The Man Upstairs by Bill Hughs

Bill Hughes lives with his wife, his five-year-old son, and three bothersome cats in a small house in Columbus. His fiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including Flesh and Blood, The Edge, The Pedestal, AntiMuse, AlienSkin, and Byzarium. In his spare time, he publishes Dred (on-line at www.dredtales.com).

Across the street a billboard announced abortion stops a beating heart. Jerry felt a surge of resentment at the certainty which enabled fundies—evangelicals, he reminded himself—to reduce complicated issues to simplistic slogans.

He pushed his way through the entrance. They didn't call it a hospital, but it smelled like one. The piney scent of disinfectant clung to the back of his throat like a leech. Underneath was the echo of another smell, sinister and overripe. As he trudged up the stairs to the third floor, he retightened the tie he'd loosened in the car. Looking neat is always worth more than it costs, a small voice reminded him. Mom.

Mom had been spared all this. Sudden cardiac arrest, they said, gone before she hit the floor. That was hard enough. Then two and a half years later a mole on dad's back turned into sixteen months of doctors and surgery and chemotherapy. The road to hospice.

Whoever designed the place had tried to keep it from feeling institutional: walls of deep blue instead of pale gray or celery, quilted hangings instead of anonymous art prints, gleaming wood floors instead of tile. Homey. Jerry disliked the charade. His father was not home, would never again be home, and it angered him that they were expected to pretend otherwise. No one, of course, had voiced such an expectation. He felt sure that if he asked, the bland caretakers would deny saddling the families of the soon-to-be departed with anything so burdensome. They were there to make it all as easy as possible.

Although he understood this, a voice inside Jerry simply said no. This was not easy. It wasn't supposed to be. Trying to make it so was an insult.

Fortunately, there was no melancholy nurse hovering bedside when he entered. Only the matchstick man, with the scarred volleyball head, ostrich neck, and walnut knuckles erupting from straw fingers, sitting up in the bed with his eyes closed. As Jerry stepped in, the eyes opened, pale and enormous. Those eyes were the only things Jerry recognized—despite the morphine haze, they were the same blue eyes that had shone out at him as he’d tossed a ball across the green lawn on a long-ago faded summer.

He pulled the thin lips over his graying teeth. After a moment Jerry realized he was smiling.

The old man's laugh was so lean that Jerry didn't recognize it right away. "Why, so the nurses won't hear? Hell, they know. Christ, Jerry, they're not stupid!"

"I never could find you," the old man said finally. "Even when you were a kid. You were never where I thought you'd be. Like in junior high. You decided you wanted to be on the basketball team. Worked all summer. Dribbling. Shooting free throws. Then you didn't make the team. Remember?"

"I tried to talk with you about it. But you wouldn't talk. I don't think it was because you were hurt or anything. You didn't seem like it bothered you at all. I thought it should. I never could quite make you out."

Jerry tried to think it into words. Finally, he stood, crossed back to the window and looked out again. The brightness outside made his eyes water.

He turned it over as he went down the hall and was still turning it over when he stepped back into the heat of the August afternoon. As the humidity rolled over him, it came to him in its simplicity. He almost turned and went back. Then it struck him just how much it sounded like a slogan, so instead he clutched it to his chest as he stood in the damp heat: because it's all we are.