"I thought I'd move them
out of the smoke. They seemed no longer those
bright arms Odysseus left us years ago
when he went off to Troy."

"The Odyssey," Fitzgerald Translation. Book 16, Lines 342-345. Used without permission.
 

MICHAEL:

I corner my bio instructor before going into class.

I hate begging, but sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

So I grovel. I explain that I was up all night because my dad's real sick...

She's not mean about it or anything, but she's like, do your best, you get to drop your lowest score anyway, so don't worry about it.

And she does say she's sorry about my dad.

She's a decent lady. Just a tough teacher, I'm told.

Oh Christ. I have no idea what this stuff is. A couple of the questions are gimmes, and I do okay on those. Some of this other stuff...what the hell?

I could've been reading one of Ally's Greek books for as much as I remember what I read.

I'm so goddamn tired. All that rocket fuel didn't make me more awake, it just ripped my guts up and made me all shaky.

I do what I can with this quiz. I don't remember what she talked about after that, because one of my classmates is like, wake up dude, class is over.

Shit. I fell asleep.

And my instructor sees me as she walks out.

Shit. I'm screwed.
 

Well, I figured I was as screwed as I could get until I got to chem. Pop quiz.

Shit! I haven't read anything yet! Just the first day's work. I didn't even touch this book last night. Figured I'd do it tonight...

Yeah, uh-huh.

Least this one, it's mostly equations and stuff, so I have a fighting chance. Not brute memorization shit. I think I nailed most of it.

Then I pass out again. This time, the instructor is like, she shakes me awake and she's like, I'm that boring?

"No...my dad's in the hospital...I was awake all night..."

She smiles. "Go home and get some rest."

Oh yeah. Right!
 

I've got an hour to wait before Kelly's done. I head out to the commons and grab a table and put my head down. I let the sun pour over me-it's still hot, but I don't feel so warm right now.

Wish she was done. I hate waiting.

I'm about to doze off again when I get tapped on the shoulder. I'm thinking it's Kelly, but it's Dr. Johnson, my bio instructor.

"Well, I wouldn't worry, you got 70 percent."

I can kiss my 4.0 goodbye right now.

"Don't get frantic. The class average was 50."

Like that's supposed to make me feel better?

"If you can do well in this kind of situation, you'll do great in the class. Hang in there."

She walks off. Like she was giving me good news or something.

I'm starting to resent the hell out of this. It's like, everyone's sorry, sure, but I'm just supposed to go on forward and do it anyway...and it's like so fucking hard...and I'm so beat...

Man, how does Kelly do it?

She finds me when she's done with class. "You wanna drive?" She asks me.

"Not really. It's your car." And my eyes are so messed up right now. Even without my lenses in, they hurt like hell.

"Okay."

She takes my arm and we give up our cool parking space. Which about five people are waiting in line for. Somebody who wasn't in line first slips in from the other direction, which means any moment now there's gonna be a riot in the parking structure.

Screw it. Trivia. Let them duke it out.

"Kel...I gotta ask you something."

"Shoot."

"Like...when your mom died...like how do you just keep doing this?"

She looks so sad, I'm sorry I asked her. "This is my dream, Michael...and if I think about my mom, I just get so bummed...so I think about you, and my studies, and about our life together...that's what keeps me going."

"I'm like...I can't even imagine it without my dad."

"I know." And she starts crying-oh God, I shouldn't have done that to her. "You know, he's kind of like my family, too...I'm so worried about him."

"I'm sorry, Kel..."

"No, that's okay...I just love you so much, Michael...and it's hurting me to see you like this, and your dad..."

"Love you, Kel."

I hold her hand the rest of the way there. I'm not sure if it's for me or her.

It doesn't matter right now.
 

"I'm kind of nervous about seeing him," I tell her. "All that hardware."

She holds my hand when we walk in. We should be walking like this on the shoreline, or at least cross campus...not to see my dad in the critical care unit...

Martha's still there. She's in this small chair, and she looks like she's sleeping. Not a shock. She's been here since last night.

"Michael, Kelly." She wakes up with a start.

I look over at Dad. He's still all wired up.

"He been awake yet?" I ask her.

"Just for a couple minutes at a time."

"But he's okay."

"He's not unconscious, if that's what you mean. But he's very heavily medicated. He's going to be in a tremendous amount of pain."

"Worse than last time?"

"Much worse. You have to remember, he's had a saphenous vein removed from his leg, a chest incision, and in order to do a bypass, they have to break your ribs."

"Plus he's got the cut from the ulcer."

He's a mess. God, hope they're giving him great drugs.

"How're his vitals?" Kelly asks her.

"Here, I'll show you how to read the monitors." She leads us to the hardware. "Keep in mind, this is a crash course, and some of these, the only way you get good is with practice."

I don't think this is a skill I want to acquire...particularly since I swear I'm never gonna need it again. Dad, don't do this again, please...

