The Visit
Rebecca Reynolds
Bobby’s fourth day in the hospital, Owen came. He left his laptop and the pack of cigarettes he was trying not to smoke in his car, and feeling empty handed, he stopped at the Dunkin Donuts next to Radiology and bought a box of donut holes from a girl who reminded him of his daughter.
Bobby’s size-fourteen feet poked out of the blanket, hospital socks stretching at his heels. An IV was thickly taped over the back of Bobby’s hand. “I made it,” Owen said, miming a forehead wipe as if he had jogged and not driven the hundred miles from his condo near the coast. The case worker, whose name Owen probably ought to remember from the call he received four days back, snapped her gum and gathered the sweatshirt from the back of her chair, stuffing it into a reusable grocery bag.
“Bobby,” she said. “Your brother is here.”
“Stepbrother,” Owen corrected, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. He had to come to the hospital with the hope of becoming a better person, though seeing the network of tubing and fluid filled bags hanging behind Bobby’s bed, how quickly that resolve was draining from him already. Owen was not good with suffering, or need, or much of what his ex-wife, Sara, referred to as the human element. He had not seen Bobby since Owen’s mother’s funeral, which had followed Bobby’s father’s funeral, nearly ten years ago. Owen’s daughter, Julia, was a teenager, then, her difficult habits just beginning, and had come with Owen because it fell on his one weekend a month of custody. Owen recalled Julia blowing her nose noisily during the service and when he turned to give her a look of exasperation, he had realized that she was, in fact, crying. His own eyes had remained dry.
“Hey, Bob-o. It’s Owen.” He looked for a spot to set the donuts.
“I know you, don’t I?” Bobby said.
After their parents died, Owen had been relieved to find the arrangements for Bobby’s care had been made in advance and none of them involved him. Bobby was put into a state-run home for the intellectually disabled, and while Owen sent donations to the home and asked his secretary to source size-fourteen Velcro sneakers so Bobby would never go without, he had not visited Bobby there.
“I heard about your operation. How’re you feeling? All better?”
The woman stared at Owen, and this time, Owen bit his tongue. Relax lady, I know he’s dying, he might’ve said. What had been his reaction when the neurologist informed Owen and his ex-wife their daughter would likely never speak again? He had laughed. Laughed! Not a hee-hee but a solid, whacking ha!, while Sara’s head went to her knees. He had never been more devastated, but there it was, that guttural sound as if he were pointing a finger at a mirror: gotcha, buddy.
“You’ll need to watch him with that IV,” the woman said, and suddenly Owen realized he was going to be left alone with Bobby.
Owen cleared his throat. “Oh, I’m sorry, but actually--.” The woman threw her hand in the air without looking back. Owen began to sweat. He considered racing after her.
“It’s always something, isn’t it,” Bobby said.
“Sure is, Bob.”
Bobby’s room was the color of Band-Aids, one wall patched with spackle that was left unpainted. A metal tray table with a plastic cup and straw, and what appeared to be the remains of orange Jell-o, had been rolled to the side of the bed. Owen wanted a cigarette. It was the first pack he had bought in six days, still wrapped in cellophane. When he was married, he snuck cigarettes here and there like a teenager, Sara’s nose keen enough to pick up the scent even hours later, and still she nagged at him to quit, and still he told her that he had, almost. He moved to the chair beside the bed and sat, holding the donut box on his lap, certain that someone in full mastery of their human element would know what to say at this moment, though he did not.
“How’s your car?” Bobby asked.
“My car?”
“In the shop,” Bobby said, and Owen realized Bobby did, in fact recognize him, and was referring to when Owen wrapped his car around a tree thirty years prior, just after college. It had been snowing, and Sara, his girlfriend, then, had broken both wrists against the dashboard, though Owen had been fine.
“That was a long time ago, Bob-o. I have a new car now. It’s fast—an Audi. I’ll take you for a ride sometime.”
Bobby grinned, and Owen could hear the wheeze of his breaths. “You had to junk the old one.” Bobby slapped his palms together and twisted them, in a gesture that replicated the scrap metal crusher at the landfill Bobby loved going to see as a child.
“Yeah, Bob. Junked it.” Owen watched a silverfish crawl out of a corner on the linoleum floor and move toward him.
“You’re a dad now. No more funny business.”
Yes, he was a dad. So, Bobby remembered that part, as well. Julia and Bobby had been a natural pair when she was younger and their developmental stages had coincided, though as Julia became an adolescent and then an adult she had grown quiet and distant, and on the rare instance she agreed to join Owen on a visit to his parent’s house, she would spend the hours curled into herself on the edge of the couch staring at her phone, while Bobby asked her the same question over and over—How are you, today, Julia? How are you? -- hoping to win her attention.
