He countered Michael’s question with one of his own. “What does Maggie think of you being on a first-name basis with all of these pretty nurses?” Jack asked with a glimmer in his eye.
“My wife knows that she is the only woman for me. I remind her of that daily,” he smirked.
“I always knew you were a smart boy.”
“So how are you today, Dad?”
Michael’s expression—– what Jack liked to call his ‘Marcus Welby mask’ -—gave nothing away, but the concern in his eyes was plain enough.
“Why not just come out and say what’s on your mind, son? I didn’t raise you to tap dance, and I’m too damn tired and sore for it.”
Michael pulled a chair up close to his bedside and sat down. When he spoke, it was with carefully chosen words and a far-too-even tone. “Having something like this happen can affect more than your body. It can mess with your mind as well.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “Boy,” he began in warning, his tone low, “stop right there.” He’d been through a hell of a lot worse than a heart attack, and he’d be damned if he was going to start talking about his feelings. “I had a heart attack, just like thousands of other people do every day. You fixed it, end of story.”
To his credit, Michael dropped his eyes, just like he did when he was a young lad. But he was far from dropping the subject. “Is it?” he said softly. “When you were out of it, you were talking, you know. To Mom.”
His sons might have gotten his brawn, but they’d definitely inherited their mother’s tenacity. Jack peeled him with a steely glaze. “That’s what this is about? Me mumbling incoherently when you’ve got me pumped up on God-knows-what?”
“You spoke as if you could see her.”
“Not a day goes by I don’t see your mother,” Jack told him, pointing to his head, “up here. And not a day goes by I don’t talk to her, either. That’s been true for almost twenty-five years, ever since the day she passed. Your mother was, and continues to be, the love of my life. If you think that ended when she died...” he paused, swallowing down the painful ache he still got every time he thought of that day, “then you don’t understand shite.”
A swell of emotion rose up within him; Jack sank back into the pillow and closed his eyes. He hadn’t cried in front of his boys since they lowered Kathleen’s casket into the ground, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to suggest - ”
Jack waved him off with a wave of his hand. “Go on then. Go tend to someone who needs you. I’m tired.”
It took a few moments, but he finally heard a sigh and the near-silent scrape of the chair as Michael returned it to its previous position. “All right, Dad. I’ll check in on you later.”
Jack grunted.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Jack,” a familiar feminine voice said. “He’s worried about you.”
Jack opened his eyes to find Kathleen sitting on the edge of his hospital bed. It wasn’t nearly as much of a shock as it might have been. He’d been feeling her presence for a few weeks now, and sensed she was the one behind his dreams. This was probably a dream, too, or the result of the medication, but he didn’t care.
He sighed. “I know. They all are. Except now they suspect I’ve gone off the deep end.” She chuckled softly at that, and the sound sent ribbons of warmth through him. How he missed her laugh.
“Are you real, Kathleen? Or just the creation of a desperate man’s mind?”
“Does it matter?” she asked softly.
Did it? No, he realized, not really. If she wasn’t real, and his mind was simply conjuring these images of her, then so be it. He’d take her any way he could get her. “No.”
His answer pleased her, because she gifted him with a smile. Just like it had all those years ago, it soothed his soul and eased his pain.
“Good. Then close your eyes, Jack, and keep remembering. We were just about to get married, I think.”
“Aye,” he agreed with a smile. “And have our first big fight as well.”
––––––––
March 1975
Pine Ridge
“Have you told Kathleen about buying the bar yet?” Brian asked, adjusting Jack’s tie. Standing in the small room near the front of the church, they waited for the opening notes of the wedding march. It was just the two of them; Jack and Kathleen had wanted to keep things small and simple, and that included the wedding party. Brian was standing up for Jack as his best man; Kathleen had her sister Erin as matron of honor.
“Not yet. I want it to be a surprise.”
Brian cocked a doubtful eye his way. “You sure that’s smart?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because your bride expects to spend her wedding night in a honeymoon suite in the Poconos, and not in a dilapidated pub?”