"Here, you can see, heartbeat is very slow, but that's good. And he's got a steady sinusoidal rhythm, and that's also good. Pulse is a little weak, but he's holding. And he seems to be getting enough O2, and that's good as well. The fever's normal after surgery, and at 100, we're not terribly concerned, although if it doesn't drop in a couple of days, we're going to be looking seriously at infection. He's being given prophylactic antibiotics for that, but hospitals are the worst place to be if you're sick, if you want to know the truth."

"Why?" Kelly asks her.

"Superinfections. And they seem to be getting harder and harder to combat. Particularly staph aureus."

"Dr. Scully said something about that. But we work on viruses in her lab."

"They're getting nastier, too. Because they can mutate so easily."

She stops for a moment, and I see her set her hand on top of his.

Oh God. If anybody thinks he's just her 'patient,' they're out of their minds.

And the look on her face. It's like she looks at him so tender...kind of like Kelly looks at me...how Ally looks at Langly...how J looks at the prof...

God, what is it about that look? It takes normal (or sort of normal) males and turns them into small puddles of goo.

She turns to me. "Michael. I have to work at my regular job tonight. I come off at 7. I'll come back after that."

"I'll stay with him."

She looks at me like I'm nuts.

"You look absolutely exhausted, and getting sick right now is not going to help him. And he'll worry a lot less if you're keeping up on your studies."

"He's gonna be all alone!"

"We can bring our books here," Kelly says to me.

Martha shakes her head. "No. Absolutely not. You will go home tonight, and you'll get a decent night's sleep."

"And who the fuck are you to tell me what to do?"

She's tired. "Listen, little boy. I've seen what major illnesses do to family members, and it isn't pretty." I HATE it when she calls me that.

"Seems to be okay for you to stay here all night!"

"I'm trained for this. And believe me, I'm going to get some sleep very soon."

She's full of shit. She looks like she never sleeps.

Kelly looks at me hard. "I think she's right, Michael. Look. Why don't we get our books, and we'll wait for him to wake up, but if he's not up by 9 o'clock, we go home and go to bed. Deal?"

I'm not happy about it, but I say, okay, whatever.

As Langly says, with women, you compromise.

You do what they want.

For once, dude was right. And about women, no less.
 

LANGLY:

God, I hate this guy. I have worked my frigging balls off all day, and he's like, well, I guess your efforts were satisfactory.

Fuck effort. He's getting results, baby. And if it's not good enough for him, well, fuck him if he can't take a joke.

I got to get some sleep.

"I'm leaving normal time tonight," I tell him.

He looks at me like I'm nuts. "Excuse me?"

I don't care. If he wants to fire my ass, fine. But I've only been here three days, and I've HAD IT with him.

"I'm tired. One of my best friends is real sick. I got kids. I got a wife. I got a life."

"And since when do you start dictating the rules, Mr. Langly?"

"That's Dr. Langly to you, and I'm leaving at six."

He stares at me like, where did I get the balls to go off on him like that?

"If your work is done, you can go."

Oh, it'll be done, you bastard.

It'll be done.

I'm so damn tired. I can barely keep my eyes open, and I think I got Ally's cold. My throat hurts a lot and my head hurts and my nose is starting to run.

Great. All I need right now.

Oh, quit wimping out, you fuckrag, I tell myself. You've got a fucking cold. Frohike's like halfway between dead and alive, and you're moaning over a fucking case of the sniffles!

That's how you get here. You get weird. You lose all perspective.

Well, guess what, assholes? Not gonna happen here.

Weird thing is, he hasn't said anything about last night. I was all ready to come in and get my ass kicked...and I got it kicked, but not about that. Just everything else.

Fuck him.

I'm leaving at six, and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it.

Besides, if I'm desperate, Carmenita knows where all the keys are.

I got to remember to be nice to that lady.
 

BYERS:

I normally enjoy the graduate seminars. On the whole, the students in them are intelligent and the discussions are lively.

Today, they could be the most luminescent people on the planet, and I'd still feel the way I do right now.

Which is: I want this day to end, and I want to get out of here. I'm tempted to cut them off and send them on their way, but we've only got 45 minutes to go, and they're all in the heat of a debate on whether or not insurance companies have the right to dictate drug choices to physicians.

This is ordinarily right up my alley, and I love the discourse, the arguments, and I always learn something new from the students.

Not today. My head aches from exhaustion and my stomach is raw from too much coffee. I want to get out of here, see Frohike, and then tumble into bed next to Juliet, feel her warm soft hands on my back, her lips on mine. And the cat on our feet. Tivvy appeared this morning to have borne me no ill will regarding last night's (actually, this morning's) mishap. The
albacore tuna and cream she had for breakfast might have had something to do with this.

"Dr. Byers? What's your position on alternative formularies?"

I think I've been sleeping...I entirely missed the entrée on to this topic.

"I'm sorry...I think I missed that part of the discussion...it was a very late night."

This brings raised eyebrows and titters, which is fine. I don't feel like making a public service announcement regarding the details of my late night (or very early morning, however you choose to look at it). They can think what they like, and they will.

