Caleb turned his head away. He"s pushed his body like this for a decade, Shane thought. He knows what to do. But then he gazed at his brother"s body and thought, maybe he has no idea.
He sat on a stained chair and attempted the conjuring of memories which might bind Caleb to him. Fred"s Mariners obsession, the duck wallpaper in their kitchen, the time Potter ran into the woods for two days. When he mentioned Potter, Caleb smiled.
Then his phone rang, and Janelle"s voice, one of his favorite sounds on this earth, came to him in the cramped room.
"How is Caleb?"
"He"s a mess. But they"re taking care of him. How"s Lily?"
Janelle sighed. "She"s lying on a cot with an IV in her. It"s so hard to watch. She keeps saying "cay cay." June says that"s Caleb."
"What are the doctors saying?"
"So, one doctor said babies are resilient, she"s a little sunburned and a little sore, but she doesn"t need to be admitted. They were going to let us go. But a few minutes ago, this other younger doctor came in. She"s acting like we left Lily outside and went to a bar for a weekend. Her eyes," Janelle reported, "hold large quant.i.ties of anger."
"What"s her deal?"
Janelle"s voice was shaky. "She wants to know how she got this dehydrated. I said my brother-in-law got lost on a hike, I didn"t tell them it was a three-day run. June was right, they"d have called DCFS before I finished the sentence. She wants to do tests, but I don"t see how they have anything to do with being dehydrated."
"What tests?"
"She"s paging an eye doctor."
"Maybe she thinks her eyes got hurt in all that sun?"
"They want to x-ray her whole body."
Shane swallowed. "They what?" From over the phone, he heard Lily cry.
"What"s wrong?"
Shane touch Caleb"s shoulder. "You really took care of her. She"s fine."
Caleb"s eyes lightened.
"She"s just p.i.s.sed off." Janelle paused. "She"s awesome."
Doctor Ong opened the curtain, accompanied by an unshaven resident and a thick-muscled Latino orderly.
"So, we"re going to take him for his scans."
Caleb shook his head again. And then he swung his long legs over the side of the bed onto the linoleum floor. The resident gasped.
The orderly stepped forward, and Shane moved to block him; there was a second when violence seemed possible. Doctor Ong"s expression communicated an exasperation that Shane felt deeply sorry for.
"If you refuse treatment, we are not responsible for the result, do you understand?"
"Yes," Caleb replied weakly, holding out his IV. "Please take this out."
"I"ll need you to sign a doc.u.ment to that effect."
"Hey," Shane said softly to him, "you need to stay here."
"I"ll sign."
"Well then," the doctor said to no one in particular, "discharge him."
"Hey, no," Shane said again.
"I know what to do," Caleb told him gently. "Trust me."
Slowly, the nurse bent to Caleb"s arm and pulled out the plastic tubing of his IV line. No, Shane shook his head. He stepped outside to find Doctor Ong, the nurse, a hospital administrator, someone to stop this. Caleb dressed in what was left of his soiled clothes and limped out of the room. Moving past other green curtains, which hid other patients, he felt an obscene negative energy overtake him. He walked slowly back to the waiting area, his limbs shaking. Soon he would get his bath, more fluids, sleep. He decided it would be much better to wait for Shane outside, in the fresh air, under the healing sun.
He stepped through the hospital doors into the world. Caleb had never been in San Francis...o...b..fore; immediately he could feel the sea-level oxygen, as rich as cream. The texture of this air, damp and rough with salt, surprised him. It was so different from the mountains. Behind light clouds a golden sun was beating, he could feel it soaking into his skin. He felt sanguine and alive. He was here. He had made it.
Running alongside the Arthur Breed Freeway, from the end of the mountain range into Oakland, had been a fever dream; he was still unsure what had been real and what was delirium. Drunk with hypoglycemia, he had woven nearly into the street. And then the Bay Bridge had risen like the hull of a battleship to a man in the water, offering rescue. Caleb had limped up its bike ramp and onto the swaying steel. At its summit, he had stared out over the water at San Francisco. A hill there possessed a beacon which appeared as if it had been placed there for them. He had started walking across the bike lane, suspended over the boats of the bay. Suddenly he had smelled black chemical smoke, heard police sirens, screaming. He froze, reaching up to take Lily"s dangling feet. But then he had nodded, understanding; that had been another bridge, a different day. Now he was not running into chaos, but into safety.
