Celebratio Somnus
 

LANGLY:

August 1, 2001

I really need some sleep. I'm so damn tired. Just let me sleep...

Forget it. I hear a kid crying.

A kid crying right next to our bed.

It's Patrick.

Oh Christ. Thought we got him all settled in and everything. What's going on here?

I'm tempted to tell him to get his little rear end back in bed.

But I'm a sucker at heart, and I pick him up.

Shit. This kid is on fire. And he's like, he's crying, but it's not like normal crying. Sounds weird. Real high-pitched and scary.

Jesus fuck. He can't be. Not my little guy.

What do I do now?

"Ally, wake up." I shake her. She sleeps through everything. She says when Miranda was a baby, she used to call Daddy instead of Mommy 'cause she knew that waking Daddy up was easier.

She doesn't wake up, of course. She mutters something, can't figure out what it is, but I think it's along the lines of fuck off.

"Ally, get the fuck up. This kid's steaming."

"Huh?" She wakes up slow, she's real thick. "Wha--?"

I snap on the light. I haven't looked at the little guy yet, but oh man. He looks wrecked.

"I told you, honey, they get sick a lot of times after they get immunized." Her voice is still filled with sleep.

"Not like this, they don't!"

She gropes for her glasses and I grope for mine-then I remember mine died today. Shit. Jesus fuck.

She takes Patrick and sits him on her. "Oh fuck babe. Look at his arm."

I lean my face in real close...his arm where he got shot up is all red and puffy and hot. Even I can see that.

"It's okay, baby, it's okay," she murmurs to Patrick. "Langly, go fill up the tub. Cool water. Not ice cold."

This is gonna be interesting...trying to maneuver around half asleep and totally blind.

"Is he gonna be okay?" I can't keep from panicking.

"I think so, but we need to cool him down." She sets him down for a second, then picks him up again when she's out of bed. "Miranda got sick, but not this bad."

Not exactly the words I wanted to hear.

"But she's okay."

"Obviously. C'mon, we need to get him cooler, fast."

Oh God. Patrick, I haven't even scattered your dad's ashes yet...

Don't make me do yours.
 

We dip him in the water, and he's still screaming. Even Miranda comes up from the dungeon, and she sleeps like her mom.

"What the hell are you doing to him?!" Her voice is like chalk on a blackboard right now.

"He's got a high fever, we're trying to get him cooled down, please stop screaming," Ally looks over to her daughter, whose face I can't see right now. Either she's pissed he woke her up or she's worried sick. Or maybe both.

Apparently worried sick wins out. She leans over where Ally and me have him dipped in the tub, and she grabs a facecloth and starts massaging his cheeks. "There, Patrick, it's all right, it's okay. We're all here." She keeps her voice low and soothing with him right now.

"Langly, don't dip your arm in the water," Ally says to me.

Fuck my arm! My little guy's sick, and I don't give a fuck about a few stitches!

He's so twitchy and jumpy and miserable, and he's still crying. Oh man. If I could trade places with you, little guy, I would. Believe me.

"He's not cooling off. Miranda, get some ice." Miranda for once doesn't come up with fifty arguments why she shouldn't have to do it. She just moves her ass, and pretty damn fast at that.

"Oh, fuck!" I hear Miranda shriek from the kitchen. You know, that girl's voice can be really grating sometimes. "The ice maker's all screwed up! I'm gonna have to hack this ice apart!" I hear her take a heavy object and banging away at the ice, which is probably all clumped together in the tray-which it manages to do about twice a month.

"Hurry up!" I yell to her, and Ally glares at me.

"She's going as fast as she can, I can hear her. Just add some more cold water, babe." Her voice gets softer.

Then Patrick's head lurches back, and he's like caught in this horrible wave of spasms, and he sounds like he's choking.

"Oh, shit, he's convulsing!" Ally's really worried now.

"I'll call 911!" No...no...no...

"No, get him out of this tub and hold his head so he doesn't hurt himself, it should be over in a moment! And put a towel in his mouth!" She grabs one of the hand towels, stuffs it in his mouth.

I just hold him, and it feels like the longest moment of my life...

Longer than when Joanie died in my arms...

Longer than watching Scott get shot...

I'm not sure who's dying here, but I think it's me.

At least I hope it's me.
 

Finally, he gives a shudder, and he's still. His eyes are blank.

"Patrick, sweetheart?" Ally's talking real soft to him. "Do you remember anything that just happened to you?"

He shakes his head.

I can hear Miranda on the phone in the other room. She's calling an ambulance, I hope. Or getting some kind of help. I don't think she's chatting with her girlfriends, at any rate.

