Читать книгу The Hard Way Back to Heaven - Karl Dehmelt - Страница 13

5

September 7, 2009

“You have a bleb.” Dr. Richard Fost says, flipping a paper on his clipboard like a cue card.

“A what?” Michael says. His feet dangle a few inches above the floor. Lauren sits in the moderately comfortable chair adjacent to the examination table. Both of them have dressed casually for the occasion: Michael in his office polo and slacks, Lauren wearing a red blouse and black jeans.

“The chest x-ray results showed a very noticeable entity positioned in your right lung, near the top. Most likely, this was, and still is, the source of the bleeding in the sputum that caused you to come here today.”

“Richard, you’ve been taking care of me for six years. Where the hell did this come from?” Michael’s palms grip the thin paper of the exam table with precipitation.

“There are a few possibilities for what it could be, and also where it could have come from. The only way to positively determine an answer would be for you to undergo a procedure known as a bronchoscopy.”

“What is that?” Lauren asks, her voice small. Her fingers softly trace the band of her wedding ring.

“It’s a relatively minor procedure.” Fost wheels to his desk, his white overcoat pressing against the hard gray of his seat. His short, black hair is tightly cropped.

“A bronchoscopy will allow us to enter your lung and physically examine the source of the bleeding. Instead of having to crack your chest open and go in there with a magnifying glass, we can stick this tube down your throat and take samples of whatever is on top of this bleb. You’ve had how many incidents of bleeding so far, in these past few weeks?”

“A lot.” Michael says quickly.

“Right. So the fact that there is a potentially foreign body actively causing the release of blood is quite concerning, but its manageable. This bleb thing is a little pocket full of fluid that has attached itself to your lung, providing a possible entryway for foreign and malicious diseases to enter. By conducting the bronchoscopy, we’ll be able to get a solid idea of what exactly may be causing this, or which, if any, possible infections may be associated with your current symptoms.”

“When would I be undergoing this procedure, exactly?” Michael thinks of Alex, who had just started eighth grade not even a week ago, who falls asleep to a coughing father and crying mother.

“I’d want to have it done today, or as soon as possible.” Fost says resolutely, looking between the couple.

“Today?”

“Yeah.”

Michael shares a look with Lauren, her pupils aloft with fear.

“Alright, then, I guess we’d better do it.” Michael pats the table in a quick beat.

“Good.” Fost flips the papers on his clipboard back to their state of rest. “Let’s get you over to the hospital.”

—

After the initial incident of bleeding, more episodes of coughing and resulting blood had followed; Lauren had pushed him to schedule a more appropriate examination than self-diagnosis of “I’m fine” or the surgical “I probably just coughed too hard.” Michael started tossing paper towels in the trash, labeling incidents as less severe by swallowing his grimaces.

At the same time, Alex dutifully went and made his parents proud by earning his grades in school. He ate the starter assignments for the year seamlessly, completing them with expedience. He recalled his review and absorbed all the new information. At the age of 13, he’s already preparing for a life of compartmentalization and success in the face of stress. Such is the nature his parents have taught him through their earliest practical lessons of argument and division.

—

On the night of Michael’s bronchoscopy, Lauren is the parent on duty. On a typical night, she usually tucks herself in her room with a book on mental health or uses the computer while Alex occupies himself with his electronics elsewhere in the house. Michael often pulls Alex away from the screen, ready to discuss the news of the day or potentially the activity of the music world.

As Michael’s in for surgery, Lauren and Alex wait in the reception area, Alex listening to his music, and Lauren reading in the chair next to him.

Harlan and Cynthia join them, driving down after dinner. Harlan sits next to Alex, stationed like a real life version of the Lincoln Memorial. He sits examining the magazines left on the table of every hospital waiting room, thumbing through stories related to celebrities who synthesize a completely different world and ordinary people. He vests no value in their tales, yet he reads on, soaking up details to occupy his eyes. Harlan’s seen the fear in his son’s expression upon coughing up the blood. He can only imagine the disappointment and shock accompanying every sequential bloody paper towel, collected as mementos or tossed into the garbage.

Harlan’s fingers leaf through the pages slowly, transitioning from a story on kidnapping to a story on weight loss. Society seems to be evolving in reverse, where such fickle topics as ways in which celebrities lose weight sit next to a story on how to destroy a young girl’s world. The pages Harlan turn are marked with a touch of sweat. Lauren mentioned Fost speaking of a small possibility of cancer, but tragedy needs no data for a hypothesis.

Alex sits in the chair next to Harlan. The boy stares downward, his music player singing to him. Harlan and his grandson live less than an hour apart, and Harlan loves seeing him when they get together four times every year. The inches between the chairs include the opportunities never seized and the moments never spent, memories lying in wait for discovery. In only a few hours, Alex has gone from his school to the waiting room, for a parental procedure nobody in the family can correctly name. Harlan taps his grandson on the shoulder, his fingers touching the light gray fabric of Alex’s hoodie.

Alex snaps out of his own mind, removing the buds. His eyes, similar to his mother’s, look at Harlan reservedly.

