Proof of Angels (7 page)

“Sean, Sean, Sean,” Gaspar repeated like a mantra and closed his eyes, imagining the horror.
The could have been
.

“So I said a prayer. Promised myself a long time ago that if I ever found myself in a similar predicament I wouldn't be
a hypocrite and declare my devotion to our lord and savior and all that crap, but I did. I said a damned prayer. Promised God or whoever was listening, angels, saints, my dead mom and dad, whoever, I'd be a better man if I got out of there, and just like that, this angel appears from out of nowhere. She was so bright, and it felt so real, and I followed her and just as I got to the window, she disappeared. She got me out of there. I got to the window and I just jumped. A second after I did, the room flashed over and the entire floor gave way. The house exploded behind me. If it weren't for that angel, I'd be, I'd be . . .”

“Dead,” Gaspar finished, tight-lipped and with a nod.

“Yes. I'd be dead. But I am not. And I can't help but wonder why. And I can't exactly go around telling people that an angel saved me. Or that I have some divine purpose now, some reason to be alive today. I can't very well do that. Not now, not after all the bullshit I put my sister through telling her she was crazy all those years she went searching for miracles to save Colm . . .”

“Sean, I understand. I do. But it could be a lot of things . . .”

“Yes, that's what I want to hear. I need to hear some common sense. I need some sort of scientific reason. Tell me one, Gaspar. Please, because I feel like I am losing my mind.”

“Well, for one, you said the angel led you to a window. Are you sure the sun wasn't coming through the window? That it wasn't some sort of aberration? Some trick of your eyes? An optical illusion?”

“No, I am sure it wasn't. It was black as night. The window was covered in smoke. Next try . . .”

“You said you were unconscious at some point? Did I hear
that correctly? You lost your way? Your head injury could have caused you to hallucinate. You could have been dreaming or suffering from oxygen deprivation. It could have been a stroke of good luck—that you happened to see a person—but actually you were already on your way in the right direction for the window.”

Sean smiled. He liked hearing Gaspar try to reason away the unfathomable. There was a secret thrill in it. And Gaspar was so good at making the irrational so banal. But there was a part of him he wasn't going to reveal to Gaspar.
I saw her before, Gaspar. I saw this angel of light before
.

“And then there is the most obvious reason for why you didn't see an angel . . .”

“Oh? What's that?” Sean asked.

“Well, if an angel was going to go through all the trouble to save you . . . why stop there? Why stop at the window? You were three stories up. Why didn't she just carry you to the ground safely?”

Sean let out a loud laugh and slapped his own leg. “Ouch!” he said, realizing again that his hands still hurt and so did his legs. “Yeah, it was just some sort of illusion. I know. Thanks, Doc. You're right. It's all a bunch of nonsense.”

“Now, now, that's not what I am saying. You asked me for logical reasons. I gave you some. But the illogical can't be ignored either. It is illogical that you're even here today talking to me. All of my textbooks, all of my experience in medicine tells me that you should be dead. So there is something there. There is space for the irrational. Always.”

“So you think there's a chance that all of this—me being here—isn't just some fluke? That there is a reason bigger than
me? That maybe I have a second chance for a reason?”

“Maybe. As a man who is living his second chance, I have to say it's not something to take lightly. And angel or no, the facts are irrefutable. You are here. For whatever reason, Sean, you have a second shot. And you have to remember, like you said, angels come in all sorts of shapes and forms. You have lots of angels looking out for you—here and now. And maybe
you're
the angel with a message, a purpose that you need to fulfill here on earth.”

“So you agree there was a reason—why I am here?”

“Yes, my friend. I agree. But maybe you need to look at it another way, too.”

“How's that?”

“Stop thinking in terms of chances—first, second, third—whatever. Think of it in terms of phases, chapters, if you will. You're just turning a page, moving on to the next chapter. Nothing to be ashamed of in the previous ones. You're just moving forward, like everyone else in the world. But now you've got the perspective you didn't have before. Now you know how important it is to savor every moment.”

“But don't you have any regrets, Gaspar? Don't you ever think there was a better way? Have you ever looked back and known you so fundamentally screwed up that you can't possibly go on?”

“Of course, I think everybody does. I have many. Too many.”

“So how do you do it?”

“How do I do
what
exactly?”

“How do you get up? Start over? Go on? Live out your second chance, chapter, or whatever you want to call it, knowing
the people you loved once don't get to, or knowing that they might be out there living their life without you, without a second thought about you?”

