The Cardinal

The lights of the hospital ward flickered darkening Cayden Miller’s office, most strongly over Allysa Robichaud’s head. She gave a shiver. He observed with acuity and jotted a note.  

“Are you hearing voices?”

She stared, still in her seat, wide eyes sparkling instead of an immediate reply, they were a conversation of their own. The young mother pulled her natural well shaped hair over one shoulder.

“There are two kinds of voices, you know,” she said, loosening her back and correcting her posture.

Cayden Miller wrote down another note. At twenty-four she was hospitalized for the first time. Her child, like his, left behind at home. Her hands were unsettled; always busy, always looking for something to do. Cayden thought of his wife, a physician on the next floor up who dedicated her evening tending Ryson and Emily. Lily Taylor was Allysa’s opposite; Cayden understood his wife, and found his patient to be a perplexing personality that held his attention. He tried not to stereotype her, but the hair told a story of rebellion that was hard to ignore.

“Say more,” he said.

“You aren’t curious for my sake, you are curious for yours,” she said. Allysa removed her shoes and pulled her legs up to cross them on the couch.

As if ready to meditate, she sat patiently in the thick of conversation, waiting to be set free. He needed to arrive at her diagnosis, but he knew it had to be one she would agree with or the young woman would ignore it entirely.

“What do you think Schizophrenia is?” she said.

It briefly interrupted Cayden’s thought process, but he replied as an expert psychiatrist would.

“Now listen Allysa, denying your mental health can have major repercussions.”

“And denying my truth can have more,” Allysa said.

If Cayden could move back in his seat he would have, but he held his feet flat on the ground stubbornly gripping earth. His mind went fuzzy and the light above changed its hue. Momentarily, his vision blurred while his eyes adjusted. Allysa did something to him that he couldn’t explain; he felt a shifting inside at the unknown door the young woman held open. It made him think. She fit every bullet point for Schizophrenia, but her demeanor told a story of stability and comfort in her own skin that wasn’t behind the others who fell into the diagnosis.

“I’ve prescribed you 20 mg of Olanzapine,” he paused, looking at her. “This should settle your experience,” he said carefully as he scanned her face.

Allysa dropped her feet to the floor and her shoulders sunk under the weight; Ryson had come to see him and saw her instead, but she couldn’t say.

Cayden’s phone went off and he left work immediately to attend to Emily’s concern.

She was crying over the small boy’s body in the ICU when he arrived. No words were exchanged but he sat beside her with his hand on her thigh. A blank mind with no recall, barely an acknowledgement of the room and only the sound of his sobbing wife.

They cremated the boy and placed the urn on their hallway mantle. Each day the couple walked by without seeing it.

 Cayden occupied the evening with handwashing dishes they normally put in the machine: he stared out the window with the warmth of the water on his hands as the only tie to this world. His daughter fell into the screen while Lily remained stuck in bed.

Over the weeks it seemed the urn shrunk: its blunt force of reality became normalized and it stopped standing out enough for the whole family to take notice. Emily carried it off the shelf and moved it under the television so it would be at eye level for her.

That’s when Cayden noticed it actually was smaller. The urn had become perfect sized for Emily’s little hands to carry her twin brother without losing it to the weight. He wondered if he was going mad but quickly fell into the scroll of Instagram desperate to avoid deep existential questions.

Allysa appeared. She spoke of enchantments and mediumship- the way the deceased could influence us in this world. Cayden skipped it after the intro and put down the phone to Paw Patrol rushing to the rescue. He pulled Emily in for a cuddle and stared blankly at the urn, letting the three second clip subtly play in his mind between the dissociation he gazed through it with nothingness where his soul would ordinarily be.

“Ryson isn’t in there, Dad.”

Cayden collected himself, pushing Allysa’s video to the background and dropping his belief in the supranatural of the urn. The mind does strange things in grief and he knew. He shook it off as if it were a normal part of grief’s wave.

“Where do you think Ryson is?” he asked his daughter. Cayden wasn’t sure how to guide a child through death but for the first time in weeks he stepped up to try.

“He’s in a room somewhere with blank white walls and a black sofa. I think he’s waiting for you to get him,” she said.

“Ryson isn’t in the hospital anymore, sweetheart.”

“But he is, Dad. I see him.”

Cayden dropped his arm and subtly shifted hist shoulders away from his daughter. The conversation had his head in a stream of run on thoughts. First, bullet points from the DSM, then bullet points of grief, each battling one another. Paw Patrol ended and Cayden stood as his phone flicked on.

Did the urn just shift? He thought out loud.

Emily looked to the stone container; golden birds engraved across one side. They glided around the back of gray before returning to their stagnant position where they held the space of the room. She ran to her mother in tears and crawled into bed.

Back at the hospital the meeting room’s plastic plant was replaced with living aloe vera in the windowsill, a spider plant on the side table.

 Three weeks off and Allysa was still there. He worked up his confidence in the office to meet with her having run from the interview once already. Cayden wasn’t sure if he could handle talking with her, but his shook and he needed reality to know.

“I’m surprised they kept you,” he said as he sat down, defeated. He refused to look at the woman but his ears remained attuned.

“They like a curiosity here,” she said. “It is what it is.”

A moment of silence spread between the two.

Allysa broke it first.

“He’s okay, you know,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your son. Riley.”

His watch beeped and Cayden used it to excuse himself.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “I forgot I’d told the nurses I would check in with them.”

Cayden drew his hand through his hair as he walked down the hall, uncertain of how to approach Allysa. He opted to talk with Brandon about her wellness plan, signing her off at the commencement of his check-in with the nurse.

That evening he went home and the urn became a tiny golden bird. It stood balanced on its little feet with Emily kneeling on the floor staring at the statue.

“I see you and mommy got a new figurine,” Cayden said.

“No,” was all Emily said in return.

The bird seemed to spread its wings and fly to the back door. It paused fluttering in front of the glass when Emily ran over.

“Wait” Cayden said.

He walked over to meet his son.

“We will miss you.” The moment transformed into a solemn sanctuary of peace filling Cayden.

The bird chirped in reply and grew two sizes, shredded the golden layer, and formed into a bright red cardinal. He lived, fully alive, flying as any other bird would.

Cayden opened the sliding glass door and the bird flew into the yard. The cardinal stopped at the feeder and several birds collected around him. Little Emily laughed for the first time in weeks as the blended flock sung together. They took off in multiple directions at the lead of Ryson’s bird who met with two more like him waiting patiently in a neighbour’s tree.