Never noticed the size of my feet
‘Til I kicked you in the shins
Will you ever forgive me
For the shape I’m in?
--The Police, Does Everyone Stare
Mike’s going into shock. Don pulls his coat off-- big in the back to accommodate the shell, Maureen made it for him years ago-- and drapes it over his shivering brother. “You okay?”
Mike nods stiffly.
“Funny, it was my leg last time...”
Mike shudders and tries to smile. Don pulls the coat further around his shoulders.
“Hello? Is anyone in there?”
Knowing that it has to be done doesn’t make it any easier. “Hello,” Don says, feeling the terror slice through him. “We’re in here.”
“I heard the explosion... I’m a nurse.”
“My brother was hurt.”
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” she says. “The building could...”
“His leg is trapped.”
“Blood loss?” The voice is getting closer now.
“A lot. He’s going into shock...”
She mutters something under her breath. Her voice sounds familiar to Don, for some reason...
He realizes why when she turns the corner.
“No,” Maureen says dully. “No. This isn’t happening, this can’t be...”
“Mom,” Angela says gently. “Mom, Don’s gonna call as soon as we can, and then we’re gonna have to go to the hospital.”
Maureen puts her arms around her daughter. “What if he doesn’t?” She looks over Angela’s shoulder at Raph. “What if--”
“Then we do what we have to.” He reaches out and touches Maureen’s arm. “Look, Isamu got hurt, not bad, but he needs to stay in one place for a while, so we’ve got him over at our place, and I figured he and Leo could use some time together... so the kids and I are gonna wait out here with you. If that’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure, that’s fine... is Mike... I mean, do you think...”
“I don’t know, Maureen. I... I don’t think they’ll be able to save his leg, not all of it, but they might recover enough... I don’t know.” He puts an arm around her; it’s awkward, but she takes him into his arms, closes her eyes for a second.
Carlos and Ookami sneak around their father, follow Angela to the bathroom. She opens the medicine cabinet, finds the Advil, measures out three pills for herself and Carlos, two for Ookami.
“Hey,” Ookami objects.
“Bottle says you’re only supposed to have one,” Angela chides. “Don’t complain.”
“Raph,” she says softly. “There’s more news... more bad news...”
“You can probably stay at Don’s if you don’t want to leave the building...”
“I...” Karai puts a hand to her forehead. “Let’s see how he is when he wakes up. If we have to take him to the hospital...”
“He should be all right,” Leonardo says, but his tone is unsure.
Isamu moans, and the conversation is forgotten.
“Isamu?” they ask in unison.
“Where... this isn’t home...”
“You’re safe.” Karai kneels down at his side, takes his hand.
“I... when did you come?”
“About a minute after you went down, so far as we can tell...” Leonardo reaches over, touches his son’s face.
Isamu opens his mouth, but can’t come up with any words. He reaches out and touches Leo’s arm. “It’s... it’s you...”
Leonardo pulls his son to his chest.
“You came... you came for me...”
“I looked for you, everywhere, everything I could think of... every time I got close, your brother got close too... I wanted to keep you safe...”
“You came for me.”
“Can’t believe the kids found you...”
“Father...”
“I just--”
”Father.” Isamu moves back from him a little, meets his eyes. “Father,” he says again, smiling, and the words finally reach Leonardo.
“Son,” he says, the wonder crossing both of their faces, and they embrace again, tighter than before, their tears blending together as Leo presses his child’s face to his.
“So what are you guys going to do?”
“We won’t be safe for long,” Raph says. “Mike made the six o’ clock news. Pretty soon they’ll start playin’ connect-the-dots... oh, that reminds me, I was gonna ask you. You mind if I put your name on my accounts for a while?”
“Well, no...”
“Richard put his name on them, but I’d feel a lot better if it was somebody in the family... I trust him, but I trust you more.”
“He really thinks they’ll try to...”
”We don’t know what anybody’ll try to do. And we don’t want to take any chances. Try to remind Don about it when he gets back, okay?”
“I will. You need my Social Security number or anything?”
“Yeah, I guess I will...”
“I’ve got all the stuff out here, I’ve needed to...” she frowns, closes her eyes. “Raph?”
“Yeah?”
“When ... when do you think it’s gonna hit me?”
“It’ll take a while,” he tells her softly.
“I just... I just keep... I mean, I know he’s gone. I know it. But...”
He’s not sure it’s the right thing to do, but he touches her arm anyway. “I know, April,” he says softly, and she puts her arms around his shoulders. “I know.”
“Look, I’m here to see my husband. My brother-in-law said...”
“Maureen.” He stands, starts walking over to meet them.
“Oh, Don...”
It startles the receptionist to see how quickly they embrace, like... well, like family. So this is the wife and daughter. They’re both skinny, the girl much blonder than her mother, but the resemblance is obvious. She wonders what happened to the real father, and catches herself again. The biological father.
