“Nope, we’re going,” he said finally, and stood. Without hesitating, he pushed his hands beneath James’s body, the frigid touch of his skin seeping through his clothes. It was like cradling a bag of softening ice. Quinn began to heave him up and off the bed, already calculating how he would get him to the garage and in the back of the SUV without stopping, when James cried out.
It was a gasping gurgle filled to the brim with pain. The pottery shards were back, but this time they were in his voice, giving way to a scraping wail that reminded Quinn of a small animal dying in the jaws of a predator. He immediately settled him on the bed again, wincing as James moaned once more before quieting into a stilted panting. The older man’s jaw muscles flexed, and a new wave of sweat broke out on his forehead. Quinn wiped it away with a towel and watched his father, antagonizing minutes dropping away as James’s breathing slowly returned to normal, the creases in his brow smoothing like waves returning to the sea.
He sat back, taut muscles going languid, the stress of the moment crashing down on him and then peeling away. He couldn’t move him, there was no way to do it without killing him. The way his father’s body felt in his hands, like a sack of rags wrapped around sharp rocks, he would puncture something internally simply carrying him to the door.
Quinn moved to Teresa’s room and checked on her. She hadn’t so much as turned in her sleep, and he propped her door open to the hallway when he left. The TV called to him, the promise of more terrible knowledge almost unbearable to resist, but instead he went to James’s side and opened his book and began to read out loud again so that his voice filled the empty space in the air.
~
The morning dawned bright and clear, another admission of spring in earnest. The sun rose from the eastern horizon, climbing up from the depths of the ocean until it broke free, burning away a mist of fog that had settled overnight.
Quinn had slept fitfully. The chair was comfortable at first, but by the first light of day, it was an instrument of torture, its edges and cushions biting into him as if it were made of hungry mouths. He’d checked on his father and Teresa whenever he’d woken, dabbing their brows with washcloths and offering water, which neither of them drank.
When he stepped from his father’s room in the early light, there was no familiar sound of breakfast being made downstairs. That was over. He would have to cook something for himself. He tried the numbers for the hospital as well as the emergency line again. Nine-one-one had the same result as the day before, innumerable tolls and still no answer, but Portland General didn’t even transfer him to a recorded message; he simply received a busy signal over and over.
He ate a cold breakfast of cereal and milk while a pot of chicken broth heated on the stove. Balancing two bowls on a tray, he made his way upstairs when he finished eating and first spoon-fed some to his father and then to Teresa. Their jaws were locked tight in similar fashion, and he used the trick of dribbling some in the pocket of their cheeks and teeth to get a small portion of the broth down. He took their temperatures a short time later, first his father’s, then Teresa’s. After reading his teacher’s he paused, staring at the numbers blinking on the display. Walking like someone in a dream, he returned to his father’s room and retook his temp, waiting until the little unit beeped before reading it again.
104.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Their temperatures were identical.
Quinn lowered his shaking hand and placed it on James’s forehead. The skin was cool and moist, condensation on a thawing piece of meat. He let his hand rest there another moment and yanked it away when his fingers began to sink into his father’s skull.
The cry that leapt to the back of his throat came out in a breathy moan. He hadn’t felt that. It had been a hallucination. Something brought on by lack of sleep and stress. Stepping forward, he leaned in and studied the area where his palm had rested.
The outlines of his fingers were there in the skin, faint and fading but there.