TRAFFIC on Route 2 ebbed to a midmorning progression. Daniel pulled to the front entrance of the clinic. Conrad hesitated before stepping out from the Suburban. Over his shoulder he glanced at Daniel. Daniel refrained from looking at him, but he sensed Conrad’s nervousness. Conrad shut the door, stared through the window. Slowly, he turned for the sliding glass doors.
Daniel did not bother to watch him go inside. He drove across the road and parked in the empty lot of the United Community Church. He stretched his legs, willing to wait for Conrad as long as necessary.
He kept his eyes peeled on the front entrance to the clinic. The sliding glass doors opened and closed. Healthcare workers and patients came and went.
He had sealed his mouth for an entire week, observing Conrad and continuing to wrestle with uncertainty of what to do. He had a difficult time sharing the same living space with him. Looking at Conrad across the supper table diminished Daniel’s will to eat. He’d retire for the night soon after getting up from the table and spend little time in the great room. He figured Aiden understood something bothered him. Aiden provided hints that he would listen, whenever Daniel was ready.
The steady words hammered inside his head: Could he ever reveal the truth to Aiden without destroying him?
Work had come as his only salvation. Alone in his workshop while passive Phedra manned the front, he could pretend, for a while, that everything remained the same as before Conrad’s coming.
On two occasions, Nick met him at the bottom of the driveway after Daniel returned home. Each time Nick asked if he had acted, and each time Daniel said he was still weighing his options.
“Go easy on him,” Nick would say.
Saturday at noon Daniel had asked Phedra to watch the shop until he returned. Rather than stop at Beadsman’s Deli or drive home for lunch, he traveled higher into the Salish Range. There, he sat on a cold picnic table by Little Bitterroot Lake, gazing almost vacant of thought at the reflection of the snow-capped mountains.
Magpies calling from treetops pulled his attention away. Nesting and mating, the black and white birds seemed unconcerned for the living below. One magpie aimed for the lake and reemerged in the sky carrying in its talons a fish carcass that had drifted ashore. Opportunistic scavengers, magpies had at one time fascinated Daniel.
Splashes from the lake sparkled under the overcast sky, distorting the mirrorlike image of the mountains. Landlocked salmon were feeding off the insects scurrying over the water’s surface. Last October he and Aiden had come to the lake to see the vast aspen groves in their full fall colors and the kokanee were spawning along the lakeshore. Inquisitive as always, Aiden watched fascinated as they flopped on their bellies to release their pearl-like sequence of eggs.
Daniel listened to the sounds of nature. Had it spoken to him? He opened his mind. Allowed the wind to provide clues.
He waited, expecting God to tell him what to do.
When a small group of day hikers disrupted his thinking, he rose from the picnic table and headed back to Rose Crossing. After work, he pulled into the driveway and crossed the road straight for Nick’s. Again, Nick met him halfway, and escorted him to the stables. They cleaned the boxes while the mustangs ran about the clover field. He and Nick talked in more detail about the situation. Nick promised to keep his mouth shut, permitting Daniel to make the ultimate decision.
Go easy on him….
The next evening during Sunday supper, a long overdue steadfastness welled inside Daniel. Conrad mentioned needing to go to the clinic on Monday. Daniel stunned both men—and perhaps himself—by announcing that he’d drive him. Aiden and Conrad’s protests failed to alter his mind. Satisfied that he came to a final conclusion, he deposited his dirty dishes in the sink and slept better than he had all week.
And then on the highway to the clinic, Daniel observed Conrad squirm. He kept more quiet than usual, even in Daniel’s company, and, grasping the dashboard, faced the road, blurry eyed. Only when Daniel pulled into the clinic’s parking lot did Conrad look at him. Daniel discerned Conrad understood Daniel’s motives for wanting to bring him.
Inside his truck, Daniel sat on watch. Brilliant blue sky spanned above the cancer clinic. Somehow, it seemed fitting that he should wait for Conrad to reemerge while sitting in the parking lot of a “falsh” church.
He imagined what Conrad might be doing inside the clinic, and what he had done the past few months. Aiden had told him that Conrad never wanted him to go inside with him, insisting on privacy. At the time, Daniel understood, even empathized. But after he read the labels on Conrad’s pill bottles, one of them stood out. He thought he heard of it somewhere before. He searched on the Internet and learned Relacore was an over-the-counter weight loss pill. In other words, an appetite suppressant.
He wondered: Why on earth would a cancer patient need an appetite suppressant?
Soon after, the suspicions began to pester him, which led him last Monday to the Flathead Valley Cancer Center to speak with Nick’s friend Dr. Vintos. He hadn’t been inside a hospital since Aiden’s injuries a few years before, sustained at the hands of his former editor, Kevin Hassler, and his girlfriend. He would have died for Aiden then, and he would again.
He barely noticed the odd odors and the irritating lights while comforting Aiden by his bedside; he was too concerned for his recovery. Yet when he walked into the Flathead Valley Cancer Center, the smell was like sweet death smacking his face and the lights nearly blinded him.