It’s going to take her a while to get used to this...
“He’s in surgery now,” Don tells them. “They’re pretty sure they’re going to have to take the calf, but they’re hoping they can save his knee... easier to get a prosthetic, they say...”
“They’re operating?”
“Yeah.”
“They don’t know anything about him, they can’t...”
“Actually,” Don says nervously, “we got kind of lucky there... c’mon, over here, they’ve got me near the back so I don’t freak out too many patients...”
“What do you mean, ‘we got kind of lucky’?” Maureen’s voice is growing sharp.
“It’s weird,” Don says. “The first person there wasn’t a medic, she was a nurse, she heard the screaming...” he gestures at his seat, kept by a pile of old Scientific Americans he’s looked through six times already.
“Where’s your coat?”
“Put it on Mike... probably around here somewhere... anyway.” He picks the magazines up and sits down. “The nurse... she used to be a research scientist over at--”
“Jane,” she says.
Don nods. “Jane. Probably the only human on the planet who could help...”
“Jane?” Angela asks. Don realizes it’s the first thing she’s said since she got here.
“I’ll tell you, later, honey,” Maureen says. “How long do they think he’s going to be in surgery?”
“A couple more hours, at least. They weren’t sure.
“So we’ve got a long wait.”
“Yeah.”
April unlocks the door. “He said you could stay here, there’s a bed in the other room...”
“Where does he sleep?”
“Not in the bed. The kitchen’s over here, and the bathroom’s right over there...”
“What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s pretty neat...” April walks over to the panel, flips a switch. It looks a little like a tall, thin fishtank, only there aren’t any fish, and when April turns it on, it lights up and a cloud of what looks like smoke spreads out through the water. “It responds to your body heat, and the room temperature, and... some other stuff, make Don tell you about it...” She puts her hand next to the glass, and the cloud turns orange, swirls toward her palm.
“Like those plasma things?”
“A lot more complex,” April says. “This responds to everything... not just sounds and touch...”
Karai reaches toward the glass and something inside the construction moves. A soft light begins to glow, and more smoke curls up toward her hand. “This is amazing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Don did this?”
“Right after Byron died. I think it was kind of like a tribute... he was an artist.”
“I remember, someone said... not Byron Hughes?”
“Yeah.”
“I went to one of his last openings.”
April’s face doesn’t change, but the smoke around her hand starts glowing red. “You were in New York then?”
“No,” Karai says. “Not permanently. We were talking about my moving here... but... I met him. I remember he was talking about... about Ookami. It must have been...”
The light within the glass begins to pulse slightly. Karai shakes her head. “We were that close to one another... and we never knew it.”
His brother’s voice is somewhere in the haze.
“You know what she does now,” he’s saying. “She’s a nurse-midwife.”
“No way,” Maureen says. “From being a research scientist?”
He can make out her face now, pinched a little with worry. He wants to reach out and touch her, but his hand doesn’t want to cooperate.
“She wanted to do something good, she told me, and she had all the bio degrees...”
His daughter’s voice: “Did you tell her about me?”
“Of course, you and your cousin... Mike?”
“Hey.” His voice sounds strange, even to him. He tries to lift his hand again and it moves this time, touches his wife’s arm. She takes it, puts it to her face. “So what did I miss?”
“A couple hours of surgery for one thing,” Don says, forcing his voice to sound casual.
“How much leg did I lose?”
“Up to the knee.”
Mike sighs, closes his eyes for a second. He can feel Angela’s fingers tightening around his other hand. “Hey, Angel... you okay?” He opens his eyes again to her worried face.
“As long as you are,” she says.
“Give your dad a hug, huh?”
She leans into the bed, wrapping her arms around his neck, and he smiles. Don smiles too, a little sheepishly, and says, “I’d better get the nurse, they wanted to see you when you were up...”
Mike winks at him and he disappears. “So what else did I miss?”
Angela and Maureen exchange a glance.
“Bad news?”
Maureen’s fingers tighten around his hand. “Casey... well, remember how he was sick?”
“Yeah, I remember...”
“He wasn’t sick, Mike. I mean, it wasn’t the flu... Mike...” She looks into his eyes and decides to give up on subtlety. “He’s dead.”
”What?”
“It was a coronary, just massive I guess, even if they’d gotten him to the hospital in time they’re not sure he woulda made it... April couldn’t wake him up and she called the ambulance, but...”
“I gotta call her,” Mike says. “There’s a phone here, isn’t there?”
“When did you find out that I was your father?”
“I started asking about you when we came to New York,” Isamu says, helping clear the dishes from the table. “I still remembered you. You know, you were the only father I ever really had...”
“And she told you then?”
“Kind of. She told me a lot of stuff... and I kind of figured it out. She always told me she’d tell me all about my father when I was old enough...”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Ookami mutters from the living room.
