IN THE CAR I saw that my mother had left a message on my cell. I picked it up and was surprised to hear my parents were spending the night in Balen. It seemed my mom’s company was celebrating a huge quarterly success and was throwing a party at a nearby hotel. Because they were going to be out late, and drinking, they thought it best not to try to drive home late. It sounded like my mom’s company was springing for the hotel room.
Aja noticed my uncertain expression. “A change of plans?” she said.
I started the car. “Well, I wanted to take you to Balen so we’d have some privacy. But I just found out my parents are going to be gone for the night. In fact, they’re spending the night in Balen.”
“So there’s no reason to go there.”
I felt like such a dick for blushing. “We could go to my house and hang out but it’s not very exciting there. Besides, I promised you dinner in a fancy restaurant. You’re probably hungry.”
“Do you have food at your house?”
“Leftover turkey. It’s only a day old.”
Aja shrugged. “I like turkey leftovers.”
“You really want to go to my house?”
“Yes.”
I was fortunate I didn’t have to worry if the house was clean. My mother loved to tidy up as much as my father loved to work in the garden. Our house was always immaculate, with the exception of my bedroom. It was not that I was a slob but my space was limited, what with my guitars, amps, and keyboards, never mind my computer and books.
My parents had bought me a tablet the previous Christmas but, for me, there was a special pleasure in holding and reading a real book. I doubted that I’d ever throw out my collection of novels. Besides science fiction, I’d collected tons of mysteries. I had every book Agatha Christie had ever written.
If my friends could have seen me the first half hour I was alone with Aja I’m sure they would have died laughing. For some reason, hanging out with her in the place where I’d grown up made me feel especially nervous and clumsy. For example, in the kitchen, suddenly I couldn’t find a damn thing. I even had trouble finding a pot to boil rice. Then I had trouble remembering how long I was supposed to let it cook. Finally, though, I began to calm down and by the time I had the food on the table I was back to my usual witty self.
“Does Bart do the cooking at your house?” I asked as I sat across from Aja, the width of the table separating us. I’d offered her a beer or a Coke but she seemed to prefer water. She also kept me from piling too much rice, turkey, and steamed broccoli on her plate. Given that she weighed no more than a hundred pounds, I could see why.
“I do most of it,” she said.
“Really? Where did you learn to cook?”
“Aunty taught me. She and her husband owned a restaurant when they were young.”
“She didn’t mention her husband to me.”
“He died not long after they married.”
“She never remarried?”
“She told me there was no point—that she’d never be able to love someone else as much.” Aja added, “I disagreed with her.”
“Isn’t it possible she was right? I mean, isn’t it possible there’s only one special person out there for all of us?”
“No,” Aja said and there was a peculiar authority in her voice, as if she was absolutely certain what she was saying was true.
“You’d never make it in the music business,” I teased. “Almost every song recorded nowadays is about finding your soul mate.”
She spoke in a serious tone. “That’s not what you write about when you compose your songs. I’ve heard them. You write what comes to you from the Big Person.”
“The Big Person?”
She gestured. “I don’t know what you call it. When you write a song, don’t you listen inside, first, before you come up with the lyrics?”
I nodded. “Yeah, usually. I know I write better when I’m alone and the house is quiet. Silence seems to help me connect with my muse.”
“Your muse.” Aja appeared to savor the word. She added, “The Big Person must be the same as the muse.”
“Is ‘Big Person’ a phrase they use where you come from?”
“No.”
“Then why do you use it?”
Aja continued to struggle to find the right words. “To separate it from the Little Person.”
I chuckled as I took a bite of turkey. It didn’t taste bad for leftovers. The rice was pretty good, too. My mom preferred basmati and, like her, I put plenty of ginger in it.
“You’re losing me,” I said. “Who’s the Little Person?”
Aja went to answer but then stopped and smiled. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.
After we finished our meal and cleaned up—it was my idea to wash the dishes—we watched a movie. Aja had never seen The Lord of the Rings—she had only seen a handful of films—so I played her a tape of the first installment: The Fellowship of the Ring. She watched the whole thing without uttering a word. But it was obvious she loved it.
