The Ghost of Christmas Present (2 page)

A few chuckles and snickers rose.

“You will all, I hope, become soldiers of one sort or another, whether you wear a uniform of public service or simply wear the courage of some cause in your heart. If you do decide to fight for some just cause, you cannot escape the stage of being a wise sage, and it will be your duty to help guide those who come after you. Old age, and then a peaceful decline into death . . . are two stages I wish for every one of you.”

Patrick scanned the faces of the classroom brimming with bright futures. “I pray each one of you comes to know all of life's seven stages.” But then he leaned forward with a wink. “But to all you would-be Romeo and Juliets out there, take it slow and get to know the family first lest you end up with some really bad in-law issues. And as for film versions, I'm partial to the Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes film myself.”

The students let out a full laugh that pleased Patrick. Everything else in his world had gone into the toilet, but he still had this. Abruptly, the students all stopped laughing as an assistant from the principal's office entered the classroom with a face awash in worry.

“The hospital called. They said they've been trying to reach you on your cell.”

Patrick fished out his phone, battery dead again. He looked at the woman and gathered the courage to ask the question that filled every one of his students' eyes. “Is Braden all right?”

“They just said come as soon as you can.”

P
atrick sat in the cardiologist's office at St. Genevieve's and stared out the window with a statue's stony eyes, blinking only once in a while at the taxis shooting by below on Sixth Avenue. The doctor's chair across from him sat empty.

Patrick had immediately called the hospital, and reached a nurse who assured him that Braden was resting. But the cardiologist had requested to see Patrick right away, and so here he was.

“Mr. Guthrie?”

Patrick rose from his chair and turned to see Dr. Friedman entering her office. “They said you wanted to see me.”

Friedman said nothing, only dropped a bound folder on the desk and took her chair.

“They said Braden was resting. Has something happened? Is he all right? I mean—”

“Braden is stable and comfortable. I'm sorry if you were concerned. The nursing staff here is not permitted to pass along the information I'm going to discuss with you.”

“How bad is it?” Patrick said as he slumped back down in the chair.

“In this case, Mr. Guthrie,” Friedman replied as she took off her glasses, “it's good.” She opened the folder. “In the past three months, Johns Hopkins has had great success treating several children with your son's very condition.”

Patrick's eyes widened as Friedman's words washed over him.

“I'll warn you up front. It's an invasive procedure, a long time for a little boy to be on the operating table. There are many preparatory tests to be completed and there are serious risks involved, but . . .”

Patrick couldn't help but wrap his arms around himself.

“Your son is a perfect candidate for this procedure. Would you like to hear more?” Friedman paused and looked at Patrick, who could only nod as if in a dream, a beautiful waking dream.

“Go on,” Patrick half whispered, not even sure he had said the words out loud, as if he were hovering just under the ceiling watching the scene from a bird's-eye view of unexpected winged hope.

“The operation involves entering the heart through . . .”

But Friedman's medical terms melted one into another and became music, Patrick now hearing only their melody of hope.

A
nd so now, on this fourth Wednesday of November, Patrick sat with Braden sharing the ginger ale and watching his son eat the pumpkin pie, the only food and drink he would be allowed before the angiogram that was scheduled for late Thanksgiving afternoon. There was no question of waiting until after the holiday. If Braden was to have his operation by Christmas and come home with Patrick in the New Year, every day was a chance to take a step closer to that dream.

Earlier, when Patrick had gently explained to Braden that he would be allowed no holiday meal until the operation was over for fear of his vomiting on the operating table, the boy only looked up into his father's eyes and said, quite seriously, “Into the breach, dear friends.”

It was from
Henry V
, the Battle of Agincourt scene. If the boy hadn't been so frail, Patrick would have picked him up, carried him onto the hospital rooftop, and shouted to the entire world's horizon, “This is my son! This is Braden Guthrie! He is the bravest soul you could ever hope to know!

“This is my son!”

Chapter 2

COLD FOREVER

T
he operating room was cold.

For some reason, Patrick thought it would be warm like the hospital nursery he had rolled Braden into when he was born. Why was it so cold in here?

Patrick rubbed Braden's hands through his rubber gloves as the technicians prepared his little body for the invasive procedure. What they were going to do to his little boy had been explained and reexplained to him as if he were being read his Miranda rights. A large needle would be inserted into Braden's inner thigh. This needle would admit a colored solution that would travel through the boy's circulatory system, eventually arriving at his enlarged heart, and there on a video screen, Patrick would be able to see the pumping organ.

“Can we turn up the heat?” Patrick asked through his surgical mask.

