Falling

MY PHONE WAS INDEED RINGING and had been for quite some time. I shoved my covers off and nearly threw myself out of bed. Breathless and disoriented, I reached the phone in hall and almost knocked it to the floor answering it.

  “Hello,” I gasped, trying to get the telephone base back into the alcove.

  “Hi, my name is Anne Marie, I’m a nurse calling from St. Worth’s Hospital,” a rushed voice told me.

  “I ... what?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath. “Who are you trying to reach?” The nurse rattled off my phone number and a pang of unease knit my ribs tighter together. “Okay,” I told her. “Well, that’s my number. This is Bixby, what’s going on?”

  “Just a moment,” she said, then to someone away from the phone, “Bixby?”

  There was a long silence and then the nurse said, “Ma’am, I have a man here who appears to have been in an accident. We haven’t been able to get much information from him, but this is the number listed in his cell phone as ‘home.’”

  “Oh God,” I wheezed. “That’s my dad, he’s a truck driver—”

  “Ma’am,” the nurse tried to interrupt.

  “What’s wrong with him, is he okay? What hospital did you say?” I ran into my room as far as the phone cord would let me and started digging furiously through the dresser drawers I could reach.

  “We’re assessing him now, ma’am, at St. Worth’s but—”

  “Okay, I will be there as fast as I can, maybe an hour, I just have to get my grandma—”

  “Ma’am!” the nurse shouted into the phone. “This man seems a bit young to be your father—”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, eyeballing two shirts, deciding which was less dirty. “I think he secretly dyes his beard. Just tell him I’ll be there in an hour.” I knocked the phone back down trying to hang it up and rushed down the hall.

  “Grandma,” I hissed just inside her doorway. I took a calming breath then tried again.”Grandma, it’s time to get up. We have some errands to run.” Her Alzheimer’s made waking her up tricky. If startled awake, she remained in an impossible mood all day. But thankfully she just yawned, stretched and sat up. “Get dressed, okay? It’s cold outside today. And brush your teeth; I’ll fix your hair.” Thankfully she had long, straight hair and not the short permed hair most old ladies had.

  I tugged a Henley over a tank top that felt like it may have been on backwards and grabbed the first two socks I saw. My hair was neither straight nor easy to deal with, but I could make a passable messy ponytail.

  My brother’s beast of a vehicle required warming up and I ran out to start it, already dreading having to use it for the hour long highway drive to the hospital.

  Grandma was standing at the stove poking at the nubs the dials went on when I came back in. “Oh, Grandma, we don’t have time, how about McDonald’s instead?” She broke into a grin at that and let me put her hair in a French braid and wrestle her shoes on.

  About the time Grandma got her sausage biscuit, I realized I hadn’t looked up directions or even bothered to bring a map. I flew down the highway, barely registering the reds and golds of the trees. Neither of us spoke but Grandma gave a little, “Ahhhh,” as we crested the last big hill and saw the city and skyline spread out below us. Thankfully there were big blue signs that led me straight to the downtown.

  There were several hospitals grouped close together and I tried to be intelligent about choosing a parking garage closest to St. Worth’s but in the end I had to admit to myself I wasn’t sure which hospital was which. Not helping was the fact I had to find a parking spot with no cars on either side to minimize my chances of hitting anything. It still took three tries to get the truck in straight after I found a spot.

  Grandma kept up with me through the parking garage, down the stairs, into and out of the wrong hospital, up different stairs, across a walkway spanning a busy street, into the right hospital and down to the emergency room. We were both out of breath when we finally checked in at the security/triage desk.

  I settled in to wait, figuring it would be quite a while. Lincoln had had so many sports related injuries I knew the routine when it came to waiting for someone in the emergency room, so I was a little surprised when a man in a suit with a name tag that didn’t pull out on a retractable cord came to get us after only a few minutes.

  “Bixby Gray?” he asked, looking at a clip board.

  I focused on the shiny spot of his bald head and forced myself to swallow the spit warning of vomit to come. “Is my dad okay?” I finally was able to ask. Grandma started shifting around beside me and I wished I had remembered to bring her nerve pills—for both of us.

  “I have a private waiting room right over here if you’ll follow me,” he said blandly.

  I stood up but dropped all my weight into my heels, as if this stout black man was going to drag me through the waiting room. “Whatever it is, I need you to just say it right now.” Grandma was fidgeting even more and I started to panic. Did her damaged brain somehow already perceive what must be the tragedy at hand? I mentally slapped myself for starting to get hysterical and waved the man towards the waiting room.

  After we were seated and the door was shut, he said, “My name is Clive, and I’m a social worker with the Department of Human Services.”

  I nodded, waiting for him to get to the point. Grandma still wasn’t settling down, so I pulled out my reserves, lemon cookies. I always had a few in my purse and those paired with the crappy cup of coffee I had gotten in the waiting room would keep her happy for a while.

  “I have a few questions for you, since our patient can’t answer any of them on his own—”

  “What? Why can’t he talk? Is he—” I interrupted, starting to panic again.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Please, just a few questions. I believe that the nurse said you confirmed you were family? And his name is ...” he asked, rifling through his clipboard.

  My chest loosened when I heard Clive refer to my dad in the present tense.