It was after midnight when we went up to my bedroom. Aja sat on the edge of my bed and I picked up my acoustic guitar and took a seat beside her and began to strum a few chords. The instrument was out of tune but I remedied that fast enough. Since I was a kid and had first picked up a guitar I’d been able to tune it automatically. It wasn’t bragging to say I could hear notes, precise notes, much clearer than your average person.
“What do you want to hear?” I asked.
“A new song,” she said.
“All my new material is rough.”
“No. Play something brand-new.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“You can do it. Just . . . let it find you.”
“Let it find me?”
She nodded. “Let your muse find it for you.”
Aja sounded so confident that I could do what she was suggesting I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t think my muse was actually alive and on call. Like I often did when I was alone, I strummed a few minor chords—E, A, D, G—switching them around randomly before I began to play individual notes in the same chord structures.
For a while I just let the hypnotic flavor of the chords ease over me. I love the sound of the guitar; I love to just randomly pick at the strings. This time, however, after ten minutes or so, I began to feel a soothing heat inside. It seemed to radiate from my gut and rise up and flow through my fingers. I noticed I’d begun to play faster, my fingers flying between the frets. It was odd but I felt as if I’d touched something special and if I just reached a little farther, a little harder, I’d know what it was and I’d be able to play it.
Then I had it, a brand-new melody. I began to hum along with it, occasionally throwing in a line now and then. I was far from having a complete song but I knew I’d stumbled onto something.
I began to sing aloud. . . .
“Strange girl
Where did you come from?
Where have you been?
Strange one
You’re so full of secrets
I can’t see within
Strange girl
You move so softly
Across the stage
My eyes can’t leave you
I’m hiding backstage
You’re a closed book
I can’t read a page
I suddenly stopped, feeling embarrassed. “God, I’m not sure if that worked. The words I mean. But the melody—there’s something there. What do you think?”
“I liked the words. I liked them a lot.”
I chuckled. “That’s because you’re not a songwriter. I was just throwing out lines. That’s how I compose songs. I’ll throw out a dozen lines and if I’m lucky I keep one.”
Aja was curious. “What lines would you keep tonight?”
“Well, maybe the first handful. They might work as a chorus. Maybe a few others.”
“Maybe all of them?”
“No way.”
“Why not?” she asked.
I hesitated. I wanted to tell her that the words made me think of her too much. That she, and not my muse, had inspired them. But there was no way I was going to tell any girl something like that on a first date.
Aja appeared to sense my shyness and put her hand on my knee. “You’re worried you won’t succeed. But you will.”
The certainty in her voice, it was odd, it seemed to vibrate a chord deep inside.
“How can you be so sure?” I said.
Squeezing my knee, Aja stared at me with her big, brown eyes. “It will be okay, Fred,” she said.
“You didn’t answer my question. How can you be so sure?”
“The Big Person.”
I smiled. “He told you?”
“Yes.”
She kissed me then, or else I kissed her. I honestly don’t know who made the first move. It wasn’t a brief kiss, nor was it long; somehow it was timeless. The next thing I knew we were lying on my bed. I was stroking her hair and running my hand over her shoulder and down the side of her hip and leg. And Aja was touching my face and the feel of her fingers—there was something extraordinary about them.
Her touch was not merely loving. I felt as if her hands were actually made out of love. I knew that was crazy, yet it felt so real. I’d like to say that I felt as if I was falling in love with her right then but the love I felt coming from her—it seemed so much bigger than anything a normal human heart could conjure up. It was like a tidal wave of caring, of intimacy—of something so big that perhaps only a Big Person could really understand it. All I knew for sure was that I’d never met anyone even remotely like Aja.
Then my phone rang. It rang and rang and I was forced to answer it. The screen on my cell said it was Dale. He wouldn’t call this late unless it was important. I propped myself up on the bed with my elbow.
“Hello?” I mumbled.
“Fred, it’s Dale. We have a problem.”
“We do?” I said. He sounded bad.
