Eph watched them slam the door on the old man, the cop climbing behind the wheel and pulling away.
Excess Baggage
EPH'S CALL RANG through forty minutes late to his, Kelly's, and Zack's fifty-minute session with Dr. Inga Kempner, their court-appointed family therapist. He was relieved not to be sitting inside her first-floor office in a prewar brownstone in Astoria, the place where the final custody issues were to be decided.
Eph plead his case through the doctor's speakerphone. "Let me explain-I've been dealing all weekend with the most extreme of circumstances. This dead-airplane situation out at Kennedy. It couldn't be helped."
Dr. Kempner said, "This isn't the first time you've failed to present yourself at an appointment."
"Where's Zack?" he said.
"Out in the waiting area," said Dr. Kempner.
She and Kelly had been talking without him. Things had already been decided. It was all over before it had even begun.
"Look, Dr. Kempner-all I ask is that you reschedule our appointment..."
"Dr. Goodweather, I am afraid that-"
"No-wait-please, hold on." He cut right to it. "Look, am I the perfect father? No, I'm not. I admit that. Points for honesty, right? In fact, I'm not even sure I'd want to be the 'perfect' father, and raise some plain vanilla kid who's not going to make a difference in this world. But I do know that I want to be the best father I can be. Because that is what Zack deserves. And that is my only goal right now."
"All appearances to the contrary," said Dr. Kempner.
Eph gave his phone the finger. Nora stood just a few feet away. He felt angry, yet strangely exposed and vulnerable.
"Listen to me," said Eph, fighting hard to keep his cool. "I know that you know I have rearranged my life around this situation, around Zack. I established this office in New York City specifically so that I could be here, near his mother, so that he would have the benefit of us both. I-usually-have very regular hours during the week, a dependable schedule, with established off-call times. I'm working doubles on weekends in order to have two off for every one I'm on."
"Did you attend an AA meeting this weekend?"
Eph grew silent. All the air went out of his tires. "Were you even listening?"
"Have you felt the need to drink?"
"No," he grunted, making a supreme effort to keep his cool. "I've been sober twenty-three months, you know that."
Dr. Kempner said, "Dr. Goodweather, this isn't a question of who loves your son more. It never is, in these situations. Wonderful, that you both care so much, so deeply. Your dedication to Zack is plainly evident. But, as is so often the case, there seems to be no way to prevent this from turning into a contest. The state of New York issues guidelines I must follow in my recommendation to the judge."
Eph swallowed bitterly. He tried to interrupt, but she kept on talking. "You've resisted the court's original custodial inclination, you've fought it every step of the way. And I consider that a measure of your affection for Zachary. You have also made great personal strides, and that is both evident and admirable. But now we find that you have reached your court of last resort, if you will. In the formulas we use for arbitrating custody. Visitation rights, of course, have never been in question..."
"No, no, no," murmured Eph, like a man about to be rammed by an oncoming car. It was this same sinking feeling he'd had all weekend. He tried reaching back-to he and Zack sitting in his apartment, eating Chinese food and playing video games. The entire weekend stretched out before them. What a glorious feeling that had been.
"My point, Dr. Goodweather," said Dr. Kempner, "is that I can't see much purpose in going any further."
Eph turned to Nora, who looked up at him, understanding in an instant what he was going through.
"You can tell me it's over," Eph whispered into the phone. "But it's not over, Dr. Kempner. It never will be." And with that, he hung up.
He turned away, knowing Nora would respect him in this moment and not try to approach. And for that he was grateful, because there were tears in his eyes that he did not want her to see.
THE FIRST NIGHT
Just a few hours later, inside the basement morgue of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manhattan, Dr. Bennett was finishing up after a very long day. He should have been exhausted, but in fact he was exhilarated. Something extraordinary was happening. It was as though the normally reliable rules of death and decomposition were being rewritten, right in this room. This shit went beyond established medicine, beyond human biology itself...perhaps even into the realm of the miraculous.
As planned, he had halted all autopsies for the night. Some work continued on other matters, the medico-legal investigators operating out of the cubicles upstairs, but the morgue was Bennett's. He had noticed something during the CDC doctors' visit, something about the blood sample he had drawn, the opalescent fluid he had collected in a specimen jar. He had stored it in the back of one of the specimen coolers, stashing it behind some glassware like the last good dessert inside a community refrigerator.
He unscrewed the cap and looked at it now, seated on a stool at the examination counter near the sink. After a few moments, the surface of the six or so ounces of white blood rippled, and Bennett shivered. He took a deep breath in order to collect himself. He thought about what to do, and then pulled an identical jar down from the shelf above. He filled it with the same amount of water and set the jars down side by side. He needed to make certain that the disturbance was not the result of vibrations from a passing truck or some such.
He watched and waited.
There it was again. The viscous white fluid rippled-he saw it-while the considerably less dense water surface did not undulate at all.
Something was moving inside the blood sample.
Bennett thought for a moment. He poured the water down the sink drain, and then slowly poured the oily blood from one jar into the other. The fluid was syrupy and poured slowly but neatly. He saw nothing pass through the thin stream. The bottom of the first jar remained lightly coated with the white blood, but he saw nothing there.
He set the new jar down, and again he watched and waited.
He did not have to watch very long. The surface undulated and Bennett nearly leaped out of his stool.
He heard a noise behind him then, a scratching or a rustling sound. He turned, made jumpy by his discovery. Overhead lamps shone down on the empty stainless-steel tables behind him, every surface wiped down, the floor drains mopped clean. The Flight 753 victims locked away inside the walk-in cooler across the morgue.