The silverfish skittered as if gliding on air.
Bobby bolted up, his johnny untying behind his neck. “Did she come?”
Owen stepped on the silverfish, but not hard enough. The insect crept away. “Who?” As if he didn’t know.
Julia. After the incident, he and Sara had believed she would die. The tip of her skull above her forehead was shattered and a chunk of her brain was missing. The coma had lasted eight days and on day six Owen called a funeral home and began to make arrangements, because that is what the doctor had told him to do. When she didn’t die, Owen felt a gratitude that weakened his knees, because it meant that she would get better. Only that didn’t happen either.
Now, she wore diapers at night and needed her meals chopped into bits so she wouldn’t choke, and she could not speak in words, only their shapeless approximations. Owen had not seen his daughter since she first woke up from her coma. Though there were tubes down her throat and she could barely open her eyes, he had sworn she stared right at him, imploringly, and it chilled him. He did not go the rehabilitation center where she learned to maneuver a wheelchair and sign the words for “bathroom” and “drink,” and he had not visited her, yet, since she had come home to Sara’s house. Weekly, he called Sara, listening to her reports of seeing something like a smile on Julia’s mouth when the cat nudged her leg, of hearing something like a laugh while the two of them watched reruns of Julia’s favorite shows. Each conversation ended with Sara reminding Owen he needed to visit his daughter, her flat tone suggesting it would be hard for Owen to become even more of a disappointment than he already was, but she was bracing for the possibility. What if Owen’s face could unlock the frozen part of Julia’s brain? Soon, Owen promised each time, citing meetings and sales conventions and now, Bobby. The truth was, he had tried. Twice, Owen had gotten as far as the highway exit of Sara’s town. The last time, he had made it to the end of Sara’s street, where he pulled over and parked beneath a bony oak and called Sara to tell her something had come up. “You don’t have to be afraid,” Sara said. “She’s different, but she’s still Julia.” But that was what Owen feared, that Julia would still be there, behind her slack face, knowing he had not saved her.
“She couldn’t come,” Owen said, but he brought up a picture on his phone and Bobby grinned at the image. It had been taken on Julia’s twenty-fourth birthday during a small window of time in Julia’s adult life when she was not disappearing for weeks at a time and then turning up at Owen’s condo, needing a place to stay and money, always money. She had a job at a frame store and rented a room in an apartment with two other young women, an improvement over that converted garage where she had stayed with a boyfriend and his brothers. The photo was the only one he had; Sara had texted it to him. In it, Julia was gazing across the restaurant, her wild, red hair pulled into a headband. Owen had arrived late to that dinner, barely in time for cake, bringing a card with $2000 cash. Julia’s chin had quivered as her fingers slid over the bills, crisp and new from the teller. He had reached out a hand as if to pat her shoulder as he would have when she was small and was about to cry during the sad part of a movie, but then, instead, pulled his fingers into a fist and tapped his knuckles on the table in front of her, drawing her eyes back to him. “Don’t blow it, kid.”
“Time flies, Owen.”
“That it does, Bob-o.”
Bobby’s eyes went to the IV and he began to scratch at it, and unsure what to do, Owen handed over the box of donuts, placing them on the tray table.
“I like those,” Bobby said, quickly forgetting about the IV. He put several donut holes into his mouth at once. Owen thought of the girl at the donut shop who looked like Julia, how tempting it was to let himself believe, for a moment, that the events from the past few months had not happened at all, that Julia was right there, whole and unharmed. It was same way Owen felt, after Julia’s rehab stint, when he stopped by the frame shop for no reason except to check up on her, to reassure himself that she was okay, though he brought along a bundle of Julia’s junk mail that had been delivered to his condo as an excuse, waiting in his hand. She had been too busy with customers to notice him, but there she was, perfectly fine. He had left without a word, trembling from relief, dropping the mail into a trashcan on the corner.
Bobby coughed, spraying donut crumbs onto the blanket.
“Hey, you okay?” Owen said. Bobby coughed again, this time nearly retching. Owen pushed the plastic cup toward Bobby. Bobby opened his mouth and leaned in, and Owen froze, realizing what Bobby was expecting him to do, and he glanced at the door and willed a nurse to enter, but none did. Frowning, Owen held the straw to Bobby’s lips and Bobby drank, pulling hard enough that Owen could feel the thrust of water in his fingers. The act felt oddly intimate and Owen had to look away. When Bobby finished, Owen dumped the remaining donuts into the trash and pushed the box down to the bottom of the bin. What had he been thinking, bringing donuts to a dying man? It was a pointless gesture, like bringing tulips to Julia’s hospital room when all they did was drop their petals and leave a mess.
