Two Miles in Highway Heat

The wet parking ticket from Lot B was still crushed in Maya’s back pocket, ink smeared over the stamp of 4:08 PM. Beside the bedside rail, on the plastic table, lay her father’s Timex, its acrylic crystal shattered across the dial. Under the humming fluorescent tubes of Cardiac ICU Room 4, David lay flat, his skin gray like wet river stone.

Clear tubing delivered oxygen through his nostrils. A white wire led from three adhesive patches on his ribcage up to a monitor that counted seventy-four beats a minute in sharp green pulses. Maya reached through the cold steel guardrail. She wrapped four fingers around his wrist, feeling the unsteady tap of blood beneath his skin.

His hand was thick, scarred along the knuckles from sheet metal and copper pipe.

David’s eyelids lifted. He cleared his throat with a dry rasp, the sound catching in his chest before his left hand came up to press the heel of his palm against the center of his sternum.

“You kept the gown on,” he whispered.

“Printmaking honor cord, too,” Maya said. “Gold braid.”

“I made it to the curb,” David said.

Maya dug her right thumbnail into the meat of her left palm. “Tyler told me about Route 9.”

“The team van blew a hose,” David said, his breath whistling through his teeth. “I had twelve minutes from the bypass exit.”

“You walked two miles through highway heat,” Maya said. “Then you threw up in the juniper bushes by the gym doors.”

“I tried the auditorium stairs,” David said. “My chest seized up like an engine without oil.”

He stopped, waiting for the monitor to catch a missed stroke.

“I heard the applause through the double doors,” he said. “I couldn’t stand up.”

“Cardiologist told Karen you shouldn’t drive three weeks ago,” Maya said. “You hid ischemic disease from me.”

“Didn’t want you staying in Oakridge,” David said. “You had your print shop fellowship.”

“I didn’t want a martyr,” Maya said. “I wanted my father in Seat A-12.”

David reached his left hand beneath the edge of the stiff mattress. He worked his fingers through the sheets and pulled out a dark blue paperboard folio, its gold Oakridge seal scratched from asphalt and rain. Inside the fold lay a torn sheet of yellow legal pad, covered in thick carpenter-pencil script.

“Principal dropped an extra envelope on the grass,” David said. “I wrote this before the ambulance crew got there.”

Maya unfolded the damp yellow sheet.

I swore to your mother I’d never let you feel second place. Forgive my stubborn chest. Take your work and go make things.

A knot tightened in Maya’s throat. She released her palm, letting the nail marks fade from the red skin. From the plastic chair, she lifted her square black mortarboard, smoothing the yellow rayon tassel until it hung straight over the front edge. She leaned across the steel rail and placed the square board flat on his gray crown, resting the rim back against the pillow.

David shut his eyes. A single drop ran through the white stubble along his jawline.

“Never again,” Maya said. “No more hiding pills. No more playing iron man.”

“Deal,” David whispered. “No more secrets.”

Shoes squeaked on the floor wax outside the door. Karen stood at the glass partition, twisting the hem of her flour-stained kitchen apron with both hands. Tyler stood half behind her shoulder, his fingers turning a silicone band on his wrist, staring down at his sneakers.

Maya stepped back from the rail and pulled the glass sliding door wide.

“Come in,” Maya said. “Both of you.”

Tyler raised his face, his lower lip shaking, before Karen took his forearm and guided him across the threshold toward the bed. Through the east window, the sky broke from greasy black into pale slate, washing the tile floor in cold morning light.