The Hospital Room
Isaiah sat in a dull room. He thought the walls were green, but he was not sure. Its lightbulb was dying. Soon, it would be gone, and the room would be plunged into darkness. And the little color he now saw would be gone. He knew that. The little light that came in from the hallway would be enough to show the shape of things but little else. It would give any person in the little room enough light to navigate but not enough to see the color of the walls. No. The color only existed in a place with light. The inherent property of each thing in the room would take in all the colors but one, and it would spit out whichever color the human eye perceived it to be. But the color of the walls did not matter to Isaiah. The theory behind why they had color, the theory that said they only presented that color with light, was what mattered to him. This room did not, not in a sense that most people would say that it mattered. Not in the sense the others in the room, his brothers, understood it to matter.
They were Isaac Newton, all three of them, and he was Einstein. Why? Isaac Newton had developed rules for his physics. He asked how objects moved through physical space. He had surveyed what he could see, and had he developed un-seeable ideas from those observations that were now known as Newtonian physics. Newton’s perspective was from beneath the apple tree, but Einstein. . . Einstein stood on light beams. Einstein stood on nebulae. He stood on time itself, and because of his vantage point, he saw something else. He realized Newton’s model did not fit with this wider universe, so he gifted the world with quantum physics, a theory that Isaiah was sure would unlock the universe to humanity.
Isaiah’s brothers were Newton. He was sure none of these three could explain Newton’s ideas with any intelligence, but they were Newton in a different way. They saw the four walls of this room. They concerned themselves with whether they liked the ugly green walls. The bulb hanging from the ceiling above the hospital bed was dying, and they concerned themselves with being able to see once it was out. The room had an antiseptic smell, but despite being scrubbed from the darkest corner to the hardest to reach ceiling tile, it did not feel clean. It felt as if it had fallen into disuse and was covered with a layer of dust. Where Isaiah concerned himself with germ theory, his brothers were certain to worry whether the room had been cleaned enough. And the dichotomy between himself and these three went on and on.
Daniel was thinking about the mechanics of the breathing machine at the head of the bed. Isaiah was thinking of the mechanisms of reality allowing the machine to work. Jeremiah, on some level, was wondering if he could pull some emotion out of the situation for some future acting role, while Isaiah was thinking of the recent experiments that stuck electrodes to the brains of Rhesus monkeys to see what would happen with specific, directed shocks.
His brothers dealt with reality from the simple perspective. They interacted with reality as it presented itself. Isaiah? He looked at reality from the perspective of how reality worked. His mind did not spin with numbers as these three brothers may have thought. His mind was uplifted by theories and thought experiments. How did the world work? That was the question foremost in his mind. How did the world work? And after that question was answered fully, the real work could be done of exploiting that knowledge for the benefit of humanity. These ideas would not only improve life on earth, it would send people to the stars. The first man, a Russian, had gone up into space only a few years before, and Isaiah knew that short orbit around the earth was only a beginning. Humanity’s destiny was out in the stars, and if he could have anything to do with it, he would.
Isaiah did not blame his brothers when they concerned themselves with what could be seen. He did not scoff at them when they focused on this small city or this small hospital or this small room. He only had something larger on his mind. A person only lived seventy-five years, a little more if that person was lucky. Isaiah would die eventually, sooner than he wished. But the things that were to come, they would be far greater, far grander, and perhaps everlasting. Anything next to these revolutionary ideas were small in comparison, and he had a hard time making himself care about them.
It was the same today. Isaiah experienced what everyone else in the room experienced. He saw the ugly green walls. He felt the darkness of the place. He heard the hushing breathing machine and saw its billows moving up and down. But he did not care. He knew he should care. He tried to will himself to care. He tried to gin up emotions, to walk himself through an interpersonal fantasy, but it did not work.
