11.1.2011.2252
BHG
It was only a cold. A simple, common strain of rhinovirus. Kids got colds all the time. Hell, Ben recalled being perpetually sick in elementary school. Kids coughed without covering their mouths, tested everything with their teeth and ate their own boogers, so of course disease had been rampant. This couldn’t have been any different, right?
He stared down at his hands. Adam’s bright green hoodie. He had forgotten it on the subway. Ben had spent the entire morning hunting down the train from the previous day’s orange line just to find it. Adam always said it was his lucky hoodie.
Apparently it wasn’t lucky enough.
He closed his eyes tightly and listened to the faint murmurs of voices just down the hallway. His mother’s hushed, tremulous voice and the doctor’s calm, sterile, reassuring baritone. He couldn’t understand what they were saying, but from the way his mother’s voice occasionally hitched in crescendo he could only figure it to be one thing.
He lifted the small fleece-lined hoodie up to his face and buried his tired eyes into the worn, soft fabric. His mother’s tentative footsteps drew nearer. She paused before collapsing beside him on the bench. He felt her arms drape tightly around his shoulders and winced as she began to shake him with her sobs.
“He’s gone. He’s … gone …” she gasped.
It had only been a cold.
.
Ch. 1
Ben was fifteen. He didn’t feel fifteen. In fact, he felt older. His mother always accused him of that. ‘You’re a thirty-year-old man trapped in a teenager’s body,’ she would say. He wondered if such a thing could be possible? Perhaps his brain had an overabundance of synapses which provided for early maturation? Maybe he was a famous scientist reincarnated, like Benjamin Franklin, or Benjamin Thompson?
Or maybe it was from having a deadbeat dad he never got to know, and from living paycheck to paycheck with an overworked and underpaid single mother? Maybe it was from having asthma, and no peers who liked him, and a little brother who was ten years younger who made it a hobby to drive him insane? Maybe it was from being bullied every day of his life for looking strange, being weak, having to wear thrift store clothes? He was pretty sure it was from not fitting in, not having girls even acknowledge his existence, and for being two grades ahead of anyone else his own age.
It wasn’t his fault that everyone around him was an idiot.
Quickly Ben shoved his textbooks into his already overstuffed book bag. He squeezed the duct tape on the right shoulder strap tightly, hoping to use his body heat to warm the adhesive to encourage it to stay intact. He didn’t need to spill his books all over the subway platform again. He didn’t want to relive watching his physics book succumb to the 1200 volts of the third rail again, let alone have to explain to his teacher that yet another tome of knowledge had been inexplicably ruined. He shuddered at the memory of his poor geometry book’s death by purple crayon, executed most efficiently by his exuberant artist of a little brother.
“Benjamin! Hurry up, you’ll be late!” He heard his mother’s frustrated voice through his thin bedroom wall. Somewhere on the other side of the wall he could heard his little brother Adam rambling away.
The kid never shut up. Ever. Ben had looked up stages of child development in a psychology book he had found in the library. He had been convinced that there was something wrong with the kid. Every breath Adam took ended with a question. That couldn’t be normal. He wanted to know everything. ‘Why is the sky blue?’ ‘Why do we have to go to school?’ ‘Why do you have to go to work, Mom?’ ‘What makes taste?’ ‘How did the universe begin?’
Seriously. The kid was a pain in the ass.
“Ben!” He heard his mother’s exasperated calls again, intermingled with Adam’s persistent chatter. He was sure the kid was asking their mother something about mammary glands.
“I’m coming. Calm down.” Ben shouldered his book bag gently and stomped out of his room just in time to see Adam tugging his own Spiderman backpack over his shoulders. The bag was way too big for him, but no matter what Ben had told their mother she insisted that he keep it. Never mind that halfway to school the thing was dragging on the ground and Ben ended up carrying it everywhere for him.
He snarled at the thought and blinked blearily up at his mother. It was six-fifteen in the morning. Nobody should be awake this early.
“Okay, I put a note in Adam’s book bag for his teacher. Also, I didn’t have a chance to make you guys lunches, so here is some money, okay? Remember, you need to get the reduced lunch, otherwise...”
“Yeah, I know. Okay.” Ben stuffed his handful of quarters in his pocket and scowled. There was nothing more humiliating than having to buy lunch at school. There were lots of kids who had to used the reduced lunch program, and Ben knew it was irrational to feel embarrassed about it, but being singled out and have to use the reduced lunch line was simply humiliating. He would rather starve. It looked like today he was going to have a bag of Doritos from the vending machine, again.
“Mom. Mom? Mom! Mom, listen!” Adam was practically hanging from her leg like a monkey. She nearly tripped on him while she pulled her coat on. “We’re carving pumpkins today!”
“That’s nice,” she murmured half-heartedly while she hurried to get her coat on. “Be a good boy, okay? Ben, have a nice day.” And she was gone out the door to her first housekeeping job. Eight hours at the Marriott and then an extra five at the Radisson.
