When I stop at the cemetery in the pouring rain, I don’t expect to see anyone there.
Let alone a small boy – a boy I know – in a black suit with his head bent and his knees drawn up, sitting under the tree as the lightning streaks through the sky.
He’s my neighbors’ kid. Well, my father’s neighbors’ kid. I don’t live in that house anymore.
My first thought is that he is lost; I don’t see his parents around. In fact, I don’t see anyone around. Then I spot a bicycle toward the far end of the dismal place. Must be his.
My second thought is that maybe he’s meeting someone here. A friend. Girlfriend? But a cemetery is an odd place to meet someone. Then again, I have no idea what kids are doing these days.
At last, I decide it doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business what he’s doing here. All alone, in the storm, with hunched shoulders.
I get out of my car, water beating down on me. When I walk through those gates, I have every intention of not caring and heading to the grave I came here to see. I have every intention of doing what I haven’t been able to do ever since I moved back from Boston a couple of days ago. I’m thinking today is the day I’ll do it.
But I pass by the grave I’m supposed to stop at. In fact, I don’t even pay attention to it. I keep walking.
My focus is the kid sitting under a tree.
I’ve only seen him once. Yesterday, when I stopped by the house because Beth said that the pipe in the upstairs bathroom was leaking and the plumber wouldn’t be there until tomorrow. I told her I’d fix it.
Although it wasn’t any of my business. What happens to that house, which looked to be in pretty bad shape – leaking roofs, broken stairs, loose floorboards – and the man living in it. Even the willow tree in the backyard looked like it was about to die.
The kid looks up as I approach, and I gauge his age to be twelve. His eyes are swollen; he’s been crying.
I clamp my jaw shut and tip my chin at him. “Hey.”
He sniffles and glares at me. “My mom said not to talk to strangers.”
I thrust my hands in my pockets and nod. “She tell you to sit under a tree during a thunderstorm, too?”
“No.” He shrugs. “I can do whatever I want. She’s not here to stop me.”
He looks away angrily, and I tell myself to move on. There’s nothing I can do here. He’s grieving, for whatever reason, and grief’s not something I can do much about.
Definitely not as a doctor. There’s even a thing called Bereavement Exclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Meaning, there’s a fuck ton of debate over diagnosing bereaved individuals.
Grief is not something I can fix – not medically. I should know for more reasons than one.
Still, I take a seat beside the boy.
“Where is she?” I look at the ocean of graves, resting my elbow on my upturned knee. “Your mom.”
He rips the drenched grass out of the ground and spits out, “Dead.”
I knew he was going to say something like that. But it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Death never gets easier. Duller, perhaps. The pain of losing someone. But it’s always there.
“How’d she die?” I ask, running my hands through my soaked hair.
The boy doesn’t say anything for a while. I don’t know if he’ll talk. I wouldn’t. I haven’t, even after nineteen years. I’ve buried it like these dead bodies.
“Cancer,” he says at last, in a small voice. But then it rises, matches volume with the storm around us. “The doctor said she’d be fine. He said he was gonna do everything.”
“And he didn’t?”
“No. It was a minor procedure. I looked it up. She was supposed to be better after surgery. But she never even made it out.” Ripping out the grass once more, he snaps, “Fucking moron.” Then, “Sorry. I know you’re a doctor.”
I raise my eyebrows at him.
“I was being a dick. I saw you yesterday. The first time I ever saw that house getting any visitors.” He shrugs sheepishly. “And heard you. You were talking about hospital and patient charts and cases or whatever. Didn’t mean to insult your kind, but I also kinda did. I’m Dean, by the way.”
I chuckle, despite myself – a dry sound – and rest my head against the tree trunk. “Simon. And I don’t mind. Doctors are morons, yes. They think they can save everyone. They have this God complex. They think they are heroes. They think the whole world depends on them. Like they aren’t capable of making mistakes.”
“Do you have a God complex?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“So, you’ve never made a mistake?” he asks with disbelief.
“No,” I lie, making him chuckle.
He rests his head against the tree. “I miss her.”
For some reason, I’m compelled to tell him, “Yeah. My mom died when I was fourteen.”
Dean spins his head toward me. “No way.”
I jerk out a shrug.
“What happened?”
I sigh, thinking about it.
What happened?
She was there one minute, and then, she was gone. I remember tucking her in for the night. I remember turning off the light and going back to my room.
There was a party one of my friends from school invited me to. I didn’t usually party. I never had the time to. Besides, I didn’t jell with most of the guys from my school. They kept away from me because they liked their faces and their big mouths, and I liked talking through my fists.
But that night, I was debating whether to go or not. I thought she’d looked good today. She’d been having a streak of good days so maybe I could go, blow off some steam.
But after that everything’s hazy.
I passed out in my bed and when morning came, for some strange reason, I was frantic. Anxious. I dashed to my mom’s bedroom and there she was. On the bed, the same way I’d left her. Only difference was that she wasn’t breathing.
“I can’t remember. All I remember is that a doctor was supposed to save her, but he didn’t,” I reply, hardly believing that I’m having a conversation about my mother with a twelve-year-old boy.
I haven’t talked about my mom with anyone in years.