He saw his father on the bed. The small breathing mask covered his nose and mouth. His eyes were closed. He looked peaceful except for his skin. His father always had a healthy redness to him, the Irish blood running hot and strong. But today his skin was white, a white that almost melted away in the dimness of that room. He had always been a strong man, but the man Isaiah saw now was barely paper thin. He was less than paper thin. The giant of a man his father had been throughout his youth was shriveled. But Isaiah did not care. He did not feel any flutter of emotions as he looked down at the bed. His father had been shot. He had been rushed to the hospital. Ezekiel had already been there when Isaiah arrived. Jeremiah arrived shortly after and threw himself onto the old man in a sobbing fit. Ezekiel held back tears. Daniel’s face had been in a permanent grimace since his arrival. Isaiah’s brothers all showed emotion, but he did not feel any himself. His father lay in a hospital bed. He had been shot. It might be his last days, but Isaiah did not care. And if he did not know the reason why he felt so apathetic, he would have been worried.
“Is he going to be alright?” Daniel asked Ezekiel. Isaiah was not surprised Daniel asked no one else. To Daniel, the two youngest brothers were still children and untrustworthy. To Daniel, Isaiah was still in his late teens and Jeremiah was somewhere around seven years old. The two youngest could not be trusted, so he went to the next oldest child, Ezekiel, and he acted as if the two youngest did not have anything worthwhile to say.
“The doctor,” Ezekiel breathed out an anxious sigh. “He, uh, says he can’t be certain. They got the bullet out. That’s what they say, and that’s good. But he said he’s old, and he said there’s no telling.” Ezekiel gave out another nervous sigh. “No telling,” he breathed.
“We’ll have to figure out what to do with the store,” Daniel said.
Ezekiel nodded.
“I’ve got some ideas about the business, if you don’t mind hearing about it,” Daniel continued.
Ezekiel nodded again. He looked at their father. Worry filled his face. He seemed distant, distracted.
“I was thinking,” Daniel continued to speak without making sure Ezekiel was listening. “Dad is getting old. He’d be retiring in a few years anyway. I think, well, we could sell it. Sell the store. One less thing to worry about.”
The distance continued to fill Ezekiel’s face for a moment longer. Then he looked to Daniel. Understanding filled his eyes, and his eyebrows knit together.
“What?” he asked.
“The old man’s got what, five years, ten, maybe fifteen, if he’s lucky? And, honestly, how great are his chances of making it through this?”
A frown formed on Ezekiel’s face. His head moved from one side and then to the other, a slow shake of the head.
“Daniel,” Ezekiel said the name slowly, “you, of all people, know we can’t do that. What? He wakes up, and he finds his life is gone?”
Isaiah was not surprised to hear an argument start up about the store. Ezekiel had some burden about keeping the store afloat even though their father was getting old. Daniel, for whatever reason, wanted the store to be closed. Ezekiel’s reasons were because he felt responsible for everything and everyone. It was part of his personality. He had a nervous disposition, and Isaiah believed he was attempting to alleviate that anxiety by controlling as much as he could. Daniel’s reasoning was a mystery to him. A little less than ten years ago, Daniel had been in love with the business. Then the rift between him and their father happened, and this desire close the store could be simple pragmatism, or it could be a type of petty revenge.
Either way, Isaiah did not care. He had no connection to the store himself, and he knew he would not be affected by how his father would react to it being sold. Isaiah did not comment because he did not want to deal with the store. It was just another thing that did not matter. If it was sold, his parents would have money to live out at least a few more years before the four brothers picked up the slack. If it was not closed, the old man would go on working, and Ebenezer Fleet’s life would go on how it had been for the past thirty years.
Daniel answered with a calm, adult voice. He always tried to present himself as the most logical in the room, and though it would have annoyed Isaiah in another situation, he turned his attention to Jeremiah instead.
Jeremiah was the opposite of Isaiah. Somehow the two youngest had chosen divergent paths. Isaiah had chosen a life of science. Jeremiah? Jeremiah lived a life of emotions, and that was why this youngest brother was throwing himself into acting.