Ben glanced down at his watch. They had a couple minutes before they needed to leave. He looked down at Adam just as he was wiping his nose with the sleeve of his green sweatshirt. “Stop that, that’s gross. Use a tissue,” Ben grumbled. He reached over to pluck one from the kitchen and shoved it in Adam’s sticky hands. The little boy gave it a sloppy blow before tossing it happily in the trash.
“We’re carving pumpkins today, Ben!” Adam repeated. “Miss Allison says we’re going to have a parade tomorrow and we should wear our costumes. I want to be Spiderman.”
Ben frowned. Had their mother even bought Adam a costume this year? Last year for trick-or-treating their mother had made them wear boxes wrapped in red and blue paper with Styrofoam cups taped to the front. They were supposed to be some bastardized version of Lego blocks. Adam had been ecstatic. This year, however, Ben’s little brother was more aware of the world’s latest trends. Anybody who was anybody would wear a super hero costume, and NOBODY wore home-made costumes anymore. Except poor people.
Ben frowned and stared down at the eager face of his little brother. “You’re annoying,” he said slowly, letting the words sink in. The kid didn’t seem to notice. He stifled a wet sneeze with the arm of his sweatshirt and bounced up and down, unable to sit still for even a nanosecond. “And you’re gross,” Ben added.
“You’re gross!” Adam wailed in retaliation, though his words held no malice. He grinned and gathered up a fistful of tissues on his own. He stuffed the balls of fluff into the pocket of his sweatshirt and smirked.
Ben rolled his eyes. He hated kids. “Come on, let’s go.” He pushed Adam though the front door, locked it behind them and meandered down the hallway toward the elevator and frowned at the familiar maintenance sign hanging just over the call buttons. Not again. He quietly cursed the broken elevator and himself for lingering in the apartment for the last few minutes. Now they would have to hustle to make it down the stairs and to the subway station in time for the orange line. He grabbed hold of Adam’s arm and began dragging him to the stairwell. Descending three flights of stairs was normally nothing, but was a cumbersome deed when one had a five-year-old in tow.
Especially the world’s shortest and particularly slowest five-year-old.
“Hurry up! We’re going to be late!” Ben shouted as he practically dragged his kid brother down the stairs. Adam tripped and stumbled at every opportunity and was practically in tears by the time they reached the bottom landing. “We don’t have time for crying. We’re cutting it close as it is.”
“I dun wanna go to school...” Adam sobbed as they burst through the doors and out onto the open street. Ben scowled and cursed, trying to ignore the sniveling, boogery kid he had in hand and made his way haphazardly through the early morning foot traffic to the subway station. By the time they had descended the escalator into the belly of the city Adam had completely forgotten that he was upset and had become more preoccupied with shoving bits of tissue up his nose to stop up the inevitable flow of snot from his left nostril.
A half an hour later he was dropping off his snorting baggage at the elementary school and was on his own trek southbound six blocks to the high school.
It had been a normal school day, complete with the usual bullying from the upperclassmen and the girl he liked in his English class not giving him the time of day. He had his bag of Doritos for lunch, had his fill from the water fountain and stayed late to check out a few new books from the library for his upcoming science project. Was he the only one who gave a damn about the science fair? Yes, probably. He cradled the stack of books all the way to the subway station and back to the apartment. To his dismay the elevator was still, inexplicably broken. He hauled his load up the steps and to the apartment. He could hear SpongeBob Squarepants cackling just inside. He stumbled in just to see the television playing a particularly obnoxious episode at full volume, but the usual image of his kid brother parked with his nose glued to the screen was nowhere to be seen.
“Mom? Adam?” He called out as he dumped his books onto the kitchen table. He walked the few rooms of the house. Nobody was home. He switched off the television and slumped down to a sit on the couch. Strange. He fished his old candybar Nokia cell phone out of his pocket and dialed his mom. She didn’t answer. He clicked it off and tossed it on the coffee table. Maybe they just went out to get Adam a Halloween costume? That must have been it. He hopped up, raided the fridge for something to eat and completed his search with a cheese sandwich and a modest apple. It would have to do. He inhaled it quickly, shoved the plate on the coffee table beside his cell phone and slumped back into the sagging back of the pale yellow couch. He was tired. Before he had decided a short nap was in order his eyes were almost closed. A quick nap, and then homework, and then he would have to watch Adam for a few hours tonight while his mom did her second shift at the Radisson.
.
Ben nearly fell off of the couch when his cell phone began to chime. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep but the sun, which had been poking its way through the blinds just before he had dozed off, was now nowhere in sight. He frowned and wearily picked up the phone to answer it.
“Ben? Ben, are you at home?”
“Mn. Yeah, I am. Where are you guys? What time is it...” he looked around the now dark apartment, somewhat disoriented. He could hear his mother saying something to someone else on the other end of the line before returning her attention to him.
