17. Markus
CHAPTER 17
MARKUS
At fourteen stories tall, the Baker Hotel is always the first thing you see when you come into Mineral Wells. Once upon a time, it was the first thing you smelled too. The hundred-year-old hotel was built back in the early twentieth century, when people were obsessed with bathing in mineral water. By the sixties and seventies, mineral spas in the middle-of-nowhere Texas had fallen out of favor with the traveling type, and the hotel sat closed and moldering for my entire life in this town.
All I remember about the place is decay. When the wind blew through its many broken windows, across rain-dampened carpets and wallboard, it stunk up this little town with the stench of neglect. Now, though, a company has come in to refurbish and modernize the old place. The spray paint tags have been power washed away, the windows replaced. The old hotel actually looks nice now, and it smells a lot better too.
“Wow,” Adam says as he takes in the sight of that sole skyscraper, scratching at the clouds.
And the sky is full of clouds now. From the south, it’s been a peaceful sunny day, but ahead of us, the front of a Blue Norther billows and boils with towering shelves of blue-gray clouds. The cold front charges across the plains, promising a violent night of lightning, gusty wind, and torrential rain. I ignore it, all of it. The hotel, the approaching storm—there’s already too much on my mind as it is.
Your father is dying. My mother sounded more exasperated than sad when she dropped that bomb. I was stunned silent by the news, so she filled the gap with all the terrible details. My addled mind could only capture bits and pieces. It’s cancer, pancreatic. Stage four, metastasized to his liver and lungs. He’s chosen to forego chemotherapy. He’s in hospice and only has a few days left. He wants to see you.
He wants to see you.
That last part is what keeps coming back to me, those words. My father wants to see me? Why? He’s dying. This is what people do when they’re dying; they tie up loose ends. Is that what I am? A loose end?
My father and I aren’t close. Nothing was ever the same between us after my parents sent me away to “therapy.” I stopped sharing my life with them, and they let me. They’d gladly sent me to a boarding school, and I’d gladly gone. When I started college, I left Mineral Wells for good.
I call my parents on Christmas. They call me on my birthday. Yet never, in all the years since I left, have they asked me to come visit.
They’re as disappointed in me as a child as I am of them as parents. This town isn’t my home, and my parents are just people I used to know. So why would my father want to see me now?
Adam’s fist curls over the top of his steering wheel, and he points at the Lone Star Motel as we drive past, saying, “I can drop you at the hospital then come back here and get us a couple of rooms so you have somewhere to rest and decompress… Unless you want me to come into the hospital with you?—”
“No!” I answer to quickly, too loudly. That one little syllable is soaked with emotion, and I immediately regret saying it. Taking a deep breath, I modulate my voice. “I really appreciate your kindness in bringing me all the way here, but you don’t have to stay. I can rent a car, and?—”
“I’m staying the night.” Now he’s the one who sounds curt, like I’ve hurt his feelings. But I don’t have the energy to consider that or even to apologize and make it right.
At the light, he pulls into the left turn lane and waits for a semi to pass so we can go west to the hospital. On the right side of the road, a group of five crosses stands at the corner where Michael Forest, a star baseball player in the grade above mine, drove his pickup into a minivan carrying the Craine family. Five dead that night. Five crosses now. With the storm brewing ahead of us, it all feels like a portent. It feels like doom.
I look away as we turn, letting my gaze fall on Adam’s profile. So handsome, so solid and sure and kind, even to me, someone he barely knows. Clearing my throat, I say, “Thank you for everything you’re doing for me. I owe you one…two… Well, I owe you a lot, and I’m grateful.”
Adam smirks at me over his shoulder, then pulls into the parking lot and comes to a stop beneath the hospital portico. “You don’t owe me anything.”
I chuckle. “Well, that’s a debate for another day, but yes, I do.”
With that, I pop the door open and step out into the harsh wind that pushes ahead of the storm front. Adam and I share a silent nod, and I shut the truck door, turning toward the building. A set of automatic doors detect my movement and slide open for me, and I walk through to the waiting room and the front desk.
I recognize the woman at reception. We went to school together. She probably recognizes me, too, but we don’t discuss it. Instead, I ask for my father’s room information and then go up to find him.
Stepping off the elevator, Dad’s room is across the hall and a window in the door affords me a glimpse inside. There’s an array of machines lined against the back wall, their bright displays indicating vital numbers and details, and within that mass of information, is an adjustable bed. There, wired to the myriad machines and tucked beneath the folds of a thick white blanket, is a gaunt old man with sunken eyes and a nasal cannula snaked across his cheeks. His sallow skin looks translucent and waxy, like wet crepe paper draped over a skeleton.
Who is that?
My parents are in their late fifties—by no means old—and in my mind, Dad is still in his early forties. He’s the healthy man who jogged every morning, then came in through the back door, huffing and puffing and checking his pulse as I ate breakfast cereal. He’s the powerful prosecuting attorney who made criminals tremble with the mere mention of his name. When we last shared a video call, he was looking older and grayer, sure, but nothing like this.
The man in my father’s hospital bed isn’t him. It can’t be.
I stand there, frozen to the spot as I stare into the room, unable to move forward but not able to retreat either. That’s when my mother notices me. She’s sitting in a chair beside my father’s bed, reading a book that she sets down when she comes to the door. The closer she gets, the more she blocks the view of that stranger lying in my dad’s sick bed.
My mother looks different too. Older, yes, but there’s more to it than just age. She looks weary and tired, and the frown lines etched into her face deepen as she quietly opens Dad’s door, then clicks it closed behind her.