The redheaded receptionist informed him Dr. Vintos was attending a seminar out of state. By the squint of her eyes, she seemed to notice Daniel was different. Daniel was used to people staring at him due to his accent and moustacheless beard.
“Is there any way I might get information on a patient?” he asked in a shaky voice.
“Are you… a doctor?”
Daniel shook his head. “I’m trying to find out about a Conrad Barringer. I think he’s a patient here.”
“Are you a relative of his?”
“No, I’m a… I’m a friend. I only wish to know if he’s registered.”
“Oh, I see. Wait a moment, please.”
She punched a keypad before a flat screen monitor. A moment later, she said with a downturn of her ruby lips, “No one by that name is registered here.”
“Can you look again? I believe he’s been coming here for treatments for about two months.”
Screwing up her eyes, she turned back to the computer screen. “Can you spell his last name for me, please?”
Daniel became flustered and that angered him. “I… I don’t know. I think it’s B-A-R….”
She scrolled through the data bank again. “Nothing, sir. Sorry. No Conrad B-A-R or B-E-R or anything. When was his last appointment?”
Daniel barely heard her above the ringing in his ears. She repeated herself. Daniel tried to smile, to look unsurprised.
“Perhaps you have the wrong clinic,” she said. “There’s another cancer center at the county hospital.”
The receptionist said something else, probably along the lines of “Are you okay, sir?” when Daniel stood clutching the counter without responding. Wordlessly, he turned for the door and somehow found his truck and drove to the shop, ignoring the towering mountains that rose to the east, south, and west along the way.
The glass doors slid open, but no one came through the vestibule. Daniel sat stiffer, kept vigilant. He checked his wristwatch. Twenty-five minutes had passed since Conrad entered the clinic. A shadow waited between the two sets of doors. With small steps, as if he were expecting to be waylaid, Conrad appeared outside.
Shoulders slouched, he stood, edged aside when a nurse wanted to enter, and peered around the parking lot. He shoved his hands in his pockets, stared at the sidewalk. Something about his body language. As a prosecutor, I’d become sensitive to gestures that denote someone might be lying. During their last meeting, Nick explained how he figured out Conrad’s scheme, and Daniel thought himself stupid for not noticing sooner.
Appearing and reappearing between traffic on Route 2, Conrad barely budged. As patient as a cougar, Daniel fixed his eyes in his direction. Conrad’s gaze froze across the road. Their eyes locked. Daniel was certain Conrad recognized him sitting in his Suburban.
Conrad’s head and shoulders fell forward and his hands flopped loose from his pockets. He shuffled closer to the road, near the entrance to the clinic’s parking lot. After waiting for a break in traffic, he scurried across the road like a calf encountering the human world for the first time.
He walked longways to Daniel’s truck, hands tucked back in pockets. With an impish grin, he opened the door and shrugged.
“I was expecting you on the other side of the street. I thought you’d forgotten me.”
Daniel eyed him, speechless for a while. In a low, detached voice he said, “Hop in.”
Hesitating, Conrad slinked into the passenger seat and pulled the door toward him, but from the sound Daniel guessed he’d left the door ajar, as if he’d wanted a means for a quick escape if needed.
Daniel savored the faceoff. He had waited for it the span of a week. Although a momentary pinch of sympathy bugged him, he shook his head, concentrated on what required action.
“I… I didn’t have long to wait this time,” Conrad said. “Mondays are usually slow.”
Daniel faced the windshield, grasping the steering wheel. “They have no record of you.”
“What?”
“The cancer clinic never heard of your name. Du sei en falsh mann. You’re a fraud.”
Conrad sat mute. From the passenger side window, Daniel saw his eyes, shiny with what looked like tears, gaping toward the road.
“I thought you might have figured me out.” He spoke in a voice so low, Daniel had to perk up his ears to hear him. “This must shock you a lot. Especially since you’re Amish. Does Aiden know?”
Daniel pursed his lips. “No.”
“What about Nick?”
“He’s on to you.”
Daniel sensed Conrad turn his eyes to him, but Daniel remained staring out the windshield, not yet ready to look him in the face. “Please don’t tell Aiden,” Conrad said. “Try to understand. I don’t want him to know.”
“It’s against my upbringing to use violence,” Daniel uttered. “I’m questioning that now.”
Gazing back out the window, Conrad said, “I had nowhere else to turn. I lost my second job in two years last summer. Without a job and low on funds, I had to sell all my possessions, including my Jeep. Amazing how fast you can go through fifty thousand dollars when you have no income. I drained my retirement account. The only person I knew with a big enough heart to take me in was Aiden.”
“But why lie to him? Why something this ugly?”
Conrad shook his head. “I didn’t think Aiden would want me any other way. He’d already rejected my last attempt to get back with him. I knew he’d never turn me away if he thought I had a serious illness. When Aiden asked what I had, I thought of the first cancer to come to mind. Someone I knew in high school had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. I didn’t know about you when I first called, I swear. I never intended to break up you and Aiden. That’s not why I came. On some level I guess I’d hoped maybe I could get him back, but I realized that would never happen once I saw the two of you together.”
