"I have been in a beautiful place," Dad says, his voice sounding hoarse and dry.
"Yeah? You wanna take me there, Dad? Take me someplace beautiful and happy with lots of green and yellow."
"The boy will take you."
I lift my head. "Who is the boy? Where will I find the boy? Huh? Huh, Dad?"
"They got him, I think," he whispers.
"Who did? Who got him? The Furies? They didn't get him. I'm right here."
"They got Mother and Dad and Lara and the music and the boy, and they're coming after me. Tonight they're coming after me. Do you hear them? Do you hear the drum section?" He places his hands over his chest. "Patta-pum patta-pum de dum dum," he sings.
I sit up straight and my head throbs. "No. No, Dad. I don't hear anything. Just you. It's just your voice. No Furies."
"Listen."
"Nobody's coming," I say. "Nobody's going to get you. I'll keep you safe. I always have, haven't I?" I squeeze his shoulder.
"Listen. Do you hear them?"
"No. Who?" I'm feeling sick. My stomach is cramping. I need to go to the bathroom.
"The drums. They're coming." He lifts his arm and stares at it. "The moonlight shines right through me now. It sees clear through me."
I struggle to my feet, using the bed for support. "No! No drums. No Furies. Nobody's coming. No moonlight. No one will ever take you away. Do you hear me? You're safe." I push his arm and it flops onto his chest.
"It's all right," Dad whispers. "They say I need to go."
I lean over him, holding on to the bedpost with my right hand, and gaze down at him in the darkness. His face, fuzzy in the dim light, looks peaceful, and it frightens me. I'm used to his fear. His fear is normal. This peace doesn't feel right. Is he talking about dying?
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: I think so.
LAUGH TRACK: Isn't it a shame.
"I feel a beautiful place of moon music. They tell me it's beautiful, patta-pum pum. No Furies. So I must go."
I don't know if it's panic or my food rising. I search around for the bucket and grab it just in time. I retch into the bucket and wipe my mouth on a damp washcloth I had set out for Dad to use. My mind is racing. Is he dying? Have I let him die? Am I killing him? Is that what I've been doing? Not protecting him at all, just slowly killing him? Mom! Why did you leave me? How could you?
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Shh!
What does he mean when he says he must go? What beautiful place does he see? I look at him lying in the bed, so thin and pale. He smells awful. He smells like the stuff the girls at school use to remove nail polish—like acetone. I look at the room, my parents' bedroom once, but now the room—the house—has become our prison. How has this happened?
CRAZY GLUE; (Singing) Take the keys and lock them up, lock them up, lock them up.
I let this happen. It's all my fault, this prison we're in.
CRAZY GLUE: (Singing) Lock them up, lock them up.
"A rope in my throat," Dad says. "Pull out the rope so I can breathe. I can't breathe." He gasps and raises his head and tries to get out of the bed, but then he flops back, too weak or maybe too dizzy to rise. "Time to go," he whispers. "Just let me go. Pull out the rope."
SEXY LADY: Do something, Jason!
CRAZY GLUE: (Singing) Lock them up, lock them up.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: Don't just stand there. Hurry. Get help. Not a moment to lose.
I glance at the clock on the chest of drawers. It's just after eight. Dr. Gomez will still be awake.
LAUGH TRACK: Call her!
"Dad, I'm going to go get help, okay? We need help. I'm letting go, but not for good. You're not dying. You're not going to die on me. Okay?" I pull my left arm out of my sling and grab the glass of water on the side table. I lean over and lift his head with my good hand. "Here, drink this. Drink this! Drink this! Please, Dad, drink this."
Dad flails, his mouth clamped shut. I set the glass back down on the table and hurry to the bathroom where I'd left Dr. Gomez's card.
"Oh please, oh please, oh please." I crawl around on the floor among the bedding, looking for the card. Finally I find it. I jump up, grab the box of baking soda we use for toothpaste off the sink, and put some in my mouth. Then I take a slurp of water and hurry downstairs, swishing the water and baking soda around, hoping it will mask my own stink. I open the front door and spit the pasty stuff out onto the street, gagging at the leftover glob clinging to the roof of my mouth. I run to my neighbors. "Please, oh please, oh please let him be okay!" I run on wobbly legs past the house next door because there aren't any lights on. I move on to the next house and see the blue flashing light of the television. I ring the doorbell, and a man in a tight white T-shirt with a big belly answers the door.
