Irish Eyes – Chapter Two

 

St. Canard was a landmark in Gateway. It was the first hospital operating in the city and due to the work of several preservation societies the entranceway remained a remnant of the Gothic architecture that once made up the entire complex. It allowed the building to retain a sliver of its dignity as a soulless piece of modern glass and concrete was erected around it. Thus, it had all the trappings of the contemporary hospital. The inside was cold and sterile in a way that reminded everybody that this was a place that people came to die. The emergency room lobby was full of poor, unfortunate souls, huddled together with an assortment of maladies. Only the most severe cases were making it through the doors tonight.

It was for this reason that Charlene, the nurse on desk duty, was in a cynical mood. She was dressed in her multi-colored scrubs that could easily be likened to a pair of children’s pajamas. The late shift brought in all the crazies, drunks, and drug addicts and it left the middle-aged woman with an attitude that was often thoughtless. Here she was tending to the dregs of society when she could be at home watching over her children. The only time people with a sympathetic story came in at this time of night, it was depressing as all Hell.

Cael Foley, whose father had just been in a severe accident, was thus left walking into a shit storm that he could not anticipate. Charlene grimaced as she caught the stench that only came from a night of heavy drinking. She did not want to deal with another idiotic sot and made it a point to cut the young man off before he could explain.

“Wait, don’t tell me! You and your friends were wasting away to Margaritaville when you decided to try a round of ‘Will it Blend?’ with your fingers?”

“No, my—”

“Fill out the form and have a seat. The first available doctor—” Her rote response was interrupted.

“Listen, you smarmy bitch! My dad was in an accident and I don’t even know if he’s alive. Now, drop the attitude, do your job and help me!”

“I’m sorry, what’s his name?” a shamed Charlene responded.

“Michael Foley.”

Brooke and Jimmy arrived shortly after the verbal scuffle at the front desk. Brooke immediately put her arms around Cael’s waist and rested her cheek against the back of his shoulder. Cael was grateful for the comfort as it was what he needed at the moment.

Cael and Michael Foley never had the kind of father-son relationship that was the staple of old black and white sitcoms. None of the milestones of a boy’s life were shared with his father. They never played catch or went fishing. His father never taught him how to drive nor gave him the obligatory sex talk. Yet, he could not say that his father was distant either. The man was just busy most of his life and was quite successful because of it. Cael definitely could not say that his father never put in any effort. He enjoyed the small bits of time they spent together watching a game on television, or seeing the proud look on his face in the stands of his own games. He owed a good deal of his own success in both sports and academics to the example that his father set for him. Michael Foley was respected by his son as a distant, quiet authority figure in his life, one that Cael was not ready to give up.

Charlene’s foul demeanor had completely drained from her expression. In an instant, the apathetic woman now looked as if she empathized with the distraught young man. Cael barely heard the details of her call to intensive care to find out what room his father was going to be put in. Time was slipping away from him faster than he could keep track of it. A combination of grief and his intoxication made time move in the way movies used time-lapse photography. The fox was decaying right before his eyes.

“I’m sorry that I snapped at you before.” Charlene started, thinking it best to ease her way into communicating with the man again. “I’ve had a bad night, heck, a string of bad nights, but I guess that’s nothing compared to yours. Your father is still in surgery. If you go down this hall here and then make a right, you’ll find the family waiting room.”

She stood and pointed down a long, vacant, white hall whose fluorescent lighting made the place seem even more isolated. White was never an inviting color. It was too clean and made the place look homogeneous. This gave the hallway the sense of being much vaster than it actually was. To Cael’s inebriated mind, it seemed to get longer as he walked through until it became a never ending corridor, which most likely had something unpleasant at the end.

“It’ll be okay, Cael. I’ll be right by your side as long as you need me.” Brooke did her best to try to ease his mind, but the threat of death’s ominous grasp overwhelmed him.

