Thursday, July 19—13:28:51
We were a block away and easily beat the ambulance to the house on Irving Street NW, across from the Tubman Elementary School. Harriet Tubman, escaped slave, hero of the Underground Railroad, spy for the Union Army during the Civil War, and later suffragette.
We reached the home of Enrique and Miguel Estevan, father and son. The old man, very old, lay motionless on the indigo living room couch. His ash-gray face sagged as if his skin was five sizes too big. Skin puddled below his eyes like deflated balloons, and wattles of the stuff drooped beneath his jaw. His lipless mouth gaped open, but it showed surprisingly white teeth. And an incongruous full head of hair was so black it was almost blue—it had to be dyed but looked convincingly real.
His breaths were shallow. We found his pulse.
The younger man—he seemed to be in his sixties—was frantic.
We reassured him the ambulance would be here any second.
He pointed toward framed photographs on a side table. He grabbed one. A photo of a man in his sixties with his arm slung around the shoulder of a handsome young man.
“That’s us.”
Jen nodded in sympathy. Father and son when both were much younger.
“You don’t understand … Where are they?”
“Almost here.”
“Look closer,” he said.
Jen glanced at the old man lying on the couch.
“No, look here.” He tapped the younger man in the photo. “That’s him. That’s my son.” He pointed to the couch. “That’s him on the couch.”
“But—”
He stretched a helpless hand toward the man on the couch. “I’m the older one in the picture.” He stabbed a finger at the young man in the photo. “This was taken six weeks ago.”
I don’t want you to think I’m a heartless lump of clever cells, but binary programming didn’t prepare me for people being nuts. Sorry, there I go. Prepare me for people with mental illness. I study it; we’ve attended courses. Jen corrects me when I say jerky things like that. But it just isn’t logical. Dementia I kind of get, because I’m used to dealing with inferior human memories, so an impairment on that front never seems like a stretch. This one didn’t feel like dementia, so I figured this man in his sixties required help.
The ambulance conveyed us to the hospital. We waited. Jen and I don’t always see eye to eye, but she agreed that Enrique Estevan—the younger-looking one who claimed he was the father—didn’t have a firm grasp on reality. I tried to impress her with a clever line: “Maybe reality doesn’t have a firm grasp on itself.” But it didn’t entirely make sense, although a half hour later I turned out to be a prophet.
We checked Jen’s messages. Shot the shit with other officers who had dragged people into the ER. Wandered back and sat next to Enrique, who squirmed on the plastic chair like he was sitting on top of an ant hill.
Thirty-three minutes later, a doctor came out and looked around like he needed to find someone and yet was hoping that person might not be there. He called out, “Mr. Estevan?” and when Enrique looked up, he came over to him.
“I’m so sorry, but your son has died of liver failure.”
Your son? Jen said to me. Doesn’t he mean your father?
“He was only forty-six,” Enrique Estevan said.
And looked ninety-six.
We tagged along while Mr. Estevan filled out forms. We stepped away when he spoke to the hospital chaplain and rushed forward to hold him when we thought he was going to hit the deck. We rested a hand on his back while he met again with the doctor.
Mr. Estevan said, “He was completely normal until a week ago.”
“There is a condition called”—the doctor glanced at his tablet—“Berardinelli-Seip lipodystrophy. I never heard of it until today. Maybe thirty Americans have it, maybe a thousand in the entire world. It’s extremely rare.”
It was caused by a gene mutation. Subcutaneous fat disappears in parts of the body, hence the sagging skin. It normally manifests in early childhood, progresses slowly, and has a variety of symptoms. There have been reports of cases where it starts later and progresses fairly quickly. But nothing that raced so quickly to death. The doctor could not explain it, but he did a decent enough job summarizing the same Wikipedia articles I was pulling up.
I buzzed for a car, and as we drove Mr. Estevan home, it felt like a hearse.
For a while he cried. Then he moaned and rocked himself back and forth. “This can’t be happening,” he said. I felt bad for the guy.
We phoned his sister in Baltimore and delivered the blues.
Jen asked Mr. Estevan if he’d be alright on his own until his sister arrived, but even I knew it was a dumb question. What could alright possibly mean when you’d just lost your child? The one who suddenly looked old enough to be your father. Or grandfather.
Cruel me did wonder why Enrique hadn’t exited. Maybe this could have been prevented.
As we headed out the front door, he was still crying and moaning, “Poor Miguel. My beautiful, beautiful boy.”
I called for a car. I didn’t want to make a deal about my smart line, but I guess I did a bit, so I said, “Weird, huh?”
At first Jen didn’t answer, but just as the car arrived, she said, “Damn if you weren’t right again, Chandler. Something is fucking up reality.”