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“But you don’t think so,” Jeff said. “I can hear it in your voice.”
“He didn’t ask for any family or friends when he woke up.” And Simon hadn’t offered to contact anybody, either. He definitely wasn’t going to mention that to Jeff.
“So… that’s it? Just you playing hero for the day?” Jeff sounded dubious.
“What else would it be?” Simon asked.
“Hey. This is me you’re talking to. I know you. There are things here you’re not telling me. Lots of things.”
“There’s a very long list of things I’ve never told you.”
“Nice evasion, but you didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask me a question,” Simon shot back.
Jeff burst into laughter on his end. “Yes, I did, and you answered it with a question. That’s Conversational Evasion 101. What’s so special about this guy?”
The answer to that seemed too huge to articulate and even Simon could tell that might be a problem. “I don’t know,” he said in the end.
“That,” Jeff said, “I believe.”
“But I feel…” Simon trailed off. He felt entirely too much and for no discernable reason.
“Yes?”
“I want to help him,” Simon said. “And Icanhelp him. He seems to need help. If he allows it, why shouldn’t I? Celia thinks there’s something missing in my life. I think she wants me to take up a hobby. I was thinking of maybe getting a dog. But helping people is something I’m good at. It’s something I enjoy. It seems to me it would be…”
“It would be what?”
Simon said the first thing that came into his head. Not always a smart decision, but it was Jeff he was talking to. He trusted Jeff more than almost anyone else in the world. “Right. My helping him would be the right thing to do.”
Jeff fell silent for a long time. Simon waited him out. Eventually, he said, “Uncle Simon, this is a human being we’re talking about. He’s not a hobby or a pet. He’s a person and you don’t know what kind of person he is. You need to think this through. You need to be careful.”
It wasn’t bad advice at all. It was, in fact, excellent advice. “I will,” he promised, outright lying to his nephew for the very first time.
7
Ben Is Rescued Again
Friday, December 15
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
The Loop
When Ben woke, he was alone in the room. Simon had left. Well, of course he’d left. Ben wasn’t anything to him, regardless of the pretty words he’d said before Ben had fallen asleep. He felt a deep pang of sadness, and also one of abandonment, which wasn’t fair. Simon owed him absolutely nothing at all. He’d already done far more for Ben than any other stranger on the street would have. Expecting more was foolish and wicked, like the daydreams he’d had as a child of being a secret prince of a fairy kingdom, secreted away as a baby to protect him from danger, or perhaps just stolen. He was being raised in the mortal world but didn’t really belong in it. He dreamed of color and sunshine and brightly colored flowers, of shooting stars and full pink moons and ships sailing on silver seas.
He'd never shared those dreams with his mother because he knew exactly what she’d say. He was being childish, with his head always in the clouds, but also that it was sinful to be so enchanted with magic and make believe. The Bible was real. Fairy tales were not. That was the end of it.
He found his only outlet first with paper and crayons, later moving on to colored pencils, watercolors, then paint and canvas. He paid for the latter items from an after-school job as a dishwasher in the diner just down the road from his house and hid them in the attic, where she never went, as it was only accessible by a rickety ladder that came down from a small door in the ceiling. The attic was Ben’s refuge and it was the one thing he missed about the home where he’d grown up.
There was another knock on his door that occurred while the person was opening it. Ben didn’t understand the point of knocking if you were just going to come in anyway. It would make more sense to just walk in. It’s what his mother had always done. That’s how he’d gotten up the courage to go up into the attic in the first place. It was the only place in the house where he was assured of privacy.
“Good afternoon, Ben. I’m Dr. Perez.” A handsome man with dark hair and a closely trimmed beard smiled and held out his fist to Ben. At first he was confused, but then he realized that instead of shaking hands, the doctor wanted a fist bump. That made a sort of sense. It was probably more hygienic. Ben returned the gesture with his left arm—the one without an IV in it. “How are you feeling?”
“Hello,” Ben said. He was still drowsy but he felt much better than he had in several weeks. Maybe he’d just needed some extra sleep. “I feel okay.”
“Hm. And the lungs?” Without waiting for an answer, the doctor used his stethoscope to listen to Ben’s chest. “There’s still some congestion in there. We’ll send you home with a few prescriptions. You’ll need to take an antibiotic to finish up the pneumonia and I want you to take an oral steroid for a week. Prednisone, I think. And also two inhalers. One will be a rescue inhaler and the other will have medicine in it to keep you from getting quite this sick again. Okay?”
