Josie talks about how they would endlessly walk through the city, pushing Luke around the park day after day. It is a rite of passage for new parents that I never experienced. At least not yet.
‘I made sure I was around in the first few months, and the two of us would push that stroller around almost until we’d worn the wheels away. Sometimes, Lauren would sleep, and it would just be me and this one touring the city parks. When he started to get bigger, he loved the swings. Not for ten minutes, but thirty or forty minutes until your arms were falling off. Never really liked anything else, not until he was about two and he got a scooter and would whizz along so fast that we’d have to sprint down the street to catch him,’ Josie says.
‘I missed all of that,’ I say.
‘You’re here now,’ Josie says.
Every few miles or so Luke calls out and asks how much further we have to go. Josie inclines her head, turning it slightly, saying ‘not much further now, baby’.
We drive on, and the miles fly by like months on a calendar. It strikes me that we are following the light back into the past. Shortly before eleven, we enter San Jose, having driven for almost an hour and a half with a toilet pit stop along the way for Luke. We pull into the visitors’ car park of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, which sits on the city’s edge.
Josie turns the engine off, and we glance at each other, and together we turn to Luke. He’s drifted to sleep, jetlagged and tired from our flight. His head is tilted back, and his mouth is open.
‘It’s almost a shame to wake him,’ Josie says.
I nod when she says this, although I know that it isn’t quite what she means. Josie already knows what we will find inside the hospital, and she is, I can sense, as worried as I am about how Luke will react. After everything that’s happened, all that he has been through, I wonder how much more a five-year-old can take?
For Luke, and for me, this is the end of the Yellow Brick Road. We’re back in Kansas and nearing journey’s end. Reality is about to hit at any moment, and I fear it will bite hard.
I also know that he will never forgive me if I don’t take him with me. It would turn into a bitter, resentful itch that would gnaw away at our relationship. It is something that we have to do together. It will be the two of us, as it has been for a while now. Then, for however long we have, it will be the three of us. It will be how it should have been from the start.
‘It is,’ I say. ‘We have to, though.’
Josie bites her lip and nods. I release my seat belt, and I turn in my seat and reach for Luke.
‘Hey, Luke,’ I say.
‘Are we there yet?’ he asks as soon as his eyes open.
‘We are. We’re all the way there. You remember what we spoke about, don’t you?’
Luke gives me a nod. That’s good, I tell him. I step out of the Jeep, and I open Luke’s door. I unbuckle his seat belt and help him out of the car. I take his hand, and he holds the other one out to Josie. Luke walks between the two of us as we cross the car park towards the hospital building entrance. We take the lift to the third floor, and Josie speaks to the nurse stationed behind the desk.
We walk down the light, bright corridor to room 311 and stop in front of the light-coloured wooden door.
Inside, I can see a bed and briefly pause with my fingers on the handle. Luke looks up at me, expectantly. I almost ask him if he is ready. I don’t need to. He is more prepared than I am. There are butterflies in my stomach, my nerves are shredded, and I feel I might throw up. I take a couple of deep breaths.
Josie senses this, and she smiles at me.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ she says.
Is it, I want to ask, although I allow the question to fall away.
I press down, and I open the door. The two of us step into the room, and we stop right there. The only sound is the background hum coming from the medical equipment and of distant traffic.
I don’t see Lauren, at least not at first. A young woman is lying in bed, and her dark hair is nestled in the white pillow. She is hooked up to a machine with drug and IV lines into her arms. Then I see her face more clearly, and I’m right back there. It’s the same girl I saw that first time standing in a bar in Santa Cruz.
I feel so many emotions as we approach the bed. There’s a lump in my throat, and I feel like I am about to break at any moment. I take a breath and hold it together, and try to be strong for Luke. Despite looking fragile and pale, there’s still a beauty that shines out from her.
Luke is standing close to my leg and a little behind me. I am like a tree and he is safely behind its trunk. He is fearful and not prepared to fully show himself. He’s looking at his mother intently, and I take his hand in mine. We move closer until we are standing alongside her bed. I reach out for Lauren’s fingers, and I give her hand a gentle squeeze. It’s warm, and there’s a crackle of electricity as my skin touches hers.
‘It’s Jon. I finally made it back. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,’ I say.
There’s no reaction, no sign that she can hear me. I’m not sure what I was expecting.
‘Mommy’s still sick, isn’t she?’ Luke says.
‘Yeah,