“Were you pissed at him? The doctor,” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Did you do something about it?”
I think about not telling him, but maybe it will help in a small way, knowing someone else has felt the same. “Punched him in the face.”
I want to rip off the grass like Dean did. My hands tremble with the need. But I fist them and shove them in my pockets instead.
“Oh man, that’s awesome,” he says in awe. “I wish I could punch him too. But my dad wouldn’t be too happy about it.”
I wonder what his dad is thinking about right now. He must be freaking out. But I have a feeling if I point it out to his son next to me, this strangely rebellious boy is not going to like it.
“So, why’d you become a doctor?” he mutters after a moment.
“Because I wanted to be better than the man who killed my mother.” I look at the pouring sky. “I wanted to show him that I could do a better job than him. Save everyone.”
“Did you?”
Something moves in me. I can’t name it. Or rather, I don’t want to name it. Naming it would mean… it’s real.
I’ve failed. I’m like him, and I can’t deal with that.
I can’t deal with being like him.
“Yes. I did,” I lie again, and he smiles.
We sit in silence, after that.
“That your bike?” I point toward the red bike leaning against the brick wall.
“Yeah.”
“So what? You waiting for someone? Ran away? What?”
Dean narrows his eyes at me. “Are you gonna lecture me about the dangers of running away like a boring old man?”
This time my chuckle is louder, surprised; I can’t help it. “If you want to run away, kid, that’s your problem. Just don’t be stupid about it.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“Are you planning on going back?”
“Maybe.”
“Ah, so you’re just trying to kill your remaining parent.”
He swallows, looking guilty. “I’m not.”
I shake my head at him. “Look, either run away because you really mean it, or just don’t do it at all. Temper tantrums don’t look good on anyone.”
He glares at me for a few seconds and I want to laugh out loud.
Which is a feat in itself.
I wasn’t looking forward to today. I knew it was going to be excruciating, walking through the same hallways I’d visited as a child. I hated being at Heartstone. The smell, the walls. Nurses, techs. The patients.
Visiting Heartstone meant that my father wasn’t home, and my mother wanted him to be. So either she’d take me with her when she went to see him, or I’d go look for him in the hope that I could convince him to come home.
If it weren’t for Dr. Martin and his sudden heart attack, I wouldn’t be here. Even though back in Boston I was basically out of a job, coming home, walking through the doors of my father’s legacy, was never the plan.
But plans don’t always work out.
“I hated the funeral, okay?” Dean snaps, his eyes welling up again. “I hated staying back there. My dad wouldn’t say anything. My sister wouldn’t stop crying. I had to get away. Not that it’s any of your business.”
It’s not. He’s right.
By experience, I know that this isn’t the last time he’ll cry or run away. This isn’t the last time he’ll be angry. My body goes tight at the thought of all the times he’ll want to punch something or someone. All the times he’ll want to forget the pain of losing his parent by either being reckless or so fucking numb that even his veins would freeze over.
“Your sister. Is she younger than you?”
“Yes. Why?” he asks suspiciously.
“She likes balloons?”
“Yes.”
I nod, my body relaxing at having something to do. “Come on. I know a place where we can buy balloons.” I come to my feet, my clothes sticking to me; I fucking need a shower to wash this day off.
We walk to the car and I think, tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll come back and visit the grave. Tomorrow, I’ll tell her all about what happened at Mass General and why I came back when I promised I never would.
But then again, telling her would be admitting failure, admitting that I might be like my father – a fraud – and I already know that tomorrow will never come.
We get to the car and I load his bicycle in the back. Dean loves my car, if his oohs and ahs are anything to go by. It’s a Mercedes sl550 convertible. My father never drove a Mercedes. That was the only reason I bought it. To prove that I’ve got a better car than him.
I drive Dean to the store, where we buy a bunch of balloons. By the time I drop him off at the funeral home, the rain has stopped.
I help him with his balloons and bike. Fishing my card out of my pocket, I say, “Call me if you ever run into trouble.”
“Are you gonna stick around for a while?”
I look at the overcast sky, thrusting my hands inside my pockets. Back in Boston, I was supposed to be promoted. I was going to be the head of their psychiatry department. Youngest in their history. Until I stepped down.
I don’t know if there’s anything left for me in Boston. But I can’t stay here, either. Not in this town.
I can’t say that to this boy, though. No idea why. But I can’t take away his hope when he’s looking at me like that.
“I think so, yeah.”
He grins, ties the balloons to his bike and take off pedaling. I stay there until I see him walking through the door, and then drive off.
Not to the house though. To the hotel.
A couple of hours later, I’m fresh out of the shower and in bed. I’ve got patient charts to read before the upcoming meetings this week.
Opening my laptop, I log into the system. The words seem blurry, like I’m looking through a lens of water. I reach out and pluck the glasses lying on the nightstand. No matter how much I try to deny it, I do need glasses for reading now.
My eyes have gone weak. Like his.
I put the glasses on; the words on screen make sense. Crystal clear. I pull up the only chart I’m interested in, for some unfathomable reason.
Name: Willow Audrey Taylor.
Age: 18
The girl with the silver hair and a tattered book.
The girl who likes to make things up.