well-deserved, month long vacation.
It was a hot, dry night. Late July in Colorado was infamous for hundred degree-days and only the vague memory of anything resembling rain. They had met at the office, which had moved from a single suite on the first floor to the entire top floor of the building. They had constructed a pond, complete with live reeds and cattails in the center of the room. There was a series of benches situated around the water, flanked by bonsai trees. Scott’s office was up a series of stairs, all four walls glass, one overlooking the entire downtown skyline framed against the jagged, blue Rocky Mountains.
Justin met him there at quarter till eight in the evening in a brand new suit. Every time he saw Justin these days he was wearing a different suit. The two stood for a moment, staring out the window, the orange clouds masking the setting sun as it slipped past the rocky crags. The sky faded from deep blue to an almost black, the stars shining brightly in the cloudless sky. It had been the perfect night. He could vividly remember thinking that. He had stood like Caesar, surveying his kingdom beneath the best that nature had to offer.
That is, until his cell phone rang…
The phone had fallen from his hand, clattering to the floor, the antenna breaking off. He could remember staring at Justin, whose face faded from an enormous mile, to a silent nod as he stared down at the floor.
He had sped to the hospital, oblivious to anything going on around him. Car horns filled his ears, but the significance never registered within his mind as he just pinned the gas to the floor, the whole time wondering, over and over, how this could have happened again. It seemed as though he had just done this.
He had arrived before anyone else, leaving his car parked in the emergency lane in front of the hospital.
The doctor had greeted him after only a few moments waiting in the plush, forest green chairs in the waiting area, and had led him to the back of the emergency room. There were several large rooms with doors on all sides, leading from one into the next. They stopped first at room 113; he could remember that number as though it was his own birthdate.
Two nurses, clad in powder blue scrubs, stood next to the lone bed in the center, organizing the blood drenched trays to either side of the bed. They wore latex gloves covered in rapidly drying blood. Both had looked up at him when he had walked in, and then immediately down at the floor. Metal arms extended from the side of the bed, halide lights mounted atop their flexible arms. A crimson-soaked sheet covered the raised bed, long tufts of blonde hair protruding from the top portion.
The nurses had continued organizing the stained utensils, and throwing the drenched clothing the doctors had shed into the hamper. The doctor beside him had raised the sheet covering the long lump on the bed, revealing his mother’s lifeless corpse. Her face was pale, splatters of blood dried on her cheeks. Her blue forehead was damp, her bangs matted backward. The tubes that had been used to open her airways still lay next to her head on the table. One of the nurses had quickly shuffled off with the saw that had been used to open her chest, and the device used to spread her ribs as soon as he had laid eyes upon them.
Scott had closed his eyes, identifying her with a curt nod. The doctor had spoken of an accident and a drunk driver who had also not made it off of the table as he had led Scott into the adjoining room where his stepfather lay beneath a similarly stained sheet. The nurses in his room had vanished as soon as Scott had walked in at the request of the doctor, who once again raised the top of the sheet for him to identify the body.
The rest of the night had passed in a blur, a thick fog convalescing within his mind. He had wandered back to the room where his mother lay, sitting on a stool on the corner of the room with his face buried in his hands. He couldn’t bear to look at her body, trying desperately to remember her as she was, and to shake the image of her dead body, her jaw hanging slack as her tongue began to swell within. Time had passed slowly, yet he had sat there, peering between the tear-soaked gaps in his fingers for more than an hour before one of the nurses finally led him from the room.
She had guided him to the chairs in the waiting area, offering to allow him to speak with a counselor or the chaplain, but he had refused. He just sat there; staring blankly at the television as a baby wailed to his right, the man next to him cradling his blood drenched arm and grinding his teeth.
Rising, he pressed his way through the group of people standing around the crying infant and shuffled to the pay phone on the wall. Pulling his wallet from his pocket, he produced his calling card and dialed the numbers into the phone. After an endless series of numbers, he was granted permission to dial his sister’s number at school. She was living off campus at the University of Colorado in Boulder, her address changing as frequently as her major, but he had at least had the foresight to buy her a cell phone.
