Rearview (9 page)

18

Constant stood on the other side of Fifth Avenue. Black suit, pale skin, dark hair. Even at that distance his eyes seemed to radiate, to glow electric blue. He smiled and reached into his coat pocket, retrieved something, and held it up to look at it. It was the pocket watch, the silver one with the number 7 engraved on the back. He tapped the watch two times, signifying time was up.

Dan stretched out his arm to slide up his sleeve and checked his watch. He still had twenty minutes.

This was wrong. Constant couldn't steal twenty minutes from him. He'd been promised seven hours—that was the deal.

Pulling away from Sue's grip and keeping his eyes on Constant, Dan said, “Wait here with the boys, okay? Don't go anywhere.”

Constant placed the watch back into his coat pocket and took a step back into the moving crowd.

Panic prickled the hair on Dan's arms. Constant couldn't just leave. There was a problem. Dan needed more time. Even twenty minutes wasn't enough, not nearly enough.

“Stay here, honey, okay?”

She took hold of Dan's arm again. “Is someone there?”

Constant moved farther into the crowd and all but disappeared.

“Someone.”

“Who?”

“It's nothing; just stay here.” His heart hammered. He couldn't let Constant get away. “I'll be right back.”

“Dan, stop this!”

But he had left, taken chase after Constant. If he could stop him, maybe they could strike another deal; maybe Dan could get more time. At the very least he had to get his final twenty minutes back.

Dan raced down the sidewalk, keeping his eyes on the black coat putting more distance between them. Behind him, Sue hollered something, but he couldn't understand her. If he could just get more time, he'd explain everything to her.

Not waiting for the light to change or traffic to stop, he stepped off the curb and onto Fifth Avenue. He couldn't wait; he had to keep moving or he'd lose Constant for good.

Tires screeched and Dan flinched.

He never saw the car coming.

Striking him midthigh, crushing muscle and breaking bone, the impact bent him in half. He flipped up and over the hood, hit the windshield hard enough to break it, then rolled off the side and landed on the pavement.

On his back, staring up at the gray sky, flakes falling, buildings towering over him, seemingly rising up to heaven, Dan heard nothing but a rhythmic ticking, thick and heavy like that of a grandfather clock.

Above him, the scarred sky darkened and roiled, heaved and billowed. The buildings shrank, retracted into the earth. And still the ticking was there—steady, monotonous, growing louder and louder.

Until there was nothing. Only blackness and the ticking, ticking . . . until it, too, faded.

19

The alarm sounded the same time it did every morning, pulling Dan Blakely from a dream. He lay in his bed, eyes shut, allowing the lingering remnants of that awful nightmare to wisp away like smoke in a stiff breeze. Tears puddled in the corners of his eyes and wet his lashes. The alarm continued to sound its steady call . . . but it didn't sound like his clock at home, and the bed didn't feel like his bed.

Slowly he peeled open his eyes and let them adjust to the light in the room.

It was no dream. The trip to New York, finding Sue and the boys, the impact with the car.

He was in a hospital room and the beeping came from the digital monitor beside his bed. His IV bag was empty.

Oddly, despite being nearly broken in two by the moving car, he felt no pain. Dan moved his wrists, flexed his fingers, lifted them to his face. An oxygen cannula rested against his nose, pumping cool air into his nostrils. An IV line ran into the back of his hand.

But this was not the hand he'd looked at every day. This hand appeared older than his by at least twenty or thirty years and more weathered. He curled the fingers into a fist, then extended them, wondering if he'd become the experimental patient of a strange and terrifying doctor who enjoyed transplanting body parts from one dying victim to another and if this, indeed, was a real hospital at all or a secret lab where gruesome things were done. But no scars circumscribed the wrist.

He moved his legs, pumped his ankles, bent his knees. They were stiff but the motions produced no pain.

The door to his room opened and a voice startled him. A familiar voice.

“Hey, you're awake.” It was Sue.
His
Sue.

Turning his head, he found the woman was not the Sue he remembered, but more resembled her mother, Lois. Only it
was
Sue, for she possessed the same round eyes, the same smallish nose and full lips. She'd always had her mother's mouth but not exactly; it was uniquely hers. This Sue's face had aged, and her hair had turned a dusty gray. Deep creases radiated from the outside corners of her eyes. She reached for his hand and her touch felt the same—so loving, so caring.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?”

Dan tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry, throat too tight. Confusion clouded his brain like a fog that moved in overnight and shrouded the morning in mystery.

“Where am I?”

The look on her face told him this was not the first time he'd asked that question. She sat in the chair next to his bed and rubbed his hand. “Honey, you're in St. Luke's, remember? You've been here for a week.”

He remembered, vaguely, as if looking through a clouded window and seeing only shadows and silhouettes of the world outside.

