While you prepare your cup of tea think of a forest, a cool rain forest at twilight. You’re walking on an ancient trail that winds through and between thick ferns, the air is full of the scent of wild orchids. There are no sounds save for your breathing and the wind passing through the impossibly tall redwoods that tower overhead…
Are you alone?
Is it possible to ever really be alone?
[Blind Faith \\ Can’t Find My Way Home]
Chapter 4
“Why, Mom? Why’d you do it?” Tracy asked her mother as they walked home after school.
“Mr. Murphy thought it would be a good idea. So did I – at the time.”
“So after all these years not telling anyone, now everyone knows he was my dad?”
Rebecca nodded as she walked into the house, then she walked straight into the living room and up to the huge window that looked out over the water. The afternoon fog she’d felt building was now rolling in and she held onto herself, warding off the coming chill. “Maybe we should get a few logs. This feels like a good night for a fire.”
“You’re changing the subject again, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what to say, Tracy,” Rebecca sighed. She remembered an afternoon just like this one, only with Sam standing next to her as they’d watched another thick fog rolling in. She closed her eyes, could almost feel him standing by her side, feel his heart beating next to hers. They’d known each other only a few weeks but already she was sure he was the one.
“It’s getting cold out,” she remembered him saying. “Don’t you need a sweater?”
“Let’s put on a fire. My dad’ll be home soon and it’ll be nice to have a fire going.”
They’d gathered armfuls of split logs and Sam had stood back and watched as she got the fire going, then they’d sat and waited for her father to come home from work.
And they’d waited. And waited.
Until the assistant station master called and told Rebecca that her father had been taken to Tacoma General Hospital. It wasn’t all that far away but Sam drove her anyway, and when they arrived at the emergency room they learned her father had been rushed straight to surgery.
Yet no one there could tell her what had happened.
So she and Sam had sat and waited.
“What are you thinking about, Mom?” Tracy asked.
“Another foggy evening. A long time ago.”
“You look lost, Mom. Is everything okay?”
“I feel lost, Tracy. Lost inside an echo, like I’m caught inside a hall of mirrors.”
“Mom?”
“Hm-m? What?”
“You want me to cook dinner tonight?” her daughter asked.
She smiled at the echo, remembered Sam saying almost exactly the same thing when they’d finally returned from the hospital. The fire in the fireplace had grown cold, so cold that not even embers remained, and she’d felt so hollowed out by the pain of her father’s passing that the clinging fog outside had felt ambivalent. Without saying a word Sam had rebuilt the fire then disappeared inside the kitchen and made their dinner. He held her through the remains of the night and didn’t let go during the many gales that followed.
In the aftermath of it all, Sam’s oldest and best friend, Dave Mason, had driven up from Santa Barbara to lend a hand. There’d been the inevitable lawyers and the hospital bills and all the other paperwork Rebecca needed to sort through, and yet all those things had seemed to dull the reality of her father’s passing – at least for a while. But Dave had always been good at such things and as spring turned to summer the three had grown inseparable. They drove up to Paradise and walked the trails on Mount Rainier’s sun facing flanks, camped under the stars as the west wind carried them deeper into the night, and one weekend the three ventured north to Port Townsend and went sailing on a friend’s boat.
Then the boys – as she’d taken to calling them by then – did what they’d done since high school: they pulled out their guitars and their notebooks and they began writing songs. Rebecca sat and listened as their efforts took on a life all their own, and she knew those star-kissed nights and days on the sound had become a part of the tapestry her boys had created with her.
She was majoring in English. She understood poetry – and it was over that magic summer that she realized Sam was something of a genius. A quiet Shakespeare kind of genius. He pulled words from the sky the way magicians conjured rabbits from hats, words that spoke to the soul, phrasing that seemed rooted in a deep understanding of life. And she was smart enough to keep her distance during these marathon writing sessions, contenting herself to sit bare-footed on the sofa and listen as the boys’ imaginations took on the shapes and forms of their summer together.