She answered on the first ring, stifling a giggle. From the tone of his voice, she could tell that something was wrong as he fumbled to formulate his thoughts into words that he hoped would shield her from some of the immediate pain and shock, but all he could muster was: “Mom and Ray died in a car accident.”
The following week had been chaotic, but he had it under control. He had just done the same thing far too recently. He had handled all of the arrangements without help, his sister only coming down for a couple of days as she was working an internship at IBM and didn’t want to ask for that much time off. It was obvious that she was overwhelmed by the situation, but she distanced herself from him, and he didn’t really know how to bridge the gap so that he could help her. They had barely spoken over those few days, and just as infrequently since. He kept tabs on her, but it was almost as if he lost his sister and his parents in the same week.
Perhaps it was the sense of belonging, or more realistically, it was that it was his comfort zone, but he had gone back to work in construction the following week. After canceling his registration at school, he had delved into work with a ferocity. His social life consisted of a beer on the couch over SportsCenter on the way to bed, morning coming before the dawn. Ambition had become the best medicine. Rather than deciding on which of their properties to begin first, they had begun two at the same time, spreading their labor so thin that it was a miracle it held together at all.
Ulcers arose from nowhere; the roll of Rolaids in his pocket his best friend. Even Justin had been forced to distance himself as Scott had become far too driven to talk to on a normal level. His primary, and singular, focus was on work. He had left no room for anything else. There hadn’t been a date in months, nor was there even the prospect. But both projects stayed right on pace, and finished under budget. They made a fortune, but it was all for naught, as the completion of the work left Scott with an empty, aching wound deep within his soul that only another project could help to fill.
Justin had chosen an early retirement, selling his quarter of the business back to Scott for enough money to live a lifetime abroad. His foremen feared him, his workers loathed him. He was completely alone in the business, and the stress had begun to take its toll.
He lay there in his bed, staring up at the ceiling as he did every night, waiting for the sun to rise so that he could justify getting out of bed. His most recent project, the development of thirty-five acres on the furthest most north point of the city, adjacent to the Air Force Academy boundary, had fallen behind schedule. With the early onset of a fierce winter and the strength of the economy, labor had been thin at best. Finding an experienced builder who was willing to work through the snow was nearly impossible, let alone at anything resembling an affordable rate. The upper echelon development, consisting of one hundred houses on third acre lots, was only half sold. Thirty-two of the houses were inhabited, the rest in various stages of completion. A handful of Realtors were actively trying to push the sales, but without the park being finished, and the lake sitting dry beneath a few feet of snow, it was a challenging task indeed.
Scott sighed loudly, closing his eyes and raising his arms above him. A wide yawn ripped across his lips. Sitting up, he dangled his legs over the side of the bed, rolling his head on his shoulders, the vertebrae popping dully. He sniffed and climbed from the bed, shuffling into the bathroom where he leaned against the side of the marble sink and peed for what felt like five minutes. Yawning once more, he scuffed across the tile floor and back into the bedroom, stopping at the closet only long enough to grab the matching top to his pajama bottoms. Slipping it over his bare chest, he made his way down the hall, sliding down the long staircase into the foyer. Sunlight spilled through the skylights staggered throughout the twenty-two foot ceiling, reflecting off of the highly buffed Spanish tile in the entryway.
Rubbing his scruffy jaw, he grabbed the handle to the front door, glancing through the etched glass arches in the middle. Throwing wide the door, the bitter wind raced in to greet him. Shivering, he stepped out onto the porch, standing on the thick “Welcome” mat that was only half-covered by snow.
Large flakes fell from a partially cloud-filled sky, slowly swirling as they fell straight down, before being ripped away by the gusting wind. Bending over, he grabbed the paper and tucked it beneath his arm, staring across
