The Crossing Page 13

  They were a pair of “New Birthers.” Another of the many couples trying to repopulate the dying world. New Birthers cycled in and out of the hospitals, pushing out children and hope in one fell swoop, all the while certain that something in their creations of life would balance out all of the death and dying that were seeping into everything else around them.

  Just like with Embers, the New Birthers weren’t working under any unified plan or direction. They were just people doing what they could to quell the fear inside of them. And I always hoped that their efforts would bear fruit. Because it was easier to imagine that than to imagine their efforts being in vain and that those children they worked so diligently to bring into creation would be destined to live the shortest, harshest lives of any of us.

  Since the beginning of time children were meant to ensure the future. Now the future couldn’t ensure the children.

  I asked Connie questions about the baby and about Nolan and I said things like, “It’s going to be okay” while squeezing Connie’s hand and, sometimes, I did Lamaze breathing along with her. We even laughed now and then, like old friends sitting in the front parlor of an old house, remembering life as it was before everything changed.

  Nolan squinted over the steering wheel as if tightening his eyes could make his vision part the sheets of rain like Moses. It went like this the whole way to the hospital. When we pulled up in front of the emergency room I bolted from the car like a scalded dog and came back with a wheelchair and a nurse as if delivering the babies of strangers was a hobby of mine. Nolan was still in the driver’s seat, his hand locked on the wheel like a dead man’s, like it hadn’t received the message from his brain yet that they’d gotten where they were trying to go. Then Connie’s hand was on his shoulder and his hand relaxed and released the wheel and his arm flopped down onto his leg, lifeless, like an animal shot through the heart. “Jesus,” he said.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Connie sat forward in the back seat and wrapped her arm around her husband’s neck. “We’re gonna get through this,” she said.

  Nolan sniffled and rubbed his eyes and suddenly looked like a child. “We’re gonna be okay,” he said. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

  “Of course you are,” I said brightly. It was part performance, part sincerity. Whichever of the two was the majority I couldn’t say. All I knew was that, just then, the couple was nervous and maybe I could help them and, for the first time since starting out, I wasn’t thinking about Gannon and what would happen when he caught up to me.

  “Jesus,” Nolan said when the car was parked and the nurse had taken Connie into the back of the hospital. He and I were standing at the registration desk together.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Virginia,” I said. “I’m a student of human nature. And I’m willing to bet hard-earned American dollars—as my third foster father used to say—that this is your first baby and that you’d give anything you could for it all to go ahead and get over with. But don’t you worry. Things generally sort themselves out.”

  “That a fact?” Nolan replied. He pawed at the empty pocket of his shirt like a smoker who had only recently given up the habit.

  “It is,” I said. “Do you like numbers? I’m pretty good with numbers and, speaking for the numbers, a CDC report from 2014 said that the rate of infant deaths was only 6.1 deaths per one thousand. Not the greatest for developed countries, but—”

  “How do you know that?” he asked. Then he turned to the nurse before I had time to answer. “How long’s this gonna be?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How long?”

  “Can’t really say,” the nurse replied, punching at her keyboard, only half paying attention to him. “Sometimes they pop right out. Other times they do everything they can to stay in there.” She snorted a half laugh. “We’ll know more in a little bit, once the nurses examine her.”

  “Is everything okay? With her? With the baby?” Nolan made a fist with his existing hand. Then the fist relaxed into an open hand again and he sighed.

  “We’ll know more once she’s examined,” the nurse said. She was watching her computer screen and didn’t see the fist he had made and unmade.

  “Well, how long is that gonna take?” he asked.

  “Not long.”

  “Well, how long is not long!” He said it sharp enough that the nurse finally looked up from her computer. She looked him in the eyes, and then at the empty, folded sleeve where his left arm should have been. Her face softened.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  I put my hand on his shoulder the way Connie had. “Let’s go outside, shall we?” I said. “I think I left something in the car. Plus, there’s fresh air out there. Fresh air and rabbits and unicorns, all types of awesome things. That’s what a person needs at a time like now: clean air and sunshine. Speaking of air, sort of, did you know that there’s a global helium shortage?”

  “A what?” Nolan asked. He fell into step beside me, his face tightened into a question.

  “Yep. Not enough helium in the world and less and less each day,” I said. “Strange facts are fun facts. Anyhow, while everyone is filling up kids’ balloons at birthday parties, helium is also used in MRI machines and other advanced science. But there’s only a finite amount here on earth. It won’t be here forever.”

  “So what... I mean, what are they gonna do?” Nolan asked.

  “Hell if I know,” I said. “But it feels good to think about something else for a change, doesn’t it?”

  Nolan barked a small laugh.

  When we got back outside the rain had stopped, as if it had existed only to torment us on the drive. The sun hadn’t come out from behind the clouds just yet, but it would soon, I could tell. It was that feeling like false dawn—a small, barely noticeable change, like a dial being turned up somewhere, everything brightening by degrees, a spark becoming an ember becoming a flame.

