I took one last walk the night before I was to be released. I called it a victory lap to the nurses at the station, and I believed it was. I had neither conquered nor vanquished, but I had endured. Maybe that was all that mattered. It was our grip on life that spoke most of who we were.
I made my last stop the nurses’ station, where Kim was still trying to catch up after arriving a half hour late for her shift. Late, she said, because Owen had driven her to work. One good-bye kiss had turned into ten, and time had a way of sneaking off and hiding when love came calling. Then I walked back into my room and stopped at the door, jarred by what I was seeing. Had it not been for the metal cart parked just inside, I would have fallen. Instead I gripped it and steeled myself at what was in front of me.
Someone was in the chair by my bed.
“Elizabeth?” I asked. Pleaded. Prayed. “Is that you?”
The figure moved from the shadows and into the light shining from above the bed. The face that appeared was a sorrowed mix of old and young.
“Mr. Andy?” it said.
I moved closer. “Jabber?”
Jabber rose from the chair. Halfway toward me he stretched out his arms. I caught him in mine and we stood there, his knees buckling against me as he let out nearly four days of grief and anger. I held him up, surprised at my strength. My eyes were open and staring not at him but at my hands resting on his back.
“Come sit down,” I told him. “Come on.”
We walked to my bed and I sat him down in the chair. Jabber wiped his eyes and brushed back his shaggy hair.
“How are you, Jabber?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said. Then the tears began again, a torrent that rushed from him and seemed never ending. I kept my hand on him and squeezed, just as Elizabeth had done for me. “Sorry,” he finally said. “Ain’t right what happened. You okay?”
“I’m fine, Jabber. Promise. Doc says I’ll be getting out of here tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Good. Good. Sorry I didn’t come sooner. Came by once. You were asleep. Things have been rough. Funeral and all.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I know you had a lot to deal with.”
Jabber’s eyes said more than any words could. They seemed bigger somehow, like something had just jumped in front of him and yelled Boo! The boyish sparkle was gone, replaced not by a hard stare but an empty gaze. He had the look of someone who’d just lost everything. It was a look I knew well.
“Funeral was yesterday,” he finally said. “Lots of people there. Kids from school, even folks from Mattingly. Was real nice.”
“Wanted to thank you for bringing me this,” I said, looking at my box on the stand beside me. “Really came in handy.”
“I knew you liked it,” Jabber said. “Sorta why I’m here. Wondering could you do me a favor.”
“Sure,” I said.
Jabber stared at the ground. “Wonder could you let me have his key chain. Don’t know why. I got the money he owes you.”
“Jabber,” I said, “don’t worry about that.”
I reached over to open the box but found the key chain beside it. My mind raced, wondering if I had somehow sat it there or if someone else had, then handed him the key chain. “I’m pretty sure he’d want you to have it.”
Jabber turned the key chain over in his hand and gripped it like a lifeline, the one thing that kept him from being swept away.
“I loved him,” he said.
“I loved him, too.”
“He was the best thing in my life. He was like my daddy and my mama and my brother all at once. He was my best friend.”
“How’s your mom?” I asked him.
Jabber grew silent again, still studying the tops of his shoes. He shrugged. “Hasn’t been home much. Said she couldn’t be around me because I remind her of Eric. I think she blames me because I stayed home that night. I think she might tell me to leave.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She wanted Eric and me out before. Her boyfriend doesn’t like us. This might be her reason to do it.”
“If you were there with us, nothing would be different,” I said. “It was just his time, Jabber.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“I don’t really understand it, either. But I’m trying. I think Eric had a light to shine, and I think he shined it. And I think he did such a good job at it that God called him home.”
“He’d have been a good missionary,” Jabber said.
“I think he was just that. I know it. And don’t you worry. I’m gonna help you out, Jabber. I’m gonna do everything I can. We’ll figure this all out.”
Jabber looked at me and asked the question that he both so needed and was so afraid to have answered.
“What am I supposed to do next? I feel like everything’s over. Like…I died inside.”
He looked down again. I held my words until he raised his chin. “You have, I think,” I said. “But life is full of births and deaths. Things end so other things can begin. What’s taken from you God will give back a hundredfold. Your troubles make your faith, Jabber. You need to find that faith now.”
“I don’t believe like Eric did. I went to church with him some, but not always. He said God had all the answers. Don’t know about that.”
“I think we’ll both always have our share of questions.” I stared at my box on the table beside us and knew that was true. “And I think those questions will always have a little hurt to them. But I think in that hurt is the closest thing to truth we can ever find in this life. Don’t you worry. We’re gonna get through this together. As long as you don’t mind having to keep an eye on a bald old man.”
Jabber smiled as much as he was able. “Thanks, Mr. Andy,” he said. He held up the key chain. “And thanks for this.”
“He’d want you to have it, Jabber. And thanks for bringing my box. It helped.”
“Guess I’ll head out before they kick me out,” he said, though he didn’t move.
There was a torment inside him, one that burned and smoked and let out tiny wisps in his speech. I wanted to reach out for him, to tell him there could never be another to him like Eric, just as there could never be another to me like my mother, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find another to help bear the heavy load life had given him. I wanted to reach out, but I knew he had to reach out as well. True understanding is always met in the middle, not on the ends. I could offer my help, but Jabber had to accept it. He had to take down his wall. And the first bricks were dislodged with his next words.
“Got a ride in the morning?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Thought I’d just ask Jake.”
“I’d come get you, if you want. Maybe we could talk some.”
“That’d be just fine, Jabber. Just fine.”
Jabber then rose to leave and gave me a hug. Even managed to slap me on the back. It was a sign he was in better spirits, at least for the time being. Still, I knew the road ahead for Jabber would be a difficult one. His life had been stripped bare of good. He could easily go the way of his mother and choose numbness over pain. Jabber needed someone who could convince him otherwise. He needed a friend. Someone he could depend upon.
He needed an angel.
Jabber left with the promise that he’d return bright and early the next day. My eyes settled upon the empty chair in front of me. I didn’t know what had been real and what had been imagined, but I knew that wherever the words Elizabeth had spoken to me had come from, they had been true. I would need them. Them and more.
“Mr. Andy?”
I turned toward the door. “Yeah, Jabber?”
“Forgot to give you this. Found it stuck down in the cushion when I sat down.”
Jabber dug into his pocket. Out came a folded sheet of carefully cut paper.
Elizabeth’s paper.