These Things Happen

So here's our man. At that time he was a fairly nondescript kind of guy. Had a wild youth, but settled out of it for the most part. He was in his early 20's when the girl came into the picture. He loved her. That overpowering, occasionally painful sort of love, he wanted to envelop her whenever he was with her. They were together for two years before it all went down. See, she was the virtuous type, virginal as it were. Not particularly religious, just the kind who wanted to wait until marriage for somewhat vague reasons. He didn’t agree with this, not a bit. But he loved her, and he was alright to wait.

And then she turned up pregnant. And he left her. He still loved her, that much hadn’t changed, and it hurt to do it, but it had to be done. She understood, and there was no animosity, it was as amicable a breakup as it could have been under the circumstances. They went their separate ways; she was going to raise the child with the father. But it didn’t work out quite like that. The father wasn’t much interested in being a father, and decided to leave town. Having alienated everybody else after what she’d done, having nobody to whom she could turn, she went to our man.

He was hesitant to do it, but he took her in. They weren’t going to be together, he made this much perfectly clear, but he’d help with the baby. He wouldn’t let her go through it all alone. So he got a job with his father, change his class schedule to night classes, and the two of them moved in together. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do. Until she went into early labor. Far too early. Something went wrong. She was rushed to the hospital, he got there that night; he hadn’t gotten word for hours.

She went into a coma, he was given a choice. Neither prospect looked particularly good, but he had to make a decision. He told the doctor, through clenched, drowning eyes, to deliver. She went into the operating room, and she died there. Our man waited outside. The inside of his skin felt scraped out, his eyes wouldn’t focus, he wanted to fly into a rage but he couldn’t move. He just sat. And he waited while the girl died. And he wondered what he was going to do now.

The baby, however, wasn’t breathing. It went straight into intubation, tubes and plugs going every which way, desperately keeping the baby alive, pumping air into his lungs. Our man barely had a chance to say goodbye to the girl he loved before he was faced with the dying child. The doctor said he wouldn’t take the boy off of life support until our man gave the word, but he made no bones about it; the odds of the kid living were all but nonexistent.

Our man silently nodded. He pulled up a chair and he sat next to the boy. He stared at him through the Plexiglas tank. He saw the plate on the side with the boy’s identification and saw the blank space next to the word “NAME.” He pulled out a sharpie and tried to think of a name. Our man could only think to use the name of his father. He named the boy John. He placed a hand on the side of the tank. It was as close as he could get.

The night turned into the morning, the boy was alive. Our man hadn’t left his side. He didn’t sleep. The food the nurses left him had long since gone cold. He just sat, either staring into the tank at the boy or resting his forehead against it. Always talking, silently, to the boy through the tank, through the wires and tubes.

The day turned into several days. It turned into a week. Our man didn’t leave the boy’s side. He wasted away, refusing to eat, drinking barely any water. Some of the nurses gossiped that the boy might live after all. Our man and his kid became the talk of the ward. Even the doctors were talking about them in hushed tones. The doctor who delivered the boy tried to stay level headed about the whole thing, but even he occasionally gave the gossip some thought.

Our man got a lot of attention from the nurse staff, bringing him food that he wouldn’t eat, blankets, making sure he was comfortable, keeping him going. Silently praying for the both of them. Always watching from a distance as our man seemed to carry on entire imagined conversations with the boy, always having some manner of contact with the side of the tank, either a hand or his forehead.

The doctor was completely caught off guard when our man went to him and told him it was time to shut the machine off. He stammered out an “okay” and the two of them went into the room. At a distance the entire nurse staff and several doctors watched, all of them silently thinking the boy would live. The doctor moved to the machine and looked to our man. He gave a nod, eyes clinched tight, but not water tight, and the doctor flipped switch after switch, turning everything off. Everybody held their breath, waiting for the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor to turn into one solid tone. It didn’t.

The energy of the room turned into anticipation. They knew it. The boy was going to live. Our man reached in after the doctor removed the tubes and wires. He picked the boy up into his arms. It was the first time he’d even touched the kid. He held it close to him; the only thing he had left of the girl he loved. He put his forehead to the boy’s and whispered in his ear. “It’s alright. You can go now.” The beeps of the heart monitor finally devolved into one long droning sound. And that was all. The boy was gone.