EVEN DOCTORS CRY. And this late afternoon they were crying. Their original optimistic prognosis seemed to be well founded when they made it but their original prognosis was wrong.
When Traci was told, she grabbed some things and rushed out to the street and hailed one taxi after another that wouldn’t stop for her in the evening traffic rush, and finally one did stop and she told the driver her destination of George Washington University Hospital. During the anxious and sickening twenty minute taxi ride she was imagining that she would see Eli Jared lying in bed, shriveled up, and with tubes going in him and out of him and unable to speak or at best to do no more than whisper. But that isn’t the way it was.
Eli Jared was seated in an arm chair next to the empty bed in which he was supposed to be lying, and he was wearing a three-piece gray suit and tie and he had neatly placed his eye-patch over his left eye, and there was an unlit cigar in his mouth. And when he saw her he yelled out, “For God’s sake, it’s Traci of Howe!”
She didn’t cry. She laughed. “Hello, Mr. President.”
“What on earth did you bring me, Traci of Howe? Booze? Did you bring me booze in that bag you’re holding behind your back?”
“No, Mr. President! I didn’t bring you booze. I brought you something so much better than booze!” And from behind her back she took the filled-with-something paper bag she thought she was hiding. She had her purse dangling on its thin black strap from her shoulder and she took the purse’s strap down and placed her purse on a small table that had cartons of juices on them. Then she was free to release the contents of the paper bag she brought with her.
She held the bag in her left hand and put her right hand to the top of its interior and as though she was announcing the winner of an award she said, “Mr. President, let me introduce to you—Proween!” And from the paper bag, she took and exposed to him a stuffed furry replica of a tabby cat with big blue-green eyes.
“Oh, my God! Did you say Proween!?”
“Yes. She’s Proween!”
“I assume she’s some relation to Prowee and Prowette?”
“Of course. She’s Prowee’s new daughter and Prowette’s new sister. One of the family!”
“Well, I’m so glad she chose to visit me. That’s very nice of her.”
“Oh, she isn’t visiting you, Mr. President. She wants to live with you. I’m just her chauffer. Her mother and sister kissed her goodbye and said they hope she’s very happy with you. But I warned her. I told her ahead of time that you are probably not the easiest man in the world to live with!” And she gave Proween to her new overseer.
Eli Jared smiled, grabbing the unlit cigar from his mouth so his smile would be unobstructed and he put the cigar down on the arm of his chair and took Proween and then put her on his lap. “I’ll treat her well. Lucky she isn’t a human. Those are the ones I can’t live with.”
“I guess I should have figured that one out,” Traci said. “And I’m very impressed that you remembered the names of her mother and sister.”
Eli Jared pet the little replica of a cat and said, “Proween will love life. I loved it.”
Traci noticed that he put the word into past-tense and her smile ended. “You’re going to be alright, aren’t you, Mr. President?”
“Oh yes. I’m going to be alright. It’s just that I won’t be alive.”
“Oh yes you will. Now, don’t even think that.”
“No, Traci, I won’t but that’s not unusual you know. I know a lot of people who died. It’s very common.”
She couldn’t help but smile but this time not a wide one. Just a smile with her mouth closed.
“But I’ll be alright, Traci.”
“I know you’ll be alright. Your doctors say you’ll be alright. Everyone says you’ll be alright. I say you’ll be alright. You look wonderful. You look like you’re ready to walk out of this place!”
“I was ready to walk out of this place as soon as they brought me into this place. Look at that picture on the wall. It’s the Eiffel Tower. Why on earth would I want to be looking at Paris when I already don’t feel good?”
“Well, it’s pretty. They just wanted to put a pretty picture up there.”
“That’s their opinion. Then let them put it in their own room. There’s no reason why I should be forced to look at Paris while I’m here. I’m a guest.”
“Mr. President, I think you’re going to be home in no time. I think you’re going to walk out of here and then you can say goodbye to the picture of Paris.”
“That’s what I want to do with or without their permission, but they’re mad enough at me as it is for refusing to wear a gown. I don’t want to make them any angrier. They’ll catch me leaving. And they’re the ones who have the hypodermic needles. They give me shots all the time. I don’t think anything’s in them. They just like to give me shots. Some nurse comes in here rolling a metal tray and says, ‘it’s time for your little shot?’ The first time she said that I thought she had a gun.”
“Well, that’s your medicine.”
“And then they give me Jell-O. Green Jell-O. For God’s sake, don’t they have any red Jell-O?”
“Are you hungry right now?”
“No. I’m a little nauseated. It’s all that green Jell-O. And then all those juices there. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
“Mr. President, they’re just trying to help you.”