I pick him up and cuddle him hard against me. He's shaking again, even though Ally's got him wrapped in one of the beach towels.

Miranda comes back a few minutes later. "Mom? Langly?" Her voice is small and tired. "Jo's on her way over."

"You called Jo?" Her mom sounds kind of suspicious. "At this hour?"

"Hey, take him to the hospital, he'll really freak out. I told her what happened. She says it's not that weird for that to happen to little kids with high fevers, but she said she'd come anyway."

Maybe not the soundest medical decision ever made...but I feel better.

"Langly, your stitches came out," Ally says gently to me. I look down quickly at my arm. Yeah, it's bleeding. So fucking what.

I carry Patrick into the living room and just hang on to him for dear life.

Both of ours.

*************************************************************************************************************
Bryce's been real out of it, but he wakes up when I'm rocking Patrick.

"Hey, man, what's going on, it's dark out!"

"No kidding." Patrick's still all trembly. I just hold him close. As if that will help him.

I'm a total fuckup. What ever made me think I could take care of a kid? Hell, I can barely take care of myself. Ally does most of it. Wonder if that's one of the reasons I married her...I knew I was useless at looking after myself, and finally I fell for someone who actually wanted the job...

She probably thinks I'm a waste case. That I suck. I had no idea what to do.

She's brewing coffee. I wonder what time it is.

"Something wrong with the little fella?" Bryce yawns.

"He's sick."

"Aw, that's rough. He's so little, man."

"Yeah." And I'm supposed to be a big person and take care of him. Which I do a shit job of doing.

Ally comes back in with a mug of coffee, just the way I like it. She asks Bryce how he takes his, he tells her just black, and she comes back with one for him and one for her.

"Langly, let me take him for a while," she says gently.

"No." No way.

"Well, at least let me put something on your arm, or your chair's going to remember this night for a long time to come."

It will anyway, Ally girl. And so will I.

I'm wondering how much of it's Patrick being shaky and how much of it's me.

"How's he doing?" I can smell Ally firing up a cigarette. I could use one right now, but don't have a spare hand.

"He's still shaky. But I don't think he's as hot."

"That's good." She sips her coffee and alternates with drags on her smoke. I ask her for a drag off hers, she comes over and lets me suck on it for a moment, then hauls off to the bathroom, comes back with some gauze and a fever thermometer.

"Him first," she says, popping it in Patrick's ear, which inspires him to cry out. I just whisper, it's okay, it's okay, and it's over pretty fast.

"He's at 103, and for a little kid, it's high, but not horrible." She kneels down next to my chair. "Give me your arm, babe."

"103? Jesus fuck, Ally, I was in the hospital for weeks when I was at 103."

"He's a little kid. They can withstand higher fevers. Their hearts are stronger than ours."

God, I hope so.

When does this get easier? When do you quit worrying all the time? When do you stop having heart attacks on a daily basis?

"Ally," I say to her, real quiet because I really don't want Bryce hearing all this, "when did you stop freaking out over 'Randa?"

Even with my fuzzy vision, I can see her mouth curl up. She stops wrapping my arm and bursts out laughing.

"Stop? Stop? You're kidding."

"No, wasn't there a time when you didn't worry every second?"

"No. And there never will be. It's like a constitutive operator in a gene, Langly. Flip the switch, it never goes off." She laughs tenderly.

"So when do you get used to it?"

"You don't." She finishes my arm.

"So how do you not go nuts?"

"Drinking helps," she says quickly. Then I can see her blue eyes look into mine, and even without glasses, that sweet look that makes me dissolve is unmistakable. "Sweetheart, this is what it's about."

"About what?"

"About thinking about them 24/7."

"Oh."

"I'd say that kid's pretty lucky," Bryce pipes up from the sofa. "I mean, my folks, they were okay and all...but I mean, I don't remember them ever sitting up with me in the middle of the night and all..."

"He won't remember it," Ally says. "He's sick, and he's little, and he won't remember that part. But he knows we love him. He'll remember that."

"Be nice if I knew what the hell I was doing," I mutter as I rock my little guy.

"Parenting's the last province of amateurs," Ally says quietly. "We all kind of make it up as we go. We just try to do the best we can."

"I don't think that's true," Bryce says.

"No, I think, with a few rare exceptions, it is true," Ally is prepared to defend her position. "Different people have different skills, different capabilities...I used to be so down on my mother...she was a very difficult human being. I thought she hated me. I realized too late that she was trying to tell me she cared about me in the only way she knew how."