“Some days I try to be a little nicer, a little more patient. Sometimes, I try to smile a bit more. I try to make up for all the years I wasn't so nice, so patient, so pleasant to Niranjana and to Dhruv. I can't go back and be kind to them. But I can be kind to others. I can't bring my dead wife back. I can't undo a lot of things, Sean. You're right. And you know that, too. You do. That's not our job. So I try to be a bit better, every day. That's all we can do.”

“I regret so much though. I've screwed up so many times. I don't know where to even begin making up for it.”

“Sean, stop. Just stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Thinking about the past, Sean. Stop. I know it's easier said than done. But a wise boy once told me that thinking about the past can make you angry or sad, and thinking about the future can only make you anxious. But there is a space in between the past and the future. It's the present. It's right now. So rest there, Sean. Rest there. You have nothing to regret in this moment. No mistakes have been made. Nothing is about to happen. If you just stay here.” Gaspar put his hand on Sean's heart and tapped it. “Right here. Stay right here.”

G
ASPAR STAYED IN
L
OS
A
NGELES WITH
S
EAN FOR A
full week as promised. It took the better part of every day for him to make all the necessary arrangements for Sean to return to his apartment and have around-the-clock care.

Sean amazed Gaspar with his progress. In just a remarkable seven days, a mere seven weeks from jumping out of the building, Sean was able to sit up. His head was removed from the stabilizer and his neck was fitted for a brace. The bandages on his hands were removed and protective gloves slid on; he could finally use his hands to hold his own drink.

Though several doctors had explained to Sean about the injuries he'd incurred, Sean admitted to Gaspar that he didn't quite grasp what they were telling him. So Gaspar called for Sean's CT scans and X-rays, and the two sat together looking at the glow of Sean's insides. Gaspar used a pen as a pointer to show Sean that he had two clean breaks in each of his femurs.
Almost identical. He showed Sean the before photos—the two femurs, snapped and jagged black lines through white bones. Sean winced in pain just looking at the films, though the initial excruciatingly acute pain of the break had long since faded to a throbbing, constant one.

Then Gaspar held up the post-op films. Each of Sean's legs now had four screws drilled into it: two at each side of his hips and two in each of his knees to support the rods placed to help the bones heal. Gaspar explained how the screws would eventually have to be removed. Sean shook his head in disbelief.

“So another surgery?”

“Sort of. You'll be awake. They may give you a twilight drug. Numb the area. No big deal.”

“How come you doctors are always telling us patients that it's no big deal? Have you ever had titanium rods stuck in your body and up your ass?”

Gaspar laughed and said, “Point taken. Speaking of asses . . .” Gaspar pulled up another set of films.

He showed Sean how his bones had been fused above the coccyx and sacrum between the lumbar and thoracic area of the spine.

“And this,” Gaspar said, brushing a long stroke of his pen against the film, “this is a Zielke rod placed in the L1–L3. These are pedicle screws in the L3 and L4. You're lucky your spine was not severed, Sean. It's a miracle. If it had been, you would never be able to walk again. You'll regain most motor functions eventually. Bending may be an issue, since the lumbar area is where you need the most flexibility,” Gaspar warned Sean, “but for the most part, with physical therapy,
you will eventually walk and regain enough to do most of your activities.”

Sean looked at the pieces of himself, broken inside, now held together with rods and screws and pins that looked like a series of chains. “For once my body looks like how I feel inside. Shattered,” Sean remarked quite melodramatically.

“Or,” Gaspar paused, “stronger than ever. Now that you're reinforced.”

“Ever the optimist, Doc.”

“No, a realist. You're on your way to getting better inside and out.”

“But I won't be able to fight fires? Surf? Do any of the things I love? Any of the things that make me who I am? How is that good news?”

“Maybe it's time, once again, my friend, to redefine who you are. Or better yet, stop defining yourself by what you do for a living or how you have fun, but rather by what you believe.”

In Sean's first day out of bed, he was moved into a mechanical recumbent wheelchair. Gaspar and James walked alongside him as he practiced using the buttons and steering himself. Pleased to finally be out of his room, Sean took a long ride through the corridors of the hospital. They passed by nurses' stations, waiting rooms, and patients' rooms, some where patients were crying out in pain and some where only the sounds of a game show wheel spinning could be heard.

Sean hated it.

“I gotta get out of here, guys. It's killing me,” Sean said.