Jeremiah’s face was buried in their father’s chest. His shoulders rose and fell with sobs. Isaiah heard a small whimper from him. He was the favorite, the Joseph of the family, and he was reacting how Isaiah expected a favorite to react. Jeremiah’s world was falling apart, and the logical reaction to one’s world falling apart was falling apart oneself. Which he did well.
As a child, Isaiah had been acutely aware of his father’s favoritism. As he grew older, he pushed himself away from those desires that only caused pain, and now he no longer envied Jeremiah. Why? Well, Jeremiah was the one sobbing on the bed. He was the one breaking down. He was the one overcome by emotions. Jeremiah had become dependent upon his father. Would he be able to live if their father died? Isaiah was glad he did not have to ask the same question about himself.
“I’ll run the store,” Ezekiel said. He and Daniel continued to argue as if the other two were not in the room.
Daniel frowned. Isaiah was sure Daniel did not expect so much push-back from Ezekiel. Ezekiel was not weak, but he as a compliant person, a people-pleaser.
“No. No,” Daniel answered. “We are not keeping the store.” He brought a hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He shook his head. “I know how this is going to work. You say you’re going to run the store, and then three months later I find myself running two businesses.”
Ezekiel shook his head back in defiance. “That’s not going to happen.” His head continued to shake. “That’s not going to happen, because in three months, Dad is going to be awake and running the store himself.”
Daniel laughed, a slight chuckle, a weak chuckle. “Did you look at him?” He pointed to the bed. “He’s a heartbeat from death. He’ll be lucky to get through the week. Three months? Three months? He’ll already be rotting in the ground by that time. We shouldn’t have to take this long to figure out what to do with the store. We should already be on to planning a funeral.”
Ezekiel scoffed. His mouth fell open. He looked to their father, and Isaiah saw the question of death spin through his mind.
“What? What?” Ezekiel answered. His eyes squinted. His mouth curled into a frown.
“You think he is going to die?” Isaiah’s voice rang out through the room. Ezekiel and Daniel turned to him. Daniel stared at him blankly. Ezekiel’s face was still filled with a frown of agitation. The breathing machine continued to hush up and down. Jeremiah continued to whimper with his face stuffed into their father’s chest. “Daniel,” Isaiah continued, “do you think he is going to die?” His words were clipped.
Daniel looked at their father. His eyes moved from their father to Jeremiah and then back to their father. Then he looked back to Isaiah. “Well, what do you think?” Daniel asked. It was not a real question, not really. Daniel was not asking the question to find out what Isaiah thought. Daniel did not ask any of his younger brothers questions to gain insight into their minds. Daniel only asked his younger brothers questions to tell them they had no useful information to provide.
“You think he is going to die?” Isaiah asked again and ignored his brother’s comment.
“Look at him,” Daniel’s voice was level. A hand gestured to their father. “I’m not saying he is going to die.” A slight annoyance filled Daniel’s voice as if it was some great inconvenience to explain his own thoughts. “But he is an old man,” Daniel continued, “and the attack. . .” It sounded as if Daniel had more to say, but his voice trailed off and his eyes wandered back to their father. To Isaiah, it appeared as if the calm look Daniel had forced onto his face was about to break.
“He isn’t going to die.” Ezekiel’s voice was forceful, like a preacher encouraging a congregation or sermonizing hellfire. “Daniel just wants to sell the store, and Dad’s death is a perfect ploy to get his way.”
Daniel’s eyebrows rose at Jeremiah’s response, but he did not respond himself.
“I think he is going to die.” Isaiah’s voice was bland as he said the words. He had tried to bring some emotion into the words, but he could not feel what he did not feel. “Why would he make it? A bullet to the chest? An old man? What are his chances, really? What are his chances?”
Isaiah’s two older brothers did not respond. The hushing breathing machine filled his ears again, but Jeremiah looked up from the bed. His eyes were red, and his face was streaked where the tears had run down.