Unlike the hallway, the waiting room was small, but it still gave him a sense of foreboding. It was depressing and the walls felt like they were closing in on him from the moment he stepped over the threshold. Any feelings of dread he had were temporarily alleviated when his mother sacked him with a hug, pouring tears into his shoulder.

It was time for him to be the strong one. The frightened child in him wanted to slump down between Brooke and his mother and let them comfort him, but as much as he wanted that, his mother needed a shoulder to lean against. The longer his mother soaked her tears, the more he wanted to cry himself. He still had no idea how had his father’s injuries were, but the way his mother was going on, he assumed the worst.

“It’s okay, Mom, I’m here.” Cael recited as if reading lines from a script. It might have been the most banal thing to say in this moment, but he knew it was not okay and that nothing he said would make the situation better.

“Oh, Cael, it’s so bad.” Her voice quivered. “He’s been in there for over an hour now. They said that he punctured a lung and that there was severe cranial trauma. They don’t know if they can save him. I don’t want to lose him, Cael.”

Cael had never seen his mother in such a delirious state. Sure, he knew that she cried on occasion when things became too much to handle, but never like this. Her cheeks were stained with mascara—as was his shirt. Her long, almost raven hair had lost its lustre and was an uncharacteristic mess. For a woman that usually prided herself on her appearance, she looked to be falling apart. Even worse, it made her look her age. Gwen Foley had every bit of the appearance of a forty-five year old woman, rather than that of one perhaps ten years younger. Her son did not like seeing his mother look so old.

“Hello, Mrs. Foley.” Brooke muttered, unsure that she should interrupt the family time. She was worried that she would not be wanted at such a critical time in the Foleys’ lives, but Gwen took her into her arms like she was her own daughter and the two hugged tightly.

“Thank you for coming, Brooke. Cael needs you right now as much as I need him.” She sniffled, trying to calm herself enough to greet Cael’s friends.

The mood remained somber and mostly quiet. Cael got his wish to have the two women he loved most in his life hold him tight and ease him through the pain. Most of the night he spent between the two, acting as a post for them to lean against. Other times he would pace about the room or sit back and drink from a cup of coffee that Jimmy brought for him and his mother. Once Trip arrived, Cael was sobering up, at least enough to maintain some sort of coherence.

Trip followed Cael when his melancholy friend could not stand to be in the tiny room any longer. Brooke stayed behind to comfort his mother, but there reached a point where Cael just needed some fresh air. It had been hours now and still the updates on his father’s condition were few and far between.

Cael sat on the curb outside the hospital, trying to ignore the ambulance that was unloading an old woman who just suffered a stroke. Trip dodged the stretcher as it passed by and then took a seat next to his depressed friend. The exchange between them could only be described as awkward. Cael never showed emotion in front of his friends, holding dear the image of the stoic male, so now that tears were ready to flow out, there was uncomfortable silence.

“Are you okay?” Trip asked, knowing the answer.

“No.”

“You know you can cry if you want. I won’t call you a pussy or anything. I mean, your father might die—”

“You’re rather lousy at comforting a guy, you know that?” Cael asked.

His head was tucked down between his knees and he was breathing heavily, but he was not crying. No tears would come at all. This was his first chance to show a little vulnerability and yet his eyes remained dry. He let out a deep sigh.

“Believe me, I’m trying to cry. I want to let it all out, but it just isn’t happening. What kind of monster am I that I can’t cry when my own father’s life is in danger?”

“Everybody deals with tragedy in their own way, I guess.” Trip tried his best at comforting wisdom, though there was a sense about him that his heart was not quite into it.

“Yeah, I guess. Listen, can I have a few minutes to myself? I appreciate you coming out here and all, but I need to collect my thoughts.”

“Sure.”

