The Holding Place

Chapter 11

Michael…





Bright fluorescent light stings at me as my eyes flutter open. I turn my head to shield my eyes but the unexpected tug of tubes in my nose stops me. I look down at my supine body and it seems that there are tubes going in and out of me at every available vein and opening that exists within my body. The walls are a soft cream color and the only thing decorative is a lone cross hanging above a wide door.


My mind is a bit foggy and nothing comes to me at first to explain why I might be lying in a hospital bed. The last thing I remember was sitting in my office waiting for time to go by before I had to go pick up Norah from daycare. It had been a hellish morning trying to get her ready and dressed, the way I was going about it was completely different from the routine she had been used to with her Aunt Claire. I had no idea that she was terrified of taking a bath without her collection of multi-colored rubber ducks and she screamed the whole way through it.


In my office I indulged myself in the vice of a smooth scotch and as usual my mind carried me off to a dark place. I was having the worst day since the night I lost Abby. I allowed myself to sink to a new low I had never experienced before. I wrote a note entrusting my sister with the care of my daughter and all of my worldly possessions. The morning proved to me how much of a failure I let myself become. My daughter deserved better. Abby would have expected better of me.


The revolver my parents bought for me several years ago as a graduation present somehow made its way into my hand. I was admiring the beauty of such a rare and antiquated piece, often pulling it out to give it a good shining and polish. This time I wasn’t cleaning it at all, just staring at it in a dangerous way. Something deep in my told kept telling me I was playing with fire and I should put it away but the voice telling me how much I failed myself and my failed screamed much louder.


It must have all been a strange dream, feeling the cold of the barrel against my temple. Life, no matter how desolate the times, was always very precious to me. I grew up with devout parents and stayed devout throughout my adulthood. It was the cruel way that I lost my wife that greatly shook my faith but not enough to give in to the thoughts that ran through my head as I held the revolver in my hand.


I was alone in my study, I am absolutely sure that I was. I just held the revolver for several moments against my head, allowing thoughts of how much better a life Norah would have without me dance through. Something powerful and sad came over me and my finger was suddenly tightening on the trigger, I couldn’t tell myself to relax my grip. I saw her at the exact same time, seeing her lunge at me, mouthing words I couldn’t make out.


Then I was with her again in the most beautiful of places, a small tropical island somewhere in the middle of paradise. It seemed to be so vivid and real, as if I could almost feel the warmth of the sun and her skin against mine. She indulged me in the rare treat of allowing me to draw her magnificent body as she lounged in the white sand. I cannot remember the last time I was allowed to visit with her in my dreams in such a beautiful place.


The happiness came to an end all too quickly. Dark clouds began to brew on the horizon and the wind began to violently pick up. Standing in the midst of the waves she was telling me I was dreaming. The rest of what she told me is blurred other than she told me that I needed to wake up and I wasn’t finished yet. I shut my eyes tightly and try to replay the entire scene again, hoping her obscure words will come back to me.


It was almost too real to be a dream. There have been times before where I could have sworn that Abby was right…


“Oh my gosh!” an unfamiliar female voice cries, cutting sharply through my pondering. “Claire! He is awake!”


In an instant my sister is at my side, peering down at my and taking my hand gently into hers. She runs a hand softly over my brow and for several moments she is too paralyzed with tears to say any words to me.  Behind her stands an attractive older woman who I am not immediately familiar with. There are no tears in her green eyes. She just stands there staring at me. Claire snaps out of her trance and tells the other woman to go notify a nurse or a doctor, telling her to urge them to come quickly.


“Michael, can you hear me?” she asks softly. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”


I nod my head at her. The tubes in my mouth prevent me from saying anything intelligible and I point to my mouth to indicate this. When she sees that my cognition is intact she begins to cry even harder. Her knees buckle and she kneels down beside me so that she doesn’t lose balance. I squeeze her hand reassuringly and she squeezes mine right back.


A man walks into the room with a white lab coat and stethoscope around his neck. His hair is snow white and his narrow face is bespectacled with thick glasses. He flips through a thick chart in his hands, making a few noted on my vitals. He proceeds to examine me, peering lights into my eyes and testing my neurocognitive and motor functions.


“It’s unbelievable,” he mutters as he removes a tube in my mouth, allowing me use of my speech again.