“You know what could help me?”
“What?”
“If they’d let me smoke a cee-gar.”
“They can’t do that! There’s an oxygen-tank in the room and everything, and there are other patients around, you know!”
“The other patients should go home. I saw two of them pass by the room today and they looked just fine.”
“Mr. President?”
“What now!?”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“I doubt it, but what is it?’
“Would you let a commoner hold a former president’s hand?”
“That’s out of the question, lady! Don’t get flirtatious with me! Although I have to admit if I was just two years younger things would have been different between you and me.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, you’re so right, Mr. President.
Just think—only two years and it would have been perfect. Then we would have been perfectly matched.”
“Look. I’m a compassionate fellow. If it will fill some high-school fantasy of yours to hold my hand, then—”
“Oh, it will!” she interrupted.
“Alright. Alright. Go ahead and hold my hand then. Women! God—what was He thinking? I swear to you, lady, it wasn’t His best day!”
And she moved a chair close to his chair, and she sat on it and extended her hand to his. “Mr. President, you look so good and so well and you look like you’re going to a—to a big political ballroom dinner.”
He took her hand. “I can’t wear those silly gowns they have here that tie together in the back. Those gowns make any person who’s well feel sick.”
“Well, you look so good, Mr. President.”
“Thank you. You’re a kind person. And you know I love to tease you.”
This time she laughed. “Oh, I know that!”
“You don’t mind that, do you? Did you ever mind that?”
“If I did, would you have stopped?”
“Of course.”
“You would not!”
“So what? So I wouldn’t have stopped. Why do you continue to make a liar out of me? Traci, I want to ask you something. Will you please apologize to Admiral Kaylin for me? He’s such a fine man and I treated him rudely one morning and I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“Why? What did you do?” She couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t use Keith Kaylin’s first name but called him ‘Admiral.’ She knew it was to tell her that he held him in respect.
“Why? What did he do?”
“I pretended that I was mad at him because he was late in handing a paper to me, a paper that I had requested. I did apologize to him for that but I led him to believe that that was why I was angry. But that wasn’t it. It’s true that I don’t like anyone to be late, but that wasn’t it.”
“What was it?”
“It was when I met with some of the members of Sebotus in the Solarium.”
She said nothing, but her face gave away her fear of even hearing him say that word.
“I knew you and he had been there together the night before, and like an old fool I was envious. Just envious. Envious because he was young and strong and a good looking fellow. Look, I learned when I was a little boy never to be envious of anyone for any reason. I thought that I couldn’t be envious ever again. It happened when I was a boy and that was enough. But then, in the Solarium at a time of life when I least expected it—that old schoolboy feeling overrode all common sense and all obvious reality. There envy was. In my stomach. In my head. In my soul. I hated myself for it. I want you to apologize to him for me. And he should know why. He didn’t deserve my anger. He deserved my admiration. And he had my admiration—but I let envy overcome it.”
She had difficulty putting the words together, but she did it. “How did you know we had been there together?”
“I knew it the moment I entered the room. There was something in the air. I knew it in an instant. Your exquisite scent was there but you weren’t in the room, and of all the people who were in the room, there was more scent of the Admiral than anyone else present. And there was his tardiness of handing in his paper when tardiness was not his style, and there was his awkwardness of a man who was never awkward. It was for sure. And even at a time of such extreme importance in the history of the world, that feeling overrode me. Will you please apologize to the Admiral for me?”
Her eyes were getting misty. “There’s no reason for you to apologize.”
“Please.”
She wiped one of her eyes quickly before the mistiness would become something else. She said nothing for a while and then she said, “I remember when a long time ago, after the Red Sea War, President Wadsworth said in a speech that you had the scent of a bloodhound.”
“Did he?”
“I memorized it. He said that you have ‘the vision of an eagle that can see to every horizon and spot everything beneath him.’ He said, ‘He has the scent of a bloodhound that can sniff signs of both danger and peace. His sense of touch is like a manatee, he has the taste of a butterfly, and he can hear like a dolphin. And with it all he has the sixth sense of a cat.’ And then he said, ‘He is an American treasure.’”
“The President tends to exaggerate. But I am complimented that you memorized it.”
“No. He doesn’t tend to exaggerate. He tells the truth. And I couldn’t help but memorize it.”
“You had hamburgers that night, didn’t you?”
Even under such circumstances, he made her laugh and she wiped that eye again. “You could smell the hamburgers?”
“You bet I could!”
“Well, you’re wrong, Mr. President. They were cheeseburgers!”
