“It’s degenerative. Aphasia.” He smiled dryly. “That word I can’t forget.”
“Oh.” She felt it like the blow it was. “I’m so sorry, Jerry.”
“There’s more to life than memory. So they tell me.”
“There’s the present moment.”
“Yes.”
“Memory can be a curse,” she said. She was thinking of herself, of Noah.
“It is what it is.”
Silence.
“Maybe I will go, then.” He put his hands on his knees, as if willing himself to stand.
“Actually … Can you stay a few more minutes?” There was no way to keep the need from leaping out of her voice.
His eyes seemed silver in the bright fluorescent light. “All right.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I get you something?” he said. “A cup of coffee?”
She shook her head.
“Or if you’re hungry, I could go to the—I could—”
“Jerry?”
“Yes?” He looked—what was it he looked? For the first time, with her own desperation finally waning, she saw him as he was: how hard he had worked in his life, and with what courage; how tired he was now, and how deeply he felt he had failed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For … what you did for Noah.”
He nodded faintly. His eyes shimmered briefly and he closed them. He settled deeper into the chair, stretching his long legs out and to the side, so as not to block traffic in the hallway. She felt the tension flowing out of him, leaving his body and moving out into the air. He leaned his head back against the wall, next to hers, their hair almost but not quite brushing against each other’s.
He let out a soft exhalation. “You’re welcome.”
John McConnell, a retired New York City policeman working as a security guard, stopped at an electronics store after work one night in 1992. He saw two men robbing the store and pulled out his pistol. Another thief behind a counter began shooting at him. John tried to shoot back, and even after he fell, he got up and shot again. He was hit six times. One of the bullets entered his back and sliced through his left lung, his heart, and the main pulmonary artery, the blood vessel that takes blood from the right side of the heart to the lungs to receive oxygen. He was rushed to the hospital but did not survive.
John had been close to his family and had frequently told one of his daughters, Doreen, “No matter what, I’m always going to take care of you.” Five years after John died, Doreen gave birth to a son named William. William began passing out soon after he was born. Doctors diagnosed him with a condition called pulmonary valve atresia, in which the valve of the pulmonary artery has not adequately formed, so blood cannot travel through it to the lungs. In addition, one of the chambers of his heart, the right ventricle, had not formed properly as a result of the problem with the valve. He underwent several surgeries. Although he will need to take medication indefinitely, he has done quite well.
William had birth defects that were very similar to the fatal wounds suffered by his grandfather. In addition, when he became old enough to talk, he began talking about his grandfather’s life. One day when he was three years old, his mother was at home trying to work in her study when William kept acting up. Finally, she told him, “Sit down, or I’m going to spank you.” William replied, “Mom, when you were a little girl and I was your daddy, you were bad a lot of times, and I never hit you!” …
William talked about being his grandfather a number of times and discussed his death. He told his mother that several people were shooting during the incident when he was killed, and he asked a lot of questions about it.
One time, he said to his mother, “When you were a little girl and I was your daddy, what was my cat’s name?”
She responded, “You mean Maniac?”
“No, not that one,” William answered. “The white one.”
“Boston?” his mom asked.
“Yeah,” William responded. “I used to call him Boss, right?” That was correct. The family had two cats, named Maniac and Boston, and only John referred to the white one as Boss.
JIM B. TUCKER, M.D., LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Thirty-Seven
Bones don’t lie. That’s what the archaeologists say, and they’re right.