“What is?” Clair, I and the unfamiliar women ask at the same time.


“Everything,” he says. “There seems to be hardly any residuals physically. Everything seems to be perfectly intact. Mr. Franklin, you are an incredibly lucky man. In all of my twenty-five years as a neurosurgeon you are only the fourth person I have seen walk away from such an injury. Call it luck, divine intervention, whatever you will.”


The next several minutes are spent as the doctor, who introduces himself as Dr. Samuelson, goes over my hospital course and what sort of things I can expect in the future. I will need to go through a short bout of physical therapy before being discharged as it has been several months since I have not used the muscles in my legs. I have been in a coma for the past for months. I underwent brain surgery to relieve the swelling the gunshot to my head had caused.


“Now Mr. Franklin,” Dr. Samuelson says after he asks the others to leave the room. “The only question that remains is why would you do such a thing?”


“It’s not what you think,” I reply quietly.


Dr. Samuelson sighs. “Well I told the nurse to alert Psychiatry to do a consult with you shortly. I won’t be able to do any further discharge planning until they clear you.” He removes himself from my bedside, leaving me alone with my mind in a state of turmoil and disarray.


For four months the world around me passed on by, barely giving me a thought as I lay in this hospital bed. The time to take me off of life support drew precariously near and my only visitors were my sister and that woman who was with her. Dr. Samuelson was ready to sign off on the paperwork that would legalize my last breath and call it a day, the cries and pleas of my sister doing nothing to sway him. He thought enough time had already been wasted on a man who didn’t want to live anyways.


I was honest when I told the doctor that it wasn’t what he thought. I didn’t want to end my life, something too powerful to ignore came over me in those last few seconds. I just wanted to indulge myself in the fantasy of how differently things would have turned out had I not lost my wife on that fateful night. Norah is the ever constant reminder of how weak of a man that I truly am. Four years of my life have been spent searching for something, I’m not even sure what anymore, and I’m still stuck at the finish line.


I was so sure that what I saw while my finger rested on the trigger was a dream or some type of hallucination. The revolver rested at my temple but the bullet entered my skull right above my left eye and exited out right behind my left ear, miraculously missing every major vessel in my brain. I can’t think of anything to rationally explain it except for one thing that isn’t rational at all.


Claire and my other visitor come shuffling back into the room. Her tears have been wiped away and she is looking much more composed. She is wearing a heavy coat with a bright colored sweater underneath, letting me know that two seasons have already passed by. Since waking up I finally realize that someone who should be with her is nowhere to be seen.


“Where is Norah?”


An uncomfortable look crosses over her and the other woman’s face. Claire begins to fiddle with her wedding ring, her trademark move when she desperately wants to avoid talking about something or answering a question. It is unlike Claire to not have my daughter with her. She would have been by my bedside everyday with my daughter right beside her.


“Claire?” I prod a little impatiently. I’m in no mood for a pity party and I want Claire to make no mistake that I am.


“She is at my house with my husband,” a voice that is not my sister’s replies. The woman steps around my meek sister so that she can aim her gaze directly at mine. “We didn’t think it would be good for Norah to see you in such a state. She has already been through so much already.”


“Catherine,” Claire begins gently and reaches out to put her hand on the older woman’s shoulder.


Catherine looks back at Claire and shrugs her hand away. “Claire, we have to tell him. Too much time has gone by and there is too much he doesn’t know.”


I stare directly at my sister with a confused expression. “Claire, can you please tell me who this woman is and what the hell is going on?”


Tears start spilling down her cheeks as she lets the story of the past four months tumble out. It wasn’t until I was two hours late from picking up Norah and I was answering my phone call or returning messages that the staff there sensed that something might be wrong. An emergency contact, a woman who used to be close with Abby and I, was called and she came to pick up Norah right away.


Norah pulled out the emergency key from a loose brick on the side to let the two of them inside of the house. They called out my name a few times and searched the house when I didn’t call back. It was Norah who peeped first into my study and saw my body sprawled across the floor. In her innocence of the concept of violence, death, or injury she simply assumed that I was taking a nap on the floor.