“What are his chances?” Isaiah asked again.
Jeremiah took a sharp breath in. Tears began to well up in his eyes, but he did not cry. “He can’t die.” His face contorted with sadness. “He can’t.” He took in another sharp breath. It sounded like he was going to say something else, but he let out another exasperated sigh instead.
“He isn’t going to die, Jeremiah,” Ezekiel comforted the youngest son.
“You don’t know that,” Daniel answered. Isaiah could see he was still, barely, keeping himself together.
“No, he doesn’t,” Isaiah answered all three of them. “He doesn’t know. Dad might die. He might. Probably. And he might not.”
Daniel sighed again and shook his head.
“What happened in the store, Ezekiel?” Isaiah continued. “Why did they choose his store? Why his? It certainly isn’t the nicest one on the street.”
Ezekiel swore. “God, I don’t know. I don’t know.” He swallowed. A hand ran through his hair. “He wanted money, Isaiah. The man wanted money.” Ezekiel’s voice quavered. “He was there to collect. That’s what he said. And then I—”
“Dad didn’t give him the money?” Daniel quickly interrupted.
Ezekiel brought a hand up to his face. Two fingers rubbed his eyes. He groaned. “Dad,” Ezekiel seemed barely able to form the words. “He gave him the money.”
Ezekiel shook his head after he spoke. The hand lowered from his face. To Isaiah, it looked like Ezekiel had something he wanted to say, but he remained silent.
“And he shot him anyway?” Daniel’s eyebrows knit together as he spoke. His eyes were still filled with unbroken tears, but hard anger was now behind them as well.
Ezekiel looked to Daniel. “I. . .” The sound caught in his throat. Pain twisted on his face. His teeth ground together. Isaiah awaited the last piece of information Ezekiel had held back before, but Ezekiel only nodded. “Yes,” Ezekiel answered and nodded again.
Anger completely overtook took Daniel’s face, but the information only intrigued Isaiah. What was Ezekiel hiding? Why was he hiding it? Did the man say something else? Did Ezekiel do something? Did their father do something?
The man came to collect? Collect? Isaiah knew that certainly meant money, but why had not the man simply demanded all the money like a common thug?
“Bastard,” Daniel almost yelled the word. “What a piece of. . . Dad gave him the money, and the bastard shot him anyway.”
Ezekiel nodded meekly.
Isaiah heard Daniel swear. He watched as Daniel’s fist closed and he rammed it into the wall. Then Daniel’s teeth clenched, and his lips curled into a quiet snarl.
Isaiah was surprised by Daniel’s reaction, and it told him he was not simply trying to sell the store out of petty vengeance. Isaiah knew that a fit of rage from both Daniel and their father was what had formed a rift between the two, but that had been almost ten years ago, and his older brother was now not often given to uncontrolled emotion. And Isaiah did not expect a piece of information such as this to make that stony exterior finally erupt.
“He came to collect?” Isaiah asked as Daniel continued to boil.
“Yes,” Ezekiel answered. “Collect. That’s what he said,” Ezekiel looked to their father, and his jaw tightened. “It sounded like he had been there before.”
“The mob?” Isaiah asked.
Ezekiel shrugged.
Isaiah felt a laugh well up inside him, but he did not allow himself to laugh. He looked at the husk of the man on the bed. How? How had this man? How had this little, Irish Ebenezer Fleet gotten himself caught up in the mafia? Isaiah shook his head at the old man as if he were a child who had done something both wrong and humorous. Ebenezer Fleet had somehow gotten involved in the mafia, and Isaiah wondered how that happened. Had he taken money from them when he opened his business? Was he a compulsive gambler? Did he work for the mob in some other capacity? Another laugh welled up in him, but he again pushed it down inside.
“The mafia?” The word came out of Daniel’s mouth as a growl. Isaiah and Ezekiel turned to him.