“We’re at the hospital.” His mom said plainly. Those simple words jolted Ben into immediate panic.
“Hospital? Why, what happened? Which one? Is Adam with you? Is he okay?”
“Calm down. Everything is fine, it seems your brother was sent home from school for having a really bad cold. They called this morning. I took him home and called out of work, but nothing I did seemed to help. He had a bad fever so I took him in to the emergency room. They want to keep him overnight.”
Ben stiffened and gripped the cell phone so tightly that his palm began to ache. “Emergency room? Is he going to be-”
“Yes, yes. He’s fine. He’s the same as ever, though he is just a little tired. Look, I am going to stay here tonight. He keeps saying he’s worried that the doctor is trying to steal all of his blood...” His mother explained. Ben smirked. That sounded like the little brat. “Heat up some Bagel Bites or something. I’ll be home in the morning.”
“Okay,” Ben replied. Then he sat in silence while his mother threatened to do bodily harm to him if he didn’t go to school in the morning. “Mom. It is the weekend, remember? Saturday...”
“Oh, right. Yes, well, make sure you do your laundry then. And mop the kitchen.”
“Right...” Ben sighed and hung up the phone. He reached over to flick on a lamp beside the couch, squinting as the room suddenly illuminated in the wake of the supernova of fluorescence. It wasn’t the first time he would have to fend for himself for dinner, but it did feel weird not having Adam around to take care of. It was oddly quiet. Had the ceiling fan always made that grating sound? And did the refrigerator always sound like it was about to self-destruct?
An hour later he had finished his math homework and wrote a paper for English. With fingers greasy with the remnants of his Bagel Bites, he slumped down onto the couch once more and stared at his cell phone. It was weird, being alone. He always thought he had been alone before. Sure, he was alone a lot at school, but at home it was unusual. He looked down at his hands before he wiped them absently on his jeans. It had been five years since Adam was born, and never once had the kid left his side. He was always there talking his ear off, asking questions or rambling aloud some child’s play alone in his room. Now there was nothing, an eerie silence he hadn’t remembered existing before Adam was born.
He wondered if the little booger brain was okay. Kids got sick. People went to the hospital all the time. He probably just caught some bug.Yeah, that’s it. Probably needed an IV, maybe some fluids or something. Mom said he had a fever that wouldn’t go down. The doctors probably had a cure for that, too. In no time he’ll probably be home on some sort of bubblegum flavored antibiotic, rummaging through Ben’s things, driving him bananas once again with his insufferable questions.
Yeah. He’d be home tomorrow. Ben was sure of it.
.
Ben cursed his body as it automatically woke Saturday morning, bright and early at 6am. He supposed old habits died hard, even for him. He had tried to go back to sleep many times, but it was no use. He was up, and alone once again in the apartment. He called his mother’s cell phone but got no answer, and supposed that no news was good news. Things were still too quiet without his brother around so he opted to create some white noise while he finished up his studies by putting on his brother’s favorite station for Saturday morning cartoons. Then he ran the coffee machine. He wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but the smell was just another thing to add to his list of things that made a normal morning. What else was he missing? A sock? That was pretty normal. His dark, straight hair was a complete mess, standing on end every which way, defying the laws of gravity. That was usual. The girl upstairs was stomping around on the ceiling, doing her usual early morning calisthenics. Normal.
By all accounts it was going to be a normal day. Except that everything was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. For one thing, his calculator stopped working while he was working out a particularly dreadful cosine. Then he was out of blueberry Pop Tarts, which was fine except that he had nothing else to eat except a boiled egg. And he cracked it in the middle of boiling it. He had eaten all of the Bagel Bites in the fridge the night before. His clothes were still wet. He had forgotten to move them into the dryer, and now they were acquiring a strangely sour odor. The phone kept ringing. Bill collectors, as usual. He answered a couple of them, but then unplugged the wretched thing from the wall. Anyone important would call his cell anyway. A zit had formed on his jaw overnight. The batteries to the remote for the TV were dead.
It was the apocolypse, the friggin’ end of the world. What else could possibly go wrong?
His cell phone rang. He jumped and quickly tried to snatch it off of the table. After fumbling and dropping it two times he managed to answer it.
“Hello? Mom?”
“No, it’s me. Dad.”
Ben scowled and fell hard on the couch. He bit his knuckle, resisting the urge to groan at the sound of his father’s voice. “Oh...”
“Where is your mom? I just tried calling but your house phone doesn’t seem to be-”
“She’s at the hospital with Adam. Not that you care,” Ben blurted the words as if they were burning his tongue. He immediately regret it. He could hear his father’s breath quicken on the opposite side of the phone.
“Adam? Is he okay?”
“Who knows?” Ben added, trying his best to sound as cryptic as possible. “I haven’t heard from Mom at all this morning.”
“What was it? Does he need his tonsils out?”
