April 15
Ron’s June 15
Annie almost didn’t go.
She sat in her car in the Meadow View parking lot, engine running, hands on the wheel, staring at the front entrance like it was a trap. But she’d walked through it countless times. She knew the squeak in the second hallway door and the water stain on the ceiling above the front desk and how the place always smelled like floor cleaner and something warmer underneath, like soup or laundry or both.
But today the building looked different. Smaller, maybe. Or she was different. Smaller, definitely.
She’d been home for four days. Carol had insisted. “You’ve been in that hospital for a week. You need sleep, real food, and a shower that isn’t in a public restroom.”
Annie argued, lost, and slept for fourteen hours straight. She’d eaten a box of cereal over two days and watched nothing on her phone and tried not to think about June 11.
She thought about June 11 constantly.
Ron had been transferred back to Meadow View two days ago. Stable, they said. Weak, but responsive. He was in a wheelchair now, which Carol said was temporary but Annie knew was probably permanent. He was eating a little. Talking a little. Doing his crossword puzzles, which Carol said was a good sign because it meant his mind was still reaching for things.
Annie turned off the engine. Grabbed the bag from the passenger seat. Two new puzzle books from Good Yarn and a package of the butterscotch candies Ron kept in his shirt pocket. She’d driven twenty minutes to the old-fashioned drugstore in Bridgeton to find the right brand because the ones at the gas station were wrong and Ron would know.
Finally, with a breath of courage, she walked through the doors.
The front desk nurse smiled wide. “He’s been asking about you.”
Of course he had. Annie felt that land somewhere below her ribs.
Annie thought his room looked mostly the same. Chair by the window. Photo of Grace, Jamie, Ron. The river beyond the glass, slow and flat in the April light. But now there was a wheelchair parked beside the bed, and a new monitor on a rolling stand, and a plastic cup with a straw on the nightstand that hadn’t been there before. Annie also noticed that a nurse or staffer had changed the whiteboard calendar to reflect the lie.
Someone had written “June” on the month line in fat blue marker. The television was off and the cable cord hung in the air behind it.
Suddenly Annie didn’t think it looked the same at all. It didn’t look like a resident’s room anymore. It looked like a movie set.
Ron sat in the chair by the window. Not the wheelchair. The regular chair. He’d gotten himself into it somehow, which was either a miracle or stubbornness. With the Sergeant, those were usually the same thing.
He looked up when she appeared at his side. He was thinner. Seemed grayer. But his eyes were the same. Clear and sharp and fixed on her like she was the answer to a question he’d been holding.
“There’s my girl,” he said.
“Here I am.” She sat on the edge of his bed, facing him. Set the bag between them.
He glanced at the bag, then at her. “Butterscotch?”
“The good kind.”
“You drove to Bridgeton.”
“You can tell by the bag?”
“I can tell by you. You always come back from Bridgeton looking like you survived a crisis.”
Annie almost smiled. Almost.
Ron unwrapped a butterscotch and the cellophane made a crinkling sound that filled the room. He put the candy in his mouth and looked out the window at the river.
“So,” he said. “June already.”
Annie’s stomach dropped.
“June 15, if I’m counting right. Which means the Fourth is less than three weeks away?”
“Something like that,” Annie said. Her voice held. She didn’t know how.
“Getting close.” He said. Not to her. To the river, or the window, or to Charlie. “Real close.”
Annie opened one of the puzzle books, placed it on his lap, and changed the subject the only way she knew how. “This one has a whole section on military history. You’ll crush it.”
Ron ran his thumb along the spine of the book. Then set it aside, which he never did. He always opened a new puzzle book immediately, like a kid opening a gift.
“I’ve been thinking about Charlie,” he said. “About what he’d say if he could see us now. Not just me. Everybody. The country. All the preparations for America’s birthday.” Ron studied the photo on the windowsill. Grace and Jamie, smiling in sunlight that didn’t exist anymore.
“He was the optimist, you know. I was always the one saying it’s all going to you-know-where. Charlie would just shake his head. ‘Ronnie, it’s bad, but it’s been bad before.'”
Ron shifted in his chair. The effort showed.
“All Charlie wanted was to see us try again. Come together. One more time.” He looked back at Annie. “Not fix everything. Not agree on everything. Just show up for each other. That’s what the 250th meant to him. Proof that we still could.”
Annie nodded. She didn’t trust her voice.
“You think we can?” Ron asked.
He’d asked her this before. In this room, in this chair, by this window. The last time, she’d said yes because she wanted it to be true. This time she said yes because a small Army was working to make it true, and Ron didn’t know, and she couldn’t tell him, and the weight of that was sitting on her like a box of dynamite.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Ron picked up the book. Opened it to the first page. Found a pencil in his shirt pocket.
“One across,” he said. “Six letters. ‘Unwavering.’ I think it’s s-t-e-a-d-y.'”
“Back in a minute. I’m going to get coffee,” Annie said.
“Bring me some?”
“Are you still allowed to have coffee?”
“What’s it gonna do, Sweetheart, kill me?”
The dynamite inside her nearly blew. “How about you ask the nurse next time she comes by,” Annie said, shaking off the joke and walking out the door. She passed the whiteboard with the daily schedule. Passed the bulletin board with photos of residents and staff. Passed Nurse Diana, who found Annie and then looked away, and Annie understood that look now. Diana knew. The staff knew.
She poured her coffee and looked down the hallway toward Room 14.
I’ve lied to a dying man, she thought. And now I’m building him a world that doesn’t exist. Every time he smiles at me, I want to scream.
“But this is also for Charlie,” she whispered aloud. Then she returned to Ron’s side, sat on the bed, and watched him work his crossword.
For Charlie.
New chapters posted every Monday and Thursday until April 23.