“I think we should kill the man who shot him,” Daniel continued. “I want to kill him,” Daniel’s face was hard as he said the words. “I want to hunt him down. And his friends too, if he has any. All of them.” He looked to Ezekiel and even to Isaiah as if he were asking each for help.
“What?” Confusion filled Ezekiel’s face.
Isaiah laughed. Ezekiel looked over at him with more confusion. “Would you like to go to prison?” Isaiah asked. “Because that is what will happen.” Isaiah laughed again. “If you can kill him.”
“I can kill him,” Daniel answered.
“Why don’t you just go to the cops?” Isaiah replied. “Then you won’t die or go to prison.”
“Like the cops will do a damn thing,” Daniel muttered.
Ezekiel shook his head. “No, no, no, no.” His head continued to shake. “No, no,” he continued. “We can’t—”
“Why the hell not?” Daniel stumped over to the bed. “Do you see this, Ezekiel? Hell, do you see it?” He pointed down to their father. “If we go to the cops, they’ll say they’ll do everything they can. But have you ever dealt with those idiots? Half are owned by the mob. The other half are club-carrying cavemen. Six months later they’ll come back and tell us they’ve found nothing when they really didn’t do a damn thing.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ezekiel answered. “We can’t go out and kill people.”
Daniel laughed this time, an angry laugh. “Should justice find murderers?” he asked. His voice was calm once more, an angry calm.
“Of course, they should, Dan,” Ezekiel replied just as calmly, though Isaiah saw the anger rising inside him.
“Should they walk the streets?” Daniel continued.
“What do you think?” Ezekiel did not sound angry. He sounded annoyed.
“And what if the law will do nothing? What if it is broken?” The final words Daniel spoke were slow and forceful.
Ezekiel looked his brother directly in the eyes. “Then we accept it,” he answered. “What else can we do, Dan?”
Daniel threw up his hands. A huff of breath came out of his nose. “Isaiah,” he looked over to the next youngest brother.
Isaiah looked in Daniel’s eyes. He saw the hate again. He saw the sheen of tears. Isaiah saw a bundle of emotions in those eyes, and he found himself surprised that Daniel was looking to him for help.
Isaiah shook his head. “No, Daniel. I would prefer not to go to prison,” he answered his older brother.
This was the truth, but it was just the surface of the truth. He did not want to go to prison. He did not know anyone who would want to be locked in a cell for no reason. Ezekiel’s reason for not wanting to go out and kill the man was not that he would go to prison. Ezekiel thought seeking his own justice was immoral. But it was different for Isaiah. Isaiah was not sure whether he cared it was immoral to seek one’s own justice. He was not certain it was an abomination such as Ezekiel saw it. If he had a good reason, if he felt that desire for vengeance well up inside himself, he might see a good reason for going out and killing one who had wronged him. But he did not have a good reason to do this. Daniel did. A man had killed his father for no reason. He can come to collect—whatever that meant—and the man had killed his father because he could. Daniel’s father was on the bed. Daniel’s father was dying. Daniel had been robbed him of someone he loved, and the only way to find justice for that person was enacting justice himself.
But Ebenezer Fleet was only a man to Isaiah. Sure, they shared the same DNA, the same features, the same pedigree according to his mother, but when he looked at that man on the bed, he did not see his father. Ebenezer was just a man. Isaiah did not know his father. His father did not know him. And why would he die for someone he did not know or care about?
Daniel swore again. “Are you even Fleets?” he asked under his breath. Isaiah knew it was the worst insult his older brother could muster.
The lightbulb flickered. It dimmed, and the room started to grow closer to colorless black and white. It suddenly felt like a tomb that had been shut off from the world for centuries.
“Who would have guessed you would be so petty, Dan? Don’t get what you want, and what do you do?” Isaiah watched as Ezekiel tried to laugh through his pain. “Throwing out insults? Are you thirteen?”