“Lupe,” Raphael murmurs, with just the hint of a threat, “what have I said about listening to other people’s private conversations?”
She pouts at him and he frowns, more to himself than to her. Carlos told him about Satoru, that he’d recognized Mgume in her daughter’s face. He’ll have to tell her the truth soon. But he’s had enough for one night. He opens the Wall Street Journal and gestures to her. “You got any picks tonight?”
“Maybe,” she says, slinking over to his chair, still sulking but a little more receptive.
“You lost twenty bucks last week,” he says, “better see what you can do about making it up...”
“Tell me about Jane,” Angela says as Don lifts the cigarette to his lips.
Don holds the smoke in for a second, blows it out. “Before you were born,” he says softly. “The night your parents, met, actually... I... I trusted the wrong person. Spent three months in a research lab. Jane was one of the scientists there... she tried to break me out.”
“You never told me,” she says.
“It was over,” he said.
“I guess it wasn’t.” He looks over at her face and realizes too late he’s hurt her.
“Angela,” he says softly, holding his arm out. “Come here...”
She turns away from him, but he stubs the butt out and takes her in his arms.
“Angela. You know what it’s like when you do something stupid. You don’t want to remember it yourself, much less go around telling people about it... and...” he takes her chin in his hand and tilts it toward him. “Angela.”
She glares at him. “What?”
He meets her eyes, matching her seriousness. “I care about what you think of me. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pointing out the things you haven’t wanted to tell me...”
“Nothing like that,” she says.
“I know. And I hope the hell there never is anything like that. But... do you understand? Do you understand why I wouldn’t want to think about it?”
She’s reluctant, but she gives in. “Yeah.”
They sent Don and Angela home, but the nurses set up a cot for Maureen. They’ve talked for a long time, but she hasn’t said anything for a while now.
Mike touches her arm. She stirs a little, but that’s all. “Maureen?” he calls softly. No response.
She’s finally asleep...
He leans his head back, takes a breath, lets the tears come.
Raph hears the note slipping under the door, walks over, picks it up.
For Leo and Isamu, by the look of the kanji.
He opens it up.
He was never that good with Japanese, but he can catch a couple words, and one in particular’s hard to miss.
Goodbye.
“Shit,” he mutters, grabs his jacket.
She half-wakes to the motion... something... something wrong... “Mike?”
A sniffle from the bed.
“Aw, baby...” She reaches over and his face is slick with tears. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
He shakes his head, leans a little further over, his shoulders crouched like a child’s.
“Mike... oh, Mike...” She gets off the cot, climbs over the tubes and sensors and gets her body onto the bed, touching his shoulders and the back of his neck. He resists her for a moment, then leans into her, letting her wrap her arms around him, leaning in to the embrace. The sobs are low at first, but they grow louder, and she tightens her grip, hoping she won’t set anything off.
She kneels, looks out over the city.
At least I’m a woman. The men have far worse a task...
“Karai.”
She recognizes the voice, but isn’t sure which one it belongs to. “Raphael?”
“I’m probably gonna regret saying this... but don’t do it.”
“Leave me alone,” she says stiffly. She can hear him behind her, something tearing... she realizes what it is a half-second too late. “No--”
“There’s your note,” he says sullenly, throwing the shreds of paper like confetti over her head. She snatches at one, sees her handwriting. Damn. She’d hoped he was bluffing.
She turns around, stands, draws her sword.
“Explanations don’t mean jack to your kids,” he says angrily. “Ask mine. I’ve tried, I’ve tried explaining-- shit, look at April’s two girls... they don’t give a shit about why.”
“Isamu is older--”
“You really think that makes a difference?”
“He will understand.”
“Why--” He fights for the words. “Why your-- honor meant more to you than he did?”
“I have failed. Everything I have ever done to protect him has only--”
“You think he sees it that way?”
“What right do you have--”
“He’s my nephew,” Raph growls. “He’s your son. What right do you have, pulling this? ‘Sorry, I fucked up, maybe I’ll see ya in the next life?’”
“Dammit, Raphael--”
“You have no right to do this to them. They hardly even know each other, for Christ’s sake. Now get the hell of this roof and get back to your son. He needs you.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says coldly.
“How ‘bout I just pick you up and carry you off the roof instead?”
The glare she gives him is murderous. He grins.
Karai almost trips over Don and Angela on the way back into the apartment. Don’s eyes flicker open as she passes by, register her, close again. He frowns, realizes he’s looped his arm around Angela’s sleeping bag. He shifts his weight, ready to turn over and let her go, and realizes her hand’s clamped onto his. He sighs.
”You all right, Karai?”
She turns back toward him and nods. “It’s a beautiful night out there,” she says softly.
“Makes you grateful for what you have,” he says, tilting his chin towards his niece.
“I guess it does,” she tells him, and heads for bed.
--end chapter four--
On To Chapter Five