“It’s Mike. When you canceled practice he got restless. He drove over to Balen. I tried to stop him but he said he had some business to take care of. I knew it could be nothing good. Turns out he went to pick up five pounds of pot at the home of some big dealer. Someone must have tipped off the cops. He was followed by the police, and when he was inside the dealer’s house, completing the deal, the cops hit the place. There was a shooting. Mike didn’t get hit with a bullet but he got hit over the head hard. I don’t know the full story, only what the cops told me. The dealer might have struck Mike, thinking he’d set him up, or else Mike might have gotten into a fight with the cops. You know how he gets when he’s cornered. They might have cracked him over the head with a baton. But his injury—it’s serious. I spoke to the emergency doctor just before Mike was wheeled into surgery. He told me there could be brain damage.” Dale started crying. “Fred, I don’t know what to do. The doctor said I have to prepare myself for the worst.”
“Are you at Balen Memorial?” I asked. Balen had a decent hospital, good doctors. I assumed they’d called in their main neurosurgeon. The guy was famous in our part of the country.
“Yeah. I’m on the third floor. Please, can you come? You’ve got to come, I don’t know if I can take this.”
“Of course I’ll come. I’ll leave now. Hang tight. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Dale was crying. “I don’t think so.”
I hung up the phone. Aja was staring at me; she didn’t ask anything. I assumed she’d heard enough to know Mike was badly hurt. I felt a pain in the center of my own chest. It felt odd after all the joy I’d felt only seconds ago. I sighed heavily.
“I should take you home,” I said.
Aja shook her head. “I’ll go with you to the hospital.”
“Are you sure? I’ll probably be there all night.”
“I’m sure.”
We drove to the hospital in silence. It was ironic that my parents were in Balen that very night. I considered calling them but what was the point? My mother would just get upset and pace miserably in the waiting room. She had known Mike since we were in kindergarten. And I couldn’t call Mike’s mother, not yet. I had my reasons.
But I considered calling Janet. I knew she could comfort Dale better than I could. I also knew she’d want me to call her. But something held me back. I told myself it was best to wait and see how serious Mike’s condition was before dragging everyone out of bed. The truth was I didn’t know what I was doing.
Balen Memorial was a five-story cube. Whoever had designed it had been lacking in imagination. Yet the building was relatively new and the hospital had a good reputation. Considering where we lived in South Dakota, Mike had ended up in probably the best facility within three hundred miles.
We found Dale on the third floor in the surgical waiting room. He was alone; he looked so frail. He burst into tears when Aja and I arrived. He hugged us both and I could feel him trembling in my arms. He kept thanking us for coming; I finally had to tell him to stop it.
“Have you heard any updates from the nurses?” I asked.
He nodded weakly. “A nurse came out. She said Mike’s skull was swelling inside and that the doctor—Dr. Rosen—had to drill a hole to relieve the pressure. But she warned me that that was just the beginning. The blow—it sent tiny fragments of bone into Mike’s brain. The nurse said that Dr. Rosen is trying to take them all out before he closes him back up.”
Doctor Albert Rosen was the famous neurosurgeon I’d heard about. That was the good news. But the rest of what Dale told us made me feel sick to my stomach. Holes in Mike’s head. Bits of his skull in his brain. It felt so unreal; like a nightmare.
Yet, ironically, none of what I heard surprised me. It was as if a part of me had waited for years to get this exact call in the middle of the night. Mike’s crazy drinking, the wild crowd he ran with when he was out of our sight, his explosive temper . . .
It had made this night all but inevitable.
Still holding on to Dale’s hand, I collapsed into a chair, with Aja on the opposite side, her head resting on my shoulder. It was a quarter till two in the morning. There was nothing to do but wait. The nurse had warned Dale the surgery could take all night, maybe longer.
Around three in the morning Aja seemed to drop off to sleep. Her breathing became soft and regular; she wasn’t snoring but she was close. Dale, too, to my surprise, blacked out, his head lying back against the wall. I was glad; he needed a few hours of peace. His pale face looked so weary. I worried if Mike died that Dale wouldn’t make it. Dale loved his friend that much; Mike was the center of his life. And Mike didn’t even know.
What a messed-up world, I thought.