“Wh-why?” He was suddenly very tired and blinked slowly.

Sue brushed a hand through his hair and studied him with sad eyes. She'd been through so much, he could tell. Fatigue etched her face, and sorrow was there too—deep sorrow, the kind that had acknowledged loss but not yet accepted it and would never embrace it. “The cancer, sweetie, remember? You have pancreatic cancer.”

Cancer. The pieces began to fall into place like a puzzle randomly assembling itself. He remembered Constant's words—
“You can relive any seven hours . . . But either way, at the end you'll be forwarded through time to the moment of your death”
—and the way he drew that arc in the air with his finger.

It couldn't be real, though. Had he survived the accident in New York and missed so much of his life?

“How old am I?”

Tears formed in Sue's eyes and in them he found pity and sadness as deep and lonely as any quarry stripped of its resources, then abandoned. But more than that, he found love—a love that endured and persisted and fought and gave until there was nothing more to give. A love that did not fail. “Honey, you'll be sixty-eight tomorrow.”

Sixty-eight. He'd missed twenty-seven years of his life, skipped over it as easily as if he'd hopped a narrow but fast-moving stream.

“What . . . what time is it?” When the car's bumper impacted his leg and spun him through time, he still had twenty minutes to live.

Sue checked her watch. “It's morning. 7:05.”

Time was no longer counting down, no longer ticking off the final moments of his life. Still the end was very near; he felt it in the extreme fatigue that tugged on him, dragged him ever closer to the precipice. But strangely, he no longer feared it, no longer saw it as a dark abyss from which to fight and claw and recoil.

Dan closed his eyes and almost fell asleep. Pulling them open again, he swallowed hard. His breath hitched, caught in his throat, and he coughed violently. Composing himself, he said, “I'm tired.”

“I know, honey.”

“So tired.”

Sue blinked tears away. “You've had a long battle.”

“Did I fight well?”

More tears came, spilling down Sue's cheeks. She did nothing to wipe them away. “You fought well. Yes. You were so strong. You've earned this.”

He knew she referenced his passing from this life to the next; he was on the threshold of glory.

“Where're the boys?”

Sue sniffed and patted his hand. When she spoke, her voice was tight and strained. “They're in the waiting room. I'll get them.” She stood and left, closing the door behind her.

Quickly Dan muddled through the math in his head. Jack would be thirty-five and Murphy thirty-four. As the numbers formed in his mind, he discovered that he did have some fuzzy memories of them growing up, after all. Jack's first date. Murphy's high school graduation. And a wedding . . . He couldn't quite remember whether he was a grandfather yet, but it seemed to strike a chord.

Moments later the door opened and the boys walked in with Sue. He recognized them immediately; they'd changed so little. Jack was tall and thin with a head of shaggy hair and a smile as crooked as it had always been. Beside him stood a woman, beautiful, with eyes the color of the sea at night and a belly the size of a basketball. Ah, yes, the grandson he and Sue anticipated with such delight. Murphy, shorter and stockier than Jack, stood beside Sue, his arm around her shoulders and his eyes alight with mischief.

“Hey, Dad,” Jack said. “Glad to see you're awake.” He looked at Sue, and she nodded in approval.

Jack sat in the chair beside the bed and placed his hand on Dan's arm. His wife—Amy, was it?—stood by his side, her hand on his shoulder. Her fingers were long and graceful, made for making heavenly music on a piano. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did.

“Dad,” Jack said, “thanks for being such a great example to me, to us. You modeled what a godly husband and father should be. You don't know it, but I've been watching you my whole life, trying to be just like you.” A tear slipped from his eye and tracked down his cheek. “I want you to know, Amy and I have decided to name our son Daniel. It's a good name and we hope he grows up to be even half the man you are.”

He stood, leaned over, and kissed Dan on the cheek. “I love you, Dad.”

Tears spilled from Dan's eyes and ran over his temples, pooling in his ears. “I love you, too, Jack. My boy.” A godly husband and father. So he'd had time to show them he'd changed, after all.

Amy stepped forward and gently rubbed Dan's arm. “You know, Dad, I never told you this—I don't know why I didn't; I just never did—but my grandfather used to talk about you all the time. He said you changed his life. He sang your praises right up to his death, said that time he gave you a lift to Sloatsburg was one of those moments in life that everything else is referred to as being either before or after. He never mentioned what you two talked about, but whatever you told him, it stuck. I'm glad you two became friends. He loved you so much.”

Taking her hand in his, Dan squeezed it, then caressed her fingers. “I will miss hearing you play the piano.”

Pressing her lips together, fighting back tears, she nodded. “I'll miss playing for you. You've always been one of my biggest fans.”

