Charleston

Gerald’s plans of treating his sister to a two-week long road trip through New England withered to extinction the first week of June. What Elizabeth had been passing off as indigestion for months had quickly become a monster, now metastasized to most of her organs.

“I can’t find the piece that goes here,” Elizabeth wheezes, pointing to the only border piece missing from the Cape Cod shoreline puzzle she and Gerald have been working on for the past week. After three sinus rhythm beats echo off the walls of the room, Gerald finds the piece and slides it across the table with shaking fingers.

“I reckon I should have picked something that wasn’t all shades of blue. Everything is starting to look the same,” Gerald grumbles, squinting from behind readers that do nothing to manage his deteriorating eyesight.

Elizabeth smiles, the skin around her eyes crinkling as her heart rate picks up with the effort. Behind her, the roar of a crowd booming through TV static attracts Gerald’s attention. With a sideways glance to confirm a Red Sox home run, he shifts in his seat and reaches into the bag at the foot of his chair.

“I just caught this off the right field fence, a beamer from Contreras,” he says, holding a brand new baseball over the table in offering to his sister.

“Were the bases loaded?” she asks, a sparkle in her eye as she grabs the baseball.

“Just second and third,” Gerald replies, smiling as he sits back in his seat.

“You really should have gone without me,” Elizabeth says after a moment, her face drooping as her smile fades.

“And missed our Freedom Trail audio tour and reading you Huckleberry Finn? I couldn’t go without you, so I just brought you with me.”

She laughs, the first genuine laugh in over a month that Gerald has heard, then she doubles over in a fit of coughing that has him standing to his feet in search of water. On the side table by the bed, a tumbler wrapped in an illustration of a lighthouse promises her reprieve. When Elizabeth has finally coated her throat enough to manage a deep breath, she gestures towards the bed, which Gerald helps her to while towing the machine of lines and leads behind him.

“Who are we kidding, even my healthy sixty-five-year-old body wouldn’t have made it two miles in a summer heatwave to see Revere’s house,” Elizabeth says after Gerald has tucked her under the Harvard University blanket folded at the foot of the bed. Then, Gerald eyes his sister carefully as he pulls his chair over to sit beside her.

“Just because we are aging adults doesn’t mean we should act like it,” he replies, and although he is joking, Elizabeth responds with a fixed frown.

“Says the guy who’s been acting like a crotchety old man for the better part of two decades,” she says.

“I lost everything, I have a reason to be crotchety,” Gerald grumbles.

“No you don’t. You didn’t lose everything, you lost someone important. But you still had Brandon.”

Gerald is quiet, mulling over the age-old family argument in his head before finally setting his mouth in a stubborn straight line.

“And you forget that Brandon lost his mother, too,” Elizabeth finishes.

A tug on Gerald’s heart reminds him of the emptiness there as he looks away and out the window while silence stretches between them. Outside, he can almost imagine the bounce of familiar brown curls on the shoulders of someone walking across the courtyard, or the melodic laugh of someone with an exorbitant amount of compassion drifting down the hallway.

“I barely remember what she looked like anymore,” Gerald whispers. “Or what she sounded like.”

A cold pressure on the side of his arm draws his attention back to Elizabeth, whose thin fingers attempt a feeble grasp of comfort.

“Luckily, there’s another person that could remind you of both,” she says gently.

Gerald sighs, his eyebrows drawing together as he says, “Brandon doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Is that what he told you?” Elizabeth counters. “Or is that what you have been telling yourself?”

Gerald doesn’t have a chance to consider the lie or the truth before Elizabeth’s monitor displays alerts in rapid succession, and a moment later, the hospice nurse enters the room. She stops to read the vital signs displayed, then reaches a hand down to grasp Elizabeth’s firmly.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Ms. Langley?” she asks.

“I’m in pain,” Elizabeth admits, then closes her eyes and adds, “And I am tired.”

The nurse shares a look with Gerald, whose solemn and tight-lipped expression does not change. Then, she glances back to Elizabeth and says, “I can give you something for both. But you are very weak, and there is a chance you won’t wake up if you fall asleep.”

Against the nurses expectations, Elizabeth chuckles and replies, “I think that’s everyone’s dream, my dear. To go peacefully in their sleep.”

The nurse spares one more look to the woman’s brother, who offers a sad smile, then turns to exit the room.

“Tell me about the trip you took me on,” Elizabeth tells Gerald after the door has shut. He fixes her with his sad eyes, but when he recognizes the peace in hers, he can’t help but lift his lips in a small smile. He scoots his chair closer to her bed, its legs scraping against the linoleum, and he covers one of her small hands in both of his.

“We flew -” he pauses, emotion caught in his windpipe, before clearing his throat and beginning again. “We flew into Portland International and spent the evening trying every lobster roll we could find. We took a trolley to Fort Williams Park and had some honeymooners take a picture of us in front of the Portland Head Light. We stayed for two more days and went to the Museum of Art and Victoria Mansion.”

