.
"What are you doing?" Christine asked.
"Packing you some dress clothes."
"Why?"
Melanie looked away from Christine as if she were talking directly to the pants. "Well, you don't know how long you're going to be there and you want to be prepared in case you go somewhere fancier."
"But why all black?"
Now Melanie turned to look at Christine. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out. She shut her mouth again and swallowed. Christine didn't need Melanie to explain anyway. She knew the answer.
"He's not going to die!" Christine said.
"I know," Melanie said.
"Then don't even pack that."
Melanie folded the pants over her arm, then placed them on the bed, smoothing out any wrinkles with her hand. She folded the shirt equally carefully.
"I'm going to pack these just in case, unless you really don't want me to."
"Then you don't know that he's not going to die."
"I'm sorry. I guess I don't. Do you want me to leave them out?"
"No."
Christine bowed her head and closed her eyes so no tears could escape. Soon, Melanie was sitting next to her, pulling her into a hug.
"I think it'll be ok," Melanie said. "You're right. I don't know. But I think it will be."
The plane was so hot before takeoff, it took all Christine had not to run off it. The air simultaneously felt too heavy—oppressively so, like it was pressing down on her chest, making each breath more difficult—and too thin—like there wasn't enough to fill her lungs. Christine's seatmate noticed her squirming itchily.
"Are you afraid of flying?" the woman asked.
"No," Christine said, as she continued to fidget, trying to position herself in a way that she could breathe in an adequate amount of air.
The woman frowned. "Something else then?"
Christine nodded and then turned away from the woman to signal her general disinclination toward talking.
When the plane lifted off the ground and there was no opportunity left to leave, Christine felt better. The air grew cooler and entered her nose and mouth with greater ease. She was trapped now. She had to go back home, whether she wanted to or not, and that removal of choice was liberating. She of course wanted to be with her family at this time, wanted to see her father, but she was also scared and all morning she had visions of herself fleeing first the airport and then the plane. She wondered if her mother knew about Christine's final words to her father. She worried her mother would hate her for it. She worried she would hate her mother for making her angry enough to say them. Christine wasn't sure what they would do when they saw each other.
After landing, Christine stayed seated, letting everyone off before her in order to give herself time to collect her thoughts. She smoothed down her hair, took a few deep breaths, and then walked off the plane, down the gangway, and toward the baggage claim. She was familiar with the airport and didn't have to stop to consult a map or get her bearings—so she didn't. She suspected that once her feet stopped moving, she would not be able to get them started again.
Her mother was waiting for her at baggage claim. She looked more put together, less haggard than Christine had suspected. As soon as they made eye contact, her mother rushed to her and hugged her.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered into Christine's ear.
Christine took a step back.
"For what?"
"For what I said on the phone. For what's happened."
"It's fine," Christine said. When her mother looked at her in disbelief, she added, "The first part. The second part isn't your fault."
As she said this, she realized it was true. What her mother had said was fine. Maybe it had never been that bad, maybe the intervening hours had made it less bad, or maybe the new horror in their lives was of such greater magnitude that they couldn't be bothered to worry about a dumb phone call. Christine thought it was probably the third option.
Her mother treated her carefully, telling Christine to sit down while she got the suitcase and then carrying it out to the car. Christine was surprised to find that she liked being handled this delicately. Normally she would find it uncomfortable at best and patronizing at worst, but now she found it appropriate. She was feeling very delicate at the moment. Her mother, on the other hand, looked shockingly solid. Seated in the driver's seat of the car, her eyes were dry and her grip on the steering wheel was firm and tight, perhaps too tight. Christine wondered if it was an act for her benefit—and if she'd be able to pull off the same with her brother.
"Where's Carl?" Christine asked as her mother backed out of their parking spot and began the two hour journey to their house.
"At home with Shane. I thought we could talk more easily this way."
"Is there something you need to tell me that Carl can't hear?" Christine asked. "Is Dad dying?"
The second question made Christine gasp, as if she were not the one who had said it. Acknowledging the possibility of her father's death felt disloyal, like she was counting him out too soon. She also felt childish, forcing her mother to reassure her like that.
"No," her mother said. "No, no. We don't know that." She continued in a slow, measured tone. "I just mean that you've always taken such good care of Carl and for a few hours at least, I don't want you to feel like you have to take care of anyone."
Christine looked at her mother's dry eyes, tight grip, and perfectly done up hair.
"What about you?" Christine asked.
"Especially not me."