  “You’re soaked to the bone,” Nolan said, starting off toward the car. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a change of clothes, do you?”

  “Point of fact, I don’t,” I said brightly, even as my shoes squished with each step and my clothes flapped, soggy and heavy around me.

  “Well, I can’t let you go off like that,” Nolan said, marching across the parking lot like a plow animal. He ran his hand through his hair.

  Nolan opened the trunk of the car after fiddling with his keys. There was a large blanket and a gym bag full of Connie’s clothes. He unzipped it and flopped the lid open. After riffling through it, he found a flannel shirt of his and pulled it out, careful not to disturb the rest of her clothes. He placed the shirt next to the bag and took off his wet one and put on the dry one. His hand shook so he made a fist and released it and the shaking stopped.

  “You going to make it?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Nolan said. Then: “What are you doing?”

  I had already started walking away.

  “Where are you going? You can’t leave like this. You’ll catch pneumonia. Just look at yourself!” He reached into the trunk and grabbed Connie’s bag. “There’s clothes in here that’ll fit you. Get into something dry and hang around for a bit. You just...you just can’t go off like that. Just...stick around for a bit.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But I’ve got miles to make up. A long, long way to go.”

  “Please,” Nolan said. He looked smaller than he had before, like a sculpture made from paper.

  Nolan was a good man about to become a father in a harsh, uncertain world. The war, The Disease, and still he had found belief enough to think that another soul in this world could make a difference, could find happiness, could build something out of the rubble and ruin that everyone seemed to know was inevitable. Becoming a parent was an act of courage, just as it had always bee
n.

  * * *

  It started from the moment I got into the car: a vision of my parents. I couldn’t help but imagine them heading to the hospital on the day Tommy and I were born. The fact was, and this was something I knew, just as sure as I knew my own name, that all of this whole trip ahead of me, was just my way of chasing my parents’ ghosts. I imagined, all those years ago, my parents being as frightened and excited as Connie and Nolan. In the car, I had seen my mother’s face in Connie’s—smiling, breathing in and out like the bellows of a furnace. And Nolan became my father, desperate and maybe even more afraid than my mother, sawing at the steering wheel as if death itself were driving behind them, headlights flashing and horn blowing. And I couldn’t help but become afraid for them both. I knew, even if they didn’t, that everything they were afraid of could come true at any moment, without warning.

  When Nolan had pressed his luck and drove faster on the way to the hospital, he did it out of a certainty that they would be okay. Maybe there would be a few hairy moments but he and his wife would make it. That was never in doubt for Nolan. God had already taken his arm. There was no way He would take his child as well. And I knew that Connie shared the same confidence. It was their first child—Connie had made a point of telling me that more than once—and the woman was certain that there were only good things ahead for her and her family. That’s what they were building, after all: a family. “And families don’t get snuffed out in their early stages,” I had told them at one point, fully aware and living proof that it was a lie.

  But such truths weren’t conceived of in Nolan and Connie’s philosophy. Nor the philosophies of any other parents. Who was I to take that away from them?

  My own parents were already dead and I would never have the chance to be afraid for them. The longer I lingered in the hospital, the more afraid I became for Nolan and Connie.

  “Son of a bitch,” Nolan said, flopping down into the seat beside me. “Every single one of them. Just a bunch of sons of bitches.” He scratched the back of his neck and then wiped his chin in frustration.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, trying to push the thoughts of my parents from my mind.

  “Nothing,” Nolan said. “Just the damn headache of it all. All we’re trying to do is have a baby. People have been doing that since before there were people. And these bastards just want to get their paperwork done.”

  He fixed his mouth to say more, but one of the nurses came over and smiled and said, “They’ve got her in a room now. Room 513. You can go on up if you’re ready.”

  “Thank you,” Nolan said immediately, and all of the anger was gone from his voice. He sighed and his body relaxed. “Thank you,” he said again softly.

  I patted him on the shoulder. “It’s going to be fine. Like you said, people have been having babies since before there were people.”

  He flashed a smile and stood and the two of us started off for the elevator. When we reached Connie’s room, a nurse came out and motioned for us to go on in. Nolan reached up as if to tip an imaginary hat to her but the movement came off as awkward. The nurse seemed not to notice.

  “There she is,” Nolan said warmly. He sat on the edge of the bed—so that his missing arm was facing away from Connie—and hugged her and kissed her on the top of the head. “You okay?”

  “Feeling fine,” she said.

  Nolan sat up. He looked her up and down, taking in her sudden calmness. “What’s happening? Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Connie said. “The baby just decided to slow down.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “Totally normal.”

  “You sure? What did the doctors say?”

  “Settle down, husband,” Connie replied. She squeezed his arm. “Everything is okay.”

