The Hard Way Back to Heaven. Karl Dehmelt

in its malignant manifestation, growls hungrily at the mention of its name. Lauren ignores it, even as it sits perched above her husband’s head, using him as a pillow.

      “Mike, I just think it’s a bad idea.”

      “He needs to get his work done.”

      Alex’s hands are sweating. “I think I can get it done without having to go down there.”

      Michael’s voice and coughing increase in tandem. Balled up paper towels frame his workspace.

      “I think he should be able to go down there and work on it. It’s literally two minutes down the street.”

      “Mike, you’re sick.”

      “It’s nothing worse than when I dealt with that walking pneumonia back in 2003.” At the end of his sentence, Michael rasps another cough. A warm substance hits the inside of his mouth.

      “Tuberculosis is a big deal, Mike. This isn’t some common cold you can just shove away.”

      Michael rises from his chair, walking across the floor to the bathroom around the corner, adjacent to Alex’s room. Walking in, he removes the mask, and spits the bloody sputum into the sink. The pink tinge has deepened in color. Coughing again, he turns the small faucet on. He spits once more, and the projectile lands in the already corrupted stream of water, whisking down the bowl of the sink and into the drain. Michael dimly notes Alex’s toothbrush in the corner, staring at him with the same blank expression as is on his son’s face in the dining room.

      The phone rings.

      Michael puts the mask on and walks back into the dining room. He meets Alex’s eyes for a moment, and Michael feels a stab of pain.

      Lauren moves in from the kitchen, listening intently.

      “Yes, Dr. Fost, this is Lauren McGregor.”

      Michael picks up a tissue from his desk, and he wipes the excess blood and spittle from his chin. It appears on the fabric like a miniature murder scene.

      7

      September 20, 2009

      One of Michael McGregor’s best friends had been a man named Thomas Rosenbaum. Thomas had been almost fourteen years older than Mike, but the two had been friends for over 30 years at the time of Thomas’s passing. He had been soft-spoken, a man who made up for his lack of finances in the wealth of his compassion. Thomas, or Thom, as his friends knew him, had never left Willow Grove. That’s where he had raised his only son, Barry, and where his wife, Nancy, had left him when she fled off the face of the planet with the tandem of a spiraling addiction to painkillers and another man named Victor. Thom raised his son as a single father into a man of quality any pair of adults would’ve been proud to call their own, while working two jobs, in a house he financed himself.

      Michael had been married his high school sweetheart, Rachel Maria Edwards, and had gotten her pregnant when they were both 16. They ended up marrying when both of them were 20, a childless couple.

      Thom was the best man at Michael’s first wedding. After seven years of Rachel becoming addicted to the same vein of drugs which had stolen Thom’s wife, Thom told Michael to ditch her before she wrecked Michael like a drunken teenager in a sports car. Between best friends, there is a mindset and a protection which exists far beyond the scope of logic. Six weeks following the divorce, Rachel Maria Edwards tried to sell an undercover police officer a package of the most potent cocaine in the history of Willow Grove. She became famous for creating one of the largest drug busts in the history of her county, and she fell off the face of the planet.

      Michael started relying on Thom after Eve moved away. Sister Eve is a woman as strong willed as her biological mother and as benevolent as Harlan. She had caused quite an argument at their biological mother’s funeral, and Michael, who had housed his biological mother and cared for her in her dying days, ejected Eve in front of all in attendance. It had taken Eve over 15 years since the woman’s death to acknowledge that a part of the woman had been worth a service.

      Their mom had given Eve her blonde hair and blue eyes, the angular face, medium build, and the light freckles adorning her California trimmed skin. Harlan bequeathed to her his personality, his movements, and his musical taste. Such is the reason for Eve and Michael’s silence over seven years—the classic battle between their biological mother and Harlan lives on.

      The argument which split Eve and Michael was over a trivial matter. Michael’s heart absorbs every shot fired at him. Every communication runs a direct line to his conscience. They had screamed at each other. She had been in from California to visit, probably for either an anniversary or birthday. The words flying had been words of calamity, bringing up the alcohol, the fighting, and the darkness of a past that still lies in the house Harlan calls home. Michael never understands why Eve moved to California, and Eve never understands why Michael stayed. The apocalyptic argument hides now underneath a set of stairs somewhere in a house.

      Thom had told Michael to wait, to let her come back on her own. Thom had seen the pain in his friend’s face. Whenever Michael was in pain, he’d travel over to Thom’s small house, and talk amidst the reruns on TV and the small air conditioner poking into the living room like a burglar through the window. Michael was convinced to follow Thom’s advice, waiting for Eve to come home, rejecting the cards she sent. If she wanted a relationship with her nephew, she would have to come through him.

      “Just because the two of you don’t talk don’t mean the two of them shouldn’t.” Thom would say as he lit a cigarette, the sparks bouncing off his dark skin.

      “Thom, I don’t get it. What is so hard about her contacting me, making this kind of stuff right?”

      “People aren’t put here to be understood, Mike.” Thom’s house had featured a brick fireplace among its five rooms. Thom would toss in the cigarette buds, brush the residue off his tan overcoat, and walk to the fridge to grab something to eat from the night before.

      “Understand this much about your sister, my friend.” Thom would say as he reached into the fridge. “Actually, understand it about your entire goddamn family. You McGregors have a lot of pain in this town.”

      “I know.” Michael would look across the small path. Mike wondered what would happen if he moved his entire family across the street to live in proximity to this man, who had inspired and aided him when either his father was too busy or his sister was nowhere to be found.

      “I know Eve. I’ve known her, you, your dad, your mom, all of them, since you were still singing those love songs in the 70’s like some white version of Stevie Wonder.”

      Michael would smile and enjoy a laugh of freedom.

      “At least you weren’t blind in that way, though. Some others, like with that Rachel Edwards bitch you got hitched to, that made me second guess.”

      “Hey now,” Mike said, bumming his cigarette on the concrete outside the door. “We all make mistakes. Some just stick with us longer than we’d like.”

      “Admit it,” Thom replied, walking back out onto the porch, two Fillets o’ Fish from the local McDonalds wrapped in his hands. “You want to talk to her.”

      Michael sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do, but …”

      “But what?”

      “I don’t know if I’m at a point where I want to do that, with the way my life is.”

      Thom stopped halfway through unwrapping his sandwich.

      “Bullshit.”

      “How is that bullshit?”

      “Because,” Thom would say, his intense eyes looking at Michael with guidance and experience, the dark complexion of his skin contrasting with the whiteness of his shirt but still falling in line with the tan jacket.

      “You love your sister. You miss her to death, and you feel bad for your parents that you two can’t stand in the same room without digging up things, or people, who’ve been