Isaiah’s eyes moved across the room. He looked at the green walls again. He did not care about what optics said about them being green. It did not matter anymore. That color had suddenly started to look sickly to Isaiah.
Their father? He was even worse than green. He was not white. He was worse than white. The old man was translucent.
“I guess the store and dad’s funeral won’t be the worst of our problems,” Ezekiel continued. “We’ll be burying you too, won’t we? We’ll bury Dad. We’ll bury you, and sure as hell we’ll be burying Hosea in a few years too.”
Daniel laughed.
Isaiah followed his father’s thin arm down to his spindly, wrinkled hand. He looked at the back of Jeremiah’s head. The boy’s arms were still wrapped around the old man’s torso. And his face still buried in his chest. His shoulders lifted with sobs.
“I’ll give you fifty-thousand dollars,” Daniel answered. “If you help me, I will give you twenty-five-thousand dollars each.”
“Good,” Ezekiel spat back. “Then when we all die, there’ll be something to pay for both our funerals. I’m not going to do it. Isaiah isn’t going to do it. It is wrong, and you can’t buy us off.”
Ezekiel was wrong that Daniel could not buy Isaiah off, but Isaiah’s price was much higher than twenty-five thousand if it was the mob they were dealing with.
Daniel laughed again. Isaiah looked to Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s eyes burned into Daniel.
“Ezekiel,” Daniel shook his head and sighed. Isaiah could see that he was trying not to smirk as he spoke. “Do you see the man? Do you really see him?” Daniel’s voice was earnest despite his stupid, superior smirk. “Ebenezer Fleet is at the end of the road. Dad is at the end of the road, and nothing is going to happen. No one is going to do anything about it.”
Ezekiel growled. He glanced down at their father and the sobbing Jeremiah.
“Do you think I want him to die? Do you think I want that to happen?” Each of Ezekiel’s words were clipped as if speaking them took a great effort. Ezekiel laughed, an empty, worry-filled laugh. He muttered something under his breath Isaiah could not understand.
“What?” Daniel asked.
Ezekiel looked up at Daniel. “We all know this is a bother to you,” he said. “Why don’t you get back to work.” Ezekiel took a deep, angry breath in. “Go back to making radios. We’ll deal with this. We’ll run the store. We’ll take care of the funeral if we need to. You are not the one who gets to walk in and decide what we are going to do.”
Ezekiel’s teeth clenched together. His angry eyes looked at Daniel, then to their father. He grunted and then, as if it were an afterthought, stood up and walked out of the room. The door clattered behind him as if it were a final expletive directed at Daniel.
Jeremiah glanced up at the noise. His eyes were glazed now, his face streaked wet with tears. The breathing machine hushed up and down in the newfound silence, and Daniel shuffled his feet as if he had suddenly become lost with no one to command.
The world seemed to be pulled toward that ugly hospital bed. The old paper man was a black hole. And despite Isaiah’s rationalization of what was going on, he was pulled into this gravity as well.
Isaiah did not feel about his father the same way Ezekiel or Jeremiah or even Daniel did. Each of them had a personal connection to the man. Each of them had a real relationship with Ebenezer Fleet. Daniel had been his business partner. Ezekiel was his current caretaker. Jeremiah, the youngest and favorite. Even Hosea, though he was not spoken of any more, had a filial connection to the man on that bed. Isaiah? While he did not feel for the man at all, Isaiah, still was connected to the man. Invisible threads seemed to connect him to the man, even though he wished that were not the case.
Isaiah had been invisible as a child. Maybe it was due to his own personality. Maybe it had all come about by chance. Maybe his brothers needed more much time and attention. Maybe his father was tied up in work. Sure, he knew his mother, but it was something else not to know his father. And it was something even greater not to be known by him. He had slipped through the cracks.
So, he looked on the man without emotion, and he wished he could cut the strings that attached him to this man, and he wished he could be done with him. He could walk out the door. He would go on living his life and pushing forward into that vertical drop of the future.
