Thursday, June 14
“THE OTHER NIGHT I FELL asleep on David’s bed and had a dream about that day.”
Peter had already told the bereavement group about his attempt to go with his son when he died; and though break-time had come and gone, everyone was urging him on. One woman in particular, dark-haired with brilliant green eyes, had been staring at him the entire time, hanging on every word.
“When I woke up in ICU, I couldn’t remember a thing. I thought David was still alive. But even after they told me he was gone, I couldn’t remember what happened in the minutes after he died. I knew there was something, I just couldn’t put it together in my mind.
“The dream fixed that.”
He told them about the strange room, the dark figure he believed had taken David. “It seemed so real. The dream, I mean. And the weird thing was, while I was having the dream, I finally remembered what happened after I injected myself that day. It was as if the dream was a window onto the world I found myself in with David when he died, and hence the only place I could remember what had happened there before. I don’t know if I’m making any sense.”
“Perfect sense,” the green-eyed woman said. “Please, go on.”
Peter focused on her and continued. “The thing is, I don’t know whether that room or what happened in it was real or just an hallucination. I did give myself a big dose of morphine, and hallucinations are a common side effect of narcotics.”
“What does your heart tell you?” the green-eyed woman said.
“I’m sorry,” Peter said, “I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Erika.”
“If you don’t mind, Erika, I think I’ll finish before I tackle that question.”
“Good idea. I’m sorry.”
Peter cleared his throat, uncomfortable but determined to go on. “The dream I had the other night was different. The first time, that figure—death or whatever it was—it came right up to us. And though I didn’t actually witness this part of it, I believe it took David. I was being resuscitated at this point so I can’t be sure. Maybe my so-called rescuers took me away from David.” Tears burned his eyes. “Maybe, if they’d left well enough alone, I could have helped him.”
“Peter—”
“Let me finish, Roger. I need to get this out.” Someone handed him a tissue and he wiped his eyes with it. “This time, in the dream, the figure had a face. David asked me if I saw it, but I woke up before I could answer.” He looked directly at Erika. “When I opened my eyes, David was there. Beside the bed, touching me. It was just for a second, but I swear I could feel his hand against mine.”
Erika reached across the table for Peter’s hand, her grip dry and strong. “My Tanya came to me in the same way,” she said. Her daughter had died at seventeen from complications related to mononucleosis. “In a dream...or on the tail of a dream, like you described. She’d been gone nearly six months and I was dreaming about a glorious afternoon we spent together at Cape Cod on her sixteenth birthday, just us girls. My, how we laughed. When I woke up, she was sitting on the foot of the bed with her hand on my shin. It felt like butterflies. She was smiling, peaceful. She spoke to me, Peter,” Erika said, her voice breaking a little. “She told me she was happy and that she didn’t want me to be sad anymore. Then she was gone.” She squeezed Peter’s hand. “Your boy’s in a good place. That’s what he was trying to tell you.”
Peter slid his hand away and stood. “I hope you’re right, Erika. I’d give anything to believe it. But my son wasn’t peaceful. He was terrified.
“I’m sorry, I have to go.”
* * *
Roger Mullen waited until Peter had slipped out the door, then excused himself and went after him, catching up to him in the parking lot.
“Peter, hold up.”
Peter kept walking. “Not now, Roger.”
“Come on, wait up. Let’s talk.”
Peter stopped in a yellow circle of streetlight, his shoulders sagging. He turned to face Roger. “Look, I’m upset, I just want to go home.”
“Is this a good time to be alone?”
“I’ve been upset for a long time. I’ll manage.”
Roger swiped a mosquito off his neck; his fingers came away streaked with blood, black in the streetlight. “Alright, but listen. About Erika. She’s a sweet gal, but a little out there. You know...Tarot cards, tea leaves, the whole nine yards. She runs a small business out of her house, telling fortunes. She’s harmless, but she can’t wait to put a supernatural spin on things. She’s been a regular at these meetings since her daughter died. Just keeps signing up.”
Peter glanced at his car, edgy, saying nothing.
Mullen rested a hand on his shoulder. “Sure you won’t come back inside?”
“I’ll come back,” Peter said. “I promise. Just not tonight.”
“Fair enough.” Roger took his hand away to look at his watch. “I usually head over to Eddie’s for a nightcap after the meetings. Care to join me? Say, half an hour? I’ll beg off early.”
A polite demurral came to Peter’s lips and he cut it off. This big man, smiling at him in the dark with a squadron of mosquitoes circling his head, had been enduring the same breed of pain as Peter, only for a hell of a lot longer, and now he was standing here trying to help. To refuse the man’s offer would be the worst kind of selfishness.
