Walking on Water: A Novel Read Free Page B

woman looked back at the screen. “He’s in B237.”
    “Thank you.”
    Nicole and I walked to the room, stopping outside the door. R. CHRISTOFFERSEN was printed on a sheet shielded behind a plastic holder.
    “You go in first,” Nicole said. “You should have some time alone with him.”
    I nodded, then pushed the door open and slowly stepped inside. The room was dark, lit indirectly by a fluorescent panel behind the bed and the lights of the monitors. It smelled of antiseptic.
    The man in the bed didn’t look like my father. His usually perfectly coiffed hair was uncombed and matted to one side, and his chin was covered with stiff gray stubble. He looked old. Too old. It had been only seven weeks since I’d last seen him, but he looked like he’d aged years. He had an IV tube taped to his arm and an oxygen tube running to his nose. His mouth was partially open as he snored.
    I just stood there, looking at him. It was hard to believe that this was the same man who had towered over my childhood like a giant—solid and unyielding as a granite fortress. I gently touched his arm, but he didn’t wake. After a few minutes I sat down in one of the padded armchairs near the side of the room.
    After a while I glanced down at my watch. It was five minutes past twelve, California time, three in the morning eastern time. Exhausted, I slumped back in the chair. I’d come completely across the country to be with him, but I felt like I was still miles away.
    A wave of sadness washed over me, and my eyes welled up. I had been worried about leaving my father, but the truth was, he was leaving me . Maybe not tonight, maybe not even this year, but things were changing. Time was gaining on us.
    The possibility—the eventual inevitability—of his death would mean more than just losing my father. It would be the end of the world I had known, a world once inhabited by my mother and my wife. My father was thelast, fraying line to my past, the sole witness of who I was and where I had come from. It may have been only the emotion of the moment, but somehow I could already feel the growing vacuum.
    I had sat there for maybe twenty minutes before Nicole quietly opened the door and slipped into the room. She walked over to the side of my father’s bed and gently touched his arm, then came and crouched down next to me. She pulled my head into her neck, gently running her fingers along the nape of my neck the way McKale used to do. She felt good. Comforting.
    “Has he woken?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was soft and caring. “Are you okay?”
    I didn’t answer, which I suppose was an answer. After a few minutes she whispered, “You need to get some sleep. It’s late. Especially for you.”
    “I’ll just sleep here,” I said.
    “Why don’t you go home and get a good night’s rest? He’s not going anywhere.”
    “Home?” I asked.
    “Your father’s home.”
    I looked back at my father’s sleeping form. Nicole was right. I was so tired that I could have easily fallen asleep in the chair, but it would have been a miserable night and I was exhausted enough already. “All right,” I said. “Where are you staying?”
    “At the Marriott,” she said. “It’s close.”
    “Why don’t you just stay at the house?”
    “Maybe later,” she said ambiguously. She took my hand. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
    I stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at my father, then touched his leg. “I’ll see you in the morning, Dad,” I said softly.
    He groaned lightly, but never opened his eyes.

    On the way to the parking lot I handed the keys back to Nicole and asked her to drive. Neither of us said much on the way to my father’s house. I was just too tired, emotionally and physically.
    With the exception of the front porch light, which came on automatically, the house was dark. The first thing I noticed was that there were leaves on the lawn. Of course there were leaves on every lawn on the