Bobby fell back against his pillows and slept. Owen paced, fighting the urge to go outside and smoke. He walked to the window and stared out onto the parking lot, and beyond to where the ocean was waiting, at the end of the highway. What was he supposed to do? He had thought coming to the hospital would be one good thing and that, perhaps, other good things would then follow, and like crumbs dropped in the forest those good things would form a path that led back to his daughter. He imagined the conversation he’d have with Sara that evening when he called to check in: In the hospital with Bobby, no it doesn’t look good, guessing I’ll be here through the weekend, but how about I come by sometime next week, alright? He’d say it, and he’d want it to be true.
The last time Owen saw Julia before the incident, he had stopped by her apartment to drop off a check to unclog her kitchen sink. Another problem, another check. Sara didn’t approve, but she didn’t stop him; she had no better ideas, herself. Julia had lost her job at the frame store and nobody was hiring. Owen knew it had to end, eventually, this handing over of money, no questions asked, but it was like quitting smoking—an event forever poised in the future, when conditions might be more favorable. When Julia opened the door, she was wearing a vintage REM t-shirt that fell over one bony shoulder and white tube socks that went to her knees. She stretched an arm across the doorframe, as if to block him. Peering behind her, Owen could see several garbage bags tied up and leaning against the fridge. “You going to let me in?” Owen asked, though he didn’t want to go in--he was on his way back to the office, anyway, and had no intentions of staying—but he wanted to be asked. When he saw her hesitation, her flat stare, Owen felt a sinking in his chest. He shook his head. “Okay, kid,” Owen said, pulling out his checkbook.
What would have happened if he had gone in? Would it have made a difference? Owen was already running late. He provided the requested sum, even going so far as to ask the plumber’s name as he made out the check against the back of the door. “Thanks, Daddy,” Julia said, the lines of her brow softening as the check moved from Owen’s hand into hers, and Owen saw this was what their relationship had become.
The next day, when his phone vibrated and Julia’s name appeared on the screen, Owen assumed it was because the plumber required more money. Owen was closing the biggest deal of the year, an account he had spent months chasing. If he remembered correctly, Owen might have felt irritated by his daughter’s call, a twitch of annoyance, perhaps even more. His face might have flushed just slightly as he removed his phone from the desk and pressed decline and dropped the phone into his case, and in his head he might have said “for fuck’s sake, Julia,” and might have planned to say it to her, later, as he wrote out another check from his endless supply of checks. Regardless, Owen closed the deal with a smile on his face, shook hands, made a joke or two about the weather, and by the time he got into his Audi and checked his voicemail, Julia had been shot.
Bobby jolted awake. “I’m peeing.”
“Christ.” Owen’s eyes jumped from Bobby to the IV stand as he tried to figure out what to unplug to free Bobby so he could get to the bathroom.
“I’m done.”
Owen saw the wetness spreading through the blanket. “Christ,” he repeated, pressing the call button on the side of Bobby’s bed.
Bobby shuddered. “It’s always something.”
Owen squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. Now, he needed a cigarette. “It’s fine, Bob. It was an accident.”
An accident. That’s what the investigator kept coming back to, a deal gone astray. It was no secret drugs were involved, which seemed to cast a guilty shadow that made Julia somehow deserving of what happened to her. The shooter had not been apprehended and likely wouldn’t be, without Julia in a position to identify him. Sara wanted no part of it, she focused her energies on Julia, but Owen had been paying a private detective. So far, nothing had come to light.
Owen pressed the call button again, then glanced into the empty hallway. “Hey! Can we get a nurse in here?” Bobby winced as if he was in pain. He began rubbing his fingers over the IV on the back of his hand.
“Don’t touch that,” Owen said, but Bobby did not seem to hear. Again, Owen stuck his head into the hall. “For fuck’s sake,” he said, turning back. Bobby had peeled off an edge of the tape. Owen watched Bobby pick at it, and his stomach clenched. He had to get out of the room.
