And that was when I saw them. Just behind him. In a second room inside trauma room two marked TR-2B.
I pushed past him, and he tried to grab me, but I was too quick. The woman didn’t even try to stop me. I had to stand on tiptoe to see.
And there they were.
Mom and Dad were flat on their backs atop two metal tables, their eyes pointed toward the ceiling lights. Two nurses moved between the tables, fastening a gown onto Mom, wiping Dad’s face.
I palmed the metal door plate and pushed, just as I was grabbed from behind.
“Noooo,” I screamed.
I punched his arms, but he wouldn’t let me go.
“No matter what happens, little man, you gon’ be okay.” His voice was damp as he carried me out of the room. “You gon’ be okay,” he said, over and over.
I flailed and screamed but I couldn’t escape his hold. And we were nearly at the front desk when Whit came flying down the hall, yelling you can’t do that don’t ever do that again it’s just you and me now okay you can’t just take off Jamal you can’t just you can’t just—
84
They tell her: Simone, please, you have to wait. Please, Simone. Just another minute.
They’re cleaning up.
They’re almost finished.
If she could just be—
They’ll take her to him as soon as they—
“I’m not going anywhere or listening to anyone until I see my son. You will take me to my son now.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. And her screams, her wails, are now a periodic burst of s-s-sobs, her face afflicted with a soundless pain, like when the hurt is lodged in the back of your throat, still chambered in your heart.
I never again want to see someone hurt so badly.
See someone suffer.
This is your face, helpless.
This is hope, smithereened.
This is good things happen to good people, solid as a soap bubble.
There’s no divine hand reaching down to save the person you love.
Today’s all out of miracles.
83
“I can’t fathom how you must feel, Ms. Barrantes.”
The woman in the gray dress sits as if she’s auditioning for Human with Extraordinary Posture, her hands folded, face even. Her only embellishment a silver bracelet that rattled as she shook our hands.
A grief specialist, Dr. Rodriguez called her, as he’d led us through a section of the hospital straight out of a horror flick.
Our only light a rope of low-wattage bulbs in metal cages strung the length of the cinder-block walls. Most of the ceiling missing too, bundles of cables dangling, some hanging low enough we had to move around them, some of them hissing.
We hurried right by the Authorized Personnel Only signs.
“Where are we going, Doctor?” Ms. Barrantes asked.
“They’ll explain better than I can,” he said. Before I could point out that she’d asked where, not whom or what, he added: “Please, hear them out, Simone.”
When we came to the mouth of the final hallway, it was so aggressively dark and quiet, I hesitated, searched Ms. Barrantes’s face for affirmation this was okay, that we were safe—but all I saw was pain.
Without knowing our destination—or what awaited us—our commitment solidified with each step. Somehow, we both knew that no matter what lay on the other end of this dark rainbow, we’d say yes. What was there to lose?
In the conference room, when he’d finally calmed her down enough to hear him, Dr. Rodriguez had said what was at best a rather peculiar thing: “There is tremendous opportunity here, Simone. Don’t let it slip through your fingers.”
I first assumed he wanted her to donate Q’s organs—waited for him to say: this is how Q lives on.
But this isn’t that. This is several galaxies removed.
When the labyrinth ended, we were in front of a single elevator, its door open, a dingy orange light shining from its ceiling. We’re barely inside the car when Dr. Rodriguez’s finger mashes SB. The door closes, and the elevator hiccups as we descend.
“What’s SB?” I asked.
Ms. Barrantes made a face. “Subbasement.”
“What’s in the subbasement?”
“Nothing,” she whispered.
“This is as far as I go,” Dr. Rodriguez said, holding the elevator door. “It’s the third door on your left.”
But Ms. Barrantes didn’t move, and I followed her lead. “Why am I here? What are we doing?” She wagged her head. “You can’t just . . . just . . . drop me off into some creepy hallway, Kevin.”
“I’m sorry, but it has to be this way, Simone. Listen to what they have to say. I think . . . I think you’ll find solace.”
We stepped out of the elevator and watched the doors close. And suddenly, it was so dark I could see just as much with my eyes closed. Ms. Barrantes felt for my hand, and together we took a few small steps forward. Then a few more, until we heard a click, and a buzzy halogen bulb flickered on, giving us enough light to continue moving forward.
We walked.
Past one door.
Quietly, carefully, we walked past another.
We saw it at the same time, the third door on the left, light escaping from the gap beneath it.
Ms. Barrantes looked at me, then turned the knob.
Now here we are.
“Losing a child,” the woman continues. “No one should ever bear that cross.”
“You’ve lost a child?” Ms. Barrantes asks.
The grief specialist shakes her head. “I don’t have children,” she says with a pause that sounds like I can’t. “But I’ve lost people I’ve loved. My husband last year.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ms. Barrantes says.
“He’d never been sick before. Not even a cold. All his coworkers gave him a hard time, said he made them look bad. Just take one sick day, Ross, they’d say. Everything Ross did, he did faithfully. That was his way. One night he woke up with severe abdominal pain. The doctors said they needed to remove his appendix, there was no time to waste . . .” The woman’s face neutral. “When they cut him open, they found mets in his pancreas. He was already stage three. He died four months later.”
And I want to say something comforting, but what?
“When the Center came to us, I was skeptical, as I’m sure you are now. Ross was their second case. What they did for him, for us . . . I left my practice of twenty-three years to sit in this chair to talk to people like you. To offer you that same gift.”
Ms. Barrantes takes a sharp breath, wipes her eyes. “I just want to see my son. I don’t care if I have to climb onto that hospital table to be with him . . . I have to see him.”
“Ms. Barrantes, what if he sat up on that table? What if the two of you walked out of that room together?”
Ms. Barrantes opens her mouth but says nothing. Her face perspiring. I hop from my chair.
“Ms. B, are you okay?” I ask.
Ms. Barrantes cuffs her ears like she’s blocking out a painful frequency only she hears, her face color draining rapidly, as if some internal plug’s been pulled.
“Ms. Barrantes, talk to us. What’s happening?” the specialist says. “Ms. Barrantes!”