In ultramarathons, Caleb was well aware, it was not uncommon to see runners collapsed within sight of the finish line. The agony on those runners" faces was one of the most horrible sights on earth.
And so Caleb had determined from the start never to visualize San Francisco as his finish line. He had focused only on an imaginary house called 122 Bay Street. And in the end, the moment he had seen that number on Shane"s door, his mind had a.s.sumed victory and his body had ceased to function.
Yet now he felt kinetic energy surging through his exhausted legs. A warm sun caressed his shoulders, this rich air filled his chest, his blood returned oxygen to his starving cells. And the IV fluids had done quite a bit of good, he realized. Caleb felt a smile spreading over his face. Not one he forced on, not a Happy Trails smile, but a natural, primal joy with roots deep inside of him. In the distance he noticed a patch of blue water. The bay, he thought. He crossed the street, read a street sign for Ocean Beach. Oh, he whispered.
Caleb had not stood on sand nor seen the ocean in twelve years. After all this time in the mountains, it would be wise, he knew, to feel the bottom of the continent.
As he walked downhill toward the beach, he missed the weight of Lily against his shoulders. He felt a melancholy, which was alleviated when he considered how soon he would see her. He believed he loved her as much as it was possible in the world.
Caleb walked slowly down to the waves. He felt the power of their energy immediately. As he stepped on the rocky sand, he could feel it washing his body clean. Now his pain was different; it was not a tearing, but a rejoining, of his tissues, of his cells. Even the cool salt air against his raw skin didn"t hurt. All of that was behind him. He was connecting with something completely different now.
And then, instinctively, because it knew no other way, his body lurched forward, and he began to run. He broke Mack"s rigid form. His spine was not straight, he landed on his heels, his face was turned up to the sun. He was looking out at the magnificent endless ocean, and, he laughed, his breath actually was blending with the air, he really was smiling with the sky. These were no longer just words, but facts.
As he moved he could feel the world melding with his molecules, there was no division between them any longer, no s.p.a.ce at all, and so when he fell, and was distantly aware of the sand scratching against his knees, the salt.w.a.ter filling his mouth, even while his body thrashed, he was still running.
8.
He thought he might never stop sobbing. If it weren"t for Janelle, he might never have left the hospital.
Shane moved through hours and days, met with whomever they had to meet, arranged for transport and accounting, worked with Fred over the phone on details. A mist followed them up to Washington. Staring out the airplane window holding Nicholas"s small hand, Shane traced its long winding trail along the coastline. At the airport he introduced June and Lily to Fred and Julie, but they were all too overwhelmed to make much of an effort. All weekend, Fred maintained a stoicism that Shane believed could be punctured by a pa.s.sing breeze. His mother, Julie, sat on the sofa, or on her bed, staring at nothing, and it made his heart break. No matter how many times he put his arm around her, tried to get her to speak, she gave only the most minimal response.
June held Lily at all times. She did not sleep. He could hear her at night, pacing downstairs. A house of zombies, Shane saw. That was what he had brought back from San Francisco.
June made a quiet plea for the scattering of his ashes along the trails that he had loved, but Shane shook his head.
"That"s not going to happen."
"It"s what he wants," she insisted.
"I know. But my mother wants him near her."
"He should be in Boulder, looking at the mountains."
"They think Boulder killed him."
June looked as if she had been slapped. "Boulder saved him. He told me, so many times."
"I know what killed him."
The service was small; Caleb had not stayed in touch with anyone here, and so Fred and Julie"s friends had made up the majority of the guests. They stayed in Issaquah for three days, during which June fielded repet.i.tive questions about Caleb"s recent life. Fred and Julie eventually believed her when she explained that Caleb had been happy. If you could have seen him, she told them. But that had been the wrong thing to say.
And then, exhausted and with Nicholas showing symptoms of a cold, they flew back home.
The following morning, with no job to go to, Shane sat on the white couch. He was supposed to be watching the babies play on the rug, but his thoughts were far away. He had told June that he knew what killed Caleb. And it was true. It had been him.