"Please, can I use your phone? My father's sick—and I'm sick. I need to get help." I wave Dr. Gomez's card in the man's face. "Can I use your phone?"
He steps back, allowing me to enter. "Sure, come on. It's in the kitchen. I'll show you." I follow him, wishing he'd move faster. My head's swimming, my legs feel weak, and my stomach is cramping, but I don't care if I vomit all over this man's house; I've got to use his phone.
>He stops in the kitchen doorway and points to a red phone hanging on the wall.
CRAZY GLUE: A hotline! Perfect.
I dash to the phone and call Dr. Gomez's number. She answers right away. "Hi, it's me, it's Jason—Jason Papadopoulos. Help. Help me. I need your help. Could you come—could you come, now? My dad is really sick. I'm scared. Please, could you come right now?"
Chapter Twenty-One
I SIT IN MY DAD'S BEDROOM and wait for Dr. Gomez to arrive. Dad's asleep, but his breathing doesn't sound good. I decide not to wake him until it's time to leave. I stare out the window and watch the shimmer and shadows of the river, and listen to the wind and the clicking of bare branches hitting against one another.
I hear sirens in the distance and I wonder what other disaster is happening in the city right now.
I keep listening. The sirens get closer, and closer.
CRAZY GLUE: They're for you, goob.
I jump to my feet and stare out the window. A few seconds later an ambulance and police car, both with lights flashing, pull up outside the house. I don't know what to do. We have no health insurance. We can't pay for this. We can't pay for a hospital stay. "Jeez!"
I hurry downstairs.
AUNT BEE: Just explain to everybody—false alarm.
CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, right. The city will love that.
Why had Dr. Gomez called them?
I open the door and see two men holding a stretcher between them aiming straight for the house. The front man asks me where to go. I try to tell them that we can't pay, but I can't get anything to come out of my mouth.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: You know your father needs a hospital.
I point toward the staircase.
The two men tromp up to my dad's bedroom. I wait in the hallway. I'm shivering even with a blanket wrapped around me. I don't know what I should do. The doorbell rings; I open the door again and it's Dr. Gomez. She grabs me right away and holds me tight. I want to collapse. She feels so good. It's been so long since I've been hugged. I didn't know how hungry I was for it, but I push away. I need to make her understand.
"We have no insurance. We can't pay. We can't pay." I say this over and over.
Dr. Gomez hugs me again. "It's going to be all right. You're all right, now."
It would be so nice to believe her, but now that she's here and my dad's coming down on a stretcher on his way to the hospital and out of my life, I don't see how anything will be all right, ever again. Is he going to die? I can't lose him; I just can't. And if he gets better, then what? Where will the doctors put him to heal his mind? Will it ever heal? And where will I go? Now that I've called Dr. Gomez, I have no control over anything anymore; yet all I keep saying is that we have no money. We can't pay.
The two men carrying my dad reach the bottom steps and Dr. Gomez lets go of me and opens t
he door for them. She tells them to take him to the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, and then she looks at me. "You'd better go, too. You feel quite feverish and you look exhausted."
I shake my head. I try to protest again, but she grabs my arm. "Jason, let go. It's going to be all right. They take people at the center without insurance. It's okay now. It's all going to be okay."
A policeman calls to me from the sidewalk. "Son, do you need help getting into the ambulance?"
I want to ride with Dad, so I agree to go and let a doctor look at me. I grab the keys to the house and glance about me before I leave. Already the living room looks abandoned and even strange, like it's no longer a part of me. Its cold silence warns me that the next time I see this house, everything will have changed. My life and my dad's life will be totally different. When I close this door, this chapter of my life will be over.
Thank goodness I have my friends, Crazy Glue and Sexy Lady and Fat Bald Guy and Aunt Bee. Thank goodness I have You—or I'd truly be all alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THEY DRUGGED ME LAST NIGHT. What right did they have to do that?