“One more week,” James assured him, “and then you're sprung.”

“I've made all the arrangements,” Gaspar added. “A gentleman nurse by the name of Tom, and with great luck he is also a physical therapist, will meet you and James the day after I leave. He's agreed to care for you during the day and help with your rehabilitation. I'll have a night nurse as well. James will fill in here and there. Isn't that right, James?” Gaspar nodded in James's direction.

“Yes, sir,” James said, giving him a false, friendly salute.

The two men had spent a lot of time over the past week sitting in Sean's room, eating, loafing, and at times watching reruns of
Jeopardy!
and racing to answer each statement with a question.

“What is the Emancipation Proclamation?”

“Who is Al Pacino?”

Sean enjoyed watching the two competing with each other more than the program itself. It was the most entertainment he'd had in weeks. Even more so, he enjoyed seeing James, a firefighter and surfer, who replaced each period at the end of a sentence with
man
, and had a degree from a local junior college, trounce Gaspar, world-renowned cardiologist, each night.

“Lucky guess,” Gaspar would say each and every time James would come in a second before him. Though Gaspar feigned exasperation, Sean could tell that Gaspar enjoyed the company of James as much as he did. James was not only smart, and obviously a devoted friend, but he worked hard. He pulled two doubles in the week Gaspar was there. He stopped in during his shifts when he could, after his shifts,
and before them. He always came in with something that was the “bomb.”

This veggie burger, Gaspar, it's da bomb, man
.

This hummus. The. Bomb. Bam
.

Hands down. Oh my god, this coffee. Da bomb!
Which James followed up with an explosive gesture and crashing sound effects.

“No wonder,” Gaspar said, leaning over Sean one afternoon, just before biting into a sandwich, “James didn't think to go to your apartment, the boy is always eating and or exploding.”

On the last morning of Gaspar's stay, he arrived at Sean's room early to sit and go over the expected recovery plans. But just as he was about to get up and say good-bye to Sean, James peered into the room and said he had a surprise for Sean.

“Close your eyes, man.”

“If it's a stripper, you're tipping,” Sean quipped back.

“It's nothing like that. What did I tell you? Those joints are for losers. I don't need to pay for my lady friends,” he said with a knowing smile. His bright green eyes squinted, and his lips closed as he stuck his double chin out, stretching the hanging skin and what looked like remnants of baby fat, and said, “Take a load of this face. Is this the face that needs to pay for chicks?”

“What is it then?” Sean said, covering his eyes with his gloved hands.

“Keep 'em closed. I'll tell ya when to open,” James said, shouting through the doorway of Sean's hospital room.

Sean heard two sets of adult footsteps. One set was James,
he was certain. But the other, by their pacing, was a woman's. Alongside her, Sean could hear a soft padding sound, followed by tiny clacks, like fingernails tapping the floor.

“Keep 'em closed! No peeking!” James erupted when he saw Sean tilt his head back to sneak a look through the tiny slits of his closed eyes.

For a second Sean thought it was his sister, Cathleen, with one of the boys. But then he felt a soft push on his upper thigh. The only part not covered in a cast.

“Can I open them?” Sean asked.

“You can open them!” James said cheerfully. “Go on, man!”

Sean opened his eyes and saw the yellow-haired paw that tapped at and then rested on his upper thigh. Sean's eyes followed the length of the paw and saw that it was connected to the outstretched leg of a yellow Labrador. Its large brown eyes were slanted in such a way that he appeared as if he were about to cry. Each eye was surrounded by flecks of baby-fine and soft white hair that gathered and met in a peak above his large pink-spotted black snout. His ears flopped down next to his head and swung a bit as he cocked his head as if to say “Hello” when he pulled back his paw. He had a bright blue vest wrapped around his abdomen and a red collar that was inscribed with the name “Chief.”

“It's a service dog, Sean,” James explained. “The guys back at the house all chipped in and got him for you. There is usually a huge waiting list, like a mile and a half long, for these dogs, but because of your immediate needs and living conditions—meaning you're alone and being a firefighter hero and all—you got one! You're gonna work with his trainer, and in a few days he'll be fetching club sodas for you from the
fridge. Hell, I bet we can eventually teach him how to surf. He can get our towels for us!”

Sean looked at the dog, back at James, and at Gaspar, who stood behind James smiling, totally taken with the dog himself.

“He's mine?”