“How’re you doing, Alex?”

“I’m doing alright, just listening to my music.”

“What’ve you been listening to?”

Alex pulls the device out of his pocket. It’s a sleek gray, with an engraved trademark on the case. Alex clicks a button on the top of the device, and the screen displays an image of an album cover. A young, princely boy, with a crown upon his head, is in the motion of turning away from Alex and Harlan’s intruding eyes. In red letters, the word Train hangs like a portrait next to the royal youth.

“It’s a song called ‘Drops of Jupiter’, by this band named Train. It’s one of my Dad’s favorites.”

“Train...”

Harlan attempts to reach back into the years to find a whisper of the band’s sound.

“It came out in, like, 2000 or something. You might not have heard of it.” Alex says softly, pressing the button to turn the screen.

Humor reaches Harlan’s face.

“Are you calling me old, Alex?”

Alex grins nervously.

“Let me tell you something,” Harlan shifts in his chair. “When your father was your age, maybe a couple years older, he fell in love with music. He was maybe 16 or 17, just around that age where you transition from being whiney into finding yourself. They say a 14 year old is going to be challenging, to not believe a word out of their mouths until you know they are telling the truth. You’re 13, so I can trust you, right?”

Alex laughs, and puts the device in his pocket. “Sure.”

“Good.” Harlan continues.

“Your dad, when he got to be a little bit older, started branching out. You can’t do that nowadays like we did back then. You’ve got your videos, or games, whatever you call them. You have music in the palm of your hand, and you can take it with you wherever you go. You have the Internet—I’m lucky if I can send an email. Your father didn’t have the things you do, but he loved music all the same. Do you love music, Alex?”

“Yeah.” Alex adores music; it has been his religion since he bought Ozzy Osbourne’s Black Rain in 2007. He remembers the night he brought it home, riding with his parents, his mother shooting his father looks of concern, his father, from the driver’s seat, head banging responsibly.

“Your father loves it too, as I’m sure you know. Can you believe your father was in a band at about your age?”

“Really?” Alex straightens in his chair. Alex dreams of forming a band himself, although he has no idea how to play an instrument, sing, or find band mates. He’s begun to write lyrics; simple rhymes, tangible pieces of his mind and soul. He uses an orange pad of paper for his writing, no larger than the distance from the base of his wrist to the tips of fingers. His father bought him a guitar for his 13th birthday. Lyrics are his chosen method of expression; he doesn’t need to develop calluses. His 7th grade English teacher told him he should consider writing as a career; lyrics are a sister to the writing his teacher mentioned to him. For all his reservation, he needs expression to survive; a songbird in an echo chamber.

“What did he play?”

“He sang. Your old father walked out there and sang!” Harlan’s glasses flash in tune with his voice.

“Sometimes, he’d strut out there with a guitar draped around his shoulders. It was so natural to him. I went to see him when he played Hatboro High School in … wow, that must have been 1976, ‘77? I remember him walking out there, and just the way in which he sang to the crowd, it was as if he were flying.”

“What happened to the band?”

“They got a female singer, actually. I guess your dad got distracted. They replaced him with some pretty redhead. She had a nice voice, too, but it wasn’t the same.” Harlan then remembers where exactly he’s sitting, and he shakes his head as his recollection turns to disgust.

“Don’t ever smoke, Alex. Just don’t do it.”

“I don’t plan to.” Alex assures him. The smell of sweetly vile smoke is a lingering constant on Alex’s life.

“Can I hear that song, then?” Harlan asks, pointing to the music player.

“Sure.” Alex snatches the buds from where they dangle, and hands them to his grandfather.

Harlan carefully places the buds in his ears.

“It feels like I’m contacting the mothership, kid. How do you put up with this?”

“You get used to it.” Alex taps the play button.

Harlan hears the chimes of the piano first. No matter how old he gets, no matter how far he journeys from home, Harlan holds onto the music of the world. His son and grandson inherited the need for sound. Harlan closes his eyes, as the soaring voice of Pat Monahan reaches his ears. He’s no longer in a waiting room, but in a chapel.

Harlan’s foot taps to the beat, independent and subconsciously powered. Cynthia looks over to them, a knowing expression on her face. Her husband, the traditionalist, the lover of classic cars and mechanics, is lost in some world stemming from the palm of her grandson. Alex keeps his focus on the mp3 player, the conductor of the magic. The song speaks of a woman’s journey around Jupiter.

Alex knows his father lives in his favorite songs.

One day, Alex had asked his father about his favorite musical bands; the two sat together for around three hours, discussing music, with Alex’s downloading service open on the computer. Alex bought the songs his father loved, “Jupiter” included, and Alex produced a small CD for his father. The CD is a constant fixture in Michael’s car. Their connection transcends whatever galaxy, whatever asteroid belt, whatever distance separates them. Harlan is sitting right in the middle of it, with his ears clogged, eyes closed, and his heart full.

The two of them barely hear the doors open from a distant world, with a visitor walking into where Cynthia, Harlan, Alex, and Lauren sit waiting, an astronaut walking on the moon.

The surgery is over.