Wow. Ally never talks about Eleanor. This is weird.

But kind of good to hear. I was wondering how she felt about it all.

"Don't you ever think, though...like your folks could've tried harder?" Bryce challenges her back.

Ally shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not them. It's hard to say. I know they cared for us. As much as they were able."

"What about yours, Langly?"

What about mine?

I don't wanna go there right now...lucky for me, I get saved by the bell. The buzzer on the gate, actually.

It's Jo.

"How many people you expecting at this hour?" Bryce yawns. "You didn't say anything about a LAN party."

"It's a friend of ours, and she used to be a nurse," Ally buzzes her in and opens the front door.

Jo is still in her jammies, but then again, so are we...so what the hell.

"Let's see the little one," she unwraps Patrick a little bit, feels for a pulse, listens to him. "Poor little boy." She takes him from me.

I feel naked without him. Not without reason. I'm hardly dressed for company.

"I think he's okay," Jo says, after we all hold our breath for a few minutes. "I probably would have called 911 myself...but I think as long as you have him looked at this morning, he'll be no worse for wear. Convulsions, as I told Miranda, are frightening, but in a child his age, it's probably not indicative of anything other than a reaction to a fever."

"We had him immunized yesterday," Ally says quietly.

"Well...it's not unusual for a child to develop a reaction to the vaccines. His reaction was severe, but I think in this case, being watchful will be sufficient. And believe me, if I had any doubt, I would tell you otherwise. I've seen this more than a few times in emergency care. I think he'll be fine." She's about to hand a now-dozing Patrick back to me, when she sees my arm. "What happened to you, Langly?"

"Got cut during the tornado."

"That looks pretty deep."

"He tore the sutures," Ally puts in.

She looks at it. "Well, I can't suture it again, it's been over four hours, but I can butterfly it, if you'll get me some supplies, Ally." Jo looks at me. "You got it wet, didn't you?"

"Well, we were trying to get Patrick chilled out, and we put him in the tub..."

"Well, that was the right thing to do. Now hold still."

"Maybe you can take a look at Bryce," Ally says. "Bryce, this is our friend Jo, Jo, this is Bryce, he works with Langly and took a gash on the head today."

She looks over at Bryce. "Where were you two?"

"Going out for lunch," he says.

"With a tornado warning?"

"We were hungry," I shrug.

"Langly, from what Ally tells me, you're always hungry. Now let me finish this up, but you need to hold still."

This seems to be a constant refrain from anyone who's ever had to work on me.

"Jo, I'm sorry we dragged you out of bed at this hour," Ally apologizes.

"I...wasn't sleeping. It's not a problem."

"Yeah, that storm freaked a lot of people out big time," I say.

"I've had...a lot on my mind." She doesn't say anything else.

"I think we all have," Ally agrees. "Care for some coffee, Jo?"

"I'd love some, thank you."

"Hey, what's happening up here?" Another voice joins the world's weirdest pajama party. It's Junior. And Kelly.

"Patrick got sick, and we called Jo," Miranda says. Good an explanation as any.

"Hi, Jo." Michael and Kelly come over and give her a quick hug.

This is really bizarre. Junior, hugging Jo?

Weirdness.

She seems glad to see them, at any rate.

Kelly hangs on to her and won't let go. All of a sudden, she starts crying.

"Hey, Kelly-" I start, but Ally raises her finger to her lips and shakes her head. I let it go.

"Michael?" Jo's asking Junior what's going on here.

"Um...Kelly's mom...and her little sister...they were some of the people that got killed in the trailer park today." He sounds like he's gonna cry, too.

"Oh, Kelly, I'm so terribly sorry." Jo just hangs on to her, like Kelly's stuck on her.

I can't see Junior's face from here, but I bet he had a lousy evening, too. "You okay, dude?" I ask him.

"Yeah, I'm cool."

Sure he is. Sounds like he's about to have a breakdown, but no, he's cool.

Yeah, about as cool as I am right now.

Oh Christ. Kelly's lost her family...Jesus fuck.

"Ally, did you know?" I whisper to her.

"Not until I went to bed," she says.

"If you don't mind," Jo says softly, "I'm going to take these two back downstairs-I think everyone up here is doing as well as can be expected. I'll be downstairs if you need me."

"Thank you, Jo," Ally says, and she's saying it real gentle.

"Thanks," I tell her. Although that hardly starts to cover it.

Jo and Michael and Kelly head back to the dungeon, and Miranda's like, I'm tired, anybody mind if I go back to bed? Ally hugs her and thanks her for helping with Patrick. Before Miranda slips out, she comes over and gives Patrick a kiss on the forehead.