  “Travis,” Grandma piped up in between bites of cookie. “Travis Gray.”

  “That’s right,” I confirmed, smiling that Grandma could remember that.

  “Any pertinent medical history? Diseases, prescriptions, major surgeries, that sort of thing?” Clive asked.

  “Yes, he takes medicine for high blood pressure. That’s it though, nothing else.”

  “High blood pressure?” Clive asked. “That seems a bit unusual.”

  “I know my dad’s not overweight or anything, but with driving a truck he doesn’t eat the greatest or get any real exercise. Plus he is getting older.”

  “Ma’am ...Bixby?”

  “Short for Bianca,” I said for the thousandth time in my life.

  “Right, Bixby. Would you mind just making a positive identification on your ... father?” he asked.

  “I can see him?” I asked, jumping up. “Right now?”

  I stepped on his heels twice following him out the door and was too buoyed to be annoyed when he paused to talk to a nurse and motioned me back to keep the conversation private.

  Clive stopped outside a curtained doorway and turned to me with a frown. “If this isn’t your dad ... Well, is there anyone else it could be?”

  I shook my head impatiently. I could hear a machine measuring heartbeats on the other side of the curtain and one small cough.

  Clive frowned again but pulled back the curtain.

  I couldn’t see him at first. The foot of bed was pointing towards the doorway and his face was obscured by the rise of his chest and starched white sheets. I stepped closer, towing Grandma behind me by the hand. I walked closer towards the head of the bed, not knowing I was holding my breath.

  It wasn’t my dad.

  I felt the blood vessels around my eyeballs go tight and my vision went white in places. My hand moved aside tubing and bandages without any direction from my brain. Part of me knew Clive was waiting for some type of verbal response and another part of me knew I had to get Grandma out of the
re before she got confused.

  “Linc!” she cried, grabbing the guy’s arm. Too late.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard myself tell Clive. My voice sounded funny, like my tongue was too big. It felt too big. And I tasted blood. Had I bitten my tongue? “Grandma, come on, that’s not Dad.”

  “Not Travis!” she cried happily. “Linc!”

  “No, not Linc,” I whispered.

  At this, the man in the bed opened his eyes. They focused blankly on Grandma and me, then sharpened in terror. Everyone, including the nurse that had snuck in, remained silent while a dull grinding noise began rising from the man’s throat.

  I looked wildly from Grandma to the man in the bed to Clive to the nurse. My third time looking to the patient in the bed his eyes opened wider and he stopped mewling and burst into tears. “Bixby?” he cried.

  I stumbled to the edge of the bed, shoved by Grandma. The man in the bed looked old, his eyes were purple from eyebrows to cheekbones. His face was gaunt, like he had lost weight and bandages covered half of what I could see of him. But his hair was a very dark blonde and his skin a very rosy pale. I looked into his hazel eyes and knew. Totally impossible, but I knew.

  “Linc?” I whispered.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered back. “I forgot you existed.”

  “No way,” I mumbled, stumbling away from the bed and into Clive.

  “So this isn’t your dad?” he asked.

  I shook my head, trying to edge further away.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  I shook my head again.

  Grandma shoved me back towards the bed. “Lincoln!” she cried, pointing.

  The man in the bed turned his watery eyes back to me. “Bixby, it’s me. Don’t you recognize me?”

  “This is totally impossible,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” Clive broke in. “I’m going to need some answers here. This obviously isn’t your father but do you know him?”

  “Lincoln,” Grandma chirped happily, plopping down in a chair next to the bed.

  I tried to work some spit into my mouth as Clive and the man in the bed waited for an answer. “He looks like my brother but my brother …”

  “Yes?” Clive prompted.

  “My brother …” I looked closer at the Lincoln look alike, searching for irrefutable proof. “Wait, can you roll over?”

  “Bixby, it’s me,” he pleaded.

  “Right, but if I could just see your back,” I asked, already knowing what I would see and also knowing it was impossible.

  Understanding lit his eyes and he carefully rolled over under a tangle of wires and tubes.

  I parted the hospital gown over his back and a fully colored, inked phoenix came into view. I scraped the gown up over his shoulders and saw the upturned beak, pointing at the three small stars, the blue and the green in the flame burning the bird. Our dad had let him get the tattoo for his seventeenth birthday. Linc had drawn it himself. For a long moment I stared then with shaking hands I pulled the gown closed. A thin gleam of silver slid out from my shirt sleeve.

  Air squeaked out of my tight throat and I fumbled to pull my sleeve down.

  Clive and the nurse were looking at me expectantly. I helped the man roll back over and searched his face.

  “This is my brother, Lincoln Gray,” I finally said and burst into tears.

  I could hear the other people in the room questioningly throwing around words like “missing person” and “runaway” while Lincoln and I cried and hugged each other. They let us have our reunion but when we pulled away to wipe our faces and blow our noses, Clive was right there with his clipboard.

  “I have a few, actually several, questions I’m going to need the answers to,” he said sternly.

  Lincoln looked to me anxiously. “I don’t know … anything,” he said worriedly.

  I opened my mouth, paused and then shut it. Everyone was looking at me. “I ... I have to go to the bathroom,” I finally said lamely.

  Chapter 4