Christine nodded and stared out the window, watching the other cars pass them. Her mother was usually a fast driver—probably too fast—but she seemed to be trying to extend their trip back home for as long as possible. Perhaps to give Christine more time in which she didn't have to take care of anyone. Perhaps to give herself more time away from what was waiting for them at home—a distraught ten-year-old, a comatose husband, a crushing weight of uncertainty.
"Do you want to talk about it?" her mother asked after Christine had been silent for a while.
"I don't think so, unless there's new information." The idea was both exhilarating and terrifying. "Is there any new information?"
Her mother shook her head.
"If there were new information, do you know which way it would go?" Christine asked. "Like, is he getting better or worse?"
"He's just staying the same."
"Right," Christine said. "I guess it's not rational getting too upset about it now, not when we know so little about what's going to happen."
Her mother glanced at Christine quickly.
"I don't think rational has anything to do with it," she said.
Christine nodded again. Hot tears got caught in her eyelashes, eventually falling from there to land on the tops of her cheeks. When she started crying hard enough to make a sound, her mother reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
Christine sniffled. After she had composed herself, she asked, "Do you think he's going to be ok?"
"I don't know, baby. I hope so. If anyone could survive something like this, it'd be your dad, though, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah."
They were quiet for the rest of the car ride. Christine kept looking over at her mother. Her eyes were still dry and her grip was still tight but Christine noticed her blinking rapidly every once in a while and looking up the way people do when they're about to cry. When this happened, Christine would watch the road because she figured someone should. When she noticed her mother looking straight forward again, Christine would relax and glance surreptitiously at her. She never saw any tears. Sometimes, her mother would wring her hands on the wheel like she was wringing out a wet cloth. Christine wanted to say something but didn't know what.
When they pulled up to the house, Christine hopped out quickly and grabbed her bag, not wanting her mother to have to do it. It was not very heavy, not much of a burden to either of them, but being the one to bear the burden—light as it was—made Christine feel better. She thought this must have been the way her mother felt at the airport. When she had lifted the suitcase out of the trunk, Christine looked up to see her mother waiting for her by the nose of the car. Christine walked over to stand beside her and reached for her hand.
"How," she said. "How are you doing?"
Her mother looked down at the cracked asphalt of the driveway. "I'm scared," she said, her voice breaking. She nodded to herself. "Yeah, I'm scared." Then she looked up at Christine with eyes that were not dry and smiled sadly. "But now we're together and that's making it all a bit better." She brought her hands up to Christine's face and tucked her hair behind her ears. For a moment, she kept her hands there, cupping the sides of Christine's face. Then she released her. "You ready?" she asked.
Christine nodded too.
Christine felt like she had to ring the doorbell, but her mother of course did not, instead pulling a key out of her pocket and entering the house like it was her own—because it was. Christine remembered when it had been her home too and wondered when that had changed. Through the sliding door to the backyard, Christine could see Carl and Shane playing catch. She knocked on the glass to get their attention and watched as Carl immediately dropped his glove and ran into the house.
"Christine!" he yelled, jumping into her arms.
"Hey, Shorty," Christine said, noticing how much Carl had grown since she last saw him, how much harder it was to catch him in midair.
When she put him down, Carl beamed up at her, then quickly stopped, as if remembering he was supposed to be sad.
"It's good to see you," Christine said, trying to let Carl know it was ok to be happy about their reunion.
"I didn't think we'd see you until Christmas," Carl said. He looked down at the hardwood floor. "It's not worth it, of course, but I didn't think we'd see you until then so that is… nice."
"It is," Christine said, putting an arm around him.
She noticed Shane standing awkwardly in the doorway. Christine had disliked Shane ever since she could remember and Shane had disliked her as soon as she became old enough for an adult to dislike without being a monster—probably around the time she turned fifteen. Now, though, Christine wanted to be civil to Shane and he looked like he wanted the same.
"Hey, Christine," he said.
"Hey, Shane. Thanks for being here."
"Of course."
Christine's mother made her eat something before they left for the hospital, then they all piled into the car with Shane driving. Christine sat in the back behind her mother, while Carl sat right next to her in the middle seat. Christine thought about how the middle seat was the least safe place to be in a head-on collision and reminded herself that Shane was a good driver.
"Is Dad going to die?" Carl whispered to her, sitting up straight so he could speak directly into her ear.