“Yes, he's yours,” James explained. “Well, actually Libby here is going to help you two get acquainted. She can teach you what you need to know to take care of him. But mostly he'll be taking care of you.”

Libby, a tall, lanky brunette with cropped hair and a row of earrings up her right ear, and an intricate tattoo wrapping her forearm, put out her hand to shake Sean's. “I'm Libby Cartwright. Your trainer.”

Sean put out his gloved hand and shook her hand gently, and held it and tried to squeeze it as if to say:
Wait
. He was staring at her tattoo. Celtic knots in green and orange seemed to be camouflaging scars on her arm. Sean took a hard look and recognized the shape and pattern. He had seen them on fellow rehab patients back in the day. They were scars of old track marks. A heroin addict's tell.

Libby caught Sean's eyes. Sean knew she knew what he saw. The two made eye contact and nodded in secret acknowledgment.

“I can't have a pet,” Sean said, looking at Libby, and then at James and Gaspar.

“What are you talking about, Sean? Of course you can,” James said sternly. “Don't go kicking a gift horse—”

“No, it's not like that. It's just in AA I was told I had to keep a plant alive for a year, then I'd be able to move on to a pet . . . and I can't keep the damn plant on my patio alive.”

Gaspar laughed aloud.

“What's so funny?” Sean snapped.

“I saw that plant,” Gaspar said with a knowing grin and nod. Libby laughed, too.

“Oh, so you're laughing now, too?” Sean said flirtatiously to Libby.

“Chief is different, Sean. He'll tell you what he needs. You won't forget to feed him or give him water. He won't let you. He'll be able to turn on lights, open cabinets, and fetch your shoes since you can't bend down. He knows over forty commands,” James assured Sean.

Chief sat beside Sean and propped his warm muzzle on his lap. Sean put his hand on the dog's head and started to stroke his fur. Sean hadn't felt anything but pain in his hands in weeks. And with the protective gloves, there was no way his skin was able to feel the warmth of Chief's snout, the soft hair above his eyes, but Sean felt as though he could. For a second, he felt as if he could feel as he had before the fire.

Libby knelt down beside Chief and wrapped her sleek, ropey arms around him, rubbing his abdomen, and looked up at Sean. “He's one of the best I've ever trained. Wanna see what he can do?”

Sean nodded. “Okay.”

Libby pointed across the room toward the bathroom and said, “Open the door.”

Chief padded across the room, popped up and used his paws to pull down the door handle, opened it, and held it with his body.

James looked back at Sean, amazed. “See?”

“Okay, okay,” Sean shushed James.

“Chief, pillow, please,” Libby said, pointing toward the bed.

Chief walked over to the bed, got up on his hind legs, took the pillow with his mouth, and carried it over to Libby. Libby gave Chief a hearty pet and rubbed his ear.

Sean got the drift. He felt bad for the dog. He didn't want him running around doing tricks for his benefit.

“Hey, Chief! Get over here, buddy,” Sean said and Chief turned, looked at Sean, and almost nodded in approval, as if Chief was the one making the decision about who would be keeping whom.

Chief walked past James, past Gaspar, and past Libby and lay down in front of Sean's wheelchair before propping his head on top of his paws.

“Guess he's stayin',” Sean said.

“Looks like it,” Libby said with a smile.

“So he's mine?” Sean said again, incredulously. “Just like that? He's mine?”

“Well, technically, we have to work together for a couple of weeks and make sure he's a good fit for you. I'll have to teach you how to command, reward, feed, and take care of him. It seems as though Chief is quite smitten with you, so I think we're good there, but you're going to have to be released from the hospital, and in your own home, before I can really start training you. For now, do you mind if we just come and visit every day?”

“Sure, that'd be fine,” Sean said, looking at her, taking all of her in for the first time. She wore little makeup, just some mascara and eyeliner that accentuated her doe-shaped gray eyes, and a hint of bubble gum pink lipstick. He was sure her skin was meant to be the color of a white peach, but it had
been burned so many times by the sun that it was awash with thousands of faded brown freckles. Tiny crow's-feet gathered like party crepe-paper streamers around her eyes when she smiled. And her small, slightly upturned nose crinkled when she laughed. She had a huge, open, contented smile, the type of smile that looked as though it might give way to a boisterous howl of laughter at any moment. Sean liked it. Sean liked her. She had an easy vibe. Sean glanced over at James and could see that he, too, saw what he did. Both men were now smiling back at her.