“Nothing like that, some sort of cold or flu I think.”
“...Oh. Well, if you know what hospital he is at I can try to call there...”
“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Ben said with a frown while flailing his arm in the air in a hurrying gesture. His father always took forever on the phone. It was excruciating when he called. “Look, I’m busy. I gotta go.”
“Oh. Okay, well I’ll call around anyway. How is school, Ben? Isn’t the science fair coming up?”
“Busy. Sorry. Got to go, bye!” Ben hung up as quick as humanly possible and slammed the phone down on the lumpy seat of the couch. He stared at the phone for a long moment before grabbing it and throwing it full force across the room. It struck the opposite wall with a loud crack, making a small dent just under his mother’s favorite Pablo Picasso print.
He grit his teeth and stared, seething, at the sudden damage he had done to the wall. His mom would have that taken out of her security deposit, along with the hidden hole in the back of his closet he had managed to “accidentally” kick in while engrossed in a particularly heated fit of teenage angst.
He hadn’t always been this pissed off. He morosely recalled a time when he loved his father. No, he took that back. He loved his father, he just hated him at the same time. It was complicated and the more he thought on it, the more his head began to ache. He needed to bury himself in some school work, or study something that would one day make a difference in his life. He grabbed for his Physics book that was still laid out, beckoning him on the arm of the couch. No. He needed to get out. He desperately tried to phone his mother, but didn’t get an answer. He decided he would just go down to the hospital anyway. Just as he had shoved his feet into his sneakers his phone chimed in. He checked to make sure it wasn’t his father. Relieved to see his mother’s name flashing on screen he quickly tapped the keypad and answered it.
“Mom, Dad called and-”
“Okay. I am sure he did,” she interrupted brusquely. “Did you do your homework?”
Ben stiffened and narrowed his eyes. What a stupid thing to ask. “Of course I did.”
“Good,” his mother replied automatically, obviously distracted. “Look, Ben. I have to stay here for a while. It looks like your brother will be in here for a couple of days. His fever isn’t going down, but don’t worry, they are going to try to give him some stronger I.V. medications-”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Ben blurted as he attempted to keep on the phone and shrug his jacket on at the same time.
“No. You need to stay home.” The words were harsh and sharp. Ben paused in his fight with his right coat sleeve and stared blankly at the freshly dented wall across the room. A million questions began to run through his mind. Why? I don’t understand. If he is sick, he’ll need me, right? You need me, don’t you? Just before he could verbalize these thoughts his mother added, “They aren’t letting anyone in.”
“What do you mean..?”
“There are a lot of kids here who are sick. Their immune systems are weak, and so unless you are a parent or a patient, nobody is allowed to come in. I have to wear a mask while I’m in here. The doctors are saying it is some sort of new flu bug or something. I want you to make sure you take your vitamins. I won’t be home until late, and if he doesn’t get any better by tonight I’ll stay over again. There is twenty dollars under the bread box. Buy something for lunch and dinner, okay? Are you going to be all right, or do I need to call Mrs. Ward?”
Ben scowled and gave up on trying to get his coat on, and simply let it hang limp half-attempted upon his left arm. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, if anything happens, just call your father or go next door and tell her, okay? My phone doesn’t get much in the way of reception here at the hospital.” His mother seemed even more distracted. A muted and incoherent voice spoke in the background, as if over a loudspeaker. “Okay, I got to go. Love you, honey,” then she was gone.
Ben stared down at his phone before shoving it morosely into his pocket. He didn’t know why, but he felt irritated. Betrayed. He shrugged it off, dug out the money his mother had told him to get and decided to go out and treat himself to a distraction of greasy hamburger down by the subway station. He finally managed to pull on his coat, grabbed his keys and left the apartment.
The hallway was quiet for a Saturday. He picked his way across the dull blue carpet to the elevator, scowled when he saw it was still out of order and reluctantly stomped down the stairwell to the first floor. At the bottom of the landing he heard voices coming from the lobby. He stopped at the first floor and inched up to the narrow metal door. He pressed his ear to its cool surface and waited for the voices to speak again. They did almost immediately, excited tones of youth he instantly recognized. Other boys from the apartment complex and school. He tensed and hesitated, his fingers gently touching the large lever of the door.
He never really did get along well with the other kids in the apartment. It wasn’t as if he had ever gotten into fisticuffs with anyone or anything, but ever since he could remember there had been a strange gap between himself and the other boys in the “neighborhood”. They were of a different make he supposed. Most of the boys in the apartment were atheltic, sociable and your typical teenager. They had no other interest other than where their next meal was coming from or who they were going to attempt to have sex with. Ben never felt like he could relate to any of them. They were dense, impulsive and rude. They thought he was a nerd, and never invited him to any of their activities. Impromptu soccer games out on the street were dominated by the jocks, especially Nathaniel, the boy next door.