The radio was on—Christine found the mix of Top 40 emanating from the speakers inappropriate, but preferred it to silence or to the reports of the mysterious flu that had been playing before—and Christine didn't think her mother or Shane could hear what Carl had said. Obviously, Carl had not wanted to be heard, but Christine wished that he had been. She didn't want to lie to him but she didn't necessarily want to tell him the truth either. This delicate balance between lies and truth-telling was never one Christine's mother had mastered with her. As a child, when Christine was looking for reassurance, she would talk to her father. However, in recent years, her mother had seemed to find this balance with Carl—a case of practice makes perfect. Christine thought her mother could have given a better answer than she was going to and wished her mother would swoop in and rescue her.
"I don't think so," Christine answered Carl.
"But you don't know?"
"I really don't think so."
"Ok."
Carl shifted in his seat, leaning away from Christine. He seemed unconvinced, annoyed even that she hadn't been able to give him a better answer. This in turn frustrated Christine. What was he expecting from her? She wasn't his mother. She reminded herself how young Carl was and turned to him excitedly.
"Guess how much snow we have up at school?"
Carl had visited with her parents during her first year and become obsessed with the amount of snow on campus. It snowed at home too, but not every winter and it rarely stuck around for long.
"I dunno," Carl said, disinterestedly.
"Well, guess." Christine wasn't going to give up her attempts to distract Carl so easily.
"I don't want to."
"Ok. Well, it's about two feet, which is a lot for this time of year. They haven't even turned the heat on in a lot of the buildings yet and…"
Christine trailed off. Carl wasn't listening.
"Hey, come here," she said, putting her arm around him. "It's…" She wanted to say it was going to be ok, but she realized she couldn't promise that. "It's good we're together," she said, echoing her mother.
When they arrived at the hospital, Carl immediately had to pee. He said that he was old enough to go by himself—which, in general, he was—but Lori insisted on walking him to the nearest bathroom anyway.
"I'm worried about him getting too close to the flu wards," she whispered to Christine.
Christine nodded. On the same floor with her father, was a quarantine area for patients who had contracted the flu. The radio report they had heard in the car said that very few people were surviving and that many victims were overcome by powerful delusions before death. More than one had claimed to have contracted the disease from a human bite. Christine thought it was wise to keep Carl as far away from all of that as possible.
With her mother off accompanying Carl, Christine found herself waiting outside her father's room with Shane.
"I can wait out here and let you go in first," Shane said.
"No," Christine responded more forcefully than she meant to. "I mean, it's fine if you come in too."
Her fear had been slowly dissipating the more time she spent at home, but now it was back in full force. She wasn't sure what she'd find inside that room. She knew her father would be asleep, so to speak, but wondered if a coma would really look like that—like sleep. Maybe it would look more like death—whatever that looked like. Christine had never seen a dead person before. Her father's parents had died a few years ago, within months of each other, but the funerals had been closed casket. That had been hard. They had lived with her grandparents until Christine was five and even afterward, her grandparents had watched Christine most weekdays, until Carl was born and her mother stopped working. They were the first people Christine knew to die. She had thought at the time—a little coldly—that their deaths would prepare her for future brushes with mortality, but she had clearly been wrong. She was not prepared for this at all.
"I guess we should go in," Christine said to Shane.
"Whenever you're ready."
Christine nodded and strode through the door and toward her father's hospital bed more quickly than seemed necessary. Without the speed, though, she doubted she'd be able to make it there. It was like jumping into a cold pool, instead of climbing in slowly. She held onto the rails of the bed and looked down at her father. He didn't look dead, but he didn't look like he was sleeping either—or sound like it. He was surrounded by beeping machines. Christine couldn't image how anyone could sleep through all that noise, but then reminded herself that her father was not, in fact, sleeping. His breathing was shallower than that of a man sleeping and he had tubes in his nose that wrapped around his face and ears. There was an IV attached to the back of his hand, feeding him some clear liquid. Christine's eyes travelled almost involuntarily to the bandage wrapped around his torso, just below his chest. More tubes—these ones stained red by their contents—protruded from underneath it, either carrying blood to or from the wound, she wasn't sure which. There were multiple wires stuck to his chest that seemed to connect to the sounding machines, but Christine couldn't see where or how. It was only sixty degrees outside but the room felt air conditioned. The blanket on her father's bed was only pulled up to his waist and his hospital gown was open in the front. He wasn't shivering but Christine thought he would be if he could. She took the blanket and pulled it over her father, tucking it around his shoulders.
"They like to keep the blanket down," Shane said from the doorway. "They said something about not putting pressure on the wound or the monitors."
"Oh, right."
Christine pulled the blanket back down but rolled it over on the sides so the edges covered her father's hands.