Cael stayed on that curb for as long as his conscience would allow. There was a part of him, a rather large part in fact, that wanted to run away and find some deep dark hole to crawl into until it was all over. The longer the surgery went, the more he focused on what the probable outcome was. He wondered if his father would see the infamous bright light at the end of the tunnel before he died, and then he questioned whether that bright light was just the glow of the fluorescent bulbs in the hospital and that perhaps there was no place to go once someone died. It made him contemplate whether a person in a pitch black room would see nothing before they died. Cael always was the type to let his mind find the most morbid possibilities of any situation, though he kept those thoughts to himself.

It was at least another ten minutes before he made his way back to the cramped prison of the waiting room. Brooke gave him a kiss on the cheek when he returned, which forced him to put on a brave smile.

“How’s she doing?” He asked her, trying to keep his voice under his breath.

“Not good. She keeps breaking into fits of tears every few minutes. I did manage to clean her up a little, but she’s having a hard time.” Brooke replied, looking over her shoulder several times to see if Mrs. Foley was listening in. “I don’t know how to say this, but I think there’s more on her mind than just your dad, Cael. Every time one of us mentions your name, she gets worse. I don’t know what it’s all about, but she obviously needs you right now.”

Cael nodded in agreement and took his place by his mother’s side again. He put a hand on her knee and gave it a little squeeze to let her know that he was there. She buried herself in his arms, playing the role of the vulnerable child for once in their relationship. They remained that way, with Cael’s friends sitting nearby, anticipating the news about Mr. Foley as much as his own family was.

Another hour passed before a short, unassuming man in surgeon’s scrubs walked into the room. He stood by the door as everybody inside looked up with nervous expectation. His hair was frazzled from the long hours of work, and there was a thin layer of sweat on his aged skin.

“He’s stable.” The words struck like a cannonball to the chest. Gwen Foley gasped and hugged Cael even tighter than before, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She whispered ‘thank God’ quiet enough that only her son heard her over and over again. They all knew there was more news to come. Stable said nothing of what kind of condition he was in, nor when they could see him. Still, they were ecstatic that he did not die on the operating table.

“However, we are going to need to keep a close eye on him to make sure he doesn’t take a turn the other way. A lot of damage was done, and there’s a chance he might not wake up. We have him on a breathing apparatus and intravenous fluids for now. Hopefully we should have better news in a few days and we’ll know what sort of quality of life he will have left to him.”

The news was a bit hard to take, but the hope was still there. Cael lightly rubbed his mother’s back as she pressed against him, aching for comfort.

“You should be able to see him in the morning after we’re sure that he’s ready for visitors.”

 

***

 

Sunlight pierced the blinds of the family waiting room and caught in Cael’s sleeping eyes. The amber beams stung as if they had been drenched in soap. There was no ‘no more tears’ formula when it came to the sun. Cael grunted as his first waking moments were greeted by blinding rays and a headache the likes of which he had never experienced. Every sound from the footsteps of nurses in the hallway to a phone ringing down the hall sounded like cymbals crashing in his brain. It was hard to deny that there was a correlation between his light and sound sensitivities and the excess of alcohol he had the night before.

Trying to recall the previous night’s events made the pain all the greater, but there were a few things that his muddled mind remembered in vivid detail. It was impossible to shake the memory that his father’s life was hanging on by a thread, or the fact that his mother was in considerably more pain than he was.

“Morning, hon.” His mother whispered to him. It was just like her to know that he would have a killer hangover this morning. However, as he tried to rouse himself from his groggy state, he was surprised for find himself nuzzling his cheek against her lap.

“Oh, crap, I’m sorry Mom. You couldn’t possibly have been comfortable sitting like that all night.” He apologized to her as he sat up straight, his hand still covering his eyes to shade them from the bright morning sun.

“It’s okay. I don’t think I could have slept a wink last night anyway.” Her voice still had that somber tone to it and even as she tried to put on a brave smile for her son, there was nothing but sadness in her eyes.