Ben held his breath and listened to the murmurs and the occasional exclamation through the door. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could recognize the tones. Sure enough Nathaniel Ward was among them. There was no surprise there. Ben bit his lip reflexively and let his hand slide from the handle. He wasn’t sure he could handle walking through a group of meat heads right now. He was in a testy mood as it was, what with his little brother being sick and his mom practically leaving him to fend for himself. The last thing he needed was these jerks taunting him.
Their taunts were never too terribly aggressive, but they bothered him just the same. Nobody liked being shunned and teased. When they were all kids the jokes were basic. Nerd. Shorty. Four-eyes. Your typical, unimaginative insults. Now the insults were more sophisticated, and backhanded. Comments insinuating that Ben would always be alone, that he didn’t and would never have any luck with girls, that he was different from them in some way or another. Whenever he used to try and become part of their conversations he would be shunned as if he couldn’t possibly understand. Any time they talked about football, or what their fathers were doing a strange silence would come over the group and they would glance at him nervously, as if the topic was touchy or beyond his comprehension. It was humiliating and eventually Ben just avoided them altogether to soothe his nerves and keep some semblance of dignity in his quickly deteriorating life.
Why couldn’t life be simpler? Ben frowned and turned to press his back against the closed door. The nonsensical chatter continued from the opposite side. He would have to wait until they dispersed or left.
The voice that stood out most was Nathaniel’s. Ben didn’t know how he felt about the other teenager. He had known the kid for a long time. His mother used to babysit Adam on occasions when their own mom had unexpected delays in getting home and Ben was still too young to look after someone else. Their mom had always insisted that Ben go over there with Adam, but he was twelve by then and completely opposed to being babied by any adult.
The last thing that Ben ever wanted was to share any space with Nathaniel for any extended period of time. His mom would never understand that the tall, athletic “perfect” son next door was not-so-great at school, and part of a crowd of pubescent boys who made Ben’s life miserable on a daily basis. She didn’t get that if Ben was to go over to their apartment with the understanding that Nathaniel’s mom would have to “take care” of him that the Ward’s shining star of a kid would have plenty to tell his jerk-off friends the next day in class.
The last thing Ben needed was to fuel their disdain of him.
He didn’t know why they bothered to waste their time on him. Maybe it was a group mentality thing? Everyone had to have an enemy. He supposed that Natheniel was the leader of the group, so Ben had decided early on that his nemesis was the tall, popular soccer star next door.
They were complete opposites. As far as Ben knew, Nathaniel was no more intelligent than a paramecium. He was tall, strong, friendly, popular. He had a nice family, the perfect kind you saw on television. A square-jawed Dad with a good job, a pretty mom who stayed at home and nurtured and cooked and cleaned and took care of the neighborhood kids, and an adorable little sister. They lived in a large apartment, with nice furniture and clean floors. There was always something delicious smelling wafting through their door. When everyone else passed out crappy cheap candy during Halloween, Mrs. Ward always handed out elaborately decorated cookies. She was a friggin’ Martha Stewart. Ben couldn’t remember the last time he saw his mom actually bake anything.
For every change of the season or holiday Mrs. Ward would transform the front door of their apartment into a fancy, sparkling work of art. Fall leaves, Christmas lights, Easter Bunnies.
Everything was perfect, and though Ben knew it was ridiculous, he absolutely hated Nathaniel for it. It was easy to hate someone who you didn’t really know, and to be honest Ben didn’t WANT to get to know him. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the brute. He just wanted to walk through the lobby in peace. He wanted to get through one day without having someone snicker or point and laugh at him at school. He wanted people to stop making fun of him for being small, and smarter than they were. His mother said they only made fun of him because they were jealous.
What a load of bullshit. What would Nathaniel Ward and his attractive, girl-popular athletic cronies possibly have to be jealous of? Ben was small, weak and awkward. He couldn’t play sports without having an asthma attack. Hell, if they cut the grass unexpectedly out in front of the apartment building Ben would have to hole up for the rest of the afternoon with his nebulizer running full blast. He couldn’t talk to girls. Nathaniel had a different girl trailing around behind him every other week. Ben had no friends. Sure, he had kids who he helped in class, or people he knew from the Science Club and the Astronomy Club, but he didn’t have anyone he could confide in. He couldn’t talk to anyone about his feelings anyway, he wouldn’t know where to begin.
So whenever any of this would come up in conversation with his mom he would avoid it entirely. She was infuriating, always telling him things would get better soon, and that he was just a teenager and that the world sucked for everyone but that he would grow out of it. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He just... he just wanted her to acknowledge his feelings, not dismiss them and be so fucking optimistic.
Ben gasped when he suddenly realized that he had clenched his fists so hard that he had bruised his palms. He hadn’t honestly thought he was strong enough for something like that. He sighed, shook his hands out and turned his head to stare up at the descending stairwell just overhead. The conversation just on the opposite side of the door continued, the voices coming through only as nonsensical and incomprehensible mumbling. Not that Ben cared to hear the specifics anyway. They were probably talking about something retarded, like sports or how many girls one of the goons had fucked by now.