But he could not cut those strings. That connection was not so simple. Life had never allowed itself to be so simple for him. Old mother Fleet and old father Fleet had decided to have five boys, and at least three of those boys dragged him back into that old, dying man’s orbit. His oldest brother Hosea had figured out how to disconnect himself from these connections, but Isaiah did not think the price that the oldest son paid was worth it.
But Hosea was free, wasn’t he? In some terrible sense, free.
“Isaiah.”
Isaiah looked up at Daniel. Their eyes met.
“You know we have to do something? It’s our duty. You know that the police aren’t going to do anything about this. We have to be the ones to do it.”
Isaiah smiled over to Daniel. “Why don’t you just go out hunting for the man if you think that’s what needs to happen.” Isaiah looked down at his father’s weak face, and an image of the old man in a casket flashed through his mind, and he continued to feel nothing.
“We’re all brothers, and we should be doing this together,” Daniel answered.
Isaiah laughed. “Give it to one of the aunts.” Isaiah hissed out another laugh. “Ezekiel is a nicer person than me. You think I would have told mother to contact you?” He hissed another laugh and shook his head. His pushed off his thighs with both hands and stood up to his full height, just a hair shorter than Daniel. “None of us are kids anymore. We won’t do things just because you tell us to. And I say, do whatever the hell you want to. Pull Dad’s plug. Burn the hospital down. Burn Dad’s shop down. Burn their house down. Burn down the whole city. Go on a rampage through downtown. Do whatever you want, Dan. We don’t care. And we won’t stop you.”
Isaiah stomped out of the room. When he entered the hallway, he stopped. He let out a sigh. He looked down the hallway and started walking toward the reception desk. He had escaped the room. Now, he only needed to avoid any situation like this in the future, if he could somehow do that. It was proving to be a harder trick than he expected. He had spent his whole life slipping into the background. He had learned to be invisible. He had learned not to say anything. He had learned to have his own thoughts without ever voicing those thoughts, but he did not know how he would not get dragged back into what was happening now.
“Yes, dear.”
Isaiah thanked God for the distraction of Ezekiel’s voice when he neared the reception desk. It was Ezekiel who had the receptionist’s phone pinned to his ear, and annoyance was building on the fat woman’s face.
“I’m, yes, no, yes,” Ezekiel continued. “Claire, I just. . . Yes, dear. No, I’m just leaving I’ll see you in fifteen minutes. Okay, less. Ten. Yes. I promise.” Ezekiel sighed. Claire chattered through the telephone line for fifteen more seconds.
Isaiah winced. He did not even notice that he had already forgotten about his father.
“Okay, okay. Love you. Bye.” The phone dropped back onto the receiver. Ezekiel said thank you to the receptionist and then leaned against the desk and sighed. He saw Isaiah approaching and gave him a halfhearted smile.
“How is Claire?” Isaiah asked.
Ezekiel moaned. He let his eyes drift down the long hospital hall.
“I told him off,” Isaiah said. “Daniel. I told Daniel off.”
Ezekiel nodded.
“I think you’re right,” Isaiah continued. “We can’t go out and do whatever. If Dad dies. . . Well, we’ll deal with that if it happens, but the police should really take care of what happened.”
Ezekiel sighed again. “You know, Isaiah, he’s right about the police? They won’t be doing a damn thing.”
Isaiah shook his head.
“Yes. Yes, he is,” Ezekiel answered. “I’m just sick of him always being right. Sick of following him around. The bastard.”
“Then why didn’t you go along with his plan?” Isaiah asked.
Ezekiel sighed again. He shook his head. “Isaiah,” Ezekiel’s voice shifted, as if something had surfaced in his mind and he had a compulsion to confess it. “I. . .” Ezekiel winced. “Are you leaving?” he asked instead.
