The emergency room at Thomason Hospital resembled a morgue. Grace Delgado and her three sisters sat in the waiting room. They said little, but when they managed to utter a word or two, they spoke in whispers. Grace was stoic, just as she had been after Sam had died. She retreated to her own desert, prayed and fought with God there. Her sisters would touch her, squeeze her hand, kiss her. She let them. A fleeting thought ran though her head—that her sisters had always loved her more than she had ever loved them. She was wrong, of course, but typically, she was overly harsh on herself, even in her fleeting thoughts.
Liz paced the room, away from Grace and her sisters. Grace knew enough to leave her alone.
“Would you like some water?”
Grace looked up at the familiar voice and took the cup of water Dolores was holding out toward her. She drank. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. She pictured Mister’s face, unscarred and youthful and perfect, his dimples making him seem even younger than he was. He’d loved to smile and laugh and speak his mind. Such a lovely and tender young man. She thought of the expression on his face when he’d dug a grave for Mississippi. He was perfect in that light.
She looked up and found herself staring into the grave face of a young, but tired doctor. “I’m looking for a Mrs. Delgado.”
Grace nodded. “That would be me. But I think you’re looking for her.” She pointed her chin toward Liz. She rose from her chair and made her way to where Liz was pacing the floor. “Liz,” she whispered. The doctor was standing beside them.
“Mrs. Delgado?”
Liz looked at the doctor numbly. “Yes?” The question hung in the air.
“I’m very sorry—”
She stopped him in mid-sentence. “I want to see him.”
“He’s not, I mean, I have to warn you, he’s—”
This time it was Grace who interrupted him. “Would you be so kind as to let my daughter-in-law have a few moments—” Her voice dropped, almost cracking.
The doctor nodded.
Grace took Liz by the shoulders. “Go on,” she whispered. “I’ll be in when you’ve had your time.”
Liz and Grace searched each other’s faces for a moment.
“It’s okay,” Grace whispered.
Liz nodded, then followed the doctor through the swinging doors that read: NO ENTRANCE WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF HOSPITAL STAFF. She turned back and looked at Grace, her lips trembling.
She didn’t know how long Liz had been in the room with Mister. She was beyond caring about time. She sat in a chair that faced the swinging doors. She did not take her eyes off the door. She sat almost motionless until Liz appeared, her eyes red, her hair disheveled. Their eyes met. She rose from the chair where she’d kept vigil. Liz was standing in front of her. “I think he’d like it if you spent a few moments,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” Grace said.
“Even now he’s beautiful,” she said, her voice breaking down.
He seemed not dead at all. His hair, still wild as a flame, his face as calm as a breezeless dawn. Not dead at all—except he’d lost his color. She touched his forehead, then ran her fingers through his hair. She gasped, then felt the hot tears and the convulsions, the pain in her heart, the same pain she’d felt when Sam had gone. She’d told herself that nothing would ever hurt like that again. But she’d been wrong. This was worse, this awful, relentless, merciless gnawing at her heart that made her wince in pain, that made her fall to the ground on her knees and clutch at herself as if she were trying to claw away the pain. She did not hear herself screaming my son, my son. She did not hear her words breaking down into wails. Nooooooooo myyyyyyyyyyyeeeee sooooooonnnnn, her cries becoming an astonishing howl. This was loss, this was pain in its cruelest, purest form, and it seemed she would break and she didn’t care if she did, didn’t care about anything because there wasn’t anything left but this hurt that was eating away at her body with a hunger that was even more ravenous than the cancer.
She became a stream, and the only waters that flowed through her were of him, Mister, being held out to her the second he was born, his eyes alert, his nest of thick black hair begging to be combed, Mister trying to convince her not to make him go to school, Sam can teach me everything Grace, Mister standing in front of an empty building, Grace, this is my new coffee shop, La Dolce Vita, that grin impervious to cynics, Mister wailing at Sam’s grave. She wanted it to stop, to stop, and yet she wanted the images to run through her forever, and God, she was, she was breaking, and then—right there—in the midst of all these wordless articulations, the dream came to her. The dream, her friend of many years, it came to her. And now she understood it as she never had. There they were—Sam and Mister, spinning each other round and round and round, until they were one with the blinding light.
She opened her eyes and found herself kneeling on the floor.
She picked herself up.
She kissed him one last time. “Amor,” she whispered. That was the last word she had spoken to him. It was a beautiful and worthy word, as beautiful and worthy as her son.
She pulled her hand away. And left the room.