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Trulytogether. Not as partners in a catastrophe, each brave-facing it and dealing with their truths on their own.
Daniel was all the way to the door, and even opening things up, when the other two got up in a rush and reached for him.
“No,” he said sharply as he took a step back.
Catching his balance on the jamb, he forced his voice to be even. “I’ve got to get out of here. I just—give me a minute.”
“Daniel, let me come with you—”
“I’m sorry,” he said to Lydia with a voice that cracked. “I just—let me clear my head. I don’t want to be a shit, I really don’t. I just… I need to breathe for a minute, ’kay? You listen to everything he has to say and fill me in when we’re back upstairs.”
From inside the exam room, Gus murmured, “Let him go.”
“Take your cane,” Lydia said urgently. “Here.”
She ducked back in. Leaned all the way out again. “Please. Take this.”
He watched from a vast distance as his hand reached forward and locked on to the metal shaft’shook. Then, before he said something he was going to regret, he nodded at her and walked away. Shuffled away. Limped away.
It was a while before the larger laboratory sank in, all the researchers busy at their stretches of stainless-steel counters, so many white coats and faces hiding behind clear safety glasses, their nitrile-gloved hands reminding him of ads for the Blue Man Group that he’d seen in the New York City subway once.
Glances were discreetly sent his way, and he could feel their disappointment in him.
Or maybe he was dubbing that in.
As he continued along, he assumed he was going for a short wander. That he’d return to the exam room and pull his mind and emotions together. Instead, he found himself all the way down at the elevators.
Well, looked like he was headed back to the house.
When he hit the up button, the doors opened immediately.
Maybe it was a sign.
He stepped in, turned himself around, and punched the button marked “L.” For “Lobby.” When there was a shrill buzzing noise, he couldn’t think of why—
Oh, right.
Fumbling in his back pocket, he took out hisswipe card and did the duty with the reader. The doors shut. And up he went.
Not a staircase to heaven, as it were. But an Otis elevator to C.P.’s crib.
Then again, there was no eternal peace waiting for him at the end of this short ascension. Or at the end of his road, either. Funny how being an atheist had never particularly affected him one way or the other. That pragmatism stung, though, as he confronted the worm-food option that his refusal to believe in a higher power promised him.
Salvation might just be a fantasy he was going to need to embrace.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself.
“He needs to blow off some steam,” Gus said. “It’s been a lot lately.”
As the good doctor sat down in front of his computer again, Lydia’s instinct was to go after Daniel and make sure he was all right. Whatever that meant.
Gus leaned over and patted the seat she’d been in. “He’ll be back.”
“Maybe he’s gone to have another smoke.” As she felt the man look up sharply, she shrugged. “He goes out into the woods and lights up. With a Jack Daniel’s. I found him there last night. No, wait, it was two nights ago? I can’t remember.”
Time had ceased to be linear for her. It was more a fruit salad of minutes and hours, everything mixed up in a big bowl of sadness.
Who knew that there was a vinaigrette that tasted like grief.
