Holder (excerpt)

  While she was at the comic store, Ms. Lockley found herself staring at the bright covers of various issues, displaying one heroic deed or another. She made her way to the Charlie Horse comics and dug out a few she knew Dewy didn’t have. The covers showed a man in a medical coat, except at times he seemed to have a horse’s head. In one he appeared to be leaping from above on to a group of scrawny criminals. She sighed, brushing away a thought of her brother, and tapped the comics against their bin to level them. Then she straightened and made her way to the front of the store, pulling an empty superhero backpack from a shelf on her way.

Before she went back into the hospital proper, Ms. Lockley pulled around back and waited in her car watching a door she’d picked out months ago. In time one of the hospital staff came outside, and she threw open her car door and scrambled out.

“Wait wait wait! Don’t let that door close!” she shouted at him, “I’ve left my keys!” The man turned and grabbed the door before it shut, politely holding it open for her, but looked at her suspiciously as he did. She thanked him, flashing an expired hospital badge she'd snatched off a distracted nurse the week prior, and slipped into the hospital’s basement. Once there, she found herself a pair of used scrubs in the wash bins, which she folded up and put under her arm. 

Reaching the hospital’s main floor, Ms. Lockley hurried to the nearest bathroom and crawled into the pair of "borrowed" scrubs. She breathed deep, reminding herself that she knew the hospital well enough to move through it with familiarity and let that feeling wash through her. Then she picked up the empty backpack she’d bought, exited the bathroom, and made her way down the hall. She slid in behind the front desk, keeping the bag to her side, and punched the button which unlocked the door to the prescription storage room, quietly slipping inside. 

After checking to ensure no one had paid her any attention, she moved through the shelves of bottled pills and bags of liquid painkillers. She found the morphine and filled the bottom half of the backpack with clear plastic bags plump with the drug. Next, she shoveled bottles of Oxycodone into the bag, and glass vials of Laudanum. Then she zipped up the bag and walked out the same way she came in. She dropped the bag on a bench, hastily changed again in the bathroom, tossing the used scrubs on the floor of an empty stall, and picked the bag up again on her way out.

When Ms. Lockley finally got to Dewy’s room he was sleeping; lying on his side drawing heavy, shuddering breaths. Ms. Lockley settled herself in the lone chair next to his bed, placing the backpack on the floor next to her. She leaned in and took Dewy’s arm by the wrist, and pushed her body to unfurl, in a way that it hadn’t for many years. Her skin began to crawl, and it felt like her veins were exposed to the raw air. She could feel every blood cell, bumping and sliding along through her as they began to change; growing amorphous and ugly. Dewy's cancer responded to their connection, lifting itself from within his bones and meandering its way into hers. Then it ended. She let go, and Dewy blinked his eyes open. Ms. Lockley immediately felt worse, an ache spread through her whole body, radiating through her limbs. And exhaustion, utter exhaustion, in every pore. 

“Hi, mom,” Dewy said, sitting himself up.

Ms. Lockley swallowed, “Hi…Dewy. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good I guess. Better than yesterday,” he looked at her with concern, “How are you feeling?”

“I’m…okay. I brought you something.” She pulled the comics out of her bag and placed them on the bed. 

“Wow,” Dewy scrambled forward, his worry forgotten, “Wow mom, this is awesome!”

Ms. Lockley laughed, no more than a shot of air through her nostrils, and tried to smile but she found the effort excruciating.

“Listen, honey…I’ve got to go take care of some things. Stay here and read your comics. I’ll be back later okay?”

“Okay.” He had already begun flipping through the first issue. She hoisted the superhero bag over her shoulder and dragged herself - and Dewy's cancer - out of the hospital.