  “You’re damn right it is,” I added. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

  The nurse came back before too long to let Nolan know that there was still paperwork to be done. After Nolan left, I stayed with Connie, who was growing sleepy from the medicine they had given her. She stared up at the ceiling, counting the ceiling tiles aloud, while the medication began to flow through her veins—heavy, thick veins that, when I saw them, reminded me of Europa’s Falga Regio—wide, branching lines slicing into the ice like cracks in the floor of an empty riverbed in which the water has long ago gone. Everything reminded me of Europa in some form or another. So, for me, Nolan was Jupiter—the big, colorful gas giant that could have been a star, a life giver in its own right, if things had gone differently, but fate had other plans. Now it was only potential churning in upon itself—still glorious and beautiful, but never what it could have been.

  Maybe planets do mourn the lives they could have led as stars. Who’s to say?

  Connie was Europa. The small, cool orbiter with an ocean of life buried inside her.

  Connie let out a long, relaxed sigh. “How you feeling?” I asked.

  “It’s all free drinks and dancing girls,” Connie said with a dopey, faraway look in her eyes. “Where’s Nolan?”

  “Taking care of the paperwork, I think. There’s no shortage of things that need to be filled out.”

  “How is he?”

  “Pensive would be the word I’d use.”

  “He’s always been afraid of everything,” Connie replied with a smile.

  “You want me to go and get him?”

  “No,” Connie said. “Just hang out with me for a bit if you don’t mind. Nolan will come in when he’s ready.” She adjusted her position on the bed and looked at me. “I don’t think I ever asked you where you were headed.”

  “South,” I replied. “Southeast to be more precise. Cape Canaveral. Almost to the bottom of the American map.”

  “Canaveral?” Connie said. “Going to watch a launch?”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said. “Nothing more majestic, in my opinion. The summit of mankind’s achievements, if you ask me. Hardly anything comp—”

  “I did that once,” Connie replied. “It’s something. What’s the launch?”

  “Unmanned probe on its way to Europa, one of the Jov—”

  “One of Jupiter’s moons, if I’m not too buzzed to think straight.”

  “Dead on!” I exclaimed. “You must be a fellow fan of the celestial science. Not nearly enough talk about the heavens and far too much talk about Heaven if you ask me. I’m fond enough of the metaphysical and related theories but there’s so much here, in this universe, that we have yet to figure out that I feel like people spend too much time thinking on the unknowable and not enough time trying to sort out the rest.” I exhaled.

  “People you’ve met so far, you mean?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Not complacency, just pattern making. The world is vexing enough, I suppose, without the talk of space exploration and the greater knowledge of mankind. Too much to think about for general people, what with bills and mortgages and divorces and children and everything else that comes and plants roots in a person’s life.”

  “Kids think about it.”

  “They do, indeed. Children are the future until they become adults, then they simply become furniture—stagnant and unchanging.”

  Connie laughed. “But not you, huh?” she said. “So why is it so important to you? Why uproot your life to head across the country with the way everything is? Why not just curl up and hide or, better yet, run away like other Embers?” She tried to sit up, then changed her mind. “I can’t blame them for running away. Can’t blame them at all. And then, look at you: it’s obvious that you’re not just on a trip. You’ve got no bags. And you should be taking a bus or a plane. No, you make it seem like this is your final trip in life, like you’re taking a one-way trip. You make it seem like there’s not going to be anything after Florida, after the launch. Maybe you should hang here in Arkansas for a while. Skip out on that launch. Why are y
ou doing this?” She watched me closely as she asked the question.

  “Can I answer a question with a question?” I asked.

  “You sorta just did,” Connie replied.

  “Why do people like you do it?”

  “People like me?”

  “New Birthers. It’s all winding down,” I said. “Why pretend otherwise?”

  “Because that’s what hope is,” Connie replied without a moment of hesitation, as if she had been waiting for the question since the day she was born. “You know the great thing about strangers? They don’t know anything about you. You can tell them anything and then disappear and never see them again. They make perfect confidants. And since they don’t know you or, in a sense, care about you, they don’t have anything to gain by skewing their answers. They can be honest with you and you can be honest with them.” The pain was coming back to her and she reached up and took a hold of the self-medication button. “Can’t promise I’ll be in a state to offer decent advice for very long.”

  “An interesting thesis,” I said. “I—”

  “Can you just cut the smoke and mirrors for a moment?” Connie asked. “Please?”

  “I’m going because this Europa mission is the last good thing that’s going to happen in this world.” I spoke slowly. “And I want to be there to see it. I want to remember it, to keep it forever, because that’s what you’re supposed to do with good things. I’m going because my brother and I don’t understand each other anymore. This was supposed to be our last chance to get things back to the way they were. But I guess things can never get back to the way we remember them, no matter how perfectly we remember them.” I looked down at my hands and caught them trembling. They looked afraid. “I wish Mom and Dad were here.”

  “I was wondering about that but didn’t want to ask,” Connie said. “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead.”