They made a demo reel and set off to downtown Seattle in search of someone who might listen to their work and perhaps lend a helping hand. They talked to other struggling musicians working the coffee houses, managed to get a radio disc jockey to listen once, but it wasn’t enough. They weren’t ready yet. Dave was shattered and limped back to Santa Barbara and as autumn approached Sam and Rebecca drove down to Portland to start their last year of college…
…yet something had changed…
…though Rebecca felt that change soon enough. Morning sickness and missed periods, followed by a trip to student health services, and she learned that motherhood beckoned. Sam smiled the smile of the terror-stricken, told Dave he could see his whole life unspooling in the dark like a cheap Saturday matinee and then someone told him that health services could point the way to an abortion – but the word hit him like a hammer blow, left him breathless and inexplicably sad. Rebecca had never once mentioned the word before and so he knew she wanted the child too, and there was never anything else said about the matter. They were going to have a baby; it was as simple as that.
They graduated from college and Sam moved into Rebecca’s father’s house on North 11th Street in Tacoma, Washington. Dave came up again to lend a hand; Sam and Dave painted the baby’s bedroom and then they pulled Rebecca’s old baby furniture up from the basement and she scrubbed all the old bits and pieces until they were squeaky-clean – and Dave watched as Sam slipped into the role of expectant father while not giving this change in life so much as one carefree thought.
‘So, that’s what love does?’ Dave Mason asked himself as he watched the change overtake his friend.
And then, a few weeks later Tracy came into their lives.
Rebecca turned away from the window and the fog and looked at her daughter. Sam had been gone for years, and Dave too, so Tracy was all that remained of that impossible love, of that unlikeliest communion. “I guess I thought our past might get in the way of the future, but Tracy, don’t take that secrecy to mean that I didn’t cherish every minute I had with your father. I think I wanted…didn’t want all of the confusion I felt…”
“Mom? Please don’t cry…”
Rebecca looked at her daughter, at Sam’s daughter, and she still recognized his eyes in Tracy’s. “It’s not easy, Tracy. Even now.”
“I remember him, you know? Every now and then I catch a flash of memory and I can see him again – just for a moment. Almost like I captured him inside one of those…a stereopticon, I think…and he’s with me again. It’s weird, Mom, because I can feel him. Like he’s really with me, even though I know that can’t really be true…”
“Are you sure about that?”
“What?”
“Are you sure he’s not still with you, maybe on some level you couldn’t possibly understand?”
“Mom? What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything, Tracy. I’m asking you a question. Can you really be so sure?”
Life is getting very complicated here at Chaos Manor…let’s just say Erica has not been well and leave it at that. Finding time to write has been quite difficult; hopefully with the coming of spring things will get better.
[10cc \\ I’m Not In Love]
Chapter Three
She shook away remnants of the dream, felt the side of the stranger’s face on top of her thighs and he came back to her in a disconcerting rush of truth.
Stillwell…Sam Stillwell…I met him at dinner last night…we had drinks in the lounge car then came back to the room to talk…
But here he is – in the here and now. Dying. Running from death. In search of a way to get away from the…from the what? The inevitable? But why doesn’t he seem frightened…?
She ran her fingers through the bare remains of his hair and he stirred – then he too seemed to recall where he was and as suddenly sat bolt upright.
“Damn,” he sighed as he stifled a yawn, “I’m so sorry…didn’t mean to fall off like that…”
“Don’t be sorry. I was enjoying the moment.”
“The moment? Rubbing patchy chemo-hair?”
“Feeling you let go. It felt like maybe it’s been a while?”
He shrugged and looked out the window. “This storm isn’t letting up any, is it?”
“They can get bad this time of year,” she said, smiling.
“My mouth tastes awful,” he said as he stood, looking around the compartment self-consciously. “What time is it, anyway?”
“A little after five,” she answered, now a little hurt by his sudden evasiveness.
“How long was I out?”
“I think about six hours. How’s the pain?”
He looked at her now – the first time since he’d awakened – and shook his head. “Just fine – as long as I ignore the fire in my back.”