"He looks really small," she said. "I guess that's what people always say in situations like this." She had never thought of her father as a big man—he wasn't—but she had never considered him small, either. The hospital bed looked narrow, though, and, even with all the wires and tubes on top of and beside him, her father did not fill the whole space. She wondered if he had gotten smaller since she last saw him. If dehydration or lack of blood had shrunk him somehow. "Stupid," she said to herself, rejecting the idea along with the cliché of finding her father small in his hospital bed. People always looked small when their power was taken away. And that was certainly one aspect of a coma. Whether this made it closer to death or life, a coma certainly rendered those under its spell utterly powerless. "Stupid," she said again.
"It's not stupid," Shane said.
Christine was surprised that Shane had even been able to hear her, a little embarrassed too. At the same time, she appreciated his gentleness, finding it equally surprising.
"I remember him bigger," she said. "Do you remember him bigger?"
"Yeah."
"If I talk to him, will he be able to hear me?" Christine turned away from her father for the first time since entering his room and looked back at Shane.
"I'm not sure. I always say the same thing every time I come in," he said. "I guess this is only my third time here. It feels like more."
"What do you say to him?"
"Uh, I guess I say, 'You're still here, still hanging in there.'"
This line made Christine uncomfortable, as if her father might not be there the next time they visited. Was he really that close to death? Her mother hadn't made it seem like that.
"Would he not be?" she asked.
"What?"
"Would he not be hanging in there?"
"No, he… well, I'm not sure. Sorry. That's what's stupid, me saying that."
"No, it's not. I was just… curious. Wondering if you knew something I didn't."
"No, I don't know anything."
Shane said "anything" like it was all-encompassing. Ordinarily, Christine would have agreed with him, but she had no desire to cut Shane down now. He seemed down enough already.
"I'm so sorry, Christine," he said. "This is all my fault. I should have—"
"No it's not."
"How can you know that? You don't even know all of what happened."
"I know enough," Christine said. She knew that whoever had counted the men in the car that Shane and her father had apprehended had miscounted, leaving the last man—the one who had shot her father—a surprise they were not ready for. She also suspected that it would be fairly difficult to count the number of people in a speeding car and knew that, whether the person who miscounted was to blame or not, Shane had not been that person. She understood the guilt of course—when she first heard what happened, she had wondered if her father had been too distracted by what she had said to him on the phone to notice the gunman aiming at him—she just didn't agree. She walked toward Shane and hugged him before she could think better of it. "I think maybe I would like some time alone with him, if that's ok."
"Of course."
Christine smiled sadly at Shane as he left, then turned back to her father. She unwrapped the blanket from his left hand and placed her hand gently on top of his.
"Hi, Dad. It's Chrissy. We're all, uh, we're all hanging in there. So, you just hang in there too, for us. I know that's what you're doing of course. But, uh, just know that we're not done with you yet. Ok?" Christine wiped at her eyes. "I'm so sorry for yelling at you. I was just being stupid. I was mad about something else and I… well, you're a good dad and I hope I didn't make you feel any differently. You're a great dad. The best probably. And that's why we need you here." She paused. "Why I need you here."
She called Shane back in and Carl and her mother joined them, the four of them crowding the small room. Doctors and nurses flitted in and out, checking vitals, providing no new information. They seemed preoccupied. In the hallway, Christine overheard them discussing the flu ward.
"I can't go in there. I have children to think about."
"Did you hear Dan got it from one of his patients?"
"Even the morgue guys are scared."
"I hear they've been burning the bodies."
Christine wondered if they'd burn her father's body if he died. She supposed that wouldn't be so terrible. It'd be similar to cremation, but she wasn't sure her father wanted to be cremated. She assumed her mother knew, but decided not to ask.
They stayed at the hospital for hours, occasionally trading positions in order to sit closer to the bed and hold one of Rick's hands. They hardly spoke, not to Rick or each other. Christine kept expecting her father's hand to move in hers, to squeeze back, but it never did. She was struck by the uselessness of their presence there. Her father didn't know they were there, or at least didn't seem to. Nonetheless, when it came time to leave, Christine wanted to stay. When her mother reminded her how late it was getting, Christine said she'd sleep there and everyone else could come meet her in the morning. It didn't seem right to leave her father all alone in that unnecessarily cold hospital. What if he woke up and there was no one there to tell him what had happened? He'd be so frightened. What if he died? A doctor came and told her that there was no chance of her father waking up overnight and that she'd have to go home, but Christine wondered how he knew. She decided not to ask about the chances of him dying. Eventually, she agreed to leave, with the assurance that they would return "first thing in the morning."