“Besides, when was the last time I got to cradle my only child like this? It made the night a little easier knowing that I was protecting you.” Tears started to stream down her cheeks and her voice went up an octave as if she was trying to force them back in. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, Cael, protect you from harm, and the way things are now, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to do that.”

“Mom, I’m a grown man. I’d like to think that I can handle anything that the world throws at me.” He pulled the blubbering woman to his chest and hugged her tight, his words taking a consoling tone. “Please don’t cry. Even if I can take care of myself, you’re still my mom. Nothing is going to change things between us.”

Her muffled sobs pounded in his head for the longest time. Cael wondered if she would ever stop crying, but attributed the outburst to exhaustion. Her nerves and emotions were frazzled and there was no doubt that they would get worse once they were allowed to see his father. A change of subject was in order.

“Where did everybody go?” Cael asked, referring to the fact that Brooke and his friends were nowhere to be seen.

“I sent them home hours ago.” Gwen answered, sitting up and wiping her tears away with a sniffle. “There was no reason to deny any of them of a good night’s sleep.”

Cael’s pale yellow shirt was left a stained mess. There was makeup on his shoulder from the night before and now a new salty stain of tears on his chest. Overall, he was disgusted with his hygiene. He perspired a good deal of the alcohol he drank the night before, or at least that was how he felt. He still stunk of the potent odor and as if there were bugs crawling over his skin, he fidgeted at the slimy layer of dirt and sweat that was caked into his pores.

“They’re not the only ones that need one of those. After we go see Dad, you should go home, take a nap and clean yourself up.” Cael suggested, sacrificing his own comfort for that of his mother’s.

Gwen paused, trying to breach the subject of her husband without making her son mad at her. Her boy was very good at reading other people though, and she could tell that he sensed her hesitancy.

“Just spit it out.”

“Don’t get mad, but we’ve been able to go in for about an hour now.” She said meekly. “You just looked so peaceful sleeping in my lap and I just couldn’t bring myself to wake you.”

“Mom! You should have woken me up the moment they said we could go in.” He groaned.

“Sorry, we can go now though if you’re feeling up to it. It’s probably best if we go together.”

Cael was amazed at his mother’s cavalier attitude towards seeing his father after she had stayed up all night in a state of worry. It was then that he remembered what Brooke told him the night before. This was the wrong time to get caught up in motherly instinct. She should be more concerned with the family’s dying patriarch than with protecting him. It did not quite add up, but Cael could not shake his mother’s queer behavior. Cael’s newfound doubts about what his mother was truly depressed about made the walk to his father’s room in intensive care rather quiet.

The doctor from the night before was waiting for them when they got there. Cael never bothered to ask his name, but he was wearing the standard ID badge. It was headlined by a hand drawn image of St. Canard the way it looked when it was first built, and then beneath it was the man’s picture accompanied by the name Dr. Earl Tennant.

“Now I want to warn you, he is in and out of consciousness, so don’t expect too much. You’ll be lucky to see him open his eyes at all. He is still on heavy medication and that, combined with the breathing apparatus means that he is not going to be much of a conversationalist.”

“He’ll be able to hear us though, right Dr. Tennant?” Gwen Foley asked.

“Yes, I don’t see why he wouldn’t and just because he can’t speak doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t speak with him. You would be amazed at the healing powers hope and love have.”

Cael remained quiet as his mother asked all of the pertinent questions. He was too busy peering through the doorway, taking stock of the room that they had his father in. It was practically a cave. Dim yellow light like the kind from a bedside reading lamp was the only thing keeping the room lit. The curtains were drawn shut and the characteristic white glow of the rest of the hospital was not there. It felt intimate. Cael actually liked the atmosphere of the room. It had a sort of peacefulness to it.