Around the first corner, Owen found a young nurse coming out of a room wheeling a vitals cart. Owen put a hand on the cart, stopping her, forcing her to listen to him. He felt as if he needed to make his case, that Bobby was disabled, and dying, and that Owen really shouldn’t even be here in the first place, the whole idea that coming to see Bobby would make Owen better, make him more human, was flawed because Owen was exactly who he was, a man who was begging a nurse to touch his stepbrother’s bedding so he didn’t have to, a man who was probably not even going to go to the funeral to see Bobby laid out in his best suit and a shiny, new pair of size-fourteen Velcro sneakers. All Owen really wanted was to be in his car with the window cracked and a cigarette in his lips, driving away. “Room 114 needs a bed change,” he said, instead.
“Give me a minute,” the nurse said.
When Owen came back to the room, the blanket over Bobby was sprayed with blood. There was a smear of blood on the back of Bobby’s hand, where the IV had been pulled out, and splatters on Bobby’s cheek. Owen felt the paralysis of indecision, of not knowing what to do next, the same way he had felt when he listened to Julia’s voicemail in his car after the meeting, hearing her lowered voice, the way she whispered Daddy, I need help. What had she thought would happen? Even if he had taken the call, he would not have had time to get to her apartment, to whisk her away from the bullet. He was not Superman, he had no super powers. But, she thought he did, and that was the thing. That was the thing.
“You know better, Bob-o.” Blood was everywhere. Owen was dizzy. He leaned back against the wall, feeling a fuzziness behind his eyes.
“I don’t like needles,” Bobby said.
The nurse entered. Without a word, she put on gloves.
Owen pressed the back of his head into the wall. He looked away while the nurse cleaned Bobby and set the pile of bloodied wipes on the tray table that had once held donuts. She opened the cupboard behind the bed to get a new IV needle. Owen knew he ought to warn her, but he just wanted it to be over. “Alright, now,” she said. “We’re going to put this back in.”
Immediately, Bobby punched. His fist hit the underside of the tray and sent the metal flying, crashing with an explosive bang. Bobby yelled in a voice Owen had not heard before, a high-pitched scream liked that of a frightened child. “Don’t!” Bobby cried, and a man in scrubs brushed past Owen to enter the room, and he and the nurse seemed to exchange some wordless plan of action, and while the nurse worked on Bobby’s hand, the man forced Bobby down, pressing Bobby’s linebacker shoulders into the mattress.
Owen could do nothing. He pushed his entire body into the wall.
Bobby kicked off the blanket, exposing his naked legs and the dampness between them. He cried long, rolling sobs and strained against the restraint. Bobby’s cries came like waves, cresting and falling and then building again, assaulting Owen. Owen could feel the sound in his core, resonating, humming with his breaths. Was he crying, too? Owen wasn’t certain anymore. It was all too much. Bobby was dying. Owen’s daughter was gone. There was a sadness in this world that waited like a period at the end of a sentence, and Owen had reached it, now, and he did not know if there would be anything beyond.
The nurse worked swiftly, placing the new IV, and when it was done, Bobby went limp. His eyes blinked. It was as if a storm had passed through the room and was gone.
No one noticed Owen leave.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the first-floor button repeatedly until the doors closed. As the elevator jolted down, Owen pictured his cigarettes and his car and the highway that led back to the ocean, and he began to calm. It was too late for Bobby, that couldn’t be helped. But Owen was not the one dying, not today. Something like elation ballooned in Owen’s chest at the thought, and he realized he could try to be a better person tomorrow, or the next day. There was always another day.
Turning left out of the elevator Owen broke into a gleeful jog, slowing only as he passed the Dunkin Donuts. The girl was still there, as she had been earlier, wearing her brown apron and cap. She looked so much like Julia. Owen paused there, in the open doorway of the shop.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked.
Her voice, as well, so similar. Owen stood, taking her in. He would not come back to this hospital. He would not see Bobby, or this girl, again. And though he knew this girl was not Julia, he also knew this was his last moment of hoping she could be.
“Sir?”
Owen wanted to say something to her. There was so much to be explained.
The girl blinked.
Owen tallied up the shared traits—the wavy, red hair, small nose, the shoulders, though he couldn’t make them out under the girl’s brown uniform, that he knew would be delicate knobs of bone and skin, like Julia’s.
“Sir?”
The girl’s smile was failing. Owen was trying to think of the right thing to say. Do you know a Julia Ritchards? Owen might ask, but, of course, she wouldn’t. Maybe he could show her the photo of Julia on his phone. Would she see herself? He needed her to understand there was meaning here. There had to be.
The girl gave him another chance, and when he didn’t respond, she sighed, and turned around. She busied herself cleaning the frother with a cup of water. Still, Owen did not leave. He wasn’t willing to let her go just yet. He was waiting for the right words to come to him. He needed to believe, if he had just a little more time, something would surely come.
