Chapter 8
Auggie
Peter Pan was finished, and I was out of ideas for what to read the next time I visited the hospital. Nothing I already had on my shelves seemed right, and there wasn’t a database for “the best books to read to coma patients to help them wake up”.
Trust me. I’d checked.
Which led to me making some interesting Google searches during my down time at work.
“What’cha lookin’ at?” Roland said, clapping me on the shoulder so hard he inadvertently rolled my chair back a few inches. “You’ve been staring at that screen for nearly half an hour now. I don’t think you’ve even blinked the whole time.”
He grinned at me like he’d just caught me doing something scandalous, until he leaned closer and actually looked at my screen.
“Top fifty books most similar to Peter Pan? What is this? Is it for a case?”
“No, it’s not for a case,” I said as I shuffled my notes out of his line of sight, hoping he wouldn’t see them. “I’m just trying to narrow down some reading material.”
I shouldn’t have bothered hoping. Roland had a bit of a childish personality, but he was also a seasoned detective. He noticed my pile of papers right away and snatched the top page.
“You’ve even taken notes about each book on the list. What are you… wait, is this for that patient you were telling me about. The John Doe burn victim that’s in a coma.”
I grabbed the paper back from him and carefully placed it back in the stack. “Yes, it is.”
“You’re still visiting them regularly?”
There was a change in his tone. It was slight, but I could tell he wasn’t just asking out of curiosity.
“Yeah, I am.” With pointed, precise movements I reorganized my notes until each page perfectly lined up with all the others. “So what?”
Roland sighed and looked around the office with nervous eyes. If we were in the interrogation room, I’d think he was signal for the “good cop” to swap out for the “bad cop”.
“I don’t mean anything by it,” he eventually said when no one came to his rescue.
“But don’t ‘cha think you’re getting a bit…
invested. I mean, you’ve been visiting this guy—what?
Two? Three? —times a week? And you’re clearly planning on continuing.
That’s a lot of time and effort for a guy you don’t even know. ”
The drawer beside me slammed just a little too hard as I stored my notes away, and my desk shook, sending several pens rolling to the floor.
“I repeat, so what? Yeah, I’m spending time reading to a coma patient, but last I checked that wasn’t illegal. On the clock you can nag me, but off the clock, what I do during my free time is none of your business.”
Taking a step back from my desk, Roland held up his hands.
“Whoa, hey, I’m not trying to tell you what to do.
I just want to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.
You’ve only just moved to this city. This morning, you were saying that you haven’t even finished setting up your apartment.
Maybe make sure you’re taking care of yourself first before you’re taking care of other people, all right? ”
Foolish. I took care of myself in plenty of ways. I’d been the one to return home when so many other soldiers hadn’t. I was a master at taking care of myself. It was how I survived.
Yet, before I could tell Roland that, the ring of my cellphone interrupted me.
“Where are you?” the voice on the other end greeted me as soon as I hit the button.
“Chantal,” I greeted her even as my gaze immediately found the nearest clock. “I’m just about to leave work for the day. Why?”
“Uh huh,” she said.
Her voice sounded neutral, but I could easily picture the sarcastic look on her face. In all the years that we’d known each other, Chantal had only ever spoken with a neutral tone when she was annoyed.
“And you do remember that Melody’s performance is tonight, right?”
Fuck!
Panic greater than any I’d ever known on the battlefield surged through my veins. It was only my many years of training that kept me from dropping the phone and allowed me to speak without choking.
“Of course,” I said as I tried to quietly pack up my desk so she wouldn’t hear me scrambling. “How could I forget that?”
“Uh huh,” she said again, and this time I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Make sure you pick up purple irises on the way. They’re her favorite flower right now.”
Throwing on my jacket, I ran for the door. “Already on my to-do list. I’ll be there soon.”
“I know you will,” she sighed. “You are at least always punctual. I’ll give you that.”
Then the line went dead.
No longer having to keep quiet, I ran faster.
