Chapter 3

On the bus ride back to Midway House, he wondered about her. What had happened to put her in the coma? Why was her face bandaged? How long had she been in that state? Then, more importantly, he considered what would happen in her unconscious world now that he’d guided her back to the shore.

It’s none of my business, he told himself. She would wake up at some point or she wouldn’t, at which time someone would pull the plug on her. Whatever happened, it had nothing to do with him. He’d only gone to the hospital to see Dr. Perry, not to meddle in a young woman’s dream.

He considered his possible new job at the church tomorrow to keep from thinking about her. They would want him to play hymns, none of which he knew. Dad had taught him the classics by Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin, not anything religious. His parents had never taken him to a church; he didn’t know if his parents had belonged to any religion. Their closed-casket service had been held in the funeral home with only a few friends and loved ones, no clergy among them.

The driver announced his stop and Max heard the metal-on-metal screeching of the brakes as the bus came to a halt. Then Max found his way along the aisle and down the steps. He waited for the bus to drive away, the stench of rotten eggs left in its wake, before listening carefully for any traffic and crossing the street.

Midway House smelled of the dead fish brought in by boats in the harbor. As Max climbed up the front steps, the breeze carried the odor of dead fish from the harbor. The thought of water brought to mind the unconscious woman at the hospital.

He leaned against the front porch railing, imagining her still lying there on the beach, alone and helpless. She was trapped within her own mind, unable to wake up. How long would she stay on that beach? Months or even years he supposed. Until she woke up, died, or maybe sunk deeper into unconsciousness. If only he could do something to help.

“Mr. Caldwell! I hadn’t realized you’d come back yet!” Mrs. Garnett said everything like a mother praising a toddler for learning to use the potty. Max wished for a pair of earplugs to dampen the volume of her talking. “You’re just in time to help with dinner!”

Mrs. Garnett—like Drs. Lee and Perry—seemed to think Max only needed a job to find happiness. She guided him through the living room with its incessantly loud television and into the kitchen. “I really don’t want to tonight,” he said. “I’m kind of tired from going to the hospital. I’d rather just go to bed if you don’t mind.”

“Now, Max, everyone is supposed to pitch in around here! You can help set the table! Just put one bundle of silverware at each seat!” She jammed a basket into his stomach, which he took with his free hand. He went out to the table and used his cane to find each chair, and then put a rolled-up cloth napkin on the table in the vicinity of the chair. Before he finished, Mrs. Garnett gave him another basket that smelled like ashes.

On Mrs. Garnett’s insistence, the residents of Midway House helped cook the dinner too, but none of them knew how to cook. Tonight they made undercooked roast, burnt dinner rolls, and a tossed salad, the only idiot-proof dish. Max took an extra helping of the salad and gnawed politely on a piece of beef.

Around him sat Sheila with anorexia, Leslie with agoraphobia, Dave with kleptomania, Annie with clinical depression, and Jerry with alcoholism. While the others ate in silence, Jerry couldn’t stop talking. His voice rivaled Mrs. Garnett’s in volume. “I haven’t eaten this well in five years. I’ll have to let out my belt another notch after this. Annie, where did you learn to cook?”

Annie sat next to Max. She responded to Jerry’s question by pushing away from the table and running up the steps. After her door slammed, Jerry said, “What did I say?”

“Nothing Jerry! Annie is just a little sensitive today! I’ll go talk to her!” Mrs. Garnett left the table and Max heard her call up the stairs, “Annie, honey, please come down!”

“She’s such a drama queen,” Sheila said.

“At least she didn’t wake up the whole house last night,” Leslie said.

“Guys, guys, guys, let’s not fight. This isn’t The Real World. There aren’t any cameras going,” Jerry said.

“I’m going to bed,” Sheila said.

“Make sure you put a gag on tonight,” Leslie said.

“Why don’t I put a gag up your ass. You—”

Max seized the opportunity to go upstairs to his room. At first Mrs. Garnett had insisted he take a room downstairs, but he didn’t want preferential treatment because he couldn’t see.

“You can do anything people with 20/20 vision can,” Mom told him in the car after the doctor said he would lose his vision completely by second grade.