The quiet serenity was fleeting. Dr. Tennant flipped a switch on the wall and the fluorescent bulbs began to buzz. It made the room look a sickly green as they warmed up. The room’s color seemed to match the pallid flesh of his father too. When he finally saw the man, there was nothing left of the strong, successful lawyer that filled Cael with pride. His reddish-brown hair was covered by a bandage over the entirety of his skull and the rest of him was more machine than human. The pumping of air, doing his breathing for him and the intermittent beep of the EKG heightened the illusion of a cybernetic man. His father looked like Darth Vader after his mask was removed.

Gwen and Cael Foley stood at their fallen family member’s bedside like a pair of marionettes waiting for their strings to be pulled. Neither one of them spoke for the longest time, they just stared at Michael’s closed lids, perhaps waiting for them to open so that they could be sure there was anything inside of this shell. It was a long, uncomfortable silence filled with the paranoid imaginings of what their lives would be like if their loved one never woke. Gwen seemed particularly uneasy as she wrung her hands nervously on the bed’s railing. She looked to her son, who was expectant of his mother to break the deadlock.

“Hello Michael.” She started with a squeak, opening the floodgates for much more. “I need you to wake up, Michael. What am I going to say to our son if you don’t make it out of this? I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to see him towards the challenges that will come. He needs you. There are so many more stories you could tell him. If you die, you won’t get to show him your homeland. You won’t get to take him to Ireland like you always wanted. I’m scared, Michael, I really am.”

By now, she had her husband’s hand in her own and was squeezing it as tightly as she could. From Cael’s vantage point, he could not see if it was having any effect on the man. He highly doubted that it was.

“Cael?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say, Mom. I mean, it’s surreal even seeing him like this. It doesn’t seem like it’s even him.” Cael lamented. It was as if his old man was in some kind of trance waiting for the magic word to snap him out of it, but he did not know what the word was. If he could just say Abracadabra and be done with it, he would.

“Take your time, I’m sure that the words will come.”

Cael’s reluctance to say anything to his dying father did not sit well with Gwen. There was a part of her that sensed things were only going to get worse and she wanted to make sure her son had a chance to say goodbye to his father before his memory of him was soured. It was now her duty to make sure that she flooded him with memories of the man he grew up with. Perhaps reminding him of the time they had together would help Cael.

Rather than recount the times that Michael Foley was absent at the most important moments of his life, she focused on the good. She told tales of the countless gifts Cael received over the years for birthdays and holidays. There was the brand new Huffy he received for his seventh birthday, one that made all the neighbor kids green with envy. She reminded him of how he would ride that bike for hours and chase his father’s car down the street with it when he would be called into work unexpectedly. There was the paintball gun that he got when he turned thirteen despite her own apprehension and warnings that he would shoot his eye out. The hours that he would spend in the woods behind the neighborhood playing with his friends were certainly a good memory. As was the memory of his first car, a used Mustang that remained in pristine condition for years.

“You make me sound like a spoiled rich kid, Mom.”

“Well, in a way, you are and you should be grateful for it too. There are plenty of kids out there that don’t get to be spoiled or rich. You owe a lot to your dad.”

The stories continued for hours into the early evening. Both were tired from the long day and lack of sleep, but they resolved to sit with him until visiting hours were over. They knew it was not a practice they could take part in everyday, but they owed it to the man to be by his side as much as they could.

Gwen was particularly tired, evidenced by the long, languid yawn that made her sound like a bear recovering from hibernation. It was not very ladylike, but today was not a day about image.

“Go home and take a nap, Mom.” Cael suggested, trying not to catch the yawning contagion.

“But we said—”

“No buts. You’re clearly about to pass out. There’s no reason to make yourself sick from lack of sleep. I’ll stay here and give you a call if anything changes.” Cael was practically shoving his mother out the door at this point. “Go! If nothing else, perhaps I’ll muster up some words given some alone time with him.”

“Fine, but it’s only going to be a short nap. I’ll be back before visiting hours are over.” Gwen reluctantly gave in, but as she walked down the hall, looking back to wave at Cael, she could not help but shake the thought that she was making a mistake.