And with that new snippet of information she now knew that his dissection had involved a kidney, or perhaps the aorta, so his had been a post-chemo RPLND – and she tried to push that knowledge to the back of her mind as she watched another grimace take shape on his face. “Sit down,” she said gently. “I’ll get another patch ready.” And to her surprise he did, and without any protestations at all. He didn’t ask for privacy – he simply demurred then sat and offered his right side, but to her his capitulation almost felt like a show of defeat.
She removed the old patch and cleaned the area before she applied the new one, and he nodded his thanks as she pulled his shirt down. “How’s your appetite?” she asked.
“You mentioned French toast?”
“It’s good, at least if you go in for that sort of thing.”
He grumbled something unintelligible then excused himself and went into the bathroom, and she suddenly realized how intrusive her presence must have felt to him, and she felt a little ashamed of herself.
“Maybe I’ll see you there,” she called out as she made to leave, and she heard a muffled “Okay” come from the small bathroom. She let herself out then walked down to her compartment and slipped inside, then stood there in mute disbelief at what had just happened. A part of her felt like a giddy teenager, maybe one who’d just met her favorite rock star, while another, deeper part of her mind reeled at the professional risks she’d just taken. He wasn’t her patient, and even doing something as simple as changing out his fentanyl patches carried ethical and professional obligations and responsibilities that most people couldn’t relate to or simply did not understand. Shaken by this lapse, she decided to shower, to wash away the remains of the night before she went back to the dining car.
The sun was just barely making a showing as she walked into the dining car a little after six, and not unexpectedly she wasn’t the first person there. Train buffs usually took the Empire Builder because of the spectacular crossing through Glacier National Park, though in winter the westbound train usually traversed the park under cover of darkness. Still, that didn’t keep the diehard ‘rail-fans’ from filling up the train almost all year round, and everyone ‘in the know’ was dialed in to the French toast whipped up in the dining car, so an early crowd was virtually guaranteed.
And just like the night before the steward escorted her to a table, and a few minutes later an elderly couple from back east joined her – Pat and Patricia Patterson, from Roanoke, Virginia. Pat was of course wearing a well-worn Burlington Route baseball cap and Rebecca knew the type: Pat would have a huge model railroad layout in his basement and bookshelves loaded with books on all kinds of old passenger trains – and while he’d love nothing more than to talk about this or that route for hours on end, Rebecca just wasn’t in the mood this morning.
She remembered notes she needed to finish working through. She had pre-op consults to prepare for, too – not to mention office hours come Monday afternoon…
…but suddenly she realized the train wasn’t moving along at its usual 79 miles per hour…
…and then she saw that wet, sticky snow was building up on the dining car’s windows. Indeed, it was impossible to see anything beyond the glass, yet with the abysmal sunlight filtering through dense clouds there was little to see beyond the hazy white veil that was now, apparently, covering everything.
Yet the train was still moving. She could feel the swaying motion, hear the distant clickety-clack of steel wheels over joints in the iron rail, and Pat seemed to have been reading her mind…
“We’re poking along about 45 miles per,” he said, consulting an app on his smart-phone. “My guess is they gotta plow up front. Minneapolis already had two feet of snow from this storm when we went through there last night, and I think it’s snowing harder now.”
“Do you know where we are now?” she asked.
Pat shrugged. “Fargo is the next stop, but we’re already two hours behind…”
“Have you heard a weather forecast?” Rebecca added.
“At least another two days of this stuff. An Alberta Clipper is pushing an arctic air mass down and it’s colliding with that atmospheric river that just slammed San Francisco and Oakland. The Weather Channel says this will be a historic snow event from the Rockies through the upper mid-west.”
Their waiter came by and poured coffee and took their orders – French toast times three – then Rebecca turned to the window again, instinctively reaching out to brush the snow away before remembering it was on the outside. “So, you’re a Burlington fan?” she asked.
“Yessiree! My old man worked in the Chicago office all his life.”
Rebecca smiled. “My father worked for the Northern Pacific, out of Tacoma.”
“That’s a beautiful building, one of the last great ones. But ya know what? I’ve never figured out why we’ve always been in such a hurry to tear down those places…”
Rebecca nodded. “Chicago sure had a bunch of them. I would have loved to have seen Chicago back around 1900.”