“You’re here.” She sounds surprised, like she didn’t expect me to actually show up. To clarify, she adds, “I didn’t think you’d make it before he—” She stops talking and leans close, right into my space, which makes me back up a step. Reaching for my head, her tone shifts to accusation as she asks, “What happened to your face? Were you in a fight?”
With everything that’s happened today, I nearly forgot about my car accident and the head injury that resulted in twenty-five stitches and a big bandage on my forehead.
I dodge my mother’s touch so she doesn’t poke at my injury as I answer indignantly. “I was in a car accident. Why would you assume I was in a fight?”
She just shrugs, and I’m left standing there, waiting for her to do something, say something. When she doesn’t, I ask, “Can I go in and see Dad?”
“Well, he’s finally sleeping. Maybe it’s not a good idea to wake him just now.”
What? I blink at her, stunned. This morning, she made the situation sound so urgent and dire. I dropped everything to race up here. Adam dropped everything to bring me. And now that I’m here, she’s literally blocking me from entering his room.
“Where are you staying?” she asks, like we’re just having a normal chat.
“The Lone Star up the road.”
“Oh, not there. That place is so…unseemly. You could stay at the house?—”
“I’m not alone. Is he invited to stay at the house too?”
I emphasize the “he” for effect. It’s petty, sure, but the longer I stand out in this hallway, blocked from my father’s hospital room, the pettier I feel.
“Oh,” is all she says. The frown lines worn into her face get some use as she mulls over what to say next to her gay son. “Well… I’ll call you when your father wakes?—”
“Mom, I’ve been on the road for almost four hours, hurrying to get here because you said Dad’s dying. So I’m going in there now to see him, even if he’s asleep.”
She stares blankly at me like she doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Tired of waiting for her to move, I reach out and clasp my hands on her shoulders, realizing as I do that it’s the first time we’ve touched since I left for college. Gently, I shift her a couple of feet to the right so I can sidestep her to the left and enter Dad’s room.
She huffs and mutters something about going to the cafeteria. I ignore her and close the door between us.
Dad’s room has only one chair, so I move Mom’s book to sit, using a tissue to mark her page. Not wanting to disturb Dad’s sleep, I silently watch him as he labors to breathe.
I hate this. I hate that my dad is sick. No, more than sick, he’s dying . I hate that my dad is dying. And I hate that I don’t know if I’m welcome here. Which is absurd—of course I’m welcome here. Mom has been calling me for days to tell me about his condition. Now, here I am, and I have the distinct impression I’m not invited. Did Mom expect me to play the role of a hateful son who ignores his father’s dying wish for a deathbed visit?
Well, here I am.
“Mark. You’re here.” My father’s raspy voice startles me.
“Dad.” I jerk my eyes up to find him awake, his half-lidded gaze fixed upon me.
“I’m glad you’re here. There’s so much I want to say to you.” His words are wispy, and he takes several pauses to catch his breath as he speaks. He tries to shift positions, wiggling to sit up higher in his bed, but his brittle bones can’t do much to move him. I press the button on the adjustable bed so he’s elevated a bit more. He nods when it’s at the angle he wants, then settles into his new position. All he says is, “I’m sorry.”
Uh.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a better father to you.”
I’m stunned. His words are clear and coherent, but my brain can’t seem to parse and piece them together. “I, uh, what do you mean?”
“I should have supported you, but I let?—”
Before he can finish his thoughts, he starts to cough. It begins as something dry and raspy but quickly turns into a violent hacking that seems to wreck him completely, shaking his frail body with bruising force.
Just as I’m about to hit the nurse’s call button, Mom comes storming into the room, moving to Dad’s side as if she needs to shield him. She mashes on the call button, and when a nurse comes in, the two of them discuss giving him another dose of morphine. When that’s done, Dad’s cough calms, and his eyes flutter as he finally relaxes in that cloud of blankets. Watching him slip into sleep, all I can think is, “But you let… what ?”
What was Dad about to say? What was his apology going to be?
I need to hear so many apologies from this man. Was he about to give me one of them? For a moment there, I felt a frisson of hope, something I didn’t know I could feel with my parents. But now, it’s gone, dormant again as my dad settles into his sleep. My hope withers further when Mom turns on me, her posture aggressive, like I’m the thing she needs to shield Dad from. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“You obviously upset him. What did you say to him?”
“Nothing, Mother.” I look over at my dad, who’s sedated and sleeping now and probably will be for some time. I feel as tired as he looks. And I feel…hungry. Have I eaten today? I can’t remember. To Mom, I say, “I’m going to go. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Then I leave. Mom says something at my back, but I don’t hear it. I’m not listening anymore. Exiting the room, I don’t wait for the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time to the ground floor.
Outside, thunder rumbles, and fissures of lightning crack open the sky. Rain falls through the fissures and cracks, soaking me to the bone as I walk along the narrow road back to the highway in the direction of the unseemly hotel.
The cold front blows through me, and all around the strobe and percussion of the storm roars and echoes as I rub the rain out of my eyes to look both ways at the highway. It’s empty. Everything, everywhere is empty, except for the motel parking lot. There’s one vehicle: Adam’s truck. I’ve never felt such relief at the sight of an old Chevy.
I walk across that wide lot so quickly I’m practically running when I reach the door closest to where the truck is parked. The thunder rumbles loudly, so I knock with all my might, desperate to be heard.
It works. He hears me and swings the door open. God, he’s breathtaking, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. With a glance up and down at me, his eyes fill with worry. Clasping my hand in his firm grip, he pulls me inside and slams the door shut on the storm.
And that’s when I kiss him.