“I am. And your grandfather was a good man. A generous man.” Dan now knew how Rip Van Winkle felt, awaking after twenty years of slumber to a world that had passed him by, moved on and ahead. Only Dan hadn't merely fallen asleep and gone missing for two decades. He'd lived a life, experienced love and joy and sorrow. Visited new places and been touched by beautiful music. Watched his oldest son fall in love and get married.

Murphy was next. He ran a fist over his eyes and sat in the chair. “I love you, Dad. You've always been my hero. You could do anything, handle everything.” He wiped at the tears again. “You remember when you came all the way to New York just to tell us you loved us, and you got hit by that car?”

Dan nodded. Of course he remembered.

“You were like a superhero to me. Better than any superhero. And you still are. You made a difference wherever you went. You lived life like it counted, like every moment meant something. I've always wanted to be like you.”

Dan reached over and put his hand on his younger son's head, ruffled his hair. “Murphy, I love you, Son.”

Murphy dashed away more tears, sniffed. “Love you, too, Dad. Always.”

Sue came to the bed and combed her hand through Dan's hair again. “Sweetie, there's someone else who wants to see you. Is that okay?”

Dan nodded.

“She came all the way from Minnesota to be here. She wanted to see you one time before . . .” Her words trailed off.

Sue left and came back with a middle-aged woman. Though she'd aged and put on some weight since the last time Dan saw her, he recognized her immediately. Erin Shriver. Or no, that wasn't right. Erin . . . Roberts?
Senator
Roberts?

Erin approached the bed and smiled. She had a kind face, soft edges, compassionate eyes. She was well-groomed and carried herself with confidence. Sitting in the chair, she took Dan's hand. “I haven't seen you in so long, but I've wanted to. I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner.”

Exhaustion tugged at Dan's eyelids and he blinked slowly. “Erin.”

“I owe everything to you,” Erin said. “You taught me the meaning of personal responsibility. I learned it the hard way, but it was only because of you I learned it at all. I want you to know I'm partnering with the Boone alumni association to raise funds for a new fine arts building and we're going to name it after you. Daniel Blakely Hall. How's that sound?”

It sounded like a building named after a stranger. Dan forced a smile and nodded. Closed his eyes. His breath caught again and he coughed, tried to fill his lungs but couldn't. His eyes flipped open and Sue leaned over him again.

She turned her head. “Jack, get the doctor.”

Jack hurried out of the room. This was it—Dan was dying. He knew it. His time had to be running out, just minutes, maybe seconds left.

His seven hours was up.

Sue took his hand in hers and kissed him on the forehead, the cheek, the lips. “I've loved our life together. You've made me very happy.” Tears ran from her eyes and dripped onto his sheets. “And you made such a difference in so many lives. You're a good man and I'm proud—so proud—to call you my husband.”

The door of the room opened and a young doctor entered dressed in black pants and a white lab coat, whistling a tune. A tune Dan had heard before. “Time Is on My Side.”

The doctor rounded the bed and came into Dan's full view. Thomas Constant.

“Mr. Blakely, how are you?”

It was definitely him. Same pale face, dark hair, blue eyes. He hadn't aged a bit.

“Constant.”

“Excuse me?” The doctor looked at Sue, confused.

“He's been fading in and out,” she said. “He's been sleeping for a while, murmuring on about somebody named Thomas Constant.” She sat and took Dan's hand, rubbed it with both of hers.

Constant nodded knowingly. “His dementia has been worsening?”

“Yes.”

Dan swallowed, coughed, and said, “Thomas Constant.”

The doctor smiled. “I'm Dr. Thomas, Mr. Blakely. Your oncologist. Do you remember me?”

“You're—” Dan hacked again, tried to breathe in, but couldn't. It was as if his lungs refused to inflate. He choked on his breath and wheezed loudly.

Sue squeezed his hand. Tears poured from her eyes and wet her cheeks.

Constant—Dr. Thomas—checked the monitors. He then walked to the foot of the bed, stuck his hand in the pocket of his lab coat, and pulled out a watch, a silver pocket watch with the number 7 engraved on the back. “He only has a few moments left. I'll step out now.”

He nodded at Dan, patted his foot.

Struggling to breathe, Dan found Sue's face and focused on it. The time had come. He'd grown so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. But he had to. He had to see his wife. Her face.

She stood and leaned over him.

He stared into her eyes, those beautiful pools of green and brown.

The edges of the room darkened like a shadowy cloud encircling his bed. But Sue's face was in the center of it, smiling, crying.

He focused on her face as the darkness grew thicker and nearer. His eyes closed, then opened. They were so heavy.

“I love you, Daniel,” she said.

He tried to tell her the same, but he was too weak to move his mouth.

Darker. Her face still in the center of it all. Darker still.

Her face . . . her face . . .

He had to watch her face.

The darkness made it to the edge of Sue's face and threatened to overcome it, to blot it out. But Dan didn't let it. He closed his eyes and remembered the love they shared.