“I can’t play centerfield for the Mariners,” he said.

“Well, a lot of people can’t do that either, honey. Even people with perfect vision. There are still lots of things you can do. No matter what anyone says, you never forget that.”

His room smelled musty, but opening the window would only bring in the manure odor from the fields. He searched the wall for his shelf of records and pulled each down to feel the Braille label. He found the one he wanted: Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” as conducted by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Dad had met the legendary conductor backstage after a recital. Bernstein touched him on the shoulder and said, “You have a great future ahead of you.”

Max placed the well-worn record onto his father’s player and waited for the first strains of music before collapsing onto the bed. Barber’s melody had become his favorite in the days after his parents died. There was something so haunting and yet soothing about how the music rose incrementally until the soaring crescendo before drifting back into silence. The flow of a river had inspired Barber to write the music, but to Max it seemed more like life. The way people’s lives grew and grew until they reached the crescendo at death, and then silence.

Some, like his parents, reached the end too soon. It was his fault. He never should have gone into their bedroom, but he wanted to punish them for keeping him from Alicia Hauptmann. He wanted to make them suffer a little bit. But only a little bit. He hadn’t meant for things to get out of hand.

By the time the record finished, his face was wet from tears. No one understood. Even this Dr. Perry who wanted to be his friend wouldn’t understand if he explained. She would think it was all in his head. A defense mechanism. Maybe that was the punishment he deserved.

In his own dreams he had no power over events. In tonight’s dream, he saw a piece of driftwood floating at sea. Instead of the beautiful young woman, he saw his parents. They waved their arms and called to him, but he was stranded on the shore. He could only watch as a wave built up behind their raft, and then swamped them.

When he woke, his throat felt too dry to scream. Sweat stained his clothes and sheets, the moisture a grim reminder of the dream. He pressed both hands to his face and leaned back against the wall. He couldn’t go to sleep again now without the risk of finding himself back in the same dream.

He went over to the record player and put on Beethoven’s “Tempest” sonata. His fingers involuntarily pounded imaginary keys in time with the music. After Max went blind, Dad force-fed him endless hours of Beethoven. “He went deaf and still wrote beautiful music. He didn’t let a handicap impede him.”

Max sat back down on the bed and thought about the dream. In the case of his dream, the message was obvious. Abandoning the young woman in the coma was no different than abandoning his parents. He hadn’t caused the woman’s coma, but leaving her to the hands of fate wouldn’t be any better. At least he could go back and make sure she was all right. Then he wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

The next morning, instead of taking the bus to Holy Redeemer Church to see Dr. Perry’s pastor, he went back to the hospital. Since he didn’t know the young woman’s exact location, he went to the gift shop to buy some flowers. He felt the petals of different bouquets, deciding on a grouping of what smelled like daisies. At the counter, he asked the clerk where he could find a coma patient. The man directed him to a nurse’s station at the end of the hall, through a set of double-doors. He made his way down the corridor and stopped after a set of doors opened automatically at his approach.

“Can I help you?” a woman’s voice asked.

“I’m looking for a patient. She’s in a coma.”

“Name?”

“I’m not really sure.”

“You don’t know who you’re looking for?”

“She’s sort of a friend of a friend. I live next to one of her co-workers.” He held up the flowers and hoped she believed the lie.

“Ah, so you’re here to see Sarah.”

“Sarah? That sounds right.”

“Well, you’re the first visitor she’s had in a month.”

“You mean her parents haven’t come? Or a brother or sister?” Or a husband? he added to himself.

“She doesn’t have any. It’s so sad, for someone to be alone like that. Let me take those flowers and I’ll find something to put them in.” The nurse took the flowers with one hand and with the other led him to Sarah’s room.

“What happened to her?” he asked.

“House fire. Second- and third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body.” The nurse led Max to a chair next to the bed and then sighed. “There’s not much hope for her, but maybe a visitor will help. I’ll put the flowers right next to her bed where she can smell them and let you talk. Take all the time you need.”

He waited until he heard the click of the door and then allowed her mind to pull him back into her world.