 

***

 

Cael awoke to the clip-clopping of hooves against a gravel road. Since there was no gravel road in the hospital and he highly doubted that there would be a horse, he naturally believed it to be the echoes of a dream. He stretched his head back until his neck tilted backward over the chair he had been sleeping in and reluctantly opened his eyes. The room was still dark, the way that Cael preferred it. The moment that his mom left earlier in the day, he turned off the bright lights and settled in to almost a candlelight atmosphere. What he did not count on was the fact that the dark room coupled with his own fatigue would provide the perfect conditions for a long, uninterrupted nap.

He was dismayed to find that the sun was already setting when he peered through the corner of the curtains. The sky burned changing from amber to crimson. Soon the fire would give way to the charred remains of night. He looked at the display on his cell phone and was surprised to find that it was only six o’clock. If it was not for his birthday leading off the month, he would have hated the early part of November. The premature darkness always left the season with a depressing tone that even the leaves changing colors could not brighten.

The steady tapping of horseshoes had already faded from his memory. His mother would probably be back soon, leaving this as the best time to converse with his fallen father. He groped for words in the dark, still not having given much thought to what he would say when something snorted in his ear.

That was a horse. He thought. It was improbable that a member of the equine family would have made it into the hospital and to this room without being stopped, but he knew what a horse sounded like. He was fully prepared to see a horse standing across the room from him when he looked up, but there was none. There was only a man in a long, black, wool overcoat. He stood with his back to Cael and was staring at Cael’s father like an onlooker at a funeral. The man did have a long, thick mane of lustrous black hair, but he was certainly no horse. Cael cursed himself for believing in such nonsense and then sat up.

The man must have walked in while he was sleeping. His body was tall, freakishly so in fact, and even with the heavy overcoat on it looked crooked and malnourished. It was nobody that Cael knew, but Cael knew very few of his father’s associates. The boy cleared his throat, finding it to be the most polite way of getting the stranger’s attention.

“Wait your turn, I am still paying my respects,” came a voice in a thick Irish accent, the kind that would require subtitles if you heard it in a movie.

It was not the accent though that made Cael obey the man so easily. The voice was harsh and commanding, dark and villainous and most of all terrifying to its very core. Cael felt like a child wondering if there was a monster under his bed all over again. He slunk down in his chair and quietly waited for the man to address him.

The spectre that turned to face him was a worse nightmare than the voice. His flowing raven hair stood in stark contract to the rest of his form. He was covered from his neck down to his feet in black garments. The platitude of evil being associated with the color black resonated in Cael’s thoughts. A scarf rested around his shoulders and served to cover his gnarled throat. The man’s face was just starting to crack and there was a quality about him that left Cael unsure if he was his father’s age or perhaps decades older. The skin around his eyes was jaundiced and the condition seemed to extend to the eyes themselves. They were the most prominent and chilling feature on the man’s face. They seemed to highlight themselves in the dark, almost as if they were glowing, making it seem as if he was nothing but a pair of eyes in a dark room. The yellow sickness that infected his skin completely took over his eyes with only the red veins and black pupil not taking on the color.

“You must be Cael. I haven’t seen you since you were a wee morsel sucking your thumb in your crib. I see that Michael’s wishes have come true. You are every bit the man he hoped you would be.” The stranger mused. “It is a shame that you are a rude child that does not know when to speak.”

Cael sat dumbfounded. He was face to face with someone that resembled the bogeyman, a man that at least pretended to know him quite intimately. Cael’s mouth was agape. He felt small in a way that he had never experienced.

“Then again, it would be equally rude not to allow you a question or two. Speak boy!”

“Er, I, that is…” His mouth was dry as he stammered, trying to gain enough composure to ask the most logical questions. “I wanted to know; who are you and why are you here?”

