To a good man

It has often been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and the way to a child’s heart is with sugar. This is a tale about a boy becoming a man, though not through the path that you may be thinking of. 

    Zephyr, or Zap, was a boy of about ten. He had spent his childhood normally. He played with friends and shadowed his father, Nathan. His dad was a welder and taught his son the basics as much as he could. Their family had been welders for at least three generations. It was his father’s hope that Zap would continue that line of work. 

Zap would wake up each school day by himself and make breakfast for himself and his dad. His mother, Clara, had left them both one night going to get some cigarettes from a local corner store. She had walked there and was hit by a drunk driver. She had died at impact and the driver had died after slamming into an electric pole. Zap and his father had now been alone for two years. Zap and his father learned quickly how to cook and clean, though neither were very good at it. Zap’s father worked from morning till dusk and slept whenever he could. It seemed to be the best way of life for him, to throw himself into work and not to grieve. 

Zap could cook well enough that he didn’t need to eat out that much. After school Zap would go home, start any laundry that needed to be done and start prep work for dinner. That usually was just opening some cans and tossing them into a pot to stew. Good enough for a ten-year old. While dinner was cooking, he would get started on his homework and it was around this time that his father would come home and sit down in his easy chair and take a quick nap. 

Though Zap would often wish that he could go and play with his friends, he did understand that his father needed him as much as he needed his father. His weekends were open to hang with his buds. His father would usually sleep those away. It was during one particular weekend that Zap and two of his friends, Charles and Nick, were out in the nearby woods pretending to be superheroes.  All three were always superman; there was not an imaginary foe that they could not defeat. Zap had climbed a rather large tree and tried to fly, meaning that he had jumped off and landed in a large pile of leaves. Underneath the leaves though, a large, pointed boulder sat. The rock sat there camouflaged by the leaf pile. The boy that jumped, hoping for a soft landing, hit the rock, and three cracks were heard in the quiet forest.

Charles sprinted back to Zap’s house to get his father. Nick helped Zap as best as he could to bring him out of the woods. Zap’s legs had been broken in two places that were visible. Although Nick and Charles were certain that they had heard three cracks, there were no more visible breaks. Zap was still conscious and screaming and whimpering in pain, he still struggled on to get out of the woods. 

Charles had a heck of a time trying to get Nathan to understand his plight. Charles was almost hyper-ventilating from panic. Nathan was still groggy from sleep, but with two little words, Nathan woke fully. “Zap’s hurt.” Nathan took off and grabbed his keys and wallet and took off out the door. He got into his truck and with Charles directing, the two of them took off to where the three had entered the woods.

Nick and Zap were already there waiting. Nick looked exhausted and Zap seemed to be asleep. Nathan was nearly as panicked as Charles when he picked up his son and placed him into the passenger side of the truck. He had Charles get out and told the two boys to go home and tell their parents what had happened. 

Though the nearest clinic was fifteen minutes away, Nathan knew that their equipment was fifty years out of date. The hospital was his choice. Farther away by a whole twenty minutes but their technology had not expired. Zap groaned in pain and Nathan pushed the pedal to the floor. A police car got on their tail, but Nathan did not care. His need was urgent. He flipped on his emergency lights and raced on. 

The highway miles burned away and the hospital came into view. Nathan pulled into the emergency entrance, and opened the passenger door, pulled his son out of the car and a medical team raced out to meet him. The police officer that had come in behind him was on her radio giving thanks to her dispatcher. The medical team put Zap on a gurney and wheeled him into the hospital. 

The officer, whose name was Rosie, came towards Nathan and took him inside while a valet parked his vehicle. She took Nathan inside and explained that when she saw him burning rubber and hit his emergency lights. That she knew that it was an emergency indeed. She radioed ahead and stayed with him until he came to the hospital. She said that this would be a one time thing and that he better not have another emergency that pushes his old car so hard again. She gave him her card and handed him off to the doctor that approached him.

The doctor introduced herself as Doctor Michelle Brown. Nathan heard nothing of her jargon. Her words did not affect his grief. He held his head in his hands and began to break down. He tried to bring himself up, but he had the same problem when Clara had died. He was strong for all of twenty minutes, for the drive to hospital, with his groaning son next to him, he was strong and panicked. When Clara passed, he had felt numb and now that feeling was creeping back onto himself.

The doctor wanted to know of Zap’s medical history, and Clara’s and his own as well. When Nathan had mastered himself he told her of any known illnesses that they had. The occasional flu or fever, all quite normal. When Dr. Brown asked about Clara’s death, Nathan told her that she was hit by a drunk driver. Her bones were pulverized and she was killed on impact. The doctor had a thoughtful gaze in her eyes. When asked if Clara had cancer, Nathan said that he was not aware of any sort cancer that she might’ve had. 

Doctor Brown went on to explain that the x-rays of Zephyr showed that he had not three fractures, but rather several. One of his legs was shattered beyond repair, his hip looked like a shattered window, and he had fractures on his H4 and H5 vertebrae. Brown was convinced that it was a miracle that Zap was still alive. In a coma, but alive.

Zap woke up. He was in a white bed and it was clean. He heard the whir and beeps of machinery near to him. He opened his eyes and saw his dad sprawled across his bed. He called out to him, but his voice was lost in the empty room. He poked and prodded at his dad to no effect. A nurse came in and when he tried to grab her attention it was ineffective. Though he saw himself awake it was more true that he was still asleep and trapped in a coma.

He wondered how far he might push his dream state. He wondered how long he had been this way. In all of his wonderings he kept near to his father. For he knew that even though he was asleep, it was really his father that was being tortured. Zap tried and tried again to grab his father’s attention. He tried for three days and three nights. Many different ways. At any time that he thought that he saw a reaction he was disappointed, for he saw that his father’s eyes were red from crying. He had never thought that he would have ever seen his father like this. A man that he had often held to be the pinnacle how he want to be. Now, he looked small and frail, broken.

The coma went on for a week and eventually, took a turned for the worse. Zap’s system’s began to shutdown as the cancerous cells began to infect his blood stream. New bones began to grow in odd places. Some in blood vessels, some in the liver and kidneys, and one in his heart. The hospital did all that they could but on an operating table to remove a new bone growing in the heart. A doctor, low on sleep dropped a scalpel and knick a ventricle and Zap’s life ended there on that table. Nathan heard the news and wept again.

The hospital paid for the funeral. Zephyr had hundreds show up for his passing. Hospital staff and state police showed up. All of the neighbors and school friends that he had had. More people that Nathan had ever known showed up. Though he thought that he was unknown and that his impact meant little it was his son that had the impact. When that first shovel full of dirt hit the coffin, Nathan let go and felt numb once again. He stayed and watched as his son was buried.