Ben grit his teeth. He felt stupid. His mom said that the jocks were jealous of him, but in reality he was rabidly jealous of them. Viciously jealous of everything they had, and every advantage in life they had been given. He had no hopes of ever being popular, or strong, or athletic and looked up to by anyone at school. He just wanted the normalcy. He wanted to be average, in appearance and in intellect. Being intelligent was no gift, Ben was convinced. What benefit could there be in constantly worrying, analyzing and stressing over bad situations. He wished he was blissfully ignorant. He wished he could turn his thoughts off at will, even if for a moment, to be at peace. He wouldn’t have to constantly worry about whether his mom had enough money this month for rent or the utilities. He wouldn’t have to worry about his father’s motivations, or worry about how all of this would be affecting Adam.
As much as Ben lamented about how much he hated his little brother, he was the one thing that concerned him the most. He felt like he was already screwed up. Sure, there was no reversing the damage on him, but Adam was just a kid. He already was beginning to show advanced thoughts and ridiculously deep reflection for a five-year-old. Ben was terrified that one day Adam would wake up and become the angry, bitter pessimist that he had become.
His thoughts were immediately interrupted by the sound of a door clanking shut. The main lobby door. Ben held his breath. There was no sound from outside in the lobby. He waited, counted to ten, and then pushed his way through the door and out into the open lobby, hoping that the pack of wolves had finally dispersed.
.
“I don’t understand. Why can’t he come home? I won’t send him to school...” Ms. Hall asked hesitantly as she watched her five-year-old son play with the recline controls of the hospital bed gleefully.
“Look, Mommy! I can make it go up and down. Angles!” Adam wailed happily before busying himself with smashing his thumb into the red nurse call button.
Doctor Faust sighed and shook his head slowly, flipping through the child’s chart carefully. He stopped at medical history and frowned. “It is complicated, and I don’t have all of the details, but... well, you know about our concern with letting this virus spread? How we have quarantined the hospital to only patients and their one relative? The CDC has put out an alert that this strain of virus has... well, it has been known to take the lives of children.” The doctor studied Ms. Hall’s placid reaction before continuing, “And we don’t want to risk having your son have a sudden turn for the worst. Sure, he seems fine now, but we don’t know much about this particular virus. We don’t know what the gestation of the infection is, or in what order the symptoms progress. We got his fever down, yes, but his cough has become productive.”
Ms. Hall frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “I can get him cough medicine... and I have a caregiver who can watch him if he needs closer monitoring. I just can’t afford-”
“Ms. Hall. I understand your financial situation, and am aware that every night in the hospital is costing you a great amount of money, but you must understand that this is for the welfare of the public.”
“Then I expect that the CDC or the government will compensate me for this?”
The doctor shifted the clipboard to his other arm and sighed. “I will look into it. In the meantime, we also ask that you stay here in the hospital as well. You have had much contact with your child, and you may possibly be a vessel or carrier of this virus. We are attempting to keep it contained.”
Ms. Hall frowned and shook her head. “Impossible, I have to work. First you keep him here and cost me a thousand dollars a day just to monitor him- look, he is getting better- and now you are insisting that I don’t work so pay these bills back? You people are out of your mind!”
The doctor grunted and shrugged his shoulders. “That is out of my control. Perhaps you should address your concerns to the office?” He immediately began his retreat from the room.
“I have a fifteen-year-old son at home! Alone! What am I supposed to do?” She yelled down the hall behind him.
“Mommy, look! I can change the TV from the bed. It has lots of buttons.”
.
The burger was just as disgustingly slimy as Ben had remembered it being and every last glob of sauce and chunk of mystery meat was eventually transported to his stomach. He felt sick, but blissfully full at the same time. He flopped heavily down onto a nearby bench in the square just outside of the entrance to the subway and stared across the cement park at the fountain and the people milling about, having their usual Saturday fun. Performers playing music together on one end, some kids his own playing hacky sack and just loitering, enjoying the cool autumn afternoon. He recognized a few of the girls sitting on a bench nearby, especially Daria Lunden. The prettiest girl in school, hands down. She was stunning, straight off of television, with straight white teeth and shoulder length blond hair. Together with her two best friends, a brunette and a redhead, they were a complete set. He found himself staring and immediately tore his eyes away to glare down a passing elderly man walking his equally elderly beagle.
His phone rang. He didn’t want to answer it, but his worry for his kid brother forced him to fish it out of his pocket. His father’s number flashed urgently on the screen.
“Damn it,” he muttered to himself before answering it with a stern, “What?”
“Ben? Where are you?”
“Out. Why?” He said as coldly as he could. He could hear his father release a frustrated sigh.
