Retribution
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By Martha Kuhn
mjkuhn@brightchoice.bright.net
This one could happen any time after Mark gets out of prison:
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Steve is stretched, full length, on the couch, sound asleep. Mark
sits opposite him in an easy chair, reading a medical journal,
but he soon puts the reading material down to gaze affectionately
at his sleeping son. Then a cloud passes over his eyes, he frowns
and crosses to the couch. He sits on the edge and ever so gently
smoothes Steve's hair back. Steve opens his eyes.
"Hi." He yawns and stretches.
"Hi." Mark smiles.
"What's up?" Steve asks, his voice rough with sleep.
Mark shakes his head, looks away. His eyes lose focus.
Steve frowns. "What is it, Dad?"
Mark pulls himself back to the present with an effort, gently
rubs his son's shoulder. "Sometimes, when I look at you, all
I can see is the way you looked as they were rushing you to the
O.R. And I can hardly believe you're really here." He smiles
crookedly. "And I have to do something to convince myself
you're real."
Steve raises his eyebrows, takes a long, slow breath. "I'm
glad I don't remember that part of it."
"Nothing's ever come back?"
"No. One minute I'm eating breakfast with the chief, and the
next I'm waking up in the hospital." This time it's Steve's
eyes that focus on the past. "Wish I could forget hearing
you sentenced to death." He closes his eyes, rubs his
forehead with one strong hand.
"Nightmares?" Mark asks.
Steve nods.
Mark gazes at his son, trying to erase his own nightmare images
from memory. "It's over, son. We made it."
Steve nods again. "We just have to believe it."
**************
By Martha Kuhn
mjkuhn@brightchoice.bright.net
And here's another one. Sort of contradicts the first one, but I
wasn't really trying to make them work together!
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It's the night of Mark's welcome back party. All the guests have
gone home, everything is cleaned up and put away, and Mark
suddenly realizes that Steve has disappeared. He wanders out onto
the deck, looks toward the beach, and sees starlight reflecting
off something. He squints, focusses, and sees the shadowy outline
of his son sitting on a dune. He hikes out to join him.
Steve is sitting, long legs drawn up, forearms resting on his
knees, hands clasped, staring intently at the Pacific. Mark sinks
to the sand beside him with a soft "oof", and they sit
together in silence for a long moment.
"You okay?" Mark finally asks.
"Fine," Steve answers, acknowledging his father with a
quick sideways glance. Then he looks back out to sea, his eyes
focussing on a distant, invisible horizon.
Mark waits another long moment. "Achy?"
Steve shakes his head. "Not tonight. Barometer must be
holding steady."
Once again, he falls silent, and the sound of the surf fills in
the seconds as both men gaze out on the liquid black of the
Pacific Ocean.
"Want to talk about it?" Mark asks softly.
Steve turns to him with a crooked smile. "I'd love to."
He faces away from his father again and studies his thumbnails
for a moment, as if the
answers he seeks are likely to be written there. "I just
don't know where to start."
Mark frowns. After all they have been through, it is hard to
imagine anything that they couldn't say to each other. "Just
jump in anywhere," he finally suggests.
Steve sighs deeply. Another long silence wraps the two men in its
black softness as he struggles for words. After several false
starts, he simply states, "Mom sends her love."
Mark freezes for a moment. Then his eyebrows shoot up. "You
had an NDE!"
Steve nods. "Textbook. Out of body. Saw Jesse working on me.
The black tunnel, the bright light..."
"And your mother?"
"Waiting. In the light." Steve's eyes stay focussed on
his thumbnails as silence once again falls between them.
Finally, his father's voice comes through the night, softly but
with great intensity. "How is she?" Mark asks.
Steve focusses fully on his father this time, smiles and shakes
his head in disbelief at Mark's easy acceptance. "She's
fine." He corrects himself with another shake of his head
and a lift of his eyebrows. "She's great." He smiles
into the night at the memory. "She misses us," he
continues, "but she's willing to wait. Time runs..." He
pauses, gropes for words, then continues. "Differently
there."
Mark wraps his arms around his knees, chilled in the warm night.
He suddenly notices the sky is full of stars, more stars than he
has ever before seen, in a long lifetime of reaching for the
stars.
"Why did you come back?" he finally asks his son. Steve
gives him a quizzical look, and his father hurriedly elaborates
on his question. "Most of the people who have NDEs say they
didn't want to come back."
Steve nods, understanding. "Mom said it was my choice. She
also said that if I chose to come back, there was a chance, since
my body was so badly damaged, that I could get trapped."
"Trapped?"
"You know. On machines for the next twenty years. Not really
alive, not really dead." Steve studies his thumbnails again,
with no trace of a smile this time. "She also told me that
if I stayed, you would probably be joining us soon."
"Courtesy of California state's lethal injection," Mark
comments dryly.
Steve answers softly. "No. She didn't seem to think it would
take that long."
Mark frowns, puzzled. Then his expression clears. "Broken
heart would have gotten me first, eh?" He tries for a light
tone, without total success.
"Broken spirit," Steve agrees. "Everything you had
spent your whole life working for discredited, your reputation
shot." He faces his father again, and studies him with a
gently appraising gaze. "I couldn't let that happen to you,
Dad." He smiles and swallows hard, out of words. His father
reaches out a long arm and squeezes his son's shoulder, gently
but with a world of meaning.
"Thanks for telling me, son," he finally states.
"You should know," Steve explains simply. "It just
wasn't something I could say through glass during a prison
visit."
Mark chuckles at that image. "You're right." He
breathes the night air, consciously tasting the sweetness of
freedom once again. "I put a pot of
coffee on just before I came out here. Sound good?"
Steve smiles. "Sounds great."
Father and son stand up, dust the sand off themselves, and head
up the beach side by side. As the camera pans back to include the
beach house in the scene, the following lines are heard as a
voice-over.
"Thanks for coming back, son," Mark says in a tone more
appropriate to "Thanks for picking up the dry
cleaning."
"No problem, Dad." A big Steve smile in the voice.