Rebecca Reynolds
Bobby’s fourth day in the hospital, Owen came. He left his laptop and the pack of cigarettes he was trying not to smoke in his car, and feeling empty handed, he stopped at the Dunkin Donuts next to Radiology and bought a box of donut holes from a girl who reminded him of his daughter.
Bobby’s size-fourteen feet poked out of the blanket, hospital socks stretching at his heels. An IV was thickly taped over the back of Bobby’s hand. “I made it,” Owen said, miming a forehead wipe as if he had jogged and not driven the hundred miles from his condo near the coast. The case worker, whose name Owen probably ought to remember from the call he received four days back, snapped her gum and gathered the sweatshirt from the back of her chair, stuffing it into a reusable grocery bag.
“Bobby,” she said. “Your brother is here.”
“Stepbrother,” Owen corrected, the words out of his mouth before he could stop them. He had to come to the hospital with the hope of becoming a better person, though seeing the network of tubing and fluid filled bags hanging behind Bobby’s bed, how quickly that resolve was draining from him already. Owen was not good with suffering, or need, or much of what his ex-wife, Sara, referred to as the human element. He had not seen Bobby since Owen’s mother’s funeral, which had followed Bobby’s father’s funeral, nearly ten years ago. Owen’s daughter, Julia, was a teenager, then, her difficult habits just beginning, and had come with Owen because it fell on his one weekend a month of custody. Owen recalled Julia blowing her nose noisily during the service and when he turned to give her a look of exasperation, he had realized that she was, in fact, crying. His own eyes had remained dry.
“Hey, Bob-o. It’s Owen.” He looked for a spot to set the donuts.
“I know you, don’t I?” Bobby said.
After their parents died, Owen had been relieved to find the arrangements for Bobby’s care had been made in advance and none of them involved him. Bobby was put into a state-run home for the intellectually disabled, and while Owen sent donations to the home and asked his secretary to source size-fourteen Velcro sneakers so Bobby would never go without, he had not visited Bobby there.
“I heard about your operation. How’re you feeling? All better?”
The woman stared at Owen, and this time, Owen bit his tongue. Relax lady, I know he’s dying, he might’ve said. What had been his reaction when the neurologist informed Owen and his ex-wife their daughter would likely never speak again? He had laughed. Laughed! Not a hee-hee but a solid, whacking ha!, while Sara’s head went to her knees. He had never been more devastated, but there it was, that guttural sound as if he were pointing a finger at a mirror: gotcha, buddy.
“You’ll need to watch him with that IV,” the woman said, and suddenly Owen realized he was going to be left alone with Bobby.
Owen cleared his throat. “Oh, I’m sorry, but actually--.” The woman threw her hand in the air without looking back. Owen began to sweat. He considered racing after her.
“It’s always something, isn’t it,” Bobby said.
“Sure is, Bob.”
Bobby’s room was the color of Band-Aids, one wall patched with spackle that was left unpainted. A metal tray table with a plastic cup and straw, and what appeared to be the remains of orange Jell-o, had been rolled to the side of the bed. Owen wanted a cigarette. It was the first pack he had bought in six days, still wrapped in cellophane. When he was married, he snuck cigarettes here and there like a teenager, Sara’s nose keen enough to pick up the scent even hours later, and still she nagged at him to quit, and still he told her that he had, almost. He moved to the chair beside the bed and sat, holding the donut box on his lap, certain that someone in full mastery of their human element would know what to say at this moment, though he did not.
“How’s your car?” Bobby asked.
“My car?”
“In the shop,” Bobby said, and Owen realized Bobby did, in fact recognize him, and was referring to when Owen wrapped his car around a tree thirty years prior, just after college. It had been snowing, and Sara, his girlfriend, then, had broken both wrists against the dashboard, though Owen had been fine.
“That was a long time ago, Bob-o. I have a new car now. It’s fast—an Audi. I’ll take you for a ride sometime.”
Bobby grinned, and Owen could hear the wheeze of his breaths. “You had to junk the old one.” Bobby slapped his palms together and twisted them, in a gesture that replicated the scrap metal crusher at the landfill Bobby loved going to see as a child.
“Yeah, Bob. Junked it.” Owen watched a silverfish crawl out of a corner on the linoleum floor and move toward him.
“You’re a dad now. No more funny business.”
Yes, he was a dad. So, Bobby remembered that part, as well. Julia and Bobby had been a natural pair when she was younger and their developmental stages had coincided, though as Julia became an adolescent and then an adult she had grown quiet and distant, and on the rare instance she agreed to join Owen on a visit to his parent’s house, she would spend the hours curled into herself on the edge of the couch staring at her phone, while Bobby asked her the same question over and over—How are you, today, Julia? How are you? -- hoping to win her attention.
