The Perfect Son (8 page)

“Ella needs to focus on building up her strength, recuperating, and, as I’ve said, learning to manage her stressors,” Dr. Beaubridge said.

Manage her stressors.
Was that a cardiologist’s get-out-of-jail-free card, the one that allowed him to blame everything on a patient’s failure to rein in her risk factors?

“I’ll see you at the same time tomorrow, Ella.”

“Thank you, Dr. Beaubridge,” she said.

“Wait! You’re leaving her with a bunch of nurses?” Felix stood tall and put a hand on his hip.

“Extremely well-qualified nurses, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

“You’re not coming back later today?”

“I do my rounds in the morning, before patient office hours. Do you have any questions, Ella?”

Felix moved to barricade the door. This guy was not leaving. They had barely scratched the surface of Ella’s diagnosis. “Are there any problems we should be aware of—with stents?”

“Dissection, sometimes. It’s very rare.”

“But it can happen.”

“In less than one percent. And a small tear can heal itself.” Dr. America checked his pager again, and Felix imagined pulverizing it under the heel of his boot. “Mr. Fitzwilliam, I understand how frightening this situation is for you and your family, but I don’t think this conversation is helpful.”

“When can she come home?”

“That all depends on her condition and her recovery, but I’d say in a few days.”

“So she can’t come home tomorrow?”

“Definitely not, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

“The next day?”

“Unlikely.”

“The day after?”

“Let’s wait and see, shall we?”

But Felix needed answers, he needed solutions, he needed absolutes. He needed someone to say, “Yes, she’ll be home in four days, and her chances of making a full recovery are ninety-five percent.” This man was not telling him what he needed to know.

“Your wife is in excellent hands here at the Raleigh Regional CCU, Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

Brilliant, so now Dr. Beau Carlton Beaubridge sounded like a cheap car salesman. Felix scribbled on his pad:
check doc’s credentials.

Dr. Beaubridge shook Felix’s hand. “I suggest running a Google search. That’s the easiest way to check my credentials. I think you’ll be impressed.” And he left. The nurse, eyes lowered, shuffled out behind him.

Felix turned and stared at the blank television screen and the vase of flowers next to it. Unlike him, Katherine had thought to bring flowers. They were ridiculously gaudy and horribly inappropriate for January. Also far too sweet. He would bring ones that didn’t nauseate; ones Tom would have approved of. Was it too early for
jonquilla
?

“How’s Harry?” Ella said.

As Felix moved to her bedside, a memory ambushed him: holding Ella’s hand during labor. Drug-free labor at Ella’s insistence, although Felix, who’d believed he would die from the horror of watching her suffer, would gladly have taken any drug offered.

“Harry’s in school. Max drove him.” He reached out and twisted her wedding ring round and round. It was warm and smooth. “Did you know that after two teenage boys share a bedroom, the stench is worse than when Saint John’s gun dog rolls in manure?”

“Welcome to my life.” She gave a laugh that disintegrated into a cough. Felix poured water into the plastic cup and held the straw to her lips.

She lay back on her pillow. “Is Max doing school pickup?”

“No, I am.”

“Good. Keep Harry on his normal routine as much as possible. He needs routine.” Ella looked up at him with huge brown eyes, eyes that normally reflected passion, humor, anger. This morning, they were dull and lifeless.

Her mobile dinged with a text; she ignored it. “Felix, I need you to look after Harry.”

“Harry doesn’t need looking after. He’s practically a man.”

“He’s a sweet, all-over-the-place kid who needs help structuring his life and a lot of parenting.” Ella smoothed out the edge of her sheet. “Tag, you’re it.”

Felix dug his fingers into his hair and was shocked to discover its softness. He must have forgotten to use gel. He never forgot the gel. “Our son is a brilliant teenager who needs to learn independence. You baby—”

“He’s a remarkable person who should be full of insecurity but isn’t—partly because I work hard to bolster him, to praise him, to show him what an incredible person he is, to reinforce that his challenges give him strength, not weakness. I never stop, Felix.”

