Timescape (14 page)

Stop thinking!

David took a deep breath. He looked at the tops of his sneakers. Old Reeboks. Not his favorite Chucks. He'd lost one of them in the Civil War. That didn't even sound weird anymore. He wondered if he'd get it back. Didn't the worlds balance themselves out? What belonged there, went back; what belonged here, returned? Not the case with Mom. She—

The door clicked and opened.

Keal poked his head through. “Okay, come on,” he whispered.

David went through the door and followed Keal down a long corridor. They tiptoed, but moved fast. Keal edged up to a corner, peered around it. He held his hand up. Then he slapped David's shoulder and darted forward. As David passed the other hallway, he saw a nurse walking away from him. He picked up his pace and nearly tripped over Keal.

Keal grabbed him and stepped close to a wall. “Just up here. Through those double doors. It's the intensive care unit, so there's a nurses station front and center. There's a break room behind it. That's where the on-duty nurse was when I went in.” He went to the doors, flashed his head past one of the windows set in them, then pushed through. David followed.

They ran straight for the nurses station, which looked like a fast-food counter. At a perpendicular hallway, Keal shot right. As they skirted past doors on either side, David heard noises behind him: an electronic chirping and then footsteps. Keal whipped through a door, David right on his heels.

David found himself standing at the foot of Jesse's bed. The old man looked like a deflated balloon: wrinkled and barely there. His skin matched the color of the stark white sheets. Blue veins made a road map of his cheeks, temples, and forehead. His closed eyes seemed too deeply recessed; David could make out the ridges of his skull around each socket.

Beside the bed, two IV bags hung from a chrome tree. A tube ran from each bag to his right arm. A machine mounted high on the wall beeped the rhythm of Jesse's heart. A mountain range, reflecting the recent history of his heartbeats, scrolled across a small screen. Various digital readouts flashed with changing numbers. Another contraption consisted of a transparent cylinder, inside which a bellows puffed up and sank down with each of Jesse's shallow breaths.

David wasn't sure if he should draw closer. Could he hurt Jesse simply by being there? He imagined all sorts of infection-causing bacteria wafting from his lungs, off his skin, attacking Jesse's fragile body. There were so many machines, wires, and tubes—they seemed designed to ensnarl uninvited visitors. He turned his eyes to Keal, seeking permission.

“Go ahead,” Keal whispered with a nod.

David went around to Jesse's left side, which looked free of medical clutter. Jesse's head lay on an uncomfortable-looking pillow. His arms were flat on the mattress, close to his sides.

This is what he'd look like in a coffin
, David thought.

Stop!

He noticed now that tubes snaked into Jesse's nostrils. His lips were as white as his skin, making it seem he had no lips at all, only a tight line under his silver mustache. Cautiously, David reached for Jesse's hand. He stopped. It was bandaged—and incomplete. Where his index finger should have been, there was nothing. It was a gauze-wrapped gap, making the space between the thumb and fingers grotesquely wide. It looked like an alien hand. A faint red stain marked the spot.

David stared at his own index finger, imagined it gone,
taken
. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I'm sorry, Jesse,” he whispered. He gently laid his hand over the old man's.

Jesse pulled in a jagged breath.

David gasped. He swung his head to Keal, who was standing at the foot of the bed. Keal looked up from the clipboard in his hand and smiled.

When David retuned his gaze to Jesse, the old man's eyelids were fluttering. They closed, then opened halfway. His irises were the bluest David had ever seen, even more than Mom's and Xander's, which he'd always thought were movie-star perfect. Those sapphires angled toward David, and Jesse's mustache trembled.

“Jesse,” David said. He blinked, and the tears fell.

Jesse's lips parted, then closed again. His eyes did the opposite: they closed, then opened.

“Don't try to talk,” David whispered. “It's okay.”

The old man moved his head slightly one direction, then the other: no.

No? No what? It's not okay?

Jesse said, “Dae.” The word was so airy and weak, it reminded David of a wisp of smoke.