The silverfish skittered as if gliding on air.
Bobby bolted up, his johnny untying behind his neck. “Did she come?”
Owen stepped on the silverfish, but not hard enough. The insect crept away. “Who?” As if he didn’t know.
Julia. After the incident, he and Sara had believed she would die. The tip of her skull above her forehead was shattered and a chunk of her brain was missing. The coma had lasted eight days and on day six Owen called a funeral home and began to make arrangements, because that is what the doctor had told him to do. When she didn’t die, Owen felt a gratitude that weakened his knees, because it meant that she would get better. Only that didn’t happen either.
Now, she wore diapers at night and needed her meals chopped into bits so she wouldn’t choke, and she could not speak in words, only their shapeless approximations. Owen had not seen his daughter since she first woke up from her coma. Though there were tubes down her throat and she could barely open her eyes, he had sworn she stared right at him, imploringly, and it chilled him. He did not go the rehabilitation center where she learned to maneuver a wheelchair and sign the words for “bathroom” and “drink,” and he had not visited her, yet, since she had come home to Sara’s house. Weekly, he called Sara, listening to her reports of seeing something like a smile on Julia’s mouth when the cat nudged her leg, of hearing something like a laugh while the two of them watched reruns of Julia’s favorite shows. Each conversation ended with Sara reminding Owen he needed to visit his daughter, her flat tone suggesting it would be hard for Owen to become even more of a disappointment than he already was, but she was bracing for the possibility. What if Owen’s face could unlock the frozen part of Julia’s brain? Soon, Owen promised each time, citing meetings and sales conventions and now, Bobby. The truth was, he had tried. Twice, Owen had gotten as far as the highway exit of Sara’s town. The last time, he had made it to the end of Sara’s street, where he pulled over and parked beneath a bony oak and called Sara to tell her something had come up. “You don’t have to be afraid,” Sara said. “She’s different, but she’s still Julia.” But that was what Owen feared, that Julia would still be there, behind her slack face, knowing he had not saved her.
“She couldn’t come,” Owen said, but he brought up a picture on his phone and Bobby grinned at the image. It had been taken on Julia’s twenty-fourth birthday during a small window of time in Julia’s adult life when she was not disappearing for weeks at a time and then turning up at Owen’s condo, needing a place to stay and money, always money. She had a job at a frame store and rented a room in an apartment with two other young women, an improvement over that converted garage where she had stayed with a boyfriend and his brothers. The photo was the only one he had; Sara had texted it to him. In it, Julia was gazing across the restaurant, her wild, red hair pulled into a headband. Owen had arrived late to that dinner, barely in time for cake, bringing a card with $2000 cash. Julia’s chin had quivered as her fingers slid over the bills, crisp and new from the teller. He had reached out a hand as if to pat her shoulder as he would have when she was small and was about to cry during the sad part of a movie, but then, instead, pulled his fingers into a fist and tapped his knuckles on the table in front of her, drawing her eyes back to him. “Don’t blow it, kid.”
“Time flies, Owen.”
“That it does, Bob-o.”
Bobby’s eyes went to the IV and he began to scratch at it, and unsure what to do, Owen handed over the box of donuts, placing them on the tray table.
“I like those,” Bobby said, quickly forgetting about the IV. He put several donut holes into his mouth at once. Owen thought of the girl at the donut shop who looked like Julia, how tempting it was to let himself believe, for a moment, that the events from the past few months had not happened at all, that Julia was right there, whole and unharmed. It was same way Owen felt, after Julia’s rehab stint, when he stopped by the frame shop for no reason except to check up on her, to reassure himself that she was okay, though he brought along a bundle of Julia’s junk mail that had been delivered to his condo as an excuse, waiting in his hand. She had been too busy with customers to notice him, but there she was, perfectly fine. He had left without a word, trembling from relief, dropping the mail into a trashcan on the corner.
Bobby coughed, spraying donut crumbs onto the blanket.
“Hey, you okay?” Owen said. Bobby coughed again, this time nearly retching. Owen pushed the plastic cup toward Bobby. Bobby opened his mouth and leaned in, and Owen froze, realizing what Bobby was expecting him to do, and he glanced at the door and willed a nurse to enter, but none did. Frowning, Owen held the straw to Bobby’s lips and Bobby drank, pulling hard enough that Owen could feel the thrust of water in his fingers. The act felt oddly intimate and Owen had to look away. When Bobby finished, Owen dumped the remaining donuts into the trash and pushed the box down to the bottom of the bin. What had he been thinking, bringing donuts to a dying man? It was a pointless gesture, like bringing tulips to Julia’s hospital room when all they did was drop their petals and leave a mess.