“I know. You’re a remarkable parent.”

“I need you to be one, too.”

Her mobile dinged again. Felix waited two seconds. “Ella, your phone—”

She dismissed him with a limp wave, but how could he ignore a message?
Look at me, look at me,
it seemed to scream, until he reached over and grabbed the phone.

Harry.
How did he get access to his mobile during school hours? “Harry’s sending you a virtual hug.”

“Send him back the heart sign.”

Felix stared at the keyboard. “There’s no heart sign.”

“Type the less-than sign followed by the number three.”

Felix typed and squinted. “That doesn’t look like a heart sign.”

“I can assure you it does to Harry’s generation.”

He hit “Send”; Harry replied immediately with the same sign. Overhead, helicopter blades thumped through the air; voices moved down the corridor.

“Do you know how messed up most teenagers are,” Ella said, “even without a slew of diagnoses?”

“Harry isn’t messed up.”

“Exactly. But take away his anchor, and it could undo everything. All the years of therapy, of learning coping skills, of—” She hesitated and her monitor continued to bleep. “I’m his go-to person twenty-four seven, and I can’t be that person right now. I can’t even pee by myself.” She stopped to breathe. “He’s blessed to have devoted friends, and thank God for Max, but Harry’s going to need you like he’s never needed you before. You have to take over, Felix—provide the infrastructure that lets Harry be Harry.” She closed her eyes briefly. “You have to promise to apply all that focus you direct toward fixing up the house to becoming Harry’s emotional rock.” She sucked in a breath. “When I’m on my deathbed, I want my final thought to be ‘Harry will be okay.’”

“But you’re not on your deathbed.”

“I didn’t say I was.”

“Did Dr. America tell you something he didn’t tell me? I don’t trust that man. I need to get you moved to Duke or Memorial. We can get you the best, we can—”

“Felix, I’m not moving. The end. I won’t consider anything that slows down my recovery time and delays my return home. I just need you to promise me—”

“You’re asking me to attempt something doomed to fail.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Look, can we just be practical for a minute? What about the fact that I live in my car, transporting our nondriving teen to school, music lessons, parties, the child psychologist, the psychiatrist, the neurologist . . .” She shook her head. “It could be weeks before I can drive.”

“How can I become you, Ella?”

“You don’t have to become me. You just have to try and . . .” Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m tired, Felix. Exhausted.”

“Sleep.” He took her hand. “I’ll sit with you.”

“Tell me a story. Talk to me about how we met, about how you saved me.”

“I didn’t save you, Ella.”

“Yes,” she said. “You did. I was so lost after Mom died. And then all I wanted was a family of my own . . .”

Ella drifted back to sleep, and Felix held her hand. What else could he do?

Felix sat in the hospital car park, shaking an empty Pepto-Bismol bottle. Ella had slept, woken up, and slept some more. Katherine had arrived a little after eleven, and Ella suggested he leave—try to work until school pickup. But he could hardly go to the office in jeans. Besides, Nora Mae, the office administrator, would mace him with concern. He could, however, call his assistant.

He briefed Curt on the upcoming meeting for Life Plan, the hundred-million-dollar deal that would allow their client to buy a Research Triangle Park company on the cutting edge of medical device invention: 3-D organ printing. Would computers one day be able to create digital hearts? Curt’s final comment, “I’ve got your back, Felix,” was not reassuring. When he’d hired Curt, he’d been attracted to the young man’s ability to schmooze. Felix hated that word and everything it implied, but Curt’s social charm kept people calm during deals. It had worked well for both of them: Felix handled the numbers; Curt handled the people. But an industry filled with money and greed generated its own healthy supply of sniveling weasels, and Felix didn’t trust anyone—including Curt.

Should he go into work and keep an eye on his overly ambitious assistant? Should he go home and fold laundry? Do a food shop? How did one fill a Monday stripped of routine? He had been yanked out of his world and dumped into one with alien vocabulary: MIs, stents, fatherhood.

