Tombquest: Book of the Dead

Darkness

Ren and her dad had left the hospital with no news, but at breakfast the next day, she knew she was about to get some.

"Hey, Ren-Ren, we need to talk about something," her dad said as he sat down at the table, pronouncing each word like he was being graded on it.

"It's about Alex, isn't it?"

" 'Fraid so," said her dad.

Ren looked across the table and there was her mom, dressed in her standard spray of bright colors and leaning toward her in Emotional Support Position. Perfect as usual, not an eyelash out of place.

"Oh my God, is he ..."

"No, no," said her dad, putting his hands up in a double stop sign.

Ren exhaled.

"But he had a close call over the weekend," said her dad. "Really close."

Ren looked down at her Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which was slowly turning to Cinnamon Toast Mush in the skim milk.

Her mom put her hand on her wrist, and it really bothered Ren how much she appreciated that. She looked down at the freshly painted nails on her mom's hand, and the freshly chewed ones on her own.

"His heart stopped for a while. It was a close call."

Ren absorbed the news like a body blow. Her mom squeezed her wrist, but this time she shook her off.

"His condition has stabilized, but ..."

Ren nodded again. She read her dad's tone as much as his words. Arrows stabilize before they fall, too. Her parents' body language told her the same thing: downcast eyes, slumped shoulders. However they'd gotten Alex's heart started again, she knew he wouldn't make it through Round Two.

"Can I see him?" she said. It was a test as much as anything.

Her parents exchanged a quick look.

"They think that would be possible," said her mom, finally joining the conversation.

They don't expect him to make it, she thought. But they're wrong.

"But it won't be ..." her mom began before pausing to fumble for the right words. Her years of public relations experience crumbled against the gritty details of life and death. "There's a breathing tube now and ..."

Ren gave her a look: Does it look like I care about that?

"You promise you'll take me?"

Her dad nodded, and that was the end of the conversation. Ren got up and dumped her sugary skim-milk mush in the sink.

~~

She spent the day at the museum. She wanted to be close to her dad, in case anything changed with Alex and they had to make a quick trip.

A last trip.

She tried to delete those words from her mind as soon as she thought them.

She went and sat in her favorite place in the museum, probably her favorite place in the world. It was on the second floor in European Paintings: a little bench in the middle of a roomful of paintings by Rembrandt.

She looked around at the familiar artworks. They were dark and mysterious, with lively eyed, ruddy-faced men and women emerging from the black and brown murk. She didn't know why she liked these particular paintings so much. The Met was full of world-famous masterpieces.

She liked that these were realistic, though. Rembrandt was a great painter, not just a great artist. She admired his competence as much as anything, how he somehow made recognizable images out of thick swoops of goopy paint. She had no patience for the painters who slapped down a few quick lines or splashes of color and walked away. She didn't understand genius — how some things came so easy to some people — but she understood hard work. She understood that if you worked hard enough, you could get the same results as the people who didn't have to work hard at all. And she could see the work in Rembrandt's paintings. The figures were built up in layers, carefully crafted. They were realistic, just really dark. And now, for the first time, she thought maybe she understood why she liked him best.

She thought about Alex, lying in a hospital with a tube in his mouth. She thought about that night in the waiting room, watching a train wreck on TV, surrounded by the sick and injured and a dad too busy to hear her. And finally, she thought this: Dark is realistic.