The Weight of Heaven (27 page)

the moment of Frank’s own birth, that they had grown up together,

irreducible, and the prospect of losing his son was the prospect of

losing his own skin. There was no human language large enough

to hold such a loss. There was only sound. Like the howling of a

demented dog, the neighing of a horse with a broken leg, the squeal-Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 9 5

ing of a pig with a slit throat. But older, less specific than even that.

It was the sound of an orphaned universe. A wail, a rant, a moan, a

keening, that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth.

“Frank,” Scott said finally. “You want me to pull over?”

“No,” he managed to gasp. “Go as fast as you can. I want to be

with my son.”

Scott ran three consecutive red lights as they approached the

hospital. He pulled up at the front door, and Pete jumped out of the

car with Frank. “This way,” Pete said and they walked the long

hallway that led to the children’s ICU.

The waiting room outside the unit was packed. His mother was

there, of course, and Bob and Anne and Ellie’s parents. Half of their

friends and neighbors were also there, and it seemed to Frank that

none of them dared to make eye contact with him as he went in

briefly to hug his mother. He felt his throat tighten with a resentment he knew he had no business feeling. Why were they all here?

He only wanted them to gather this way to celebrate happy occasions—Benny’s birthdays, his high school graduation, his college

graduation, his wedding day. He had not invited them to this event.

“Where’s Ellie?” he asked his mother, but Pete was already ushering him out of the room and through a set of enormous metal doors.

As soon as they entered, Frank noticed how low the lights were in

here and how quiet the unit was. A cold fear gripped him as they

walked down a short hallway toward Benny’s room.

He almost cried out when he saw Ellie, who was talking to a nurse

in the hallway. He had only left for Thailand five days ago, and he

was coming home to a different woman. She had shrunk. Gotten

older. There were lines on her face that had never been there before.

Her shoulders were bent at an angle of defeat. Her mouth curved

downward. But what killed him were her eyes. Magpie eyes, he’d

always called them, full of mischief and fun. The eyes that looked

at him now were friendly but dead. She looked at him with recognition, with gratitude, love even, but behind that look was another.

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And it was that second look that scared him. That told him how

desperately sick his son really was.

He went up to her and kissed her cheek. “I’m here,” he said. He

wanted to say more but his voice broke. “I’m here, babe,” he finally

said. “We’re going to pull him out of this.”

She rested her cheek against his shoulder for a quick second.

Then she looked at him, her eyes searching his face. “I don’t want

you to freak out when you see him, okay? You promise?”

“I promise,” he said, and it was a good thing he did, because it took

every ounce of self-control not to cry out loud when he saw Benny in

the hospital bed, when he found his son’s tiny body under the city of

tubes and drains that ran across him. He heard the steady whoosh of

the ventilator and thought he’d never heard a more ominous sound.

But what really undid him was the rash on Benny’s hands, neck, and

face. When Ellie had told him about the rash over the phone, he had

pictured something delicate and subtle, like a purple lace handkerchief placed on Ben’s face. Nothing had prepared him for the brutality

of what he saw. This rash, these purple blotches, looked like an assault, like an invasion by a genocidal army. He bit down on his lower

lip as he looked at Benny’s hands and saw the blackened fingers. How

he had loved those hands. It was the first part of his son’s body he had

ever kissed, minutes after Benny had been placed in his arms for the

first time. He had loved the puffy rise of puppy fat on those hands

when Ben was a toddler and later, the smooth stretch of skin. He had

kissed those fingers individually and bunched up together. Now, he

picked up Benny’s limp hand and held it to his lips. And before he

could complete the gesture, he knew that this was one of the last times

he would ever touch his son’s alive, breathing body.

Beside him, Ellie made a sound, like the cry of a small animal. He

turned his stricken eyes to her, unable to prevent his last treacherous

thought from registering on his face. All his earlier resolutions of

striding into the hospital and bringing comfort to Ellie, of bending

down and whispering in Benny’s ears and asking him to fight,
fight
,

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left him now that he’d seen the terrible face of reality. He felt paralyzed, thankful that his legs were still holding him up. He looked

at Ellie, who obviously needed him, with something approaching

resentment. He was spent, hollowed out, in shock. The burden of

her expectations weighed heavily on him, as did the dismaying realization that he was not up to the challenge of comforting her, that he

would fail her on this count. He stood silently at the side of his son’s

bed, his eyes darting between the monitor and Benny’s bruised,

marked face. “Ben,” he whispered. “Benny. I’m here. I’m home,

Ben. And I won’t leave you now, not even for a minute.” Gingerly,

careful not to tug at one of the tubes, he stroked his son’s hair.

“Until a few hours ago, I couldn’t even touch him,” Ellie said in

a dead monotone. “He was still contagious, they said, so we had to

wear a mask. And they started all of us on antibiotics, too. Like I

care. Like I want to live if something happens to Ben.”

“Don’t say that,” he hissed furiously. “Nothing’s gonna happen

to him.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Scott had entered

the room. He watched as his brother put his arm around Ellie’s

shoulder. The simplicity of the gesture filled Frank with shame and

longing. Ellie’s been up for almost thirty-six hours, he reminded

himself. Eyeing the couch at the far end of the room, he said, “Ellie.

Why don’t you take a nap for a few minutes? I can take over now.”

She ignored him. “I didn’t know how much to tell you over the

phone,” she said. “Didn’t want to scare you. In any case, the rash

didn’t look this bad when I brought him in. It’s grown a lot mo—”

He knew what he had to do. “When was the doctor last in? I want

to talk to him. Maybe we can transfer him to a bigger hospital. The

fact that they can’t even get the fever under control is ridiculous.”