She went inside the room, thinking that she would nudge me awake and tell me that she was safely home. It was several shakes to my limp body before she realized that something was not quite right with the situation she had stumbled upon. When she touched the wet blood that had ran down my neck she did the only thing a little girl her age could do, she screamed out bloody murder.


“She is so confused right now,” Claire says to me softly, tears still running freely down her face. “We have tried so hard to explain to her that you are not with her Mommy and that we are just waiting for you to wake up.”


My stomach heaves forward and I vomit over the bedside into the bedpan. It is too much for me to even try to begin wrapping my head around. Of anybody who had to find me laying there it had to be my innocent little girl. The revolving premonition that I can do nothing but fail her has come true yet again. She is the only person I want to cherish most in this world but I do nothing but hurt her time and time again. I am in no hurry to rinse away the bitterness in my mouth.


“Has she been with you this entire time?” I ask my sister.


Claire again looks away from me and quickly shelters herself behind Catherine, which in any other situation would be amusing as the older woman is just as willowy as she is. She is hiding something from me, which is not at all like her and suddenly I don’t think I have the stomach to hear what she might have to say.


“It’s okay,” I sigh. “It might be better to pick up this conversation later.”


“Michael, I think it is better that we get everything out in the open rather than later,” Catherine says to both Claire and I.


I remember who she is and another wave of confusion washes over me. I don’t understand why this woman is standing in my hospital room or how Claire could have gotten the contact information to get a hold of her. I last saw her at Abby’s funeral and she made no effort to come forward and say something to me. She didn’t even come in front of the congregation to say any parting words. She has my daughter at her home, which is only God knows how far away. Why is Norah not here with my sister?


“What the hell are you doing here?” I spat at her angrily.


She returns to me a pained look and gestures to my sister who is still standing behind her. “I think your sister is the best person to tell you the next few parts.”


“Michael,” Claire sobs and she slowly walks over to my bed side.


I snatch my hand away from her angrily when she tries to take it into hers. I know it is inexplicable but I suddenly feel betrayed by her. I clearly outlined in my last wishes that it was to be Claire to care for my daughter and not some woman who must have done something so sinister that her daughter spent her entire adulthood trying to leave the memory of her mother behind her. Claire recognizes the tumultuous emotions radiating out through the blue of my eyes.


“Why, Claire?” is all that I can manage.


Claire grips her hands on my bed rail to keep them from shaking and forces her eyes to remain steady with mine. “It is so much more complex than you could ever possibly think. You know how much I love and adore Norah. I only did what I thought was best for her.”


The past six months of my sister’s life comes out in between sobs and tears. Claire shows me the wig she is wearing and the port that is in her chest. I finally notice that she has lost a great deal amount of weight since I last saw her. My heart clenches more tightly with every word that she wrenches out. My anger pools away like melted snow.


“I only have a few more weeks left of treatments,” she says. “But I just can’t take care of her anymore, Michael.”


“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”


She grimaces at my question. “Look what has happened already. I couldn’t bear to be the weight upon your back that finally broke you. Don’t you know how much I love you?”


Her words make me feel like the lowest sort of scum on Earth. During the past four years she has loved me more than I ever loved myself, spending ever moment of free time she had to make my life easier. She raised the daughter that I all but abandoned. I have given her nothing in return but the torment of watching me drown in my own sorrow. I reach out a hand to cup her face and softly begin to wipe the streaming tears away.


“Of course I know that,” I whisper brokenly. “It is I who has failed to show that I love you.”


She looks at me with the same blue eyes as mine but she doesn’t smile at me. She gives me a nod of her head. My hand is pulled away from hers and is given a sincere squeeze. “Why did you do it if you knew that I loved you?”


“I didn’t want to live life without her.”


“Oh Michael… You can’t do this to yourself anymore. You have to start letting her go.”


“She said almost the exact same thing to me when I saw her,” I say without thinking.


Claire squeezes my hand a little harder this time and her expression turns to one of devastation. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore. I’ve done it for four years.”


“Michael, listen to yourself! Abby has been gone for four years now. We laid her to rest. Do you even realize she is gone?” Claire cries painfully.


“I’m not crazy, Claire,” I say, a little taken aback.


I’m not sure if I am being completely honest with her or with myself. I know what I saw couldn’t have been a dream. It was too vivid. Something tried to slap that revolver out of my hand.