He pulled onto the road and headed toward the interstate, his mind circling two questions: What was Ella hiding? And why had Dr. Beaubridge been in her room half an hour ahead of schedule?

A signpost sped past and Felix cursed himself out loud. What a twit—he was on I-40 going east, not west. Above, clouds drifted like icebergs floating away from the shore.
He
was floating away from the shore, without a lifeboat. Without his wife, he couldn’t even find his way home.

Of course.
Felix thumped the steering wheel. He would do what he and Tom always did when they needed to escape: drive until the land ran out. Brighton Beach was a straight shot from London; Wrightsville Beach was at the end of I-40 east. No more than two hours away. If he found the ocean, maybe he would find Tom’s wisdom.

“Come on, baby brother,” Tom used to say. “We’re going to drive until we hit the sea. Then it’ll all make sense.”

Life had been so easy for Tom—until the end.

As he drove southeast, Felix left behind the urban sprawl, and the speed limit switched to seventy. Forest stretched out on either side of the empty, straight highway. Tom would have loved this road. He would have played their escape song, “Rebel Rebel” by David Bowie. Tom had songs for everything—a soundtrack for life. Felix lived without melody.

The Mini zoomed past a dead hawk on the verge. One wing was raised, and its tawny feathers ruffled in his backdraft. Briefly, Felix imagined the bird taking flight like a phoenix.

For the next hour, his speed didn’t vary while his mind tumbled through disjointed thoughts. Did Ella want to be cremated or buried near her mother? Someone should rewrite the marriage service, elaborate on
till death do us part
, because a husband should know his wife’s thoughts about death and the hereafter. He should have asked Ella to explain her final wishes years ago. Why hadn’t he? Was this another failure as a husband? And why was he thinking about death? His wife wasn’t dying. But what she was asking of him was a serious threat to his life. She might as well have said, “Stand still while I practice being a knife thrower.”

The sun cast jagged peaks of shade across the empty lanes. No one was heading to the beach on a blustery January day. Turkey vultures circled random splatters of road kill—unidentifiable chunks of raw meat. And still Felix drove.

When Harry was finally diagnosed, Ella had handed out a pass from fatherhood, and Felix had snatched it up. He had chosen to walk. After all, if you had no hope of doing something well, of being the best, why would you even enter the race? And who could argue with his reasoning? Harry was an expensive child; Felix needed to be an above-average breadwinner. Caught in a web of thoughts, Felix tried to imagine the smell of salt air, tried to rewind his memories to find Tom.

One night, as they had sprawled on the pebbly beach at Brighton, watching stars, Tom handed him a small green bottle of Gordon’s gin. Felix got drunk for the first time—hammered at fifteen. Tom, however, stayed vigilant and sober. Whatever their parents thought, Tom had always been the responsible sort. He’d just hidden it really well.

How different would this current situation with Ella be if Tom had survived? Tom would have jumped on a plane, would have taken charge, would have made Harry laugh. Tom would have been a natural father.

The interstate petered out into a road that bumped over a metal drawbridge and crossed the Intracoastal Waterway. Clouds consumed the Carolina-blue sky, and the world turned gray. He had reached the end.

Felix parked in an empty lot and, tugging up the collar of his donkey jacket, headed toward the roar of the Atlantic Ocean. If Tom were alive, he would applaud.

The beach and pier were deserted but for a handful of spindly-legged birds skittering in and out of the ocean. His Dr. Martens sank into waterlogged sand, and he became a blip—a tiny, colorless ant in a world without horizons. Monstrous gray waves reared up, crashed apart, and re-formed to barrel forward with the force of a marauding army. The sun appeared for a moment and cast his shadow across the sand, creating a distorted Felix with grotesquely long legs. Next to his left foot, the water had regurgitated the rotting carcass of a pelican.

Wind rustled the sea oats with a tinkling like chimes, but the moment he turned and walked away from the pier, it battered his eardrums and stole his breath. His eyes stung as if pelted by Lilliputian spears. Felix trudged across sand the color of wet concrete. With each step, he could have been dragging chains.