Bobby fell back against his pillows and slept. Owen paced, fighting the urge to go outside and smoke. He walked to the window and stared out onto the parking lot, and beyond to where the ocean was waiting, at the end of the highway. What was he supposed to do? He had thought coming to the hospital would be one good thing and that, perhaps, other good things would then follow, and like crumbs dropped in the forest those good things would form a path that led back to his daughter. He imagined the conversation he’d have with Sara that evening when he called to check in: In the hospital with Bobby, no it doesn’t look good, guessing I’ll be here through the weekend, but how about I come by sometime next week, alright? He’d say it, and he’d want it to be true.
The last time Owen saw Julia before the incident, he had stopped by her apartment to drop off a check to unclog her kitchen sink. Another problem, another check. Sara didn’t approve, but she didn’t stop him; she had no better ideas, herself. Julia had lost her job at the frame store and nobody was hiring. Owen knew it had to end, eventually, this handing over of money, no questions asked, but it was like quitting smoking—an event forever poised in the future, when conditions might be more favorable. When Julia opened the door, she was wearing a vintage REM t-shirt that fell over one bony shoulder and white tube socks that went to her knees. She stretched an arm across the doorframe, as if to block him. Peering behind her, Owen could see several garbage bags tied up and leaning against the fridge. “You going to let me in?” Owen asked, though he didn’t want to go in--he was on his way back to the office, anyway, and had no intentions of staying—but he wanted to be asked. When he saw her hesitation, her flat stare, Owen felt a sinking in his chest. He shook his head. “Okay, kid,” Owen said, pulling out his checkbook.
What would have happened if he had gone in? Would it have made a difference? Owen was already running late. He provided the requested sum, even going so far as to ask the plumber’s name as he made out the check against the back of the door. “Thanks, Daddy,” Julia said, the lines of her brow softening as the check moved from Owen’s hand into hers, and Owen saw this was what their relationship had become.
The next day, when his phone vibrated and Julia’s name appeared on the screen, Owen assumed it was because the plumber required more money. Owen was closing the biggest deal of the year, an account he had spent months chasing. If he remembered correctly, Owen might have felt irritated by his daughter’s call, a twitch of annoyance, perhaps even more. His face might have flushed just slightly as he removed his phone from the desk and pressed decline and dropped the phone into his case, and in his head he might have said “for fuck’s sake, Julia,” and might have planned to say it to her, later, as he wrote out another check from his endless supply of checks. Regardless, Owen closed the deal with a smile on his face, shook hands, made a joke or two about the weather, and by the time he got into his Audi and checked his voicemail, Julia had been shot.
Bobby jolted awake. “I’m peeing.”
“Christ.” Owen’s eyes jumped from Bobby to the IV stand as he tried to figure out what to unplug to free Bobby so he could get to the bathroom.
“I’m done.”
Owen saw the wetness spreading through the blanket. “Christ,” he repeated, pressing the call button on the side of Bobby’s bed.
Bobby shuddered. “It’s always something.”
Owen squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. Now, he needed a cigarette. “It’s fine, Bob. It was an accident.”
An accident. That’s what the investigator kept coming back to, a deal gone astray. It was no secret drugs were involved, which seemed to cast a guilty shadow that made Julia somehow deserving of what happened to her. The shooter had not been apprehended and likely wouldn’t be, without Julia in a position to identify him. Sara wanted no part of it, she focused her energies on Julia, but Owen had been paying a private detective. So far, nothing had come to light.
Owen pressed the call button again, then glanced into the empty hallway. “Hey! Can we get a nurse in here?” Bobby winced as if he was in pain. He began rubbing his fingers over the IV on the back of his hand.
“Don’t touch that,” Owen said, but Bobby did not seem to hear. Again, Owen stuck his head into the hall. “For fuck’s sake,” he said, turning back. Bobby had peeled off an edge of the tape. Owen watched Bobby pick at it, and his stomach clenched. He had to get out of the room.