“I'm so sorry, Jesse,” David said. A fat teardrop splattered on the old man's thin arm. “You came to help us, and . . . and . . .” He sniffed.

Another almost nonexistent word eased out of Jesse's mouth: “Stay.”

David snapped his head around to Keal. “He wants us to stay.”

“Can't, David,” Keal said quietly.

“But . . .” When he looked, Jesse's eyes were closed, and his head was moving again: again,
no
.

“No?” David said. “Don't stay?”

Jesse caught David in his eyes. They were so vivid, so alive, so unlike the body in which they were housed. His eyebrows slowly came together. David realized Jesse was giving him all the strength he had.

The old man said, “Stay . . . together.” He blinked slowly.

“You . . . and . . . Xan . . .” He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

“Xander. Stay . . . together.”

“Xander and me?” David said. “We should stay together?”

Jesse's head moved again, this time barely up and barely down.

“When?
All the time
?”

Jesse said, “Come . . . see . . . me.”

“I'm here,” David said. “I came. You want Xander too?”

Jesse's eyes were closed, his lips parted.

“Jesse?”

David would have thought Jesse had died, if it weren't for the bellows in the clear cylinder. It slowly expanded, contracted, expanded. David looked at Keal, who nodded.

“Come . . .” Jesse wheezed. His eyes remained close. “See . . . me.”

“We will, Jesse. We'll come together.”

“I think,” Keal whispered, “the two things are separate. He said ‘stay.' Stay with your brother. And then, another thing: come see him.”

“But I'm here,” David said. “Does he mean come again?

Keep coming?”

Keal shrugged.

“Can we? Can we come back?”

“If we don't get caught.” Keal hung the clipboard on a hook attached to the foot of the bed. “We have to go.”

David returned his attention to Jesse. The man was still. It was almost as though he'd never been awake at all, never spoken or looked at David.

“Jesse?” David bent his fingers around his hand, down low, by the thumb. He gave it a little squeeze. “I'll stay with Xander,” he said, though he wasn't sure what that meant. “And I'll come back. I'll come see you. I will.”

CHAPTER
thirty

THURSDAY, 6:22 A.M.

“Where's Dae?” Xander said, walking into the kitchen.

Dad looked up from the stove, where he was flipping French toast. The smell made Xander realize how hungry he was. Dad said, “He and Keal went to see Jesse.”

“Now? Why?” Xander opened the refrigerator and grabbed a carton of orange juice.

“Keal thought this early they could get in and out without being seen.” Dad held up a spatula with a fat, golden slice. “Want some?”

“Sure.” He poured three glasses. Toria should be down soon. He said, “I want to see Jesse.”

Dad said, “You just don't want to go to school.”

“You got that right,” Xander said. “You know, if I stayed home, I could help Keal get the walls back up and—”

“Don't start.” Dad pushed a paper plate with a stack of toast across the island counter. He used the spatula to point at a bottle of syrup. “You know we can't risk people snooping into why any of us aren't doing what's expected. School, job, anything.”

Xander snatched up the plate and headed toward the foyer. He said, “Is David going to miss?”

“They should be back any minute,” Dad said. “Where are you going?”

“To get ready for school,” Xander said. On the way up the stairs, Xander balanced the plate on the glass, folded a piece of toast, and bit it in half. He stopped at the top. He could hear the shower through the bathroom door. So much for brushing his teeth, fixing his hair, scrubbing his face.

He thought about waiting in the chair that was wedged under the linen closet door handle, the one Keal had used to play sleep police. He had to admit that Keal had been right: Xander felt much better than he had last night. Once he finally got to sleep, it was deep and dreamless. He was still anxious about getting to all the things they had to do, but he felt less panicked about doing them all at once.

One step at a time
, he thought.
As long as we keep stepping. No stopping. Keep moving. Hang in there, Mom, we're coming. We are.