“And then where did you take me?” Elizabeth asks with a smile, her gaze fixed on a scuff in the paint in the corner of the room.

“I rented us a car and drove you to the Ben and Jerry’s factory for your very own scoop of Cherry Garcia, and followed it up by finding us a whole wheel of Vermont cheddar cheese.”

“A whole wheel would have cost you more than the entire rest of the trip!” Elizabeth exclaims with a hoarse laugh that ends in another round of coughing. When it subsides, Gerald takes a shaky breath.

“I watched you fall in love with Boston and bought you a consolation beer pretzel for dragging you to Fenway Stadium.”

“But you never caught me watching you watch the game like you did when Dad coached the Tarpons,” Elizabeth whispers with a grin.

A tear loosens from Gerald’s eye and paves a shining track down his face.

“We got matching jerseys from the gift shop, and then took the scenic route to Sterling House and Mark Twain House.”

“But not before walking through Harvard Yard.”

A tear twinned to Gerald’s escapes more quickly and violently down Elizabeth’s cheek as the nurse pushes back through the door, rolling a cart behind her. The nurse stops at the bedside and focuses her attention only on the older woman dwarfed in the bed.

“Morphine will help ease the pain and help you breathe better,” she says. “It may also make you nauseous and drowsy.”

Elizabeth reaches toward the nurse with a surprising strength, grasps her fingers, and replies, “I understand, dear. I’ll just be enjoying the rest of this trip with my brother.”

The nurse and Gerald make brief eye contact, a knowingness passing between them, before she stands a little taller and prepares to administer the medicine.

“Where are we now?” Elizabeth asks, turning her soft eyes back Gerald, who adjusts to tighten his grip on his sister’s hand.

“A backtrack for a few days in Providence,” Gerald tells her. “To take a walk through Federal Hill, which promises ravioli and cannolis that will have us stuffed so full that we have to roll each other back to our cottage for the evening.”

In the bed, Elizabeth seizes to keep herself from a third coughing fit, and beside her, the nurse pushes the prepared morphine through her IV.

“It sounds like you’ve had a lovely time, Ms. Langley,” the nurse says quietly.

“Oh, we have,” the woman replies confidently. “It’s been the best summer.”

“I’m so glad,” the nurse responds with a soft smile, which she turns on Gerald, but he is too focused on studying the threads of the blanket to return the gesture. “I will let you two enjoy the rest of your trip. You should be more comfortable now.”

“Just in time for the return flight,” Elizabeth agrees.

For a while after the nurse leaves, neither of them speak. Gerald rubs circles counterclockwise across the paperthin skin stretched over Elizabeth’s knuckles, while Elizabeth’s eyelids grow heavy. Right before her thoughts become cloudy, she curls her fingers around what bit of Gerald’s hand rests in her palm.

“We can’t fly home yet,” she rasps through an erratic exhale. “I need you to make one more stop, Gerald.”

“Anywhere,” Gerald whispers, grasping her hand as if his strength will be her lifeline. “I’ll take you anywhere.”

Elizabeth’s head rolls sideways as she regards him with the best smirk she can muster and says, “You’re going to have to make this stop without me. Promise me you’ll do this one last thing before summer ends.”

Gerald swallows hard, dread clenching his gut because he knows what’s coming.

“South Carolina is not part of New England, Lizzie,” he says, the childhood nickname rolling off of his tongue.

“No,” Elizabeth admits. “But it’s much more important than New England.”

Gerald gives a single nod, clinging to her with calloused hands that are now her only anchor to this world. Across the room, the last four hundred pieces of Cape Cod lay scattered on the table by the window. Proof of Willson Contreras' fourth inning home run sits abandoned in the chair while he sneaks a ground ball past shortstop and narrowly slides into second base on the TV.

Neither the relaxed posture of Elizabeth’s body, nor the serenity on her face, warn Gerald when she slips beyond him. If not for the harsh tone of the monitor, he could imagine being six years old again, sitting beside her bed after a bad dream. Any minute now, her eyes would fly open and he would crawl under the blanket into the safety of her arms.

In a daze, Gerald lets the nurse lead him to the lobby with a steaming cup of black coffee in hand. He doesn’t drink it, but the smell wafting from the lid reminds him of early Sunday afternoons on Elizabeth’s back porch, so he holds it until it runs cold.

Not until he’s taken a deep breath and secured a one-way flight out of Tampa for the following morning, does he dial the number he hasn’t forgotten after all the years. The other line picks up on the second ring, and for one time-stopping moment, all Gerald hears are two tiny voices shrieking in excitement before they fade into the background.

“Brandon?” Gerald croaks.

The pause is brief, but it does not negate the contentment that screams at Gerald through the void.

“Dad.”