A Thousand Steps

44

Julie is out of the overdose room in the ICU and has her own ocean-view room on floor four. She lies painfully — it looks to Matt — with her right, full-cast leg raised on pillows, arms at her sides, palms to the mattress as if bracing herself.

It’s early but Bruce has talked his way past the nurse’s station with his story of having been married to their patient for the happiest days of his life, then driven thousands of miles to see her.

“Good morning, sunshine,” says Bruce, a greeting that Matt remembers his mother rolling her eyes at when she’d come into the kitchen for coffee in the bomb shelter house.

She shakes her head. “Not you again. Hi Mattie. You’re growing every day.”

Matt holds up the hospital gift-shop flowers, extravagantly expensive but cheerful. Daisies and carnations. He’s drawn a nice little sketch of his mom from an old picture of her with Gus, the family dog, and written “Get Well, Mom!” on it.

Julie’s smile turns to a wince.

“The ribs,” she says.

“Julie,” says Bruce, “is there anything in the world I can do for you?”

“Find your daughter.”

“I certainly will.”

“Then uncrack my ribs and heal my leg.”

“I would if I could. They have terrific painkillers.”

“No, thank you. I’m going to stay off those things.”

“Atta-girl. You’re getting stronger. I can see it.”

“When I sit up it feels like my ribs are cracking all over again. I can’t look for Jazz. I can’t put up posters or nag the cops at the station. I can’t earn money to pay that PI. I’m burning up the hospital phone, trying to get the FBI and the Los Angeles Times to believe my daughter has been kidnapped.”

Matt sees her strength returning too. She’s got clear steady eyes now, not the dreamy dragon ball glaze she had before. And good color on her face too, must be from the Summer of Eternal Love.

He sets the flowers on the table and touches her forehead. Thinks of her on Sunday in her periwinkle prairie dress in free fall. He hates to see it again, that awful pirouette-jump-slip-fall down into the boulders.

“Such a sweetie, Matt. You’re my man.”

Which draws her a blank look from Bruce.

“Bruce,” says Julie. “Can you tell me exactly what you’re doing here? You still haven’t answered me.”

Bruce steps closer to the bed, Stetson in hand, a white shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, new-looking Wranglers.

“I tried to tell you yesterday but you were kind of out of it,” he drawls softly.

“I’m not out of it now.”

Matt moves for the door but Bruce stops him.

“Julie, I came back to find Jasmine. Matt and I can do it, of that I am confident. But I’ll be honest with you — as I was driving here, I realized I wanted to see you again. Very strongly and honestly and without expectations. You. I’ve had this feeling for some years but I kept it inside because of all the damage I did to you and the kids. I told myself it was not my privilege to see you again.”

“But driving out here you wanted to see me why?”

“I’d realized my desire to return to you and this family. To begin the long, long trail back to being worthy of you all. I’m sorry to just spring it on you like this. I wanted to wait until we found Jazz.”

“You can’t keep a job, a long string of girlfriends dumps you, and now you’re ready to try me again? I read your letters home to the children. I wanted to burn them. Bruce, do you know how pathetic you are?”

“Yes, truly.” He sighs, turning the Stetson in his hands.

“Truly, Bruce, you should be taken out and shot.”

“Are you certain?”

“You’re not funny.”

“But if that’s your decision, to have me shot, then...”

“I see nothing in the future with you. If you want to come back to this town you say you hate, I can’t prevent you. But I hope you can be something like a real father to your children.”

“I will insist on it.”

“I’ll have nothing to do with you.”

“I rented your house on Third Street,” says Bruce. “I’ll vacate immediately whenever you want it back. Whenever that might be.”

“No, we don’t want it, thank you. Matt, Jasmine, Kyle, and I will all be living in Dodge City. Where you’re certainly not welcome. You’d hate it anyway.”

“I sure would.”

Julie stares at Bruce a long beat. Matt can see her naturally good heart battling it out with her anger at a man she once loved. Matt does not ever want a divorce. Maybe not even a marriage.

“Out damn’d spot! out I say!”

“You still make me laugh, Julie.”

“I can’t laugh ’cause the ribs. They got me on anticonvulsants, too.”

Dr. Caroline Hoppe is making early rounds and she stops Matt and his father at the nurse’s station across from Julie’s room.

“She suffered a grand mal seizure yesterday,” says the neurologist. “Followed by two petite mals, so I’ve put her on strong doses of Dilantin and Tegretol. With no history of epilepsy, I suspect the seizures were brought on by the lysergic acid she ingested at the festival on Sunday. She told me she drank some orange juice that was being passed around by a young man. He had an orange airbrushed face, an Uncle Sam hat, and Stars and Stripes shorts. He said the juice was nectar from the gods. She said she was already feeling very strange before eating the corner of the invitation — bright tracers in her vision and geometric shapes floating around her. The seizures may prove temporary, but they could prove to be part of her future. We’ll discontinue the anticonvulsants for a week and see if she seizes again. I can send her home tomorrow if someone can be with her during her waking hours. A grand mal seizure can be very dangerous. There are hospital volunteers who can come by.”

Matt stretches his imagination for a way to take care of his mother.

“I can’t be with her all day, every day,” he says. “I have my paper route and my sister to find.”

“I can fill in around you,” Bruce says eagerly. “Happy to.”

Something gut-level, protective and suspicious, jumps up in Matt. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad.”

Julie’s voice rings from her room:

“That’s not going to happen!”

Bruce manages an embarrassed smile.

“We can keep her another day or two,” says the doctor.