I've really contributed nothing to this discussion today; I hate to be in such a passive mode, particularly on the first meeting of a section, but I'm having a difficult enough time forming simple sentences, let alone anything resembling a complex analysis.

"Why don't we take this up next time? I think we've done well for the first day," I assure them softly.

For as aware as I've been, they could have been discussing the sex lives of celebrities, and it would have passed right over me.

I wonder about that. The life and times of Cher. Wonder if anybody's thought about it as a dissertation topic. This causes me a moment's amusement, and a small laugh escapes me.

I get a look from my last departing student as if I'm totally losing it.

They haven't even got a clue.
 

MICHAEL:

Kelly and me study, well, she studies, I try to. I skipped my calc class. I left a note in the instructor's mailbox that my dad was real sick, I'd hand in the homework next time, he seems like he's cool, so I don't think it's gonna be a problem. I'm trying to hash out the problems from that right now.

Not working so hot. Usually, calc is like nothing. I can do it in my sleep.

But apparently not when my dad's lying there out of it.

I grab my calculator-this is just like so wimpy. I never use the fucking calculator in calc class, or any math class. I have it for science classes, and if it's easy enough, I don't even bother.

I'm not that far off on the first problem, but normally, I wouldn't have even made that kind of stupid mistake.

"Fuck," I mutter.

Kelly peers over at my problem. "You're still within range, you know."

"Yeah, but I could've gotten a lot closer if I'd figured in this one thing, but I'm so fucking brain dead-"

"Michael." I hear this croak I barely even recognize.

Dad?

Kelly and me both set our books down and get closer to him.

He's awake! Yes!

And he called me. I've been so tight and this is like such a relief, I feel like my knees are turning to jello.

"Dad?"

"Michael."

"Yeah?"

"Watch your mouth."

This is so rich...he wakes up from all this, and what's the first thing that comes out of his mouth?

He's gotta bitch at me about something.

I know in a couple days, I'm gonna be sick of being corrected all the time for SOMETHING (anything).

Right now, he can bitch at me all he wants...

The alternative is too gruesome to think about.
 

It's real hard for him to talk, and that one-liner sends him back to sleep for another hour. But then he gets up again, and he's a little more awake this time.

Which is good, and bad.

"Hey, Dad. How're you doing?" I wrap my hand around his. It's like we got the same hands. Same size, same shape, but I don't do fingerless gloves...and it's sort of weird to see him without them.

"Like hell."

Martha says he's gonna be in a world of hurt. Guess she wasn't kidding.

"Want me to get you anything?" Like I could do something to help him.

"Fifth of J&B might help." He's got that awful croak again, like he did after the first surgery. I can barely recognize the voice, but the request, well, that's definitely Dad.

"Hi, Mr. Frohike." Kelly still calls him that.

"You're both here? Don't you have anything else to do?"

"We're studying," I tell him.

"Uh-huh." He's out again.

So we go back to studying. I finish the calc problems, I feel a little better now that he's been awake twice, and like he knows I'm here, and he talks to us.

Kelly says, do I mind if she bails on out? She's got a long day tomorrow, particularly since she has to make up the time in Dr. Scully's lab she took off today.

I hand her the keys to our apartment and whisper the alarm code to her. It's 6723, which is a screwed-up version of my birthday, but Dad picked it...you'd think he'd be a little more cryptic and all. I ask her to come and stay with me.

Because I sure as hell don't wanna go home alone.
 

I start on the bio and chem stuff...I got labs tomorrow in them. They don't look too hard, thank God. Mostly measurements and shit like that. If I can quantify it, it's usually pretty easy for me.

I'm still hoping he'll wake up another time, and I'm so tired, but I don't wanna leave him. I know what Martha said, but I really don't.

Knock on the door. Can't be one of the nurses-they don't knock for shit around here. They just come barging in whenever they damn well please.

It's the prof and Juliet.

"Hey." I say to them.

"Has he been awake yet?" Byers asks me.

"Twice since I been here. Chewed my ass both times." This makes them laugh.

"That's a good sign," Juliet decides. "How about you, Michael? How're you doing?"

"He'd do a hell of a lot better...if he went the hell home." Dad's awake again.

"Frohike." Byers is like...is he crying?

Oh shit. Anything but that. Not the prof. He's like too cool.

"Byers...Juliet...you should be home...planning your wedding..."

"We just wanted to come by and see how you were doing," Juliet says softly to him.

"I'm doing lousy. Please, go home."

"If that's what you want..." Byers sort of shrugs.

"Yes."

He just looks at me. "Well, he's at least consistent." They tell me to call them if I need them.

He falls back asleep.

I know he feels like shit. I know this is hell for him.

Hate to tell you, Dad, but it's hell for all of us.

And pushing us away, maybe it's good for you, but it's not helping us a bit.

I'm gonna put a stop to that.

Next time he wakes up.

END OF PART 30