Like a gun.
Now there’s only a hole filling up with panic because your father is dying or dead and you don’t remember how to help him.
I came out of the two-or three-second fugue, and then the memory of chest compressions and assisted breathing was there. But first I felt for a heartbeat.
Fingers on his carotid. Waiting. Waiting.
Oh God.
There. Faint. Erratic. But there.
Thirty chest compressions. Two breaths.
Nothing.
Thirty more. Two breaths.
Still nothing.
No, no, no, no, no.
On the third round Dad took a big, sucking drag in through his nose and started gagging.
I rolled him over as he convulsed, sicking up his dinner. He coughed and coughed and coughed, but the color had come back to his lips. I checked his fingernails. They looked normal.
We needed help.
My phone wasn’t in my pocket, and I had a half memory of setting it on the coffee table in the living room.
A short yapping came from the street, where none other than Mr. Allen Crane, a.k.a. Jimmy DeMarco Jr., stood with his dog. Tosca was straining at the end of his leash, barking and whining at us.
“Help!” I yelled. It came out as a shouted whisper. My voice wasn’t my own. Someone had run a steel file across my vocal cords, shaved them flat. I mimed at my dad, who groaned something between clenched teeth before he started gagging again.
Crane/DeMarco hesitated a second, then pulled out his phone and started talking into it.
After that, everything softened around the edges.
Sirens came from the east and got louder until they filled up the world. Flashing lights. Paramedics and cops asking me questions. A fire truck bleating its low horn as it pulled up to the curb. Guys in gas masks going in through Dad’s front door.
Then there was a mask over my face and all I could see was the roof of an ambulance.
Cue darkness.
Flashes of fluorescent light. A hallway. People in gowns. A sharp poke in the arm. Then Kel standing over me, hand in mine, telling me everything was going to be okay. I tried asking about Dad but couldn’t seem to form the words.
Later I opened my eyes to a hospital room, a large window on the right pouring sunshine through half-closed blinds. A cooling chunk of iron sat at the back of my skull, its glow throbbing with the bellows of my pulse. The door across from the foot of my bed opened, and Kel stepped out of a little bathroom, drying her hands on a paper towel. She saw I was awake and hurried over.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I whisper said.
“Holy shit, Andy.” She more fell than sat in a chair beside the bed. “Holy shit.”
She held my hand for a little bit. We didn’t say anything—Kel because she was crying, me because it hurt to talk.
When she’d dried her eyes on the paper towel she’d been wiping her hands on, she cleared her throat and said, “Dad’s okay. You asked about him while you were out. You said a few other things too.”
“Like what?”
“You said Rachel’s name.”
Oh.
“Anyone else . . .” I gestured at the surrounding walls.
“No, no one else heard.”
“And Dad’s really o . . . okay?”
“Yes. I talked to him twenty minutes ago. He was asking about you.” She squeezed my hand. “Jesus Christ, Andy. What the hell happened?”
“Water,” I whispered, and she got me some. It was cool and crystalline and basically the best thing I’d ever tasted. I kept drinking even after my stomach recoiled and tried to do a magic trick and make the liquid reappear. Kel took the glass from me when it was empty.
“Gas,” I said, and this time my voice was a semblance of normal. “The gas was on when I woke up.”
Kel nodded. “Yeah, that’s what the fire chief said. All the burners were on and not lit.”
I processed this. Lay there watching Kel watch me. “You think Dad did it?”
She took a minute answering, and I resented her a little for it. “I don’t know. He’s never done anything like that before.”
“He didn’t do it, Kel. He went to bed before I did.”
“He gets up in the night.”
“Right, but he’s aware. He gets a little confused, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s not that far gone yet. He wouldn’t start the stove and walk away. Besides, he’d have to blow all the flames out first.”
“You know that stove’s older than dirt. The back two burners don’t always light when you turn them on.”
I shook my head, and the iron inside it stoked, glowed molten. I was about to say something more when the door to the hall opened and a doctor appeared. “Hi there, I’m Dr. Johnson,” he said, coming over and shaking my hand. “How are you feeling, Andy?”