“Isn’t that the truth! Dearborn Station…the original!” Pat said, but just then Rebecca noticed that Patricia simply nodded from time to time but otherwise stared ahead vacantly, enough so that she was beginning to suspect the woman had Alzheimer’s, or perhaps dementia. And Pat noticed too…that Rebecca had caught on, and he sighed as he acknowledged the obvious. “Yes,” he said quietly – almost in defeat, “she got Alzheimer’s. But you see, she wanted to take one last trip together.”
Rebecca nodded. “It’s difficult to be the primary caregiver,” she sighed.
He shrugged. “It’s difficult to watch someone you’ve known for almost fifty years as they disappear right in front of you. You can read about it all you want about it, but the reality of it…well, it is the saddest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
There was a blast of icy cold air and then the surly old conductor walked into the dining car and sort of like an old crustacean he skittered from table to table, explaining that the train was now three hours behind schedule and that the route through Glacier National Park “might not be clear this evening,” and that he’d “keep everyone informed” as he learned more.
“What happens if they close the route through the mountains?” Pat asked the red faced old man.
“Depends where we are, I reckon. Between Minot and Whitefish…well, not too many options out there. Maybe stop in Havre or Shelby; we could bus you down to Great Falls and try to get you out on airplanes, but it depends on how much snow there is and how long it’ll take the crews to plow it out.”
Rebecca felt a chill of apprehension run up her spine as she recognized the evasive tenor of the conductor’s remarks. “And what happens if we get stuck out here, like maybe in the middle of nowhere?”
“We wait for the plows to reach us, Ma’am.”
“Is there enough food on board if that happens,” Pat asked.
The old conductor smiled a little as he nodded with knowing self-assurance. “We laid on extra in St Paul, and there should be plenty of French toast, too. Should be no worries at all, sir.” The old man skittered away after that, talking to the rest of the passengers in the dining car, reassuring all the ‘Nervous Nellies’ huddled around their tables with expectant, upturned eyes.
“If they laid on more food,” Pat said, his eyes now full of concern for his wife, “I bet they think it’s more than just a merely possible.”
“Maybe so,” Rebecca said – as she suddenly started thinking of Sam Stillwell, “but it seems a reasonable precaution to take almost any time of year.”
Their meals came and they ate in silence, Pat doing his best to feed his wife – and doing rather well, too. Rebecca looked out the window from time to time and shook her head in disbelief – as she’d never seen heavier, wetter snow in her life – and at one point she even thought the snow looked like that hideous Christmas tree flocking they sprayed on trees, if only because this snow seemed to be sticking to everything. Still, about ten minutes later the glow of more businesses appeared through the snowy mist, and when they passed a clanging railroad crossing signal they could tell the train was stopping at the next station. Rebecca looked out the window and could just make out a bundled-up man pushing a snowblower along the platform below the dining car, clearing the way for passengers waiting in the station.
Then quite suddenly she felt concern for Stillwell.
So when the steward came by she signed her chit and left another generous tip, then took advantage of the stopped train’s lack of motion to walk back to her sleeping car – but she just couldn’t help herself as she walked by Sam’s compartment. She knocked on the door and thought she heard a commotion inside; she knocked again and heard him call out ‘Help!’
When she tried to open the door she felt his body blocking her way and now knew he was down on the floor.
“Sam? Can you roll over? You’re blocking the door…”
She heard him moan and then felt the door give way a little; she squeezed into the little compartment and then helped him stand up next the sofa – and she smelled it then. He’d soiled himself, and now he really needed a shower – but then it hit her…what he really needed was to be back in the hospital. Locked up in this compartment without a nurse to assist him was a recipe for…
But no. He had her, didn’t he. He needed to get to Palo Alto, and though he’d chosen not to fly she was more than capable of getting him to Seattle. One look out the window at the blowing snow and she knew there’d be no air travel out of Fargo for a while, perhaps days.