AUNT BEE: You were a wild man. You kept kicking the nurse and trying to get off the gurney. They had to do something.
Well, he wouldn't let me stay with Dad.
AUNT BEE: You shouldn't have kicked him. Your father needed better care than you. He has a heart arrhythmia. That can be serious.
They shouldn't have drugged me. Anyway, they said it was just dehydration causing the arrhythmia. He's going to be fine. It's just a stomach flu.
FBG WITH A MUSTACHE: And you're both malnourished and seriously exhausted. Most nights you barely sleep.
Whose side are you on here? I wouldn't have brought you along if I'd known you all were going to attack me.
AUNT BEE: Nobody's attacking you, Jason. Calm down. Your anger is way out of proportion. We're all on your side. We're just trying to make you see reason.
Are you saying I'm not reasonable? Are you saying I can't reason? Do you think I'm crazy? Huh? Well I might just drop the lot of you. Forget you, Aunt Bee! Forget all of you. Who needs you? I don't. I don't need anybody.
CRAZY GLUE: You're acting like a baby.
I don't care.
CRAZY GLUE: Whaa-whaa-whaa! Now we're going to pout.
Back off!
I look across the room at the clock. It's one o'clock. I've slept past lunch. I see a tray of brown mushy food on a table to my left and on my right is a light blue curtain. Maybe Dad's on the other side. "Hello? Dad?"
I struggle to a sitting position. "Dad, is that you?"
"Uh, are you talking to me? I'm Marshall," a kid's voice says.
"Oh, sorry." I rub my head. I swallow. My mouth feels dry. I'm lightheaded, too. When I turn my head from right to left, the room kind of floats around me. I test this a few times, turning my head to the two large windows on my left and then to the curtain, then to the windows, and back to the curtain. I feel nauseated.
CRAZY GLUE: So stop doing that, dumb-dumb.
Well who cares if I'm dizzy? I'm not gonna sit in this bed all day waiting for a doctor. I'm going to go find my dad.
I start to get up and I hear a knock on the door. I wait for Marshall to say something.
"Can I come in?" It's a man's voice.
I figure it's one of Marshall's relatives. The kid doesn't say anything, though, so I shrug and say, "Sure, come on in. I think he's asleep, though."
A man, youngish, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties and looking like he lifts weights, with his thick neck and stocky build, comes from around the curtain, strides over to my bed, and shoots out his hand to shake mine. "Hi there, Jason. I'm Sam Waldron."
LAUGH TRACK: Uh-oh!
"Oh. Yeah. Hi."
Okay, I figured I'd have to face this man sometime; I just didn't expect it to be so soon. I sit up straighter. I want to bolt and I guess the thought shows on my face, because Sam sets his big solid hand on my shoulder and says, "I'm just here to help you, Jason, that's all. Family Services' goal is to fix it so that eventually you and your father are living together on your own without any interference from us. That's what we're after. Believe me, the fewer people who need our help, the better for everybody. Okay?"
Sam doesn't wait for an answer from me. He looks around for a chair, finds one across the room, and brings it over beside my bed. He sits on the edge of the chair and leans forward. He looks straight at me. His eyes are gray, like my dad's. "Here's the plan, Jason. The hospital wants to release you tonight, which means you need a place to stay."
CRAZY GLUE: No shit, Sherlock!
I cross my arms, wincing a little. They've removed my improvised sling and haven't yet replaced it. "I'm staying with my dad," I say.
Sam nods. "I understand you would like to stay with him, but just listen a minute. Your father's not likely to be going anywhere for the next couple of days. Then—"
"Then I'm staying here, with him."
Sam raises his hand. "Then," he repeats, this time with more emphasis, "your father will be evaluated, both physically and mentally, at which time a decision will be made as to the best care for him."
"And what about me? What happens to me in your big plans?" I point at the file he's holding. It's a thin file, so I assume it's ours—mine and Dad's—two new people entered into the system.
