“How are we doing this morning?”
Was it morning? The shades had been drawn since I’d been wheeled-in from the ER, lest the light aggravate my concussion. Not the least of my injuries. Just one of many. I had trouble remembering the exact list. This much I knew…
My left cheekbone felt like it was caved-in. My right ribs were badly bruised. Two on the left were fractured. My left knee was unable to bend. My left eyelid and my entire lower lip were grossly swollen. All my limbs felt vaguely numb. I’d lost a tooth. I was pissing blood.
“Awesome,” I said, softly.
“Awesome as in ‘that’s an awesome hamburger’?” Nurse Mary Beth Williams asked in a gentle voice, checking my IV bag. “Or awesome as in standing mute in the face of God?”
According to Nurse Williams, positive thoughts opened a direct line to Jesus. Negative thoughts planted a “shop here” sign for Satan.
“I can never find the mute button,” I said, watching her change the bag. “What day is it?”
“Tuesday.”
I’d been laid-up for four days and counting. Nurse Williams checked my temperature.
“Thank you,” I said when she’d finished. “You’re very kind.”
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb,” Nurse Williams, checking my blood pressure. “Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”
“Proverbs.”
“Why Mr. Smith,” she said, using my cover name. “There are more strings to your bow than David’s harp.”
“Let the words of our mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight.”
“Psalms 19.”
“The Melodians.”
“One twenty over eighty. Are you ready for lunch?”
“I’m ready for a Wimpy Skippy special.”
“Sorry Honey. We don’t carry that brand of peanut butter.”
I didn’t think bad guys were scouring Miami hospitals for a patient pining for Caserta’s spinach pie with black olives, cheese and pepperoni, but mentioning it was a mistake. I shared the FBI’s assumption that Salazar would jump at another chance to lop off a branch of the Canali family tree.
Mother. Art dealing, money-laundering, Providence-born Elizabeth Canali was missing, presumed dead. No doubt after suffering the inhuman torture for which Salazar’s soldiers were famous.
The DEA’s assault had removed three of the drug lord’s men from the land of the living. But not the man himself, who’d somehow managed to escape his soldiers’ fatal finale.
“You want the TV on?”
I shook my head. Movement, light and sound were not my friends. I lay silently in the darkened hospital room, trying not to move, losing track of time, slipping in and out of consciousness…
I dreamed Veronica and I were teenagers riding a chairlift. My high school sweetheart wore her dark blue puffer jacket with silver duct-tape patches and a swoosh-branded headband.
I tapped my skis, loosening the snow sticking to my bindings. I watched pieces cartwheel into the void.
“Death isn’t the greatest loss,” Veronica said.
“What’s that then?”
“It’s what dies inside while you’re alive.”
Veronica warmed one of my cold hand between hers. I shivered and opened my eyes.
Lisa was sitting by my hospital bed dressed in black jeans and a white crop top, holding my hand. Even in the dim light, her red hair was painfully luminous. Her distressed expression made me glad there wasn’t a mirror in view.
“It’s worse than it looks,” I joked by way of greeting.
Lisa said nothing. Her expression was grim. She was trying to get up the courage to tell me something.
The only thing worse than terrible news: the agonizing pause before it’s delivered. Tears welling-up in your messenger’s eyes.
“Mia died in childbirth,” Lisa said, her hand tightening on mine. “Cristina too.”
It took me a good minute – make that an endless, horrible minute – to comprehend what I’d heard. To even begin to understand the implications.
“Wrong,” I said, my voice flat.
“I’m so sorry John.”
Tears began cascading down Lisa’s cheeks. They reminded me of the raindrops trickling down Mother’s car window as she drove me to the hospital, back when I was a defenseless child.
“John Steinbeck was wrong,” I clarified, shaking my head numbly.
Lisa looked confused as she wiped her eyes.
“It's darker when a light goes out than if it had never shone.”
I didn’t have the energy or the words to explain.
Cristina lived both inside Mia and my imagination. Occupying a lush landscape of hopes and dreams. Her hopes and dreams. Her successes and failures. Delights and disappointments. Triumphs and, yes, tragedies.
In my imagination, Cristina shaped her life with her father’s love deep in her heart, with me by her side – or in the background – guiding her journey from forceps to stone. Even as I finished his own journey before her. Before her. I was supposed to die first.
Instead, Cristina never even lived. Never would live. Not in this world.
Her life-not-lived had become a ghost town in the middle an empty desert. Where I was trapped, destined to spend the rest of my life searching for the daughter I’d never find. Never know.
In my growing, mind-blowing grief for Cristina, I spared a thought for her mother.
I’d hoped and schemed to save Mia from her sins. At the very least, I was determined to extricate our daughter from the inevitable reckoning, straightening the course of the Sportcatello genetic line. Giving Mia a shot at redemption.
Not that Mia would see it that way.
I almost laughed. Steinbeck wasn’t wrong. Not about Mia. Nor was Lao Tzu, who said the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. At her best, at her worst, Mia was incandescent.
St. Peter would be throughly unimpressed. Appalled, in fact. But he’d never flirted with Mia, cuddled with Mia, laughed with her, felt his baby growing inside her. And I hadn’t been there to say goodbye to Mia or Cristina.
I couldn’t cry. So I placed an hand on Lisa’s cheek and felt her tears. Lisa pressed her freckled face into my palm and kissed it.
“Mother’s dead,” I said, willing myself to change to the admittedly less painful event.
“No John. Her jet landed in Providence yesterday.”
“What?”
“Your mother’s fine. Well, alive.”
“So that’s why Schneider said ‘no need’.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When I asked them to rescue Mother,” I explained. “Fuck,” I added, collapsing into the bed.
“This is going to take time,” Lisa said, heading to the sink for a towel.
I didn’t wish Mother dead – at least not since I was a teenager. But what was God thinking? How could He reconcile Mother’s ongoing evil and Cristina’s eternal exile. How did it suit His plan?
I couldn’t help it. I felt abandoned. Betrayed. Angry. Alone. But I wasn’t alone.
Lisa Hoffman was there, taking her place by a badly beaten bereaved man nearing retirement. The beautiful woman whose love of music, art and living things nourished my soul. Who showed-up for me in my darkest hour. Who loved me.
Lisa lay a cold cloth across my forehead. As much as I loved her, as much as that love kept me from drowning in a dark, empty sea, I silently wished it was Novikov’s hand sending me to Bailey’s Beach.
I longed to sit on warm silky sand in front of sparking blue waters, tasting the salty breeze and staring out at an endless horizon…
If I were my main character, I'd be PISSED. I can almost hear JC singing "why torture me?" from Elvis' Suspicion (not Suspicious Minds): https://youtu.be/m5iRZidRn9A?si=spjxgWXMSOdLRVXK .
The answer will surprise you. Promise.