“I came by to pick you up. Your mom called. She said she won’t be able to make it home today or tomorrow, either. She is being held up at the hospital, so I came by to take you to my place for the weekend. She said she will be back Monday. Where are you, I’ll come pick you up.”
Ben grit his teeth and grunted cooly, “I am out. I won’t be home.”
“Ben, come on. Cut this shit out already.”
“No. I don’t want to go with you. I’m fine on my own.” Ben said angrily, his eyes closing reflexively to block out the image of Daria Lunden hugging a lanky black boy Ben knew from school. “Really. I want to be alone, okay? Just leave some money on the counter.”
“Ben...” His father sounded angry, and hurt at the same time. Ben didn’t give a shit. “When are you going to forgive me...”
“There is nothing to forgive, Dad. What’s done is done, right? I am fifteen, no. Sixteen in seven days. I can fend for myself for a while, okay? I don’t need you now-”
“Ben!”
“You want to be here for me now, but where the hell were you when I needed you most? Sorry. I got to go. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be okay. I’ll call Mom later, all right?”
“Ben, stop this shit. This is ridiculous. I am your father!”
Click. Ben jabbed the power button on his phone and shoved it into his pocket again. He took a steadying breath, opened his eyes and frowned at the newly transformed image of Daria Lunden making out with the newly arrived boy from school. He crossed his arms firmly across his chest and closed his eyes again, shielding them from the scene and the midday orange light of the sun. He was angry, but there was nothing he could do here to vent. He couldn’t go home, he knew his father would stick around and try to catch him at the apartment. He didn’t have anywhere to go, or anyone to go see. He thought for a moment about hiding in the library, or going for a walk in the park, but his anger was exhausting and made him lazy.
“ … all of the kids in the hospital are being held for...”
“I know! Did you see the news? Seven kids in this school system alone have died from it.”
“Wow, really? I wonder if they are going to close the schools? Do they know what it is?”
“No, not at all. It starts out like a cold, then all of a sudden the kids died from respiratory failure.”
“That’s terrible...”
“I know, it is supposed to be a concern of the …”
The voices faded away. A passing conversation Ben had only managed to get a part of. He opened his eyes and watched as the passing women, with arms full of grocery bags, make their way down torward the subway station. Were they talking about his school district? Kids with colds, who suddenly died? All of it was eerily familiar.
He jumped up from the park bench he had been occupying and ran over to the newspaper and magazine stand just outside of the subway station and studied the local newspaper headlines. Sure enough, just on the front page of The Meadowlark there was a headline about a “Mysterious Ailment Affecting Local Children”. Despite the protests from the attendant Ben flipped it open and began skimming the article. The women had been right. Apparently the school system had seven kids already die from a mysterious cold-like illness. There were no details on the disease itself, only that they thought it was a virus. The ages of children affected ranged from two to thirteen-years. It had affected all four elementary schools and both middle schools in the district. Ben frowned and turned the paper over. The article was short, concise and practically useless to him. The attendant snatched it from his hands and shooed him away, threatening to call his parents on him.
Right. My parents, he thought angrily as he lumbered off away from the stand. He grabbed his phone and turned it back on. Just as he had anticipated, his father had left him three voicemail and had tried to call a variety of times. Ben ignored the voicemail prompt and dialed his mom. She wasn’t answering. He remembered how she had mentioned that there was hardly any signal in the hospital. He frowned and phoned the nearest hospital, St. Jade’s Memorial, and asked to be directed to Mr. Adam Hall’s room. They said there was no patient by that name. Fine, he called the next closest hospital, Healing Heart. He asked the same thing and the operator told him to hold.
A ring. Then two. Then a familiar, small but excited voice on the other end.
“Hello?”
“Adam? Adam, is that you?”
“Ben! Mom, it’s Ben! Ben, I have a TV!”
“Cool. Hey, are you feeling all right?” It was nice to hear his little brother on the other end, sounding relatively normal. Ben listened closely as Ben described the hospital room, and the doctor, and the shot they had given him the night before. Ben could only detect a slight cough and sniffle from the kid. Maybe he wasn’t as sick as those other kids who had died? He seemed to be okay. Maybe even better than he had been on Friday. Relief began to swarm over Ben’s chest and soothe his mind. It couldn’t happen to them. His brother was in great health. There had to be something wrong with those kids who had died. Maybe they were weak kids, or already sick or something?
“Ben. I am really cold. I need Greenie. I think I lost him.”
“Your sweatshirt? The green one... where did you...” Ben began to rack his brain. Did he see the sweatshirt at home?
“I really want it. Can you bring me it?” Adam asked in a small voice. Ben could hear his mother protesting in the background. She was asking for the phone. “But I am talking!!” Adam whined. Ben could hear his mother shuffling for the phone. Hurriedly he hung up and turned the phone off. He didn’t want to talk to her. He was pissed at her already for sending their father after him and all she’d have to say was that he needed to go back home to their dad. Like Hell Ben would do that. He wanted to go to the hospital to see them. He was scared now, with his newly acquired information about the recent death of the kids. Adam sounded all right but Ben wasn’t entirely convinced. If he could just see him, and see that he was okay, he would be fine. He would feel better, and then after that, he would do whatever his mom wanted him to. He would go to stay with his dad.
