“So, what can you tell me about your mother?” Ava asks Thatcher as the elevator rises through the center of the hospital. “Where would you be if you were her?”
“I don’t know,” Thatcher says, shrugging.
“Didn’t you tell me she’s a nurse?” Cohen asks.
The boy shrugs again, nods. His eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep, and his baseball cap lists farther and farther to the side as the morning goes on.
“So, what you’re saying is, we’re looking for a missing woman who’s a nurse and she’s hiding in a hospital?” Ava asks.
Cohen smiles.
Ava looks at him, then at Thatcher. “Does the term ‘needle in a haystack’ mean anything to you two?”
She finally gets a smile out of the boy.
“What kind of a nurse is she?” Ava asks.
“I don’t know. A regular old nurse, I guess.”
“If I were a nurse, where in a hospital would I hide?”
“Maybe where there are a lot of nurses, so you could blend in?” Thatcher asks.
Ava looks over at Cohen playfully. “Why didn’t I think of that before?” she says. “This boy’s going to be a detective someday.”
Thatcher tries not to smile, scratches the back of his neck, and yawns without covering his mouth, a long, exaggerated yawn that makes Cohen rub his own eyes and wish for a few hours of sleep. The elevator arrives at their floor and they walk out. The hospital is awake now, with nurses walking here and there, orderlies serving breakfast, doctors going from room to room.
Thatcher looks at Cohen. “I’ll catch up with you soon.”
“Okay,” Ava says. “Well, Thatcher, should we go floor by floor?”
“There are a lot of floors,” he says, sounding hesitant.
“We’ll do one at a time, and you can check in with your father in an hour or two to see how your grandfather’s doing. I’ll stop by later, Cohen.”
“Thanks, Ava,” he says, glancing at Thatcher. “Hang in there.”
Cohen watches as they walk away and stop to talk to a few nurses, Ava asking questions. They glance into a few rooms, open the door to a storage closet, and are confronted by a nurse. Cohen smiles. He walks into his father’s room.
Calvin is in his bed, looking exactly the same. Cohen’s mother stands at the foot of the bed like an ancient stone statue. His sister sits in the same chair she always sits in, both hands on her stomach, eyes glued to their father. Dr. Stevens is there.
“Ah, Cohen, I’m glad you’re back. I’ve been talking with your sister and your mother.”
“Hi.”
“Yes. Well. Can we talk?” He takes a few steps to the back of the room, beside the window. The sun is already well above the buildings, and the sky is an enchanted, oil-painting blue.
Cohen follows the doctor. Kaye rises up out of the chair with a groan, a hand on her back. Their mother never moves, never blinks.
“Your babies have dropped since yesterday,” the doctor says to Kaye, smiling.
“Yeah,” she replies with a grimace. “I feel like they’re ready to fall out.”
“Are these your first?”
“No, I have a son.”
“Okay. Wanted to make sure you knew the signs of impending labor. Do you have a C-section scheduled?”
Kaye nods.
“Good.” He pauses as if searching for a good transition. When nothing seems to come to mind, he beckons for them to move a little closer. He gives a sad smile, lays his clipboard down on the windowsill, crosses his arms, and leans back against the glass. “I’m sorry to say there’s nothing more we can do. Your father is no longer responding. There’s no reason to expect he’ll recover.”
Cohen looks over at Kaye, and she does not respond the way he expects—no hand to the face, no tiny whimpering sounds. In fact, she barely responds at all. Her eyes glaze over, her lips remain slightly apart, shallow breaths coming and going. She licks her lips. She swallows. That’s all.
“I am recommending that we remove your father from life support.”
Cohen does not take his gaze off Kaye. She nods, and now her eyes are moving from one thing to another—from the window to the doctor’s face to her mother to her father and back to the window.
“Kaye?” Cohen asks.
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “No,” she says. One word.
“I’m sorry?” Dr. Stevens asks.
“I said, ‘No.’”
“We need to talk about this, Kaye.” Cohen’s voice comes out quiet, gentle.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Cohen looks at the doctor, who does not look surprised.
“Take your time,” Dr. Stevens says. “I think it would be good if the two of you spend some time talking together. I’ll be back this afternoon. If you have any questions, please let me know.”
“Thank you,” Cohen says. “We’ll . . . yes. Thank you.”
Kaye has gone back inside herself, staring at Cohen through empty eyes.
The doctor walks past their mother and through the door. She watches him walk out, takes a deep breath, and comes over to the window. “Kaye,” she says, as if calling her out of some deep place.
Kaye looks at her as if she is only now realizing her mother is there in the room with them.
“Kaye,” she says again.
“You have to let him go.” Her words are clipped, demanding, emotionless.
Kaye blinks twice in quick succession.
“You have to let him go,” their mother says again.
Kaye shakes her head. “No. Mom. Only yesterday you were talking about him having fresh clothes so he could walk out of here!”
“Kaye,” their mother says a third time, reaching out and putting both of her hands on Kaye’s shoulders. “You have to let him go.”
“No, Mom. No.” Kaye is shaking her head frantically, back and forth, back and forth, and the tears that were dammed up all morning spill over. “No.” She keeps saying it in between sobs, the word muffled from behind her hands, which she put up to shield her face. “No.”
Cohen finds himself crying. It’s the first time since he saw his father lying on the floor of the funeral home that he feels moved to tears, and it’s Kaye’s childlike insistence that her father not die that gets him. They are children again, and their parents are telling them they’re getting divorced and that Kaye will go with their mother and Cohen will stay with their father and this is how it will have to be—their parents will still be friends, there will be nothing in between them except a little distance, and they will still be a family, a kind of family.
“No,” Kaye had said that afternoon. The country house’s windows were wide open, and the breeze came so deliciously through the screens that it was as if the world itself was in denial about the destruction taking place. “No, Mom. No.”
Cohen rubs his eyes with both hands to try to push the tears back up where they came from.