It's like that girl is of two brains about him. Sometimes she's like ready to murder him. Other times, it's like, she loves him so terribly.

Will the real Miranda please stand up?

Bryce has been watching this, and for Bryce, making real minimal commentary.

"Wow," he says. "You got people you can actually call at 4 in the morning-and they show up, and they show up like it's no big deal."

"We'd do it for them," Ally says to him. And we would. Anytime, anywhere.

"I don't think I ever had anybody like that," he seems kind of sad about that.

"I'm sure that's not true," Ally says in a soothing voice. "Surely your family, a girlfriend-"

"Man, I dunno. Julie, my girlfriend, your niece, as it turns out? Something's hinky about her...I can't put my finger on it. I mean, she is really hot and all, and smart and fun and usually she's real nice...but something about her, it just doesn't add." He seems kind of embarrassed. "I mean, Langly, you guys are really cool to put me up and all, I don't mean to start dissing your people-"

"Don't worry about it," Ally interrupts him. "We've been thinking the same thing for a long time. Haven't we, babe?"

"Yeah." Patrick stirs in my arms. I rock him a little. He's not real comfortable, and every once in a while, he lets out a little whimper, but if I put him up against my chest and rock him, he's cool with that.

"If you don't mind my asking," Ally says to him as she grabs the coffee pot and refills everybody-looks like nobody but Miranda's going back to bed now-"how involved are you with Julie?"

"Well...you know, I can't even say for sure. It's so weird. It's like I like her more than she likes me, you know?"

"Been there, done that," I tell him. Too many fucking times. I'm real glad those days are behind me.

"What do you know about her?" My voice is sharper than I wanted it to be, but hell. I'm dying to know what's going on with my niece myself. At least in self-defense.

"Not a lot. She mostly seems to ask about me. Which is cool, and it's nice-not many girls are real interested."

"What do you know about her family?"

"Well, I know you're her uncle," he laughs. "Not that she told me until I told her about it. She says you're not close."

Understatement.

"Do you know who her parents are?" Ally asks.

"Never talks about them. Says her mom's dead."

Okay, well, that's true, anyway.

"Does the name Roy Renshaw hit on anything?"

"No. Should it?"

"That's her old man," I inform him.

"Yeah, well, everyone's got a father, somewhere. So?"

"You know what he does, don't you?"

"Nope."

"You've heard of Gary Lerch? Church of the Bountiful Harvest?"

"You mean the weirdo televangelist that's always going on about the Jewish conspiracy? What about him?"

"Roy Renshaw's his legal advisor. And the head cheese lawyer for the whole organization."

"Julie works for a law firm," Bryce sounds a little nervous now.

I'm not really trying to ruin his day. Really, I'm not. But maybe if I wreck it a little, well, maybe...

"What law firm?" Ally's trying to close in on this, too. And she's not gonna let up. She's keeping the coffee coming.

"She...didn't say."

"Well, how do you call her, then?"

"She says she can't take personal calls at work." He's not a stupid boy, and he's starting to put 2 and 2 together. Math majors. We do it all.

"I bet." Ally's voice isn't too friendly now. "Well, Bryce, she works for her father's firm. Supposedly she was-"

"Ally." I don't want her saying anymore. Not right now.

Bryce isn't talking now. Finally, he says, "Well, she really didn't lie to me..."

"Yeah, but she didn't tell you the truth, either," Ally keeps getting sharper. Lack of sleep doesn't bring out the best in her. Neither does my niece. She didn't click real well with Julie. I always kind of wondered why.

I think her dad's line of work might have something to do with it.

"What did she major in when she was in college, Bryce?"

"I dunno. Says she didn't finish."

"Now that's a lie. She's got a PhD in physics, Bryce." Ally sounds like, nailed the bitch.

"No shit. Wonder why she didn't say anything."

Seems sort of bizarre to me, too...

But Ally, being a girl, is hip. "Bryce. She's using you for something."

"Like what?"

Ally fires up another cigarette. "I have no idea. But it might have something to do with your work. You want my advice? No, you don't, but I'm giving it to you, anyway. Lose her. Fast."

Bryce is being such a guy. Can't say as I blame him. I mean, I am one.

"I dunno...I mean, I really do like her and all..."

"Yeah, she's probably hot in the sack, at least if she takes after her uncle-" I blush a little when she says this, but mostly, I feel like gloating-"but I don't trust her. And I don't think you do, either."

Nothing but the silence in the room.

And the breathing of a little sleeping boy.

Keep breathing, little guy.

END OF PART 88