At six in the morning a nurse came out and spoke to us. The news was all bad. Mike had major swelling of the brain; the fact his head was open due to the ongoing surgery was the only thing that was keeping his gray matter from pressing against his skull. Plus the doctor kept finding more fragments of bone; he’d already removed a dozen. I still didn’t know what Mike had been hit with or who had hit him. The nurse certainly didn’t know. She told us to try to be patient. When she left, Dale collapsed in his chair, sobbing.
“It’s no good! It’s no good!” he cried. “Even if he lives he’ll never be the same.”
Sitting beside him, I pulled Dale close. “You don’t know that. He’s got a brilliant surgeon working on him. And the brain is an amazing organ. Why, some people get in car wrecks and fall into comas for a year and are ten times worse off than Mike. Then, out of the blue they wake up and a few months later they’re out playing baseball. You have to keep a positive attitude.”
Dale nodded miserably. “I’m sorry, I know you’re right. I just feel . . . I just feel like it’s going to turn out bad. I don’t know why.”
There was a question I had put off asking Dale.
“Don’t you think it’s time we called his mother?” I asked.
Dale cringed. “No. Don’t, Fred, let’s wait. Please.”
On the surface Dale’s reaction might have appeared weird. But since Mike’s father had died when Mike was only five, Mrs. Garcia had never been right in the head. It was not as if she went around doing crazy stuff but she was usually disengaged from the world and seldom answered questions beyond saying yes or no. Most people in town assumed she’d had a nervous breakdown when her husband died—one she’d never recovered from. Dale believed, as I did, that the only thing that kept her alive was her son.
I’d discovered that the hospital had called Dale because they’d checked Mike’s cell and had seen Dale listed first in Mike’s saved numbers.
I patted Dale’s hand. “We’ll wait.”
But I felt I’d waited long enough when it came to Janet. I called her and told her the bad news. She swore at me for having left her in the dark so long but I could tell it was a defense mechanism. She was badly shaken. She said she’d come right away.
“Have Bo drive you,” I said.
“I’ll be fine.”
“No. Listen to me. Call Shelly. You two should drive together.”
She hesitated. “All right, we’ll see you soon.”
Time crept by. The large round clock on the wall above us reached seven o’clock. Dale stood and went off to find some coffee. Aja continued to rest with her head on my shoulder. She appeared to have gone back to sleep. It was only then that I realized she hadn’t called her aunt or Bart to let them know where she was. Knowing her unreliable history when it came to checking in, I took it upon myself to call her house.
Bart answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Bart, this is Fred. Aja’s with me and she’s fine. We’re in Balen. A friend of mine was in a serious accident. He’s in surgery now. I tried to take Aja home but she insisted on coming to the hospital with me. I hope that’s okay.”
Bart didn’t immediately say it was fine like I thought he would. Instead, he was quiet a long time. “Is your friend in danger of dying?” he asked.
“It’s serious. He’s suffered major brain trauma. He’s been on the operating table all night.”
“Then you must listen to me. Do not let Aja anywhere near your friend. Even if it’s just to see him for a few minutes in the recovery room. Don’t take her with you if you go see him. In fact, it would be better if you took Aja home right now. She shouldn’t be at a hospital.”
Aja continued to breathe deeply on my shoulder. I spoke softly. “I don’t understand. You’re acting like my friend can hurt her.”
“He can hurt her. You must trust me on this. Take her home now.”
“I don’t think she’d go. She insisted on coming with me. You know how stubborn she is.”
Bart paused. “She told you she had to be there?”
“In so many words, yeah.”
He sighed. “Then let her stay. But swear to me, even if she insists, that you won’t let her get near your friend.”
“Why not?”
“I told you why not. He’ll hurt her. He might even kill her.”
“How?” I asked.
“I can’t tell you how. You have to take my word for it. You know I’ve been with Aja a long time. Just trust that I know what I’m talking about. Now swear to me you’ll do what I said.”
I swallowed. “I swear.”
Bart wished my friend all the best and hung up, leaving me utterly confused. His request, his demand—it had been so odd. He was acting like Mike would suddenly rise from his deathbed and transfer all his pain and injury directly into Aja’s head. Frankly, Bart had sounded more crazy than Mike’s mother.