Isaiah knew that was not what his brother was going to say. He did not know what was on his mind, but he was sure it was not that, because no one had ever expressed the wish to know where Isaiah was going.
Isaiah nodded. “There is no reason for me to be here,” he answered.
Ezekiel’s mouth fell open in incredulity. He nodded toward the hall. “What about the old man on the bed?” he said.
Isaiah waved a hand at his brother. He wanted to tell Ezekiel his father did not care if he was there. His father probably forgot he existed more than half the time. But he knew what Ezekiel would say if he said what he wanted to. He would tell him their father cared about each of them in a unique way. Ezekiel would tell him their father would be glad seem him when he woke up, but Isaiah knew his father would greet everyone else warmly and then greet himself as if he were an unwanted dinner guest. It was not that the old man wanted to be cold toward him. Isaiah knew the opportunity had been lost for him to get to know his father, and how is father treated him was the best he could do with what he had to work with. Which was not much, because he had nothing to work with.
Isaiah did not feel like telling his brother that he did not really have a relationship with their father. “I’ve got a paper to write,” he told Ezekiel instead. “And I just, I’ve got to get all this off my mind, just for now.” He faked exasperation as he spoke.
“Okay, okay,” Ezekiel practically wheezed out. “Well, I’ve got to get back to Claire myself, though I’d prefer not to leave Jeremiah alone with Daniel.”
“Jeremiah will last as long as he needs to,” Isaiah answered.
Ezekiel nodded. Then he sighed a long, low sigh. “You really think he’ll die?” The question was half-attended to, but he looked over to Isaiah and awaited an answer.
Isaiah wanted to laugh. He had no idea what would happen to their father, and he knew he did not care. And he was not sure he wanted to care. What would the death of their father be to him, really? He would go about his life. He would go to school. He would get his degree, and eventually thrust himself into the work of a physicist. Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would make something of himself.
“I do,” he answered Ezekiel. “But the doctor seemed hopeful, didn’t he?” Isaiah reached out a hand and put it on his brother’s shoulder. He nodded to Ezekiel. “I guess do what Mother will be doing.”
Ezekiel chuckled, a weak chuckle. “And what would Mother do?” he asked.
Isaiah shrugged. “Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know.”
Ezekiel took a breath in. He pursed his lips and nodded back. “Well, I don’t carry around a rosary like she does. Do you think it will do any good?”
Isaiah shrugged. “Mother swears by it.”
“And Mother swears that we’re related to every notable figure in the past five hundred years.” Ezekiel looked at the phone. “Well, Claire hates it when I’m late.” Ezekiel gave Isaiah a final nod and began walking toward the door.
Isaiah pursed his lips and looked at the phone. He imagined the sharp chattering voice of Claire coming through. He had wanted to say something about Claire. He always wanted to say something about Claire, to plant a seed of doubt about their relationship in his brother’s mind, but Isaiah knew it was unlikely to matter any way. They would probably get married, and Isaiah’s last connection to his family would be swallowed up, swallowed up by an overbearing woman.
He had a classmate who said believing in no god was just believing in one less god than Christians. The logic behind the expressed idea was that not believing in any god was the logical conclusion of only believing in one. First, a person denied the many deities. Then, since all the other deities were an absurdity, this final deity must be absurd as well.
Isaiah was not sure of the unbeliever’s logic. Frankly, he did not care about the unbeliever’s logic. But he hoped going from one family member he cared about to none was as simple. The closest friend he had was Ezekiel. And he hoped disconnecting from that final familial connection was just as easy as not caring at all.
Isaiah looked at Ezekiel as he walked across the parking lot.
“You really think he’ll die?” Ezekiel’s question echoed through him, and Isaiah felt a tinge of emotion that spread from his throat and through his chest.
Isaiah started toward the door himself. “Dad?” he muttered to himself. “Dad will be dead in a week.” He took a long, sharp breath in. “Dead in a week,” he breathed out. And he forced the emotion back from where it had come.