“Whatever they were.” And then there was a lull in the conversation and he looked down and then he looked around the room and back at her. “Traci, will you do me the greatest favor of all?”
“Without hearing it, the answer is yes, Mr. President.”
“Tell the Admiral and tell yourself that I hope—I hope so much that both of you have the happiest life together of any two people who have ever lived.”
Traci stared at him and she bit her lower lip and the tears came and she tightened the grip around Eli Jared’s hand. “Oh, God,” she said softly and involuntarily.
“You know the only thing I really don’t like about dying? I don’t know what I’ll do. What if I go to Heaven? What am I supposed to do up there sitting on a cloud? Doesn’t that sound awful? For an hour maybe, but that’s enough. And listening to harp music for all eternity? God, I’ll go nuts! I hate harp music. At least if it was a big band!”
She didn’t know quite what to say. And then she thought of something. “Mr. President, have you ever heard of Empyrean?”
“I think so. It rings a bell. What’s Empyrean?”
“It’s the heaven above heaven.”
“Oh, no! Another one?”
“Wait a minute! Don’t make any quick judgments without thinking this through, Mr. President. That wouldn’t be like you. It’s the heaven above heaven so it’s an even better one!”
“What’s up there? More clouds? More harp players?”
“Oh, no. It’s a place of unimaginable things to do.”
“Really?”
“I think so.”
“Do they allow smoking up there?”
“I hear they do.”
“Separate rooms for smokers or can I smoke anywhere?”
“Anywhere. That’s what I understand.”
“Well, that’s good. Thank God someone has some sense of justice somewhere.”
“Mr. President, I really mean it. I believe in it. There is an Empyrean.”
“What kind of things do they give you to do up there? Things that are important or things just to keep you busy? I mean I don’t want to just be amused, you know. I’m long past the time of enjoying entertainment.”
“Well, I don’t really know the specifics.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ll try, Mr. President.”
“Traci, you know why I can’t be impressed with such a fate?”
“Why?”
“Because if I could just stay here I would be living above Empyrean without going anywhere. My life has been lived above Empyrean. I lived free in the greatest country in the world. That’s above Empyrean. Do you know what I saw many years ago? I saw something I’ve never been able to forget. A long time ago when I was a young man I traveled around the world. It was during the Cold War. There was a lot of discussion then about whether or not people would choose freedom or security if they had to make a choice. And people do have to make a choice. On some of those world trips I talked to refugees wherever I could find them. I found them everywhere and it’s then that I learned beyond any argument that the greater instinct by far is the passion to be free. The evidence was the migration of escapees during those decades with all of the migration coming from one direction. At the risk of their lives, millions and millions chose making the dangerous journey to places of greater freedom: From North Korea to South Korea. From East Berlin to West Berlin. From North Vietnam to South Vietnam and from a conquered South Vietnam to the sea. From Laos and Cambodia to Thailand. From Cuba to Miami. From China to Taiwan and Hong Kong. From Tibet to India. Millions, Traci. Millions. And millions more from the Soviet Union and all its satellite governments in Eastern Europe to nations that were free. Liberty was what the civilian migration of the Cold War was all about and it is why all those who took the journey did not meet someone else going in the opposite direction.
“Traci, they were going above Empyrean. I didn’t use the word; you brought the word to me just now. But that’s when I realized what I already had. I was living a life in which liberty was home. Liberty is above Empyrean.”
For minutes neither of them said anything.
Then he nodded and smiled at her. “What a life!” he said.
Again there were minutes of looking at each other. It was a wonderful period of time. It might have been five minutes or maybe it was two minutes or maybe it was ten minutes. Maybe it was only one but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t in the dimension of time at all. It was not in the dimensions known in life. The inaudible dialogue between them was saturated in a torrent of words in a language beyond translation. And then he gave a smile and so did she. The time was close to being done and they both knew it.
“Traci, I think you better leave now. I’m a little tired. I’m going to get on that bed. Not in it, but just on it. I’m a little tired.”
She nodded and he released her hand and she slowly stood up.
“And, Traci, I’m so glad you brought Proween here. If I felt better and could take care of her, I would do it. I would love to do that. But I think it’s best, for her own future, that you take her with you. And I know that you and the Admiral will give her the best home in the world. You will, won’t you? That’s what I want.”
“Yes, Mr. President. We will.”
And she kissed his hand.
Traci left the room and she left the hospital and she walked outside into the night with her purse hanging over her shoulder by its thin black strap and she held tight to her paper bag with Proween inside it. And she passed by a row of waiting taxis. They held no interest to her because she didn’t want to be driven anywhere. They were there for people who were in a hurry. She wanted to walk because she was walking above Empyrean.