Yet I had sworn to him.
I saw no reason why I couldn’t keep my word.
Dale returned shortly and brought me a coffee. Janet and Shelly arrived close to eight o’clock and woke up Aja. The waiting room was starting to feel claustrophobic to me and we moved to the hospital cafeteria, which was open and serving breakfast. None of us was really hungry but I picked up some scrambled eggs, toast, and a few slices of bacon, as well as a pot of coffee. Janet and Aja poked at the food, eating little. Dale and Shelly stuck to the coffee.
“You should have called us hours ago,” Janet said.
I shrugged. “Would it have helped? You and Shelly got to sleep. That’s a good thing. Mike’s going to need us today.”
“I know you told us everything the nurse had to say,” Shelly said. “But what was her attitude like? Was she optimistic?”
“She was professional,” I said. “She didn’t give anything away.”
“She sounded like a cold fish,” Dale muttered.
“We’re lucky Dr. Rosen is doing the operation,” Janet said. “People fly from all over the country to see him. Mike couldn’t be in better hands.”
I chewed on a piece of buttered toast; it felt tasteless in my mouth. “I don’t understand why we haven’t seen any cops all night,” I said.
“You know the answer to that question,” Janet said. “They’re the ones who cracked Mike over the head. Trust me, their lawyers have already warned them to keep a distance and to not say a word to anyone.”
“How could Mike be so stupid as to get caught in the middle of a drug bust?” Shelly said.
“Because he’s an idiot,” Dale said, and there was so much pain in his voice.
After eating less than half our food, we returned to the waiting room. It was eleven before Dr. Rosen finally appeared through the swinging doors. He’d obviously come straight from the operating room. There were splashes of blood on his blue scrubs. Although his dark eyes were weary, bloodshot actually, and he was on the short side and balding, the man had a strength to him. We jumped to our feet the moment he entered the room.
“Are any of you family?” he asked.
“We’re the only family he has,” Janet said. “Talk to us.”
Dr. Rosen told us the news. My fatigue might have dulled my mind but it seemed to me the man used a lot of long-winded medical terms I could have done without. The bottom line was that he’d been able to remove all the bone fragments but he feared the overall trauma to Mike’s brain would cause it to continue to swell. The next twenty-four hours would be critical.
“Could he die?” Dale had the guts to ask.
Dr. Rosen could tell, of all of us, that Dale was the most shaken. He patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can to see that doesn’t happen,” he said.
“Is he conscious? Can we talk to him?” I asked.
Dr. Rosen sighed wearily. “We can only wait and hope he regains consciousness. Two of you can see him—no more—and only for a few minutes.”
Dale was the obvious choice to go, of course, and he wanted me to come with him. But Aja stepped forward. “I should go,” she said.
“Why?” Janet asked. “You hardly know him.”
Aja didn’t respond. Pulling her aside, I spoke so only she could hear. “I called Bart to tell him where you were. When I explained to him what had happened, he freaked out. He made me swear that I wouldn’t let you anywhere near Mike.”
Aja stared at me with her big eyes. “Bart knows not to interfere.”
“With what? You?”
“Yes.”
“I’m confused. Bart acted like Mike could hurt you somehow.”
Aja shook her head. “I need to see him.”
Dr. Rosen cleared his throat. “The two who are coming with me had best come now,” he said with a note of impatience as he turned toward the door that led to the recovery rooms.
“Come on, Fred,” Dale said, grabbing my arm. He literally pulled me away, leaving Aja following me with her eyes.
The recovery room was open; there were not even curtains separating the patients who had been operated on, perhaps because they were all males. I saw two elderly fellows who’d had their sternums sawed open; obvious heart patients. And a guy in his forties who had metal bolts holding his lower right leg together.
Yet Mike looked the sickest of them all.
It was his color—he didn’t have any. Being Hispanic, always out in the sun, it seemed impossible but Mike was white as a bedsheet. The top of his head was encased in bandages; the gauze came down to near eye level. On the left side it was stained with blood. “Soaked” would have been a more accurate word. A narrow tube ran from his nose to an air pump. The latter hissed as it rose and fell. He was being mechanically ventilated.