Back home, Christine's mother put Carl to bed, then poured three glasses of bourbon. Setting one in front of Christine, she said, "Don't tell me you don't drink because I won't believe you."
When Christine, her mother, and Shane had finished their drinks, they half-heartedly shuffled off to bed, Shane settling on the couch. Christine had hardly slept the night before and should have been tired enough to drift off instantly, but found that she wasn't. Instead, she stared up at the one glow-in-the-dark star directly above her head. Once, her whole ceiling had been covered in stars, but she and her father had taken them down when she was twelve and put them back up in Carl's room. Her father had insisted she keep one, though. When she protested, he had said, "I know you don't need it, but keep it for me, ok? I remember when we first put these up. I'm not ready for you to be too grown up for them yet."
Christine had given him a hard time, but secretly enjoyed keeping that one star. When Carl was first born, she had worried that she would have to grow up, would have to get out of the way in order to let her parents focus on their new do-over baby. The star told her that she didn't have to. She'd fallen asleep to its green glow many times but tonight she couldn't. She waited until she felt certain that Shane was asleep and then snuck out of her room toward the front door. As she opened it, she heard the floorboards creak behind her. She turned around to see Carl.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd go for a walk."
"Can I come too?"
Christine thought this over for a moment. She couldn't imagine her mother would approve, but it felt hypocritical to say no, to force Carl to go back to his own room and stare at his own stars, with nothing to take his mind off the hospital and their father and the many tubes and wires keeping him alive.
"Ok," she said. "But, we have to leave a note."
"Do you think Mom and Dad are going to stay together?" Carl asked once they were outside.
"Of course I do. Why would you ask that?"
"They've been fighting a lot."
So they'd dragged Carl into this too. Christine pushed her anger aside. Now was not the time.
"I know, but things are different now. With everything happening with Dad, they'll figure it out. As soon as he wakes up."
"Yeah, but Mom doesn't seem that sad."
Christine stopped walking and looked at Carl.
"You don't think so?"
"She hasn't cried at all."
It was true that their mother had not cried in front of them, but Christine was sure she had cried in private. Christine had been surprised by her mother's strength and wondered what this said about her as a daughter. To make up for her lack of faith, she thought the least she could do was to defend her mother against claims of callousness.
"Well," she said. "Think about it like this. How would you feel if you saw Mom being sad? That would make you sad too, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah."
"So maybe that's why she hasn't let you see that."
"But I'm already sad," Carl said. "So it might not make much of a difference."
"Oh," Christine said, holding her hand up to her mouth. She felt like she might cry now. Instead, she pulled Carl into a hug and then put her arm on his shoulder and began to walk again. She could feel Carl leaning against her, his body almost at a diagonal.
They walked the next few blocks in silence. It was well past midnight and no one else was out, but it was a small, safe town and Christine wasn't particularly concerned about anyone they might encounter giving them a hard time. As they made their way closer to the town center, she saw a figure out of the corner of her eye. He appeared to be following them, but he could just be out for a walk himself. Christine decided to keep tabs on him without saying anything to Carl. When the man picked up speed, narrowing the gap between them, she grew more anxious.
"Carl," she said. "We're going to have to walk a bit more quickly, ok? I don't want you to worry but I think someone might be following us."
Carl nodded. As Christine lengthened her strides, Carl began to jog to keep up. Christine glanced behind her to see that the man was still gaining on them. He walked in a strained, jerky fashion and Christine wondered if he was drunk. He was probably harmless but Christine didn't want to take any chances. Still, she didn't want to provoke him by running. A grown man, even a drunk one, could likely catch up to a running ten-year-old pretty quickly.
"A bit faster," she whispered to Carl, pushing him in front of her.
She immediately regretted this. The man behind them began to stagger towards them in an almost run. As he passed under a streetlight, Christine could see that his skin was gray and his hair was patchy. It even looked like he was missing part of his jaw. He started to growl, reaching for them with outstretched arms. Ahead, Christine could see lights on in the police station.
"Run for the station," she said to Carl.
She hung back, letting Carl get a head start so that, if the man reached them, he'd have to get through Christine before he got to Carl. Realizing that she was not directly behind him, Carl turned around to look at her.
"Run!" Christine yelled, standing still.
She waited for another twenty seconds. When the man's arms came within a foot of her, she took off, catching up to Carl in no time and picking him up with more ease than she thought possible. "Run," she yelled again, even though she was now carrying him. "Run."