Around the first corner, Owen found a young nurse coming out of a room wheeling a vitals cart. Owen put a hand on the cart, stopping her, forcing her to listen to him. He felt as if he needed to make his case, that Bobby was disabled, and dying, and that Owen really shouldn’t even be here in the first place, the whole idea that coming to see Bobby would make Owen better, make him more human, was flawed because Owen was exactly who he was, a man who was begging a nurse to touch his stepbrother’s bedding so he didn’t have to, a man who was probably not even going to go to the funeral to see Bobby laid out in his best suit and a shiny, new pair of size-fourteen Velcro sneakers. All Owen really wanted was to be in his car with the window cracked and a cigarette in his lips, driving away. “Room 114 needs a bed change,” he said, instead.
“Give me a minute,” the nurse said.
When Owen came back to the room, the blanket over Bobby was sprayed with blood. There was a smear of blood on the back of Bobby’s hand, where the IV had been pulled out, and splatters on Bobby’s cheek. Owen felt the paralysis of indecision, of not knowing what to do next, the same way he had felt when he listened to Julia’s voicemail in his car after the meeting, hearing her lowered voice, the way she whispered Daddy, I need help. What had she thought would happen? Even if he had taken the call, he would not have had time to get to her apartment, to whisk her away from the bullet. He was not Superman, he had no super powers. But, she thought he did, and that was the thing. That was the thing.
“You know better, Bob-o.” Blood was everywhere. Owen was dizzy. He leaned back against the wall, feeling a fuzziness behind his eyes.
“I don’t like needles,” Bobby said.
The nurse entered. Without a word, she put on gloves.
Owen pressed the back of his head into the wall. He looked away while the nurse cleaned Bobby and set the pile of bloodied wipes on the tray table that had once held donuts. She opened the cupboard behind the bed to get a new IV needle. Owen knew he ought to warn her, but he just wanted it to be over. “Alright, now,” she said. “We’re going to put this back in.”
Immediately, Bobby punched. His fist hit the underside of the tray and sent the metal flying, crashing with an explosive bang. Bobby yelled in a voice Owen had not heard before, a high-pitched scream liked that of a frightened child. “Don’t!” Bobby cried, and a man in scrubs brushed past Owen to enter the room, and he and the nurse seemed to exchange some wordless plan of action, and while the nurse worked on Bobby’s hand, the man forced Bobby down, pressing Bobby’s linebacker shoulders into the mattress.
Owen could do nothing. He pushed his entire body into the wall.
Bobby kicked off the blanket, exposing his naked legs and the dampness between them. He cried long, rolling sobs and strained against the restraint. Bobby’s cries came like waves, cresting and falling and then building again, assaulting Owen. Owen could feel the sound in his core, resonating, humming with his breaths. Was he crying, too? Owen wasn’t certain anymore. It was all too much. Bobby was dying. Owen’s daughter was gone. There was a sadness in this world that waited like a period at the end of a sentence, and Owen had reached it, now, and he did not know if there would be anything beyond.
The nurse worked swiftly, placing the new IV, and when it was done, Bobby went limp. His eyes blinked. It was as if a storm had passed through the room and was gone.
No one noticed Owen leave.
He stepped into the elevator and pressed the first-floor button repeatedly until the doors closed. As the elevator jolted down, Owen pictured his cigarettes and his car and the highway that led back to the ocean, and he began to calm. It was too late for Bobby, that couldn’t be helped. But Owen was not the one dying, not today. Something like elation ballooned in Owen’s chest at the thought, and he realized he could try to be a better person tomorrow, or the next day. There was always another day.
Turning left out of the elevator Owen broke into a gleeful jog, slowing only as he passed the Dunkin Donuts. The girl was still there, as she had been earlier, wearing her brown apron and cap. She looked so much like Julia. Owen paused there, in the open doorway of the shop.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked.
Her voice, as well, so similar. Owen stood, taking her in. He would not come back to this hospital. He would not see Bobby, or this girl, again. And though he knew this girl was not Julia, he also knew this was his last moment of hoping she could be.
“Sir?”
Owen wanted to say something to her. There was so much to be explained.
The girl blinked.
Owen tallied up the shared traits—the wavy, red hair, small nose, the shoulders, though he couldn’t make them out under the girl’s brown uniform, that he knew would be delicate knobs of bone and skin, like Julia’s.
“Sir?”
The girl’s smile was failing. Owen was trying to think of the right thing to say. Do you know a Julia Ritchards? Owen might ask, but, of course, she wouldn’t. Maybe he could show her the photo of Julia on his phone. Would she see herself? He needed her to understand there was meaning here. There had to be.
The girl gave him another chance, and when he didn’t respond, she sighed, and turned around. She busied herself cleaning the frother with a cup of water. Still, Owen did not leave. He wasn’t willing to let her go just yet. He was waiting for the right words to come to him. He needed to believe, if he had just a little more time, something would surely come.