“The simplest questions require the most complicated answers and since you have shown yourself to be a simple person, I will make it easy for you to understand.” The stranger loomed over Cael, his nasty voice making the man quiver. “You could say that I am a business associate of your father’s, though we have not done business for a couple decades. You could also say that I am the reason for his success. When I allow it, you may call me…”

The crooked fiend paused as if to consider what the proper name would be for this situation. In Cael’s experience, the only men that refused to give their names were either criminals or internet predators. Cael suspected this man to be both.

“…Mr. Rourke. Yes, that will do nicely. As to your second question, I am here because it was time for me to be here. Two days ago was Samhain’s day and yesterday was mine, which means that today is the day for me to be here. If I had come a day earlier, there would have been no need for me to be here, but then we might have had a more pleasant conversation too.”

“What are you—?”

“You are trying my patience, child!” Rourke roared. “I said two questions, not three. I have told you all that you need to know at this point in time. I am most assured, however, that we will cross paths again. For your own sake, I hope that when that time comes you will visit me on my day.”

Cael quaked in his seat, hoping that he had not wet himself.

“It would not do me any good to make a scene, so I will leave you to your father. Enjoy the time you have left with him because when he is gone, you will never think of him in the same light.” Rourke moved like a revenant gliding toward the exit where he stopped, offering one last comment. “Oh, and Cael, say hello to your mother for me. I am sure she will want to know that I visited.”

Cael watched vigilantly, waiting to make sure that the man was actually gone before getting up from his seat. Quietly, he crept toward the door and then peered around the frame. His wish was for there to be an empty hallway greeting him, perhaps a nurse or two, but no creepy man in black. He got his wish, but also was startled when his mother popped up right as he looked around the corner.

“Gah! Holy shit; you scared me!” Cael said, his heart jumping up to his throat.

“That’s just mean, Cael, and here I brought you a Steakburger and some onion rings too. Here I do something nice for you and what thanks do I get?”

“Sorry, it’s just—you didn’t happen to see a man in a black overcoat walk by, did you?”

“No, the only people I saw were nurses.” Gwen replied, raising her eyebrows at the curious question. She had to admit that Cael did look as white as a sheet, but she suspected lack of sleep and food was the culprit. She handed him the white sack of diner food and then walked over to check on her husband.

“How has your father been? Did you get to have your little talk?”

“No, I fell asleep after you left and then when I woke up, Mr. Rourke was standing there and well—”

“Mr. Rourke? I don’t think I know him. One of your father’s clients?”

“He seemed to know you.” Cael said, taking a big bite out of the double Steakburger with cheese, and then washing it down with a sip from his chocolate shake. “He told me to tell you that he visited. He was the creepiest looking person I’ve ever seen. I mean, have you ever seen a man with yellow eyes before?”

Gwen Foley went cold. She looked as frightened as her son had been in Rourke’s presence. If it were not for the greasy food being stuffed into his face, Cael would have noticed the peak in his mother’s paranoia.

“Are you sure that you weren’t having a nightmare?” Gwen asked hurriedly. “It would make sense with all the stress you’ve been through and the alcohol. How about you go back to the house and rest up? We can come back tomorrow.”

“Visiting hours aren’t even over yet, and I don’t have my ca—”

“Here, take my car. I’ll call your Aunt Jane and have her pick me up.” Gwen forced the keys into her son’s hands.

“I can wait until—”

“No need to wait, you had your time alone with him, now it’s my turn. Besides, there’s something that I want to ask Dr. Tennant.” She put on a smile to try and ease her son’s worries. “Look, don’t worry about me. Go home, get some well-needed rest. I’m your mother. I think I know what’s best for you, so just listen to me for once, please?”

“Um, all right, but if you can’t get a ride, call me and I’ll be back here as quick as I can.” Cael looked hesitant as he walked out the door, his mother giving him the ersatz smile she always gave when she was trying to hide something. The only thing that Cael could think about now was the question of what had gotten into his mother.

~ by Kacie Cross on November 8, 2008.