Ben nodded to himself, resolved in his decision to go to the hospital despite his mother’s protests. But Greenie... the hoodie. He couldn’t go home. His father would still be there, no doubt. Ben didn’t remember seeing the thing at the house anyway. Adam never went anywhere without the thing. He had told Ben only a month before when he had first gotten the sweatshirt that it was “lucky” and had some sort of “magic powers”. Ben had laughed at him and told him not to be ridiculous, but in hindsight the hoodie had some sort of effect on Adam. It was like a security blanket, soothing and comforting. If Adam needed it, Ben would try to find it for him. It was the least he could do.
Where could it be? Ben decided to try the school first. He hopped on the subway and rode it all the way to Second Street trainstop and walked the block to the school. It was closed for the weekend, but Ben knew there had to be someone inside. He loitered around for about half and hour and finally ran into a maintenance man in the service entrance. He asked if the man had seen the lost hoodie and convinced the guy to let Ben root around in the lost and found box in the office. There were plenty of kid’s clothes, shoes, and random odds and ends but Greenie the hoodie was nowhere to be found.
He got back on the train and began to ride it eastbound in the direction of the hospital. He racked his brain, wondering where else the thing could be, when it occurred to him that Adam may have left it on the train. The orange line, the train that went directly to and from the school stop and their own stop on Estoria Blvd. It took only an hour to hop off onto the platform at Estoria and wait for the orange line to return. He asked the driver and attendant if they had seen it and sure enough, there it was lying on top of a collection of other lost items at the back of the train.
Finally, something was going right today. Ben tucked the sweatshirt under his arm and carried it onto the train heading back toward the hospital and forty-five minutes later he was standing outside of the hospital staring ta a large yellow warning sign on the front door reading, “No Patient Guests Allowed At This Time: Patients and One Caregiver Only.” Just beneath it was a box of gloves and two sizes of face masks. Ben peered into the lobby. An elderly volunteer sat at the front desk typing on a desktop computer. There was nobody else in there.
How was he going to get inside? His mother was there already, and if he had to check in the lady at the desk would see that Adam already had a visitor and wouldn’t let him in. He couldn’t say he was his brother and explain his real reason for coming because then they would call his mom and she would send him off to their dad. He had to get in... as a patient?
He smirked and pulled on a mask and when the woman was looking down he snuck through the rotating door and into the lobby. When she looked up he was standing just beside the desk. He managed a weak cough and sniffle. “I’m lost.”
“Lost? Oh dear, are you a patient?”
“Yeah,” Ben managed to say in a pathetic voice, attempting to sound younger than he was and frightened. For once he could use his small, slight stature for something useful. He was fifteen, going on sixteen, but could easily pass for eleven or twelve if he really wanted.
“What’s your name, dear?” The old woman asked. Ben coughed again into the back of the mask and said meekly, “Adam Hall. I forgotted what room number...”
The woman typed something into the computer and then looked up. “Four-thirteen. Wait one minute, honey, and I’ll call someone to walk you back up there.”
“Oh... okay.” Cough. Cough. “I’m gonna get a drink,” he pointed to the water fountain and smirked behind the mask. The old woman nodded. Ben inched his way to the water, grabbed a paper cup, and then when the lady turned to use the phone broke out into a run for the staircase. He ducked into the stairwell and began taking the stairs eagerly to the fourth floor. By the time he had made it to the fourth floor his chest was burning from the exertion. He stumbled out into the hallway, figured out how the numbed descended turned left. Seven doors later he was just outside of 413. He didn’t bother to knock.
Just as he burst through the door he was shoved back by a gurney. He tripped and fell to land on his ass just in the hallway as a rush of people pushing the gurney stumbled past him. Doctors, a nurse and two people in blue scrubs. They were yelling back and forth over the gurney at one another, vanishing down the hall and around the corner. Ben stared for a long, dumb moment before staggering to his feet. Greenie was lying just beside him on the ground. He scooped it up and was about to run in pursuit of the gurney when a hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned and stared up at the tear-stained face of his mother. Behind her stood a doctor in a white lab coat. The door to the room was open, empty of its bed.
“Mom... was that-”
She didn’t give him a chance to ask. Before Ben could say anything else she broke into a sob and grabbed him, pressing him tightly against her chest. Ben stared over her shoulder at the doctor, dumbstruck. The man’s face was pale, and his eyes uneasy, darting around the room, avoiding eye contact with Ben.
“We’re going to do all that we can,” the man said weakly. Ben felt his mom drop her weight against him, felt her body shaking with sobs.
Somehow he didn’t believe him.
TBC.
No comments:
Post a Comment