With that decided she helped him into the small bathroom compartment and started to undress him, but his hand blocked the way. “You don’t need to do this,” Sam sighed, clearly dejected as the sharp, pungent odor assaulted his senses.
“And you need to let me get to work right now. We’re stopped and this will be a lot easier if we get it knocked out fast.”
He started to unbutton his shirt while she got his pants and boxers down and into a garbage bag, then she got the shower running and once it was warm she washed off his soiled thighs. “Can you hold the shower head for a while?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Okay. I’m going to get rid of these clothes. I think they’re done for.”
He nodded and she went off in search of the sleeping car attendant, who was out on the platform helping a passenger disembark.
“I’ve got some soiled clothes,” Rebecca said to the girl. “Got some place I can dump them?”
“Sure. Right over there, by the other trash. What happened?”
“Oh, the guy up in A is not well. I was just lending a hand.”
“You a nurse?”
Rebecca shook her head. “No. Physician. We could use some extra towels in A.”
“You’re in E, right?”
Rebecca nodded then turned and went back up to Sam’s compartment. He was just holding onto the shower head and his head was leaning against the wall, the water running down to the drain in the floor, but he looked up and tried to smile when he saw her standing there.
“Nice to see you again,” he said through a wry grin. “What kept you?”
“How’s the water? Still warm?”
“Blissfully so, yes. Care to join me?”
She smiled and shook her head, then shut the bathroom door. The train jerked and slowly began pulling away from the station, and a second later the attendant knocked on the door and handed her a pile of towels. “Need anything else just let me know,” she said.
“Could you bring some French toast and scrambled eggs. I want to see if he can hold down some food.”
The girl nodded and disappeared, leaving Rebecca to towel him off, but he stood with his back to her, apparently ashamed of the huge, midline scar running from his sternum to his groin. After she finished his backside she turned him around and patted his wound dry, then tackled his unruly hair. “You need help getting dressed?” she asked.
“We’ll see, Mom,” came his sardonic reply.
His breakfast came and with the help of the attendant she set up the small table under the window and poured a bottle of water into a cup, then helped him walk out to the sofa.
“Food? Really?” he asked as he stared at the suspicious plate of toast and eggs on the table.
“I’d be happy if you could just get a little down. You had some pretty fierce diarrhea, so we’re going to get some water down, too.”
“Oh? We are?”
She smiled. “I’ve had mine already.”
“Ya know, that’s not exactly what I meant…”
“I know what you meant, Sam.” He looked at her and nodded before she helped him sit, then she sat across from him and sliced up some of the French toast. “Ready?”
“How ‘bout some water first?”
She helped him drink and – predictably – he pulled back from the table and leaned against the sofa. “Do you get sick every time you eat?” she asked.
He nodded. “Pretty much. I did okay on those protein shakes for a while, then even those turned on me.”
“Do you have any omeprazole? Maybe with some Zofran onboard you could hold food down for a while.”
He shrugged. “Tried that already. The basic problem, Doc, is accelerating mortality.”
She nodded. “I know. Now, let’s see if we can get one bite of French toast down.”
“Lots of syrup, please. My mouth feels like the Sahara.”
He ate a half slice of the toast before he gave up and leaned back again, but this time he leaned over and curled up in a fetal ball with his hands around his knees – and then he closed his eyes.
She pulled a fresh blanket down from the storage bin and gently covered him, then she sat down beside him. The deep empathy she felt in that moment wasn’t all that unusual, but for some reason the feeling she experienced now seemed much more personal.
But when she sat beside him again that seemed to be the signal he’d been waiting for: he leaned over until the side of his face rested on her lap again – and then he promptly fell fast asleep.
And once again she ran the sides of her thumbs in little circles on his temple until she felt the inherent tension of his dis-ease fall away, and she found herself wanting more than anything else in the world to make his suffering go away.
And for some reason she heard the mournful, soul caressing notes of West Side Wind in her mind, and when she felt sleep coming for her she knew the dream wasn’t far away. She could feel it out there, lurking patiently in the shadowlands – like a wild beast stalking her in the blinding snow.
Adrian Leverkühn Writes 