“Can he breathe on his own?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Rosen said. “But that can change. All we can do is wait and see.” He turned to leave. “My prayers are with your friend.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Dale whispered, wiping away a tear. He turned to me as if looking for a miracle. “Fred?”
I pulled Dale close. “There’s hope, you heard what Dr. Rosen said.”
Dale’s head sagged heavily. “I wish I hadn’t heard what he said.”
We stayed with Mike ten minutes, both of us taking turns squeezing his right hand, the only limb that didn’t have an IV stuck in it. Dale spent most of the time talking to Mike, telling him that he was going to be all right, that he had a lot of living left to do, a lot of concerts left to play with us. He told him how much he loved him and it was all I could do to keep from crying. I hated crying in public. Even more, I hated what the oozing blood in Mike’s bandage told us about his odds. He looked so lifeless; like no one was home.
Finally a nurse came and kicked us out. It was just as well. Seeing Mike, who’d never been sick a day in his life, in such bad shape had been too much for Dale. He was beyond overwhelmed. I practically carried him back to the waiting room. Janet and Shelly were anxiously waiting for our report. But Aja was missing.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“She went to the bathroom,” Janet said.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
Janet was in a rotten mood. She snapped at me. “Who cares? She’s human, Fred, you know. She uses a toilet just like the rest of us. Now tell us how Mike looks.”
Dale had already collapsed in a chair and covered his face with his arms. I did my best to put a positive spin on what we’d seen. My lies were not very convincing. I probably should have lied more. When I mentioned that Mike couldn’t breathe on his own, Shelly broke down and Janet turned away so no one could see her crying. She was worse than me when it came to public displays of grief.
Aja didn’t reappear in the next fifteen minutes. I finally went looking for her and found her sitting near the hospital entrance. She was bent over and clutching her abdomen as if she had a bellyache. I sat beside her.
“You okay?” I asked.
She slowly raised her head and looked at me. She hadn’t seen me approaching. Her gaze looked somehow off. She kept blinking and a muscle in her cheek was twitching. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Do you want me to take you home?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t bother returning to the waiting room and the others. I just texted Janet a brief message saying I would catch up with them later and that one of them should pick up Mike’s mother and explain to the poor woman what had happened. I knew Janet would take care of it herself.
Aja and I were no sooner in the car than she passed out, her loose hair hanging over her face. I wasn’t really worried about her. At best she had only slept four hours. She must be exhausted, I told myself. It had been a little selfish of me to bring her in the first place. Then again, I had not been lying to Bart when I had told him she had insisted on accompanying me. On the surface Aja acted easygoing but I was beginning to see she was not used to being told no.
I didn’t disturb her until we were driving up the long driveway to the old Carter Mansion. It was then she gave me a bit of a scare. I had to shake her hard to wake her up. “Aja?” I said loudly.
She finally stirred, raised her head. “It’s okay,” she whispered.
“What’s okay? Are you all right?”
She nodded, her eyes half-closed. “Fine.”
Bart came out the front door, onto the porch, and down the steps as I stopped at the mansion entrance. I’d hardly put the car in park when he flung open the door and undid Aja’s seat belt. He practically lifted her from the front seat, all the while glaring in my direction.
“I told you that you should have taken her straight home!” he screamed at me. His venom threw me off guard.
“She was just taking a nap,” I said.
Yet Bart had a right to be concerned. Suddenly I could see Aja was far from all right. She was having trouble staying awake; she kept sagging into Bart as they went up the stairs. Finally, and this really scared me, he lifted her off the ground and carried her into the house. Jumping out of the car, I tried to follow but he shouted for me to leave.
“You’ve done enough for one day!” he cried, slamming the door in my face. I stood there for several minutes feeling like a complete fool. I wanted to knock, talk to him, explain that I had kept my word. What made it worse, of course, was that I had no idea what was wrong with her.
In the end, though, I accepted that I was not wanted and trudged back to the car. Driving back to town seemed to take an eternity. The weird thing was, I suddenly felt more worried about Aja than I did Mike.