By dangling a drug for Lily like bait, compelling him across mountains and heat, he had forced him to run himself to death.
And for what? Over time, Mack"s healing might have begun working on Lily. Once she was old enough to raise her own kinetic energy levels, her body might have corrected itself. And she would have been raised in the Happy Trails Running Club.
She would have begun eating and running like them as soon as she was able. The people in that house might be exhausted, brainwashed into a cult of personality around Mack, might never be senior partners in a law firm, but they never worried about layoffs or what was in their food or what their houses were worth. They knew extreme physical pain, but they were taught to beat it. They were fulfilled and secure. They bathed in a boundless energy, enjoyed a connection to this world that Shane could barely conceive. Was this really something to take a child away from?
And if his drug worked? Then Lily would grow into some version of an American girl. She would not be taught to overcome suffering, but to indulge it. She would ignore the shimmering gra.s.s on her way to school, focused instead on what a cla.s.smate had posted online. She would exchange the power of kinetic energy for the stasis of car seats and couches. Walking along a street she would stare down at her phone, not ahead at the sky.
Had he helped her, or hurt her, by bringing her here, and taking away a man who loved her? What was the truth of that?
He heard Lily"s wheezing from the floor, watched the stretching and reaching of her upper body for every breath. The idea of sitting on the vials in the refrigerator was beginning to derange him.
It took some ha.s.sle with the Greenbrae Medical a.s.sociates nurse to get Wenceslas to the phone. He was with a patient, his nurse explained. Finally he got on, sounding concerned. After some prodding, he agreed to stop by on his way home. Shane hung up, but did not move. The day pa.s.sed slowly. There were some e-mails from Brad Whitmore recommending a labor attorney, but he did not act on them.
Shane ordered a dinner that he thought June might eat, vegetarian rolls, brown rice, tofu. He had been wrong; she would not touch any of it except the rice. At seven, the buzzer rang, and he opened the door to Wenceslas Chin.
"Hey, guys." Wenceslas"s voice was a blend of lightheartedness and concern. "What"s going on?"
He stood stout in his black suit and round gla.s.ses, a folded umbrella between his palms. Janelle handed him a peppery Shiraz and led him to the white sofa. As Shane told him everything, his face grew pale.
"He ran here from Yosemite?"
"Two hundred miles."
Janelle added, "Somehow he kept Lily safe the whole time."
"Who"s Lily?"
"He had," Shane explained softly, "a baby with him."
Shane led him to the kitchen, where June was feeding the children. Nicholas sat in his high chair, Lily in the spare. Wenceslas looked at the strawberry blonde girl as she happily held a plastic cup.
"That wheeze, that"s what you mean?"
Shane nodded.
Janelle spoke. "At the hospital they made us see an eye doctor. And they x-rayed her whole body."
"They were looking for abuse. In many abused babies, retinal hematomas are present. When they"re shaken, or hit, damage is sustained behind the eye. The x-rays are to look for previous fractures."
"They didn"t find anything."
"Why would they?" June asked her, shocked.
Wenceslas gestured to Shane, and they stepped out of the room. "Tell me about this drug."
Shane answered his science questions as best as he could. He tried to recall its precise enzymes, described the thrill of being allowed to look through the microscope at raw genetic matter, the building blocks of all. Wenceslas listened to him with a professional impa.s.sivity, but a clearly growing excitement soon revealed itself.
"You did what?" he asked several times.
When Shane was done, Wenceslas stared at him for a full minute.
"So it"s in your refrigerator now?"
"Want to see it?"
Shane went back to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and returned with one of the small vials. Wenceslas held it up to the lamp, as if attempting to divine its calibrations. He shut his eyes for a moment. Then he looked seriously at Shane.
"I can"t let you give this to this baby."
Shane froze. "Sorry?"
"If you"re really planning to administer this, I have to call Social Services."
"Oh, Wen. Don"t."
"I don"t have any idea what"s in here."
"It"s been tested. I told you. It might not work, but it won"t hurt her. It"s safe."
"They say Tylenol is safe, and it kills babies all the time."
Shane panicked. "Let me call Doctor Acharn. Let me just get him on the phone with you. I told him you"re coming. He knew you"d have concerns. He can answer your questions. Okay?"
He had his phone in his hand a second later.