Everything in its Right Place

In the gold­en-amber twi­light of the pin-prick votives, scat­tered in per­fect­ly non-ran­dom man­dalas across the expanse that was Grace’s lim­it­less office, her voice drift­ed to me.  I felt her heat as it soaked into the back of my neck, but the sound of her came in waves, some­times slow, and some­times rush­ing, some­times under­wa­ter, some­times with pierc­ing clar­i­ty, some­times far away, but with­out an echo — only the dimin­ish­ment of distance.

From my posi­tion, I could see the soft sil­hou­ette of her chin and the curve of her jaw where it met her ear, all framed by the impos­si­ble starlight med­i­ta­tion of infi­nite flick­er­ing man­dalas.  Grace lay her palm gen­tly across my fore­head, and her voice slow­ly dis­in­te­grat­ed into a slow 8‑bit chaos.  I fad­ed into a blank space, then resolved into a spec­tral observ­er drawn through Max’s sto­ry as she continued…

The rub­ber wheels squealed in dis­agree­ment and then spun to align them­selves when she pushed Max’s meal cart into place above his bed.  Max had been tube fed since his intake, but some­times Godiya would bring the mobile tray over so she could talk to Max about the col­lectibles or art pieces his moth­er had left for him. 

The assort­ment seemed like a ran­dom menagerie on casu­al inspec­tion, but Mrs. Veihl insist­ed that Max was very spe­cif­ic about the place­ment of his keep­sakes.  She was so adamant about the top­ic that she had even man­aged to con­vince the hos­pi­tal main­te­nance staff to move one of the wall-mount­ed shelves behind Max’s bed down two inch­es and five inch­es fur­ther to the right.  When Godiya asked Hank, the main­te­nance guy who per­formed the task, he told her “man­age­ment okayed it,” and Godiya thought that was peculiar.

Godiya had to stretch to reach the mag­ni­fy­ing glass that Mrs. Veihl had used a step stool to place on the high­est shelf above Max’s head­board.  Mrs. Veihl had insist­ed that it be placed han­dle toward the wall, with about an inch of the glass extend­ing over the ledge.  She said that Max had placed it that way because when the sun hit his win­dow just right, the lens would cast a rain­bow over his head.  Twisting down from the shelf, Godiya’s braid caught a fig­urine of a hero from a decade-old sum­mer block­buster and sent it careen­ing onto the mint green cot­ton weave cov­er­ing Max’s torso.

“Nice one, Grace”, she whis­pered. “Don’t want to wake him up before break­fast is ready, do we?  Sorry about that, Max”, she said, plac­ing the fig­urine back on its foot­print and adjust­ing it to reflect the light from the bleach­ing med­ical over­heads in just the way Mrs. Veihl had left it.

She care­ful­ly set the eye­piece on the adjustable table over Max’s chest, then gin­ger­ly pumped the ped­al for the head­rest, bring­ing the boy to a loung­ing seat­ed posi­tion fac­ing the work­space.  She hat­ed how the order­lies who bathed Max stomped the ped­al, throw­ing him jerk­i­ly into an upright posi­tion.  Didn’t these kids have it rough enough with­out being treat­ed like rag­dolls?  It was for that rea­son she had devel­oped such a light touch with the equip­ment.  She didn’t know if the kids could feel the dif­fer­ence, but she did know it made her feel better.

Max had come to her sev­en days ago. After his five days of “max­i­mum hope,” when Mr. Veihl had still been com­fort­ing his wife with “Don’t wor­ry Helen, Max will be ok.  He’s a strong boy,” and ten more days of “mod­er­ate hope,” which includ­ed Mr. Veihl’s reminders that, “We just need to have faith, Helen. We just need to trust that He’s in con­trol,” one week ago Godiya had pushed Max down the long hall­way that con­vert­ed him from mod­er­ate­ly hope­ful to the most­ly hope­less, “It’ll be ok, Helen. We just need to remem­ber that every­thing hap­pens for a reason.”

Two days ago, Max’s dad had stopped com­ing to the hos­pi­tal, appar­ent­ly need­ing an ear­ly start to the “mak­ing deci­sions” step of the process.

Godiya was excep­tion­al­ly care­ful when she grabbed the sol­id pine plank that made up the base of Max’s final art project from the fall semes­ter before his birth­day.  The board was one inch thick, two feet on each side, and stained a dark mahogany brown, the col­or of blood mixed with clay.  By itself, the plat­form was at least two pounds, but it was the struc­ture of the sculp­ture itself that made the exhib­it so heavy.  The nature of the object por­trayed above the vio­lent dark foot­ing had mys­ti­fied Godiya the instant Mrs. Veihl had wheeled it in on a lunch cart and then had the object, which was much too heavy for her to lift her­self, installed on the shelf above Max’s head direct­ly in the semi-cir­cu­lar shad­ow cast by the mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

In the sev­en days of Max’s stay, Mrs. Veihl had only allowed the project to be brought down on a sin­gle occa­sion.  On Max’s sec­ond day in the LTW, she had asked Godiya to put it on Max’s table for her and hand­ed Godiya the look­ing glass. Mrs. Veihl walked over to the cur­tain, drew back the cor­ner, and stat­ed that “the light looked about right.” She had motioned Godiya to the oth­er side of the bed, pressed light­ly on her shoul­der to posi­tion Godiya’s head, and hand­ed the nurse the eyepiece.

“Look,” Mrs. Veihl had whis­pered. “He’s still in there. Please. He tried to tell all of us.”  Her deliv­ery was flat, but her eyes were not.

“I believe you, Mrs. Veihl. I believe they’re all still in there.  My job is to help them get out, and I’m real­ly try­ing, ma’am.”

Helen Veihl urged Godiya’s eyes back to the mag­ni­fy­ing glass, then adjust­ed the base of the project so that the cor­ner of the red/black plat­form just caught the trail of light dawn­ing through the sliv­er of win­dow exposed by the adjust­ed curtain.

“Please just look, Godiya. I need some­one to see.”

So Godiya put her eye to the glass, and what she saw became the back­ground in the visions pop­u­lat­ed by labored breath­ing sounds of ven­ti­la­tors and stac­ca­to beep­ing of heart mon­i­tors that had awak­ened her sick with anx­i­ety for the last five days.