He couldn't believe they had to go to school. He understood the logic of keeping up appearances, especially if it took a long time to find Mom—and it was starting to feel like it would take awhile. But it's not the way he would have handled it. If he were Dad, he'd quit his job. He'd sell the Pathfinder and everything else they had to get enough cash for food and whatever they needed to make the house secure—to
fortify
it, as Dad had said. He'd register the kids for home-schooling. Then he'd spend every waking minute finding Mom. Was anything else more important?

If he were Dad, he'd do a lot of things differently. Then again, if he were Dad, they wouldn't be in this mess.

This sucks
, he thought. Just like being forced to go to bed last night sucked. Maybe he should get a T-shirt with those two words on it. David had told him he felt like the family slogan was
Nothing we can do
. But that wasn't true. There were a lot of things they could do, if only they were allowed to do them. Not being able to do them—because of sleep or school or because this or that was too dangerous—fell firmly under
his
slogan:
This sucks.

Forget waiting
, he thought, turning away from the chair. He carried his breakfast past Mom and Dad's bedroom and stopped at the junction of the two hallways on the second floor. The walls at the end of the short hall lay on the floor.

Plaster dust, wood, wiring were scattered all over them. Fixing them would take more than simply pushing them back into place. They would need new wiring, studs, wallboard. A lot of work. See? So much to do.

He squatted to set his plate and glass on the floor. He pushed the second half of the French toast into his mouth, then took a drink. Behind him, the shower turned off. He could hear Dad banging around in the kitchen.

Xander made up his mind.

He rose and looked over his shoulder at the empty main hallway. Then he walked over the fallen walls as quietly as possible. At the base of the stairs leading to the hallway of doors, he didn't pause. He went up two steps at a time.

CHAPTER
thirty - one

THURSDAY, 6:50 A.M.

On the ride home from the hospital, David thought about Jesse and how what Taksidian had done to him could have happened to any of them. So when he walked through the front door to see his father coming out of the kitchen, he ran to him and squeezed him tightly. He pushed his face into Dad's chest, feeling the solidness of it, so unlike Jesse's almost-not-there condition. He turned his head, pressed his ear to Dad's shirt, and listened to his heart. Dad hugged him back, holding him like he was never going to let go.

“Dae,” Dad said. “Are you all right? Is Jesse—?”

“He's alive,” Keal said behind David. “He spoke to David.”

“He did? He's that well?”

“Not really,” Keal said. “He didn't say much, and it took a lot out of him. I'm not sure he had that much to give. I read his chart.”

“And . . . ?” Dad said.

Keal didn't answer. David suspected he shook his head to indicate
not good.

Dad's arms tightened. “I'm sorry, Dae. But he spoke. That's a good sign. What'd he say?”

David released his hold and took a step back. “He said Xander and I should stay together.”

Dad looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

“I don't know,” David said. “Maybe he knows something . . . about the future.” He shook his head. “Maybe he thinks something's going to try to separate us.”

“Or he knows you need each other,” Keal said. “Stay together, like the buddy system.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “We talked about that, remember?”

“And he said to come see him,” David said.

“In the hospital?” Dad said. “He wants us to visit?”

David shrugged. “I guess. He wasn't making a lot of sense.”

“What else did he say?”

“That's it.” David looked around his father to the kitchen. “Where's Xander?”

“In the bathroom, I think.”

“No, he's not,” Toria said, coming down the stairs. She rounded the newel. “I was just in there.”

“Xander!” David called.

Dad gripped his shoulder. “You hungry?”

“Not really,” David said, starting for the stairs.

“I am!” Toria said.

As David passed her, he gave her a short hug.

“What was that for?” she said.

He climbed up the stairs, smiling over the railing. “Just because.”

At the top, he turned toward Xander's and his bedroom. He pulled Xander's mobile phone out of his back pocket wanting to give it to him before he forgot. He called his brother's name.

His brain caught up with something he had glimpsed, and he stopped. In the other direction, on the floor at the end of the hallway: a glass and a paper plate.

“Xander?” He walked to the items and squatted. The glass was half-full of OJ and the plate held a piece of French toast. He set the phone on the floor beside them and stepped into the MC. Empty. “Hey, Xander!”