“Yeah. It is.” Elliott's voice sounded far off.
Ambrose slept for a while, and when he awoke his dad no longer sat in the chair beside his bed. He didn't leave often. He must be finding something to eat or getting some sleep. The little window in his hospital room looked out on a black night. It must be late. The hospital slumbered, though it was never completely quiet on his floor. Ambrose levered himself up, and before he could let himself reconsider, he started unraveling the long layers of gauze from his face. Round and round, one after the other, making a pile of medicine-stained bandages on his lap. When he pulled the last one free, he staggered from his bed, holding onto the rolling rack that held the bags of antibiotics, fluids and painkillers they were pumping into his body. He'd been up a few times and knew he could walk. His body was virtually unscathed. Just some shrapnel in his right shoulder and thigh. Not even a broken bone.
There wasn't a mirror in the room. There wasn't a mirror in the bathroom. But the window, with its thin blinds, would work almost as well. Ambrose reached for it, pushing the blinds upward with his left hand, clinging to the metal pole with his right, freeing the glass so he could stare at his face for the first time. At first he couldn't see anything but the dim streetlights far below. The room was too dark to reflect his image off the glass.
Then Elliott walked through the door and saw his son standing at the window, clenching the blinds like he wanted to rip them from the wall.
“Ambrose?” His voice rose in dismay. And then he flipped on the light. Ambrose stared and Elliott froze, realizing instantly what he had done.
Three faces stared back at Ambrose from the glass. He registered his father's face first, a mask of despair just behind his right shoulder, and then he saw his own face, gaunt and swollen, but still recognizable. But merged with the recognizable half of his reflection was a pulpy, misshapen mess of ruined skin, Frankenstein stitching, and missing parts–someone Ambrose didn't know at all.
When Fern told Bailey she had seen Ambrose, Bailey's eyes grew wide with excitement.
“He was running? That's good news! He’s refused to see everybody, as far as I know. That's definite progress. How did he look?”
“At first I couldn't see any change,” Fern answered honestly.
Bailey's look grew pensive. “And?” he pressed.
“One side of his face is very scarred,” she said softly. “I only saw it for a second. Then he just turned and started running again.”
Bailey nodded. “But he was running,” he repeated. “That's very good news.”
But good news or not, a month passed and then one more and Fern didn't see Ambrose again. She kept her eyes peeled as she pedaled home from work each night, hoping to see him running up and down the darkened streets, but she never did.
Imagine her surprise then, when one night she stayed later than usual at the store and caught sight of him behind the swinging bakery doors. He must have seen her too, because he ducked out of sight immediately and Fern was left gaping in the hallway.
Ambrose had worked in the bakery with his father all through high school. It was a family business after all, started by Elliott's grandfather almost eighty years before when he partnered with John Jolley, the original owner of the town's only grocery store.
Fern had always liked the contradiction of big, strong Ambrose Young working in a kitchen. In high school, he'd worked during the summers and on the weekends when he wasn't wrestling. But the night shift, the shift when the majority of the baking was done, was the kind of job where he wouldn't ever be seen if he chose not to be, working from 10:00 when the store was just closing, until 6:00 am, an hour before it opened again. The hours obviously suited him just fine. Fern wondered how long he had been back at the bakery and how many nights she'd barely missed him or just not realized he was there at all.
The next night the registers were off and Fern couldn't seem to get the books to balance. At midnight, as she was finally finishing up, the aroma of wonderful things started to curl from the bakery, wafting around the corner to the little office where she labored. She logged out of the computer and crept down the hallway, positioning herself so that she could see through the swinging doors that led into the kitchen. Ambrose had his back to her, his plain white T-shirt and jeans were partially covered by a white apron, Young's Bakery splashed across in bright red print. Elliott Young had worn the same apron for as long as Fern could remember. But somehow on Ambrose it looked totally different.
Fern could see now that his long hair had not grown back. She had half expected to see it brushing his shoulders. From what she could see, he had no hair whatsoever. His head was covered with a red bandana tied tightly in the back like he had just climbed off a Harley and decided to whip up a batch of brownies. Fern giggled to herself at the mental image of a biker making brownies, and winced when the giggle was louder than she’d intended. Ambrose turned, giving her a view of the right side of his face, a view she'd only seen briefly in the dark. Fern darted back around the corner, worried that he would hear her and misunderstand her laughter, but after a minute couldn't resist moving back where she could watch him while he worked.