Scott turned to face Frank. “We’ve already been through all that,

Frankie,” he said quietly. “Ben’s actually getting top-notch care

here. And two, I don’t think it’s a good idea to transfer him anywhere in this condition. This is a pretty great hospital. You know

that.”

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He opened his mouth to protest, but Scott held his gaze, and

Frank was the first to look away. “So what do we do?” he mumbled,

unable to look at Ellie.

“We wait,” Scott said. His eyes were bright as he looked at Frank,

and when he spoke again his voice was gentle but firm. “And we do

whatever is right for Benny.”

At five that evening, Ellie suddenly fell asleep halfway through a

sentence. “She’s exhausted,” Scott mouthed to his brother. “Let’s let

her nap for a few hours. We can wait outside.”

He rose reluctantly, knowing that Ellie needed the sleep but reluctant to forfeit his place in Benny’s room for even a few minutes.

When they reached the door, he turned to Scott and whispered,

“You go ahead into the waiting room. I’m gonna just sit quietly by

Ben’s bed. I won’t wake Ellie up, I promise.”

He silently pulled up a stool and sat with his hand on his son’s

wrist. He stared at Ben’s ghastly face, looking for a sign, for the tiniest gesture, the slightest movement that would give him a reason to

keep hoping. But Benny’s eyes remained closed, his mouth forced

open by the clear plastic ventilator tube that was keeping him alive.

He kept staring at the beloved face behind the purple mask smothering it. Except for the gurgling of the ventilator, the room was silent.

Frank had been up for over thirty hours himself, and the undertow

of sleep tugged at him. He fought it off, forcing his eyes wide open,

moving his eyeballs from side to side. He felt himself drifting and,

for the first time since he’d received the terrible news, felt a strange

peace. He was home. He was in a darkened, quiet room with his son

and wife. And Benny was alive. They were in a bubble together,

adrift on a strange, dark island, surrounded by strange plastic sea

monsters. But they were together. And Benny was alive. That was

the main thing. They were all alive, even if a cold mechanical being

was drawing his son’s breaths for him. I could get used to this, he

thought, spending my days here keeping a bedside vigil. Dear God,

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 9 9

even this, these days of talking to and touching a son who could not

talk or touch back, would be better than not having Benny in the

world. I would settle for this if this were the best you have to offer.

You selfish bastard, he chided himself. Is this a life you would

wish for your son, this misery of being chained to a machine? He remembered what Scott had said—that they had to do whatever was

best for Benny. Please God, he prayed. Do not put me in that position. Don’t let that time come, ever. Do not ask of me what should

be asked of no man. Just let me walk out of this hospital with my

boy, and I’ll never ask you for another thing again.

Benny died a little after six in the morning the next day. They

were all gathered around his bed. Ellie and Frank sat on either side

of his bed, each of them holding his hand. In a low, quivering voice

Ellie sang, “Kisses Sweeter than Wine,” one of Benny’s favorite

songs. Next, she kissed his damp, fevered forehead and said, “It’s

okay, baby. You’ve been a real brave boy, but you don’t need to fight

anymore, okay? You can let go.”

Frank had wanted to stop her then, because even after the night

doctor had told them at two o’clock that morning that it was time

to bring the family in to say their good-byes, even after Dr. Brentwood had come in and told them that the latest lab test had shown

overwhelming sepsis, even after he, Frank, had left the room to go

call Scott to tell him to drive everybody back to the hospital, he had

clung to some strand of crazy hope, had held out for a miracle. He

wanted to tell Benny exactly the opposite of what Ellie was telling

him: instead of asking that he let go, he wanted to urge his boy to

fight, to wrestle with that dark demon, to rise from his deathbed and

assume his rightful place. You don’t belong in this stinking hospital

room, Ben, he had wanted to say. You belong in the Little League

baseball park and swimming at Seaflower Lake and going to school

at London Elementary. You belong in bed between your mom and

me on Sunday mornings and next to me in the car on Saturday

2 0 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

afternoons when I take you to baseball practice. You belong on the

beach at Hilton Head during the summers and on your little sled on

the hill behind our house in the winter.

He closed his eyes, almost smiling to himself at the thought of an

exuberant Benny flying down the hill on his blue sled last winter, his

blond hair glistening in the light of a wintry sun the color of weak

tea. While his eyes were still closed, he heard Ellie cry, “Oh, God,

Ben, no.” By the time he opened his eyes, his son was gone.

The room tilted, then straightened, then tilted again. Through

the tilt, he saw Ellie fling herself on Benny. Careful, he wanted to

say, but there were spiderwebs across his mouth and he couldn’t

speak. And now the webs were being spun across his eyes because

his eyes had become slits and he could only see half of the world.

Scott was saying something, but he could only hear every fifth word,

like a bad cell phone connection. He blinked, tried to focus on what

Ellie was saying to him, tried to see her full face, but it looked like

a Cubist painting—he could see her pained, open mouth, took in

the terror in her right eye, followed the path of a single tear. But he

couldn’t put it all together.

What finally broke the spell was Ellie’s hand. She reached across

Benny’s reclining body and took his hand in hers. “Frank,” she

moaned. “Frank, talk to me.”

He saw a funnel cloud of words leave his mouth. He noticed Ellie’s expressive face react and knew that he was saying all the right

things. And he was glad. Proud of himself and the comforting funnel

cloud that he was producing. Because inside,
inside
, he was gone.

Wandering through the punishing straits of his dry, acrid heart.

Chapter 17

The disappointment was a new feeling. From the first day he had

met Ellie, he had always been proud of her. Ellie was one of those

people who excelled at whatever she did—she was an accomplished