The technicians all traded looks from blinking eyes above surgical masks.

“Germs can't thrive in lower temperatures, Mister Guthrie.”

“I see.”

Patrick rubbed Braden's hands again.

“I'm okay, Dad. I'm not that cold.”

But the goose pimples up and down his thin arms and legs told a different story and a small shiver every couple of minutes was its conclusive premise. Patrick pushed Braden's shivering out of his mind the best he could. After all, the boy had endured far greater pain just getting his chin stitched up. That was the time he'd taken his first dive off the diving board at the rec center pool, but then decided in midair to head back to the side. His chin split open and bled profusely into the pool water. Patrick had held him close as they rode in the cab to the hospital, Braden sobbing with pain and the horror of the sight of his own blood.

So this low temperature was nothing compared to that.

Still, Patrick couldn't get out of his head the risks the doctors had warned him about: Braden might go into shock; they might have to do open-heart surgery then and there. And if that were to happen, if the unthinkable were to happen and his boy were to die in that operating room that felt like an icebox . . .

Would Braden be cold forever?

“Are we all ready to go, champ?” Dr. Friedman asked as she entered the room, wearing her mask, gown, and gloves.

“Into the breach,” Braden said.

Friedman looked at Patrick, who shrugged. “It's Shakespeare.”

“I see. We have an educated young man with us today.”

Friedman looked at Braden's EKG, swabbed his inner thigh with a solution that looked to Patrick's eyes like iodine, and then lifted a small needle.

It was much smaller than Patrick had worried it would be, and he and Braden traded relieved smiles.

“Now this is going to hurt a little bit,” Friedman said before she inserted the needle into the boy's skin. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

Braden shook his head.

“That will numb your leg and take some of the sting out of the angio-injection.”

And it was then that Friedman lifted a much larger needle, one that Patrick thought shouldn't be put into a horse, let alone a little boy. Braden blinked hard, caught his father's worried glance, and looked away. Patrick held the boy's hand tight.

“Now I won't kid you, champ. This will hurt.” Friedman prepared the large needle, filling its casing with a dark solution.

Braden looked back at his father. “Dad?”

Patrick gripped the boy's hand and couldn't bring himself to speak.

“Tell me again about how you met Mom.”

Patrick summoned speech like a man pulling every ounce of courage up from his churning stomach to stand it up straight on his tongue. “I met her at Booth One. It was the employees' table at the deep-dish pizza place where we both waited tables.”

Friedman finished filling the injection and again swabbed the boy's inner thigh.

“I'd just come back from vacation and stopped by the restaurant to pick up my check.”

Friedman rested the needle against the pale, thin skin.

“There she was.”

“Beautiful, right?”

“The living reason ancient cities were built and burned.”

Braden smiled with the image just before the needle went into his thigh. A tiny tear collected in the corner of his right eye and streamed down his cheek into his ear.

“Then what happened?”

Patrick glanced up at the medical video screen above the table, out of view from Braden but visible to everyone else. There he watched the dark solution enter his son's body and begin its journey through the intricate winding map that was Braden's circulatory system.

“Dad?”

Patrick turned back to Braden, whose left eye had also sent a tear down to his chin and neck. “She said she wasn't feeling well, but since it was only her second day there she didn't want to say anything about going home to the manager.”

“So that's when you rode your white horse out of its stable.”

“Something like that. I offered to work for her.”

“That's not what you said.”

Patrick glanced up again to see the dark solution streaming a path closer and closer to the enlarged heart, which beat a quicker rhythm than Patrick had remembered from a minute ago.

“That's not what you said to her.”

Patrick looked back at Braden, who was sweating. How could he sweat in such a cold place? “That's not what I said. I said I couldn't let a pair of eyes like hers work when they weren't feeling well.”

“Smooth. All that Shakespeare and that's what you cooked up?”

Patrick wanted to wipe the boy's forehead, but he couldn't trust himself to stop there. He wanted to reach down and hold Braden in his arms.

“Hey. At least it was original material. I wasn't plagiarizing.”

Now the solution filled the heart, which beat quicker and quicker. Or maybe it was just Patrick's heart beating faster and faster, like something out of the Edgar Allan Poe story he'd taught his class only four weeks ago at Halloween.

“And she took you up on it?”

Again, Patrick forced himself to look away from the heart, which pumped the solution to all its arteries and four chambers.

“She thought I had a tongue of silver,” Patrick said. He fixed his eyes once more on the medical screen, which seemed to grow larger to him, showing the heart beating ever faster, looking ever more vulnerable, as if it would run its last race and collapse right there in front of him.