Here After

chapter one

Thursday, February 8

“Dad, I’m afraid.”

“I know, sweetheart, but I’m right here. I won’t let you go through this alone.”

Doctor Peter Croft snuggled closer to his son on the stiff hospital bed, spooning the boy’s wasted body against his own. It would be only a matter of minutes now.

“What if I fall asleep?”

“I won’t move from this spot, David. I swear.”

“Okay, Dad. ’Cause I’m really tired.”

The boy drew a ragged breath and Peter could hear the fluid that saturated his lungs, a wet crackle under the steady hiss of oxygen. Drowning him.

David adjusted the green oxygen mask on his face, rubbing at the reddened furrows the rigid plastic had dug next to his nose. Peter watched his son’s movements, the huge effort it cost him to simply raise his arm, and the terrible loathing he felt for God rose to his throat in a barely suppressed roar.

He glanced at the door to the private room, securely locked now from the inside. The drugs he would need were in his hip pocket, already mixed in a single syringe. He’d taken them from the OR days ago, when he made his decision.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, little buddy?”

“Can you tell me a story?”

“Sure,” Peter said. He came up on one elbow, leaning over his son so he could see the boy’s face. “Had a little doll, stuck it on the wall and that’s all.”

And there it was, the tiny smile he’d hoped for. It was a ‘story’ his grandfather had told him, a man Peter barely remembered. Peter had used it many times on David when he was younger, glad now for the hundreds of nights he’d lain next to the little guy, coaxing him off to sleep. Lie down with me, Dad? Just for two minutes?

David was almost ten now, two days away from a birthday he would never see. Peter had arranged a small party for him last weekend, right here in the room, inviting a few of his closest pals from school, telling David they were doing it early this year because his best friend, Thomas, couldn’t make it any other time. The kids came bearing gifts and good intentions, but when they saw David, how much he’d deteriorated in the weeks since they’d last seen him, things quickly turned awkward. With surprisingly adult grace, David let the boys off the hook, saying he was too tired to spend more than a few minutes with them. Two of them were in tears before they reached the hallway.

“A real story, Dad. Something funny.”

“Okay, let me think.” But his mind was a black pool of despondency, and when he reached in for something to say he came up empty.

David said, “Remember when I cut my head?”

And miraculously Peter laughed out loud. He reached over his son’s shoulder to show him the index finger of his right hand. “How can I forget?”

David took his father’s hand in his own, gently rubbing the unnaturally smooth pad of Peter’s finger, and Peter thought of how precious those little hands were, the instruments of his son’s industry and curiosity, the parts of him Peter had enjoyed most when David was a baby.

“That was pretty funny, eh, Dad?”

“It sure was."

Though neither of them thought so at the time. Four years ago David had struck his head on the edge of the coffee table and opened a small gash. Typical of scalp lacerations it had bled like crazy, and in a barely restrained panic David’s mother, Dana, had pleaded with Peter to rush him to the ER for stitches. Wanting to avoid the unpleasantness of the experience for his son, Peter had decided to deal with the problem on his own.