But eventually, by Christmas, say, his immune system would have reestablished itself, and he could have gone out in public, resuming a normal life. In time, a brace would have been implanted in his chest to compensate for his missing ribs. Because he’d lost a third of his right lung, he’d have been short of breath on occasion but not enough to incapacitate him. A small price to pay for having survived.
Of course, he’d always have suffered the fear that his cancer had not been cured, that one day the tumor and its excruciating pain would return, but as the autopsy of David’s nightmare indicated, no trace of malignancy was discovered. The devastating chemotherapy-possible only because of the bone marrow transplant-had been effective. The alien that Matt so loathed and wanted killed had been defeated.
Now, because Matt’s septic shock had been averted, David’s eerie déjà vu was restricted only to the no longer ironic increase of Matt’s white blood count. Matt’s vital signs remained at a normal level. His appetite increased. His only complaint was that he couldn’t wait to go home.
“We’d like that, too,” a doctor said, “but after what happened on Friday, we want to be cautious. It’s been a week now, Matt. You’re doing fine. I think by Sunday, if you can be patient two more days, you’ll be on your way.”
Matthew raised his thumb in a victory signal.
David felt so elated he didn’t care about the indignant looks a few doctors still directed toward him and the legal problems he’d be facing for having interfered with medical procedure. Yes, the hospital attorney had been called, but David didn’t object. After all, parents can’t be allowed to behave as if they’re licensed to practice medicine.
Under normal circumstances anyhow. But since his nightmare, since David had awakened on his kitchen floor, nothing in his experience had been normal. His dizziness remained, though his heartbeat and breath rate were under control. His dizziness was more like floating, and periodically, when he closed his eyes, he still saw fireflies. At unusual moments, he’d turn toward Matthew’s radio to reduce its volume, only to realize the switch was off, and yet he heard power chords. He and Donna continued to exchange what he felt were uncanny knowing glances, as if she understood the miracle that had happened and didn’t dare break a spell by referring to it.
A spell. Precisely. David felt he was under a spell. None of what had happened-his panic attack, his struggle to convince the doctors, his 3:00 A.M. injection of Vancomycin, Matthew’s recovery-none of it seemed real. He couldn’t believe his luck. But he kept seeing fireflies. He kept hearing power chords. The need to stay close to Matthew became an obsession.
“Your son’s doing fine,” a doctor said. “Go home for a couple of hours. Get some rest.”
“I’ll go home when my son does.”
The doctor frowned at David’s haggard features.
“Hey, I’m okay,” David said. “I’m just so glad he’s alive I want to be near him. To… it’s hard to explain… enjoy him.”
“You explained it perfectly.”
“Once he’s home, I’ll sleep for two days.”
“You deserve it.”
“So do my wife and daughter. None of us could have survived this without each other.”
“All of us give you credit.”
“No, Matthew deserves the credit. I don’t know how he stayed so brave.”
Then Saturday came.
21
Saturday. The day, in David’s nightmare, when Matthew died in Intensive Care. David’s dizziness made him feel that his feet floated off the floor. The fireflies brightened. The power chords intensified.
I’m losing my mind, David thought. That has to be it. I can’t imagine another explanation. I’m cracking up from relief after six months of hell. But if David was cracking up, why, despite his sense of floating, did his thoughts seem so clear?
Something was wrong. From all appearances, not with Matthew. But logically. Something was wrong.
Okay, let’s assume I fainted from running when I shouldn’t have, when the temperature was too high, David thought. So I fell on the kitchen floor, had a nightmare that Matt would die, and woke up with the certainty I could save him because I knew exactly when and what would kill him. Does that make sense? Do you believe in precognition?
I’ve never believed… No, put it another way. I’ve never experienced it before.
A phone call you felt would come, and then it did?
On occasion. Coincidence.
But you did save Matthew’s life. When the lab tests came back, they said his infection was due to strep and staph, and only Vancomycin-not the other two antibiotics you could have given-would have been effective against those bacteria.
Coincidence.
You don’t believe that.
No, you’re right. I don’t believe that. I knew more than I could have.
Then what’s your explanation?
As David’s sense of floating increased, and the fireflies brightened, and the power chords nearly deafened him, he repeated, I’m going crazy! Or…
Yes, or?
Or I really am…!
Think it!
Dying forty years from now! And if I believe that, I belong in the Psychiatric Ward!
But if you did come back?
I won’t consider it.
But if…? There’s a logical problem, right?
Yeah, a massive logical problem. I can’t be in two places at the same time. If somehow I came back to change the past, then the future has to be changed as well. And I can’t be dying forty years from now.
Then you either had a nightmare.
Or I’m dying in the…
Future? You mean the present, remembering the past, wishing with all your heart you could…
Change it?
But the past can’t be changed. And on schedule, at 9:25 P.M. on Saturday, June 27, 1987…
A chunk of debris from the dead staph and strep collected in Matthew’s heart, plugged a major artery, and caused cardiac arrest.
It happened in an instant. The monitors attached to Matthew wailed. Sudden straight lines and zero readings.
And David’s heart succumbed to its minor imperfection, the electrical blockage that had never bothered him. Till now. In the future. Which is to say, the present.
How long is an instant in eternity? Could it last ten earthly days?
David, who’d been hovering in the brilliant doorway, abruptly shot forward, at last released, finally at peace, no longer tortured by the greatest grief of his life.
His wife’s fatal stroke in late age he could understand, though he missed her fiercely.
But his son’s death at fifteen, his dear unlucky wonderful son, who embodied optimism, who exuded good nature, who believed in being useful and could have contributed so much to a troubled world…
That death David had never adjusted to.
Until now. After forty years. At the instant of David’s own death. With a vague sense of his beloved daughter weeping over his corpse, David rocketed through the radiant doorway. It seemed he’d been held in suspension, not for a microsecond but for agonizing days, until whatever held him back suddenly snapped and long-accumulating thrust him toward the mystery.
Toward fireflies and power chords.
Toward one of the fireflies rushing to greet him.
“Dad!”
The word was soundless.
Just as their loving embrace-so long postponed-was bodiless.
But David had no doubt…