Fortunate Son

One day Thomas woke up to find that Alicia was gone. He knew that she was off taking care of her own unfinished business, something about the people that killed her and dumped her in Thomas’s valley. He didn’t worry about her; they would be together again.

The next day Skully didn’t come when Thomas whistled.

But that didn’t bother him either. Traveling alone down the wide valley that started behind his father’s home, Thomas knew that he was getting somewhere.

One day — after many, many days of walking — Thomas heard a strange bird cry. It was a high, burplike noise. The call intrigued him, and so he began to climb up out of the valley because that was where the birdsong came from. Climbing up the slope, he began breathing hard. He fell to his knees and struggled through the brush. The bird’s odd song got louder and louder. And the louder it got, the more he wanted to see the animal that made that sound.

Maybe it wasn’t a bird, he thought. Maybe it’s a frog or a wolf or a man. Maybe it’s some new kind of talking tree.

As he climbed the foliage became thinner and the sun 2 2 8

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shone brighter. It got brighter and brighter, louder and louder, until Thomas was at the crest.

He opened his eyes and saw the beeping machine against the far wall of his hospital room. Next to his bed was a chair in which sat a black-haired girl.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“I am?”

“You’ve been in a coma . . . for six months.”

“What’s a coma?”

“Deep sleep. So deep that no one can wake you up.”

“I don’t feel tired now.”

“I should get the doctor.” The girl leaned forward, prepar-ing to stand.

“No. Don’t go away.”

She smiled, and Thomas felt a tingle of happiness.

“Where have you been?” she asked him.

“In my coma?”

“No. Before. Eric said that you went away to live with your father and grandmother but ended up on the street.”

Thomas felt good in his bed. He sat up, and an electric whistle began to sound. He thought about his life in terms of the girl’s question, leaving the house he was raised in and then ending up on the street.

“Is Eric going to come see me?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’d be here now, but he had to take Mona to the doctor for a rash on her forehead.”

“Are you Eric’s girlfriend?”

Raela nodded solemnly.

“Oh my God!” the nurse coming into his room exclaimed.

“You’re awake.”

Doctors and nurses bustled around him soon after that.

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They hurried the girl away and rolled Thomas into a room where they examined him from head to toe. The chief doctor probed his body with her fingers and kept asking how it felt.

They looked into his eyes and ears and talked to one another, expressing surprise.

Finally the woman explained that he had experienced severe trauma to his system. He’d been in a coma for nearly six months, and it would be a while before he would be able to walk or take care of himself.

“Where’s my cart?” he asked when the doctor had finished.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“My shopping cart. That’s where I got all my stuff.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the police took it after the shooting.

That was a wonderful thing you did.”

After a while they wheeled him back into his room. He had hoped the girl would still be there, but she wasn’t.

“Would you like me to turn the TV on, hon?” a plump redheaded nurse asked while pulling the blankets up to his chest.

“No thanks. I don’t like TV too much.”

“I wish my kids felt like that,” she said. “All they do is watch that thing. Between the one-eyed monster and video games, they don’t have the sense to come in outta the rain.”

When she left, Thomas thought about his books and the look in the doctor’s eye when she complemented his bravery.

The room was very quiet and white. Painfully, he pulled himself to a seated position at the head of the bed. This made him a little dizzy, but it was manageable. He realized, a little sadly, that his travels in the valley were a dream.

“Maybe this is a dream too,” he whispered. “Maybe everything is. Maybe it’s not even me dreaming.”

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With these thoughts he fell into a light doze.

As he slept he tumbled down mountainsides, was attacked by feral dogs, and was raped unmercifully by boys from the desert facility whose names he had forgotten. But none of this pained him. His mother died, but she came back to console him. His brother got lost in a wilderness but still made it home in time for dinner. He found himself adrift on a tiny raft in the middle of the ocean, floating in circles and being laughed at by cruel dolphins. In this last ordeal Thomas thought that it might be time to fall over the side, allowing himself to sink under the waves. He wanted to die and be with his mother and Alicia, Chilly, Bruno, and Pedro. He could look for Eric’s wife.

Eric.

When he opened his eyes again he was still sitting upright.

The sun through the window had moved a good six feet across the wall. The door was open, and a moment later Eric was standing there.