But it was more than that. As soon as David was old enough to grasp the concept of honesty, Peter had done his best to instill that quality in his son. “Truth,” he would tell David, “is a powerful tool. Of all things, honesty is the clearest measure of a man.” It was a principle David would adopt to a degree Peter could not have anticipated. Standing here now, he could think of dozens of examples of how truthful his son had become. Even recently, a few months before he got sick, David had shown his true colors. The phone had rung that evening while Peter was cooking and David had answered it. The call was for Peter, and when David covered the mouthpiece to tell him who it was Peter asked him to say he was out and take a message. David stood there a moment, his hand slipping away from the mouthpiece, the conflict evident in his eyes—Do I disappoint my father by refusing his request or do I tell a lie?—then handed the phone to his dad. Peter took the call, then went to David’s room later to apologize. And there had been other occasions when David was with him and a lie seemed the easiest way to resolve a situation—the time a cop pulled him over, saw from his ID that he was a doctor and asked him if he was speeding because he was on his way to the hospital. A white lie could have saved him a couple of hundred dollars; the cop actually seemed to be offering him the out. But he had felt David’s eyes on him, the little guy sitting stock still in the back seat, and he’d told the cop No.
Facing Roger Mullen now, Peter felt as if David were standing right behind him, watching to see if he’d do the right thing.
He glanced at his own watch and said, “Yeah, okay. Sounds good. I’ll swing by the video store first and meet you at Eddie’s around nine.”
Roger nodded, saying, “Good,” and jogged back to the church. Peter stood there a moment longer, returning his gaze to the sky, thinking that the single greatest foible of the human condition was hope. Even now, with his wife and son in the grave, he couldn’t help but hope they were together somehow, at peace, waiting for him. You could hate God, but the hate was impotent without belief.
Without hope.
He climbed into the car and drove out of the parking lot.
* * *
“Did youse want menus?”
Grinning, Roger said, “No thanks. Molson Ex for me.”
“Root beer,” Peter said. “Lots of ice.”
As the girl took off, Roger said, “You know, I don’t believe a person can get a waitressing job in this city unless they use the word ‘youse’ at least once during the interview.”
Peter chuckled. “Same thing in Ottawa. Same thing everywhere.”
“You’re from Ottawa?”
“Yeah. Grew up there, studied at U of O. I came up here to do a two-month locum thirteen years ago and met my wife.” He grinned. “The rest is history.”
“How’s your wife holding up?”
Peter told Roger about Dana’s aneurysm and how close he and David had grown since her death.
Roger looked gray. “That’s more than any man’s share of shitty luck.”
The waitress showed up with their drinks before Peter could reply, and that suited him fine. He didn’t want to talk about this anymore tonight.
When the girl left, Roger said, “Your boy and mine spent some time together at the same daycare. Did you know that?”
“Yeah. After I met you last week I remembered.”
“Jason used to talk about David all the time. They really hit it off. He cried every morning for nearly a month after you guys left.”
Peter said nothing. One of his principal regrets about a life in medicine was the amount of family time it had robbed him of. He knew that, compared to many of his colleagues, he’d done his best, reserving the majority of his time away from work for his wife and son. Still, he could have done so much better.
Roger poured half his beer into a frosted stein and took a gulp, a thin crescent of foam sticking to his lip. He wiped it away and said, “You into movies?”
“Love ’em. If I had to do it all over again, I’d try to get into the business.”
Roger grinned. “Star potential?”
“Hardly. No, the creative end. Writing, maybe. And the software they’ve got now? Fascinating. I was just getting David interested in a computer animation course for kids the university offers. He was a whip with computers.”
“How do you feel about going to them? Movies, I mean.”
“You and me?”
“Don’t get worked up. It’s not a date.”
Peter snorted laughter. “Relax, you’re not my type. When were you thinking?”
“That new Spielberg flick starts tomorrow. I’m on graveyard shift tonight, so I’ll sleep till one or so. Why don’t you call me anytime after that?” He jotted his number on a napkin and gave it to Peter. “We could do the early show, beat the rush, then maybe catch a bite at Mr. Prime Rib.”
“My favorite place in the world. I’m in.”
“How do you want to work it?”
Peter glanced at Roger’s vanishing beer and said, “You’re the boozehound. I’ll pick you up.”
Roger smiled. “Deal.”
The waitress came back all smiles with her tray and said, “Can I get youse anything else?” and both men broke into helpless laughter.
* * *
Peter felt good. He was watching Tommy Boy, a Chris Farley movie he and David had watched together about a million times. David had loved the film so much, he’d named his goldfish after the main character, and for a while Dana had made ‘Tommy Boy’ her pet name for David. Peter laughed out loud in a dozen places watching the film, and by the time it was over felt relaxed enough to call it a night. Brushing his teeth, he realized that a big part of the way he was feeling came from the prospect of a friendship with Roger Mullen. Roger was a good guy who understood Peter’s situation. The other friends he had were mostly couples left over from the days he and Dana socialized with members of the medical community. A friendship with Roger would allow them to lean on each other, outside of the sometimes morbid circle of the group. He was actually looking forward to their outing tomorrow night.
Passing David’s door on the way to bed, Peter considered going inside again; but in spite of what Erika had suggested at the meeting—and in spite of his own vain hope that what he’d seen in this room had actually been his son—he’d already reconciled himself to the belief that what he’d experienced was a dream...vivid, terrifying, heart-breaking, but a dream nonetheless. He could see no point in attempting to relive it.
He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to his chin and slipped into a deep, dreamless slumber.