Daniel listened, and his heart softened. Not for Conrad, but for Aiden. In the past, their relationship had reared up from ugliness and heartache and stood stoic after the storms. Here again sitting next to him, one more pounding wave.
“I have no real family to turn to,” Conrad went on. “Like you, they’ve rejected me. I’ll turn thirty in a few months. What’s left for me? I guess I blame myself. I lived selfishly and have few trustworthy friends.”
“How long did you think you could pull off this farce?”
“I knew things were getting out of hand when I had to keep up with the treatments and phony side effects.”
“You pretended to lose your hair by shaving your head. That day in the bathroom screaming about your precious hair, you were putting on an act.”
“I cut out clumps and then later decided to shave my head completely. I’m embarrassed about that. I was at the time too.”
“Where did you get the Leukeran?”
“I ordered it from an online pharmacy based in Fiji before leaving Virginia. Cost me three hundred dollars to have it express mailed. Aiden knows so much about everything I wanted to look authentic. I never took any, of course. I’d pretend.”
“And then you started to take the weight loss pills.”
Conrad nodded. “At first I was slipping Ranger my food so that it looked like I was eating but still losing mass. Then I thought of taking diet pills. After the hiking trip to Glacier National Park, I went into my room and realized what had made Ranger sick.” He lowered his head. “He’d gotten into my diet pills off the dresser. I could tell by the teeth marks on the bottle. But of course I couldn’t say anything to Aiden or you, or to the vet.”
Daniel jerked his head to look at Conrad dead-on for the first time since they left the house that morning. Perhaps he appeared frailer at that moment than when Daniel thought he was sick from cancer and battered by the horrible treatments. “You could have killed him,” he muttered.
“Please, Daniel, try to understand. I know it makes me seem like a complete idiot. But I’m no monster.”
“What about those bouts of midnight sickness, when Aiden crawled out of bed to nurse you in the darkest hours of morning?”
“He always made it to the bathroom after the fact. I made a point to make enough noise to wake him, and then pretend I had just thrown up. He never actually saw me get sick.”
Bile rose in Daniel’s throat. He needed to spit, but he required more information. “What have you been doing each of the times Aiden drove you to your treatments?”
“I’d go for walks, mostly. I’d stand in between the two doors of the lobby waiting for Aiden to leave. A few times I’d have to go inside. I’d sneak past the receptionist and wander the halls or hang out in the cafeteria. With my bald head, I sort of blended in. Once when the receptionist caught me, I asked to volunteer, not knowing what else to say. The past few weeks, that’s what I’ve done.”
“Is that another lie?”
“It’s the truth. We can go inside and they’ll recognize me and tell you.”
“Didn’t you feel disgusted with yourself seeing all those kids with authentic cancer? The kids who had actually lost their hair?”
“I didn’t give them cancer. It’s not my fault.”
Daniel shook his head, clasped the steering wheel tighter. “I never heard of such deception in my whole life.”
“All I wanted was to have somebody to lean on until I got back on my feet. I needed a place to gather myself. I can make a fresh start. I just needed time. I’m sorry, Daniel. I know I’m an idiot.”
“Disrupting my life for two months is one thing, but how you used Aiden is unforgivable.”
“Please don’t tell him I lied to him. I’ll be too ashamed.”
“And to cheat him this way after how you mistreated him in Chicago.”
“And here I am, living off of you and him, and Aiden being so kind.” Conrad shook his head toward his lap. “I’m always thinking of myself first. In some ways I wish I had cancer. I really do. My life would be so much easier.”
“Stop that. You talk like a crazy man.”
“It’s the truth. I started to pray I’d get cancer or some other incurable illness.” He brought his voice to a whisper. “That’s when I thought of the idea to fake it and call Aiden.”
Daniel swallowed what pity lingered and sputtered, “Why not let the state care for you? People like you seem to think it’s good enough for everyone else; it’s good enough for you then. Become nothing but a wasted life living off the public feedings. An incompetent who can’t rub two sticks together to make a fire.”
“I couldn’t have gone on welfare. I couldn’t.” There was silence, and Conrad said, “What are you going to do now that you know?”
Daniel’s Amish background prevented him from doing what he wanted. “I should kick you out on the street, refuse to ever let you see Aiden again.”
“Is what I’ve done illegal? Are you going to tell the police? I’ll pack and leave you both. I’ll never bother either of you again. Just let me get my things and call a cab and we can forget I ever came. I’ll tell Aiden I got a job back in DC and I need to hurry home. Only promise you’ll never tell Aiden or the police what I’ve done.”
So many thoughts came to Daniel’s mind. He bit his lower lip, coalesced his resolve into action rather than waste it on feeble words. He turned the ignition and shifted in reverse, making sure to swerve the truck left so that the centrifugal force slammed Conrad’s door shut, and he locked him in with the master switch.
“Where are we going?” Conrad glanced around him like a caged fox. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you? You won’t hurt me. Remember, you’re Amish.”
Daniel shifted into drive, and, with a snap of their heads, pulled onto Route 2.