"We'll place you, temporarily, in the home of another family member, or friend, or—"
I interrupt again. "Do you think we'd even be in this situation if we had family somewhere? I don't have any family. They all died off, or they live in Greece."
"Or," he says, again with emphasis, "we'll find you a temporary foster home."
I feel dizzy, so I slouch down in my bed more so that I can rest my head on a pillow. "I don't know why I can't stay with my dad. What's so wrong with me staying with him, here?"
Sam looks me in the eyes again. He does it like he's practiced this—this deep stare. I don't like it. I look away.
"Jason, what kind of care do you feel your father needs?"
I shrug and study my hands. I notice my fingernails look really dirty in this bright, clean hospital room. "I don't know," I say. "I just want things to be the way they were—the way they used to be."
"And what way was that?" Sam asks, setting his elbows on his knees.
I look out the windows at some distant church steeple and ask myself honestly what Dad needs, and my answer is my mom. Everything would be okay if Mom were here. She was the one who could always make Dad better again. She was the one who could draw him out of his study and get him to join us on trips to the zoo or picnics in the dead of winter along the C&O canal. She was the one who could get Dad to laugh, and even though Dad was the writer, she was the one with all the stories, the memories—about how they met, about their first years of marriage, about me.
AUNT BEE: There you go. You're remembering your mother. That wasn't so hard, was it?
I feel a sudden burning in my chest. I swallow, thinking I can get rid of the feeling that way, but it only intensifies. I press the heel of my hand against my chest and take a deep breath. Then I turn back to Sam. "I think my dad just needs to see my mom again."
"Okay," Sam says, nodding. "But that's not very realistic, is it? Don't you think you and your father deserve to build a good life without her?"
"What is this?" I explode. "Everybody's ganging up on me! I'm not realistic? You think I'm not realistic? Like I'm crazy, too? Is that what you think? I know my mom's dead. Okay? I know she's not ever coming back. I know that! Don't you think I know that?"
Sam has jumped out of his chair. "Okay, calm down. It's all right. It's all right. Nobody thinks you're crazy." He puts his thick arm around my shoulder and does this sideways hug thing so my head is mashed against his rib cage.
CRAZY GLUE: Yeah, goob. Calm down already. You're freaking me out, man.
I pull away from Sam. "I'm okay. I'm calm. You can sit down now. I'm not going to do anythi
ng."
"Of course you're not," he says, but he doesn't sit. Instead he takes the file he left in the chair and tucks it under his arm.
CRAZY GLUE: That file's gotta reek!
"Listen, Jason—I'm going to come back around dinnertime to pick you up. By then we'll have your living arrangements all figured out. I promise, everything will work out fine. You'll see. Now, are you willing to go with me?"
"Do I have a choice?" I cross my arms again and look out the windows. I see a gaggle of geese flying past the steeple.
CRAZY GLUE: Freedom.
"Yes, you do. You can go with me willingly, with the intention of making the best of a difficult situation, or you can go unwillingly and make yourself and everyone around you miserable."
CRAZY GLUE: Where'd they find this bozo?
I don't say anything, and after a moment Sam pats my shoulder, tells me he'll see me later, and leaves.
I'm down in my dad's hospital room. The doctor came to see me for all of five seconds after Sam left, and then a nurse came and put my arm in an official sling. She said it should heal in a couple of weeks.
Dad's asleep. He's got tubes and baggies and stuff hooked up to him, and the monitor by the bed beeps and burps now and then, letting me know he's still alive. They've shaved his beard off and he looks better—cleaner—but he's so thin, he barely makes a lump in the bed. I shake his shoulder. "Dad?" He stirs and smacks his chapped lips a few times.
I imagine him opening his eyes, recognizing me, and saying something wonderful, something that makes sense.
"Dad?"
He opens his eyes; it takes him a moment to focus and see me. "This is bad news. I got static in the attic. Tell the boy." He closes his eyes. "The Furies..." He goes back to sleep.
I use my good arm to pull the covers to his chin. I feel his forehead; the fever is gone.
AUNT BEE: If only his mind were as easy to fix as his body.
I'm just glad he's alive. Really. At least he's alive. Right? That's the important thing. That's what we've all got to remember.