“I know.” Anton’s voice was soft, serious.
He’d had to say it. Even though Anton knew. Even though it was implied. Because it was like a wedding vow—something to be said out loud. Till death do us part.
TWO DAYS LATER, he broke his vow to protect Anton against all harm. Anton had a soccer match on Saturday afternoon, and David and Dee sat in the bleachers, along with the other parents and grandparents. Several people had drifted up to the Colemans before the match began, to offer their congratulations. “I can’t believe how news spreads,” David muttered to Delores. “It’s like we still have a town crier.” She squeezed his hand and nodded.
David was wiggling his fingers at a toddler in the row ahead of them when it happened. Even though he missed the sight of Anton running directly into the other player, he heard the sound, followed by the “Ooooh” of the crowd. By the time David’s head snapped back to look, Anton was lying on the field, his legs splayed. Beside David, Delores screamed. But David was already up, running down the bleachers and onto the field. When he reached Anton, the blank look in the boy’s eyes made him want to retch. “Call for an ambulance,” he yelled at the coach. “Now.”
They wouldn’t let him ride with Anton in the back of the ambulance, so he rode in the front, next to the driver. Delores followed in their car. Every few minutes David would slide open the panel that allowed him a small window into the body of the ambulance, and he would talk to the silent boy, telling him that he was with him, reassuring him that he would be fine. He fought the urge to ask the young kid driving the ambulance to step on it, knowing that he was doing the best he could.
The news at the hospital was somber but not grim. Anton had a concussion as a result of the blow to his head. An MRI ruled out a brain bleed or a cracked skull. He would most likely be okay, the doctor said, but they’d keep him in the observation unit of the ER until the next day.
“I’m spending the night with him,” David told Delores.
“You better ask,” she whispered. “It’s not like Anton has a private room. You don’t want to get in their way.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m not asking them anything. I’m staying, even if I have to stand all night.”
In the end, they gave him a chair next to Anton’s bed. He lowered his lanky frame into it, caring about nothing but the fact that he would be there when Anton woke up. Already the boy had a shiner around his right eye.
He had just dozed off when he heard Anton yell in his sleep. David eyed the clock. Three A.M. He gazed at the boy, willing himself back to sleep, but Anton had his eyes open, staring wildly around him. “Hey, hey, buddy,” David said, squeezing the boy’s hand. “I’m here, okay? I’m right beside you.”
For one awful moment, Anton looked as if he failed to recognize the man next to him. Then he said, “Is Mom here?”
“No, baby. She’s home. But she’ll come if you need her.”
“No. That’s okay. Do I have cancer?”
“No. What?”
“This is a hospital, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So I have cancer?”
“Anton. No. You have a concussion.”
“Is that like cancer?”
David stared at his son. “No. You hit your head. You ran into another player during the soccer match today. Remember?”
Anton scrunched up his face, trying. “I don’t. I can’t remember.” There was a film of sweat on his upper lip. “My head hurts,” he said.
David pressed the nurse’s button. “Okay. Just try and relax, okay, buddy? You just have a little bump on your head. Everything’s fine. We’re gonna give you something for the headache, okay?”
They were both quiet as they waited in the dark for the nurse to show. “Dad,” Anton said, and David felt the word in his chest like a lit match. “I’m scared.”
The tenderness in David’s chest felt liquid, like milk, like honey, like something melting. He got up and carefully put his arm around the sleeping boy. “Don’t be,” he said gruffly. “There’s no reason to be. Your daddy’s here with you.”
He felt Anton relax in his arms. He looked up, willing the nurse to come so he could ask her for pain meds, but also taking in this moment, this dark, this silence, this warm body relaxing into his strong arms. I could kill for this boy, he thought, I could wage wars, burn down villages, protect him with my dying breath. After James, he had never expected to feel this fierce a love again, this love that hissed and roiled and rattled in his chest.
The nurse gave Anton a children’s Tylenol. After she left, David asked, “Do you know you have a black eye?”
Anton smiled, as David knew he would. “I do? Cool.”
“Yeah, you look like a pirate.”
“Oh boy. Can I see?”
“Tomorrow. When I can get you a mirror, okay?”
“What time are we going home?”
“I don’t know, bud. Let’s see what the doctor says.” And then, compulsively, as if flicking his tongue over a sore tooth, “You don’t remember anything about the game today?”
Anton blinked. “No.”
“Okay.” He ran his hand lightly over Anton’s hair. “You try and sleep, buddy.”
“Where are you gonna sleep?”
“Me? Right here. Beside you.”
“But there’s no bed.”
“That’s okay. Go on. Get some rest.”
Anton closed his eyes and David sat in his chair, sleepy but alert, awaiting the dawn that he knew was surely around the corner.
BOOK TWO
September 2001
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was a movie. An epic disaster movie, like those 1970s chestnuts such as The Towering Inferno that his dad and mom sometimes watched on the old VCR. Plumes of smoke, burning buildings, the terrified people on the street running toward the camera, their eyes wide open with fear, covering their mouths from inhaling the smoke that already bore the hoofprint of death and the smell of flesh burning to a crisp. Even worse than the black plumes of smoke that rose like the wrath of God was the apocalyptic white snow-ash that fell on everything, portending a new world order. The white ash took every American metaphor—“pure as the driven snow,”—and turned it on its head, made it something sinister and ugly. A new world had arrived, delivered to their doorstep by CNN.