Thirty minutes later, after a trip to the florist and with a bouquet of purple irises firmly in hand, I pulled up to the theater.
Chantal was waiting for me outside the front door. Standing off to the side of the crowd, she hadn’t seen me yet, and I stopped to watch her for a moment.
She’d recently changed her hair. The new look was longer than she usually preferred, almost reaching down to her waist. For the sake of tonight’s event, she’d left half of it loose while coiling half of it on top of her head in an elegant updo.
I was used to Chantal always changing her look. She owned a hair salon and loved using herself to experiment with new techniques. It wasn’t unusual for her to have a brand-new hairstyle every time I saw her, so I’d come to expect the differences.
What I didn’t expect was familiarity. She was wearing a green dress that fit her like a glove. I remembered that dress. It had always been one of my favorites on her due to the way it complimented her complexion.
She bought it years ago on our honeymoon.
We’d probably been idiots getting married so soon after high school. Especially, when we knew I would probably be shipping out overseas. So many couples couldn’t survive such long distances, but we’d thought we could be the exception.
We were wrong.
Our marriage lasted for a while. We were happy—at least, I think we were happy—and we made it work.
Eventually, we had our daughter, Melody.
It took longer than anticipated since my limited leave meant we didn’t have much time to “try” for a child.
So, it wasn’t until I was thirty-five that I finally became a father, and for a short time all the struggle seemed worth it.
Even if our relationship wasn’t perfect, it at least had a purpose.
But distance, no matter the reason, was hard to overcome.
I was off on the other side of the world, fighting wars I believed in less and less every year, while my family’s lives passed without me.
I missed most of Melody’s early milestones, and even though we were married, Chantal was basically a single parent anyway.
In the end, it didn’t matter why I wasn’t there or what my intentions were.
There was no difference between a dead-beat father and one serving overseas.
Absent was still absent. My intentions were good, but that didn’t make any difference to my wife and child when I still missed all the same moments.
It was inevitable that resentment would start to grow. No child deserved to grow up with parents that hated each other, so as soon as we noticed our relationship turning sour, we filed for divorce.
That was several years ago. I thought it would be a hard change, but the hardest thing was admitting how easy it was.
My service wasn’t affected, Chantal was already used to living as a single parent, and I’d spent so little time with Melody that she barely knew me.
The biggest change was taking off my wedding ring, and the indentation it left in my skin, but even that faded overtime.
Chantal was still waiting for me by the door, tapping her painted nails against her arm with impatience as she looked around for me.
Things could be different now. I was retired from the military.
I’d moved to the same city where Chantal and Melody lived, and I had a stable job.
Chantal and I would never get remarried.
That ship had sailed a long time ago, and there was too much history between us to start fresh.
But we could forge a life as amicable co-parents, and I could finally be the father that Melody deserved.
Gripping the bouquet in my hands tighter, I stepped out of the crowd.
“I’m here, right on time, as promised.”
Crossing her arms, Chantal shifted her weight, so her hip jutted to one side as she eyed me up and down.
“Damn. I was hoping you’d be late for once, so I’d finally have something to criticize. Why are you always making it so hard to hate you.”
I shivered just thinking of the word ‘late’.
“Our sergeant used to smack us around with his helmet if we were less than ten minutes early to anything. At this point, I don’t think I’m capable of being late. So, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t come empty-handed.”
I waved the bouquet of irises in front of me like a peace offering.
Chantal took them, inspecting the flowers with a critical eye.
“These are actually pretty nice,” she declared after a moment when she didn’t find any wilted petals or leaf spots. “Good job. Now, come on. They’ve just started seating, so let’s get in there. I want to get a good spot near the front.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the door, instinctively holding on to the inside of my elbow as if we were married again.
Since she’d always been shorter than me, I’d never been able to comfortably put an arm around her waist when we walked together, and she hated the weight of having one of my arms draped over her shoulder.
So, linking arms like we were back in the Victorian days had always been our “couple walk”.
It was nice to know that, even if a wedding ring no longer sat on my finger, some things never changed.