I tried not to think it. I thought it anyway. Hemi, please come. Please come now. I need you.
Hemi
It was after four on a New Zealand Friday afternoon by the time the jet touched down in Tauranga, and nearly five by the time I was walking into the small ward of the private hospital with Karen at my side.
I hadn’t intended to take her. Or, rather, taking her hadn’t entered into my thoughts at first. I’d changed my mind for a few reasons. First, she’d demanded to come. Second, I hadn’t wanted to leave her alone, not with Noah the Unattached Buddhist hanging about. Third, I thought Hope would want to see her, and that Hope would realize how much she’d missed her sister, how much she needed to be with her again. To live with her again.
I was determined to use any ammunition I had, you see.
I wanted to see Hope more than I could remember ever wanting anything. But I needed to see Koro.
When I walked into the room, he was lying in bed, his eyes closed, his arm in a sling, the white bandage around his head contrasting with his gray-tinged skin, and he had tubes running from an IV bottle into his arm. Koro, who’d always stood tall and strong despite his age, lying there shrunken and wrong, like a mighty kauri fallen in the forest.
I knew that a man in his eighties couldn’t live forever, and I needed him to all the same. Nothing else was thinkable, but seeing him like that forced me to think it.
And then there was Hope. Sitting beside him with a newspaper in her hands, her sweet voice saying, “Police urge members of the public to be vigilant . . .” When she saw us, she stopped reading. The paper fell from her hand and onto the bed, and Koro opened his eyes.
You read sometimes about the worst kind of dilemma. A shipwrecked man, maybe, treading water, with two people he loves struggling beside him and only one he can save. It was the type of question philosophers loved to pose, the type that had always seemed pointless to me. But now? That was how I felt. There was my Hope, pregnant with my baby, and all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and hold her tight and never let her go. But beside her was Koro, and he was alive.
I tried for words, but none had come by the time I was across the little room to Koro and taking his uninjured hand gently in mine.
He said, “Hemi. My son,” but it didn’t sound a bit like Koro. No strength to his voice, and his eyes weren’t focusing right, either.
Neither were mine, for that matter. The tears were threatening to spill, and I still didn’t trust my voice. Instead, I leaned down, pressed my forehead and nose gently to his in a hongi, breathed his breath, and thought, Thank you, God. Thank you for my Koro.
Across from me, Karen was hugging Hope, who’d sprung to her feet. I stood upright, still holding Koro’s hand, hard and calloused from a lifetime of work. He said, his words slow and slurred, “I took a tumble in the dark. Silly old bugger.”
“Nah,” I said. “Bit clumsy, maybe, that’s all.”
“Never mind,” he said. “I’d have told you not to come, but I reckon you were glad enough of the excuse.”
“Too right I was. And no worries. I was always going to come.”
“Should’ve fallen ages ago, then,” he said, and I had to squeeze his hand again and swallow past the lump in my throat.
I looked across the bed at Hope and saw the compassion and understanding in her eyes, and the lump may have grown even bigger. She wasn’t going to be starting up with me again. Just now, she cared about Koro, she cared about Karen, and she cared about me. I could see it in her as if I could see her heart, because I could. Hope was an open book. I just hadn’t bothered to read it.
“Eh, sweetheart,” I managed, then couldn’t think of what else to say, where to go with it.
The moment stretched out until Karen heaved a sigh and said, “Could you guys just hug or something?”
“Yeh,” I said. “Yeh. We could.”
Hope came to me this time. Straight around the end of the bed and into my arms, sliding into place like my missing piece. I held her tight, lifted her off her feet, and said, “I love you.”
It wasn’t the most eloquent declaration ever, but it seemed to do the business, because she wrapped her arms around me even more tightly as I set her down, then tucked her head under my chin and laid her cheek against my chest, seeming to need to inhale me the same way I was inhaling her familiar flower scent, the softness and the strength of her. Everything I’d missed. Everything I needed most.
“Good,” Koro said. “Take the two of them and go. Tane and June are coming after work. Any minute.”
“Came to see you, didn’t I,” I said, though I hadn’t let go of Hope. “I’ll wait until they arrive, at least.”
“Nah, you won’t. I’m tired, and I want to sleep. I saw you. Go away.”
Karen laughed out loud. “Koro’s as bossy as you, Hemi. That’s awesome.”
I hesitated a moment longer, but Koro closed his eyes and said, “Ignoring you. Bring Karen tomorrow.”
I smiled, took his hand once more, and said, “We’ll be back first thing in the morning. See you then.”
After that, Karen, Hope, and I were walking out the main doors into a chilly winter evening, and I was trying to figure out what to say next.
Karen, of course, beat me to it. “Let me guess. I’m going to get dropped off to get something to eat while you and Hope talk. I’m psychic like that.”
“No,” I said. “We’ll go home and have something to eat. It’ll be good to be together.” I meant it, too. It was good. “And then I’ll take Hope for a bit of a walk, maybe, and a chat.”
I hadn’t seen her for nearly two weeks, and I’d been shocked when I’d held her, especially once I’d lifted her. She was wearing her familiar jeans, but they weren’t nearly as snug as they should have been. Her collarbones, too, were much too prominent under her long-sleeved white tee, although her breasts were clearly larger. All things that might have been there to notice two weeks earlier, if I’d paid more attention.
“I’m not sure what there is at Koro’s,” Hope said, confirming my suspicions. “Not for all three of us to eat.”
“We’ll stop by and pick something up, then,” I said, reaching the car and holding the door open for her. “Do a bit of cooking. What do you fancy?”
She laughed, just a breath of sound. “That sounds so normal. Sorry. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all this. Figuring out how to be.”
“Right now,” I said, “you don’t have to be anything. We’ll make it up as we go, eh.”
All she was able to think of to eat, once we were back in Katikati and walking the endless aisles of Countdown, was, “Potatoes. But Koro probably has potatoes. And yogurt.”
“Tummy?” I asked.
“Yeah. And I just . . .”
She trailed off, and I said, “Chicken, then.” I picked up a packet of prepared boneless chicken breasts marinated with a bit of herb. She needed protein. I didn’t have to be a doctor to know that. “I’ll cook you a potato, no worries. Some kumara as well. Vitamins.”
“You don’t have to baby me,” she said. “I’m fine. Just a little tired. It’s been a long few days.”