Seamus Grant

Grant

"Whatever, we'll make this work,"

Hope

A young boy, maybe 10 or 12 was looking at Seamus Grant when he woke up.  He was wearing a soccer jersey and khaki shorts. The brown hair that covered his eyes swayed when he bounced against the wall.  He was murmuring something very quietly and that made Grant feel sick.  “Hey,” Grant’s voice was hoarse and deep. “Hey,” he said again.  He hoped that would spur the kid to get someone or at least startle him into stopping his bazaar ritual.  It did both.  The kid stopped and made his eyes go wide as if he just woke up and then ran out.  The room was the same as before but now he was held down by Velcro.  That reminded him of his fall from before some hours, days, or weeks ago.  He had thought the assassin who had tried to kill him was coming to finish the job.  And in his fear and exhaustion all he did was fall to the ground adding embarrassment to his pain.  Now the pain returned to his knees which brought him back to the guilty verdict.

“We find the defendant guilty.”

That was when everything turned into confusion and untamed anger and energy.  He pressed his forearms up with everything he had forcing his elbows against the small white bed.  All the while he spit through his clinched teeth and felt his face burn.  The heat made him angrier and feel powerless.  Pitiful sighs and whimpers interrupted the powerful heaves against the restraints.  When the Velcro neither stretched nor broke to his force he gave up. I shouldn’t even be here! 

The old man walked in when Grant was feeble, red, and panting.  He was the same as before except now he relied on a cane not a creaky, noisy walker for assistance.  His smile was wide and kind.  The beard he stroked was a coat of grey with patches of white.  A metal watch that was probably a third party imitation hung loose on his left hand, a clipboard in his right.  He wore a solid bright blue button-down shirt and jeans that were meant for somebody much younger.  “Good morning, Grant.”  He said, “I am your warden and keeper.  You are my responsibility and your responsibility is to behave.  You will enjoy my hospitality as long as you behave.  And do not try to escape again; your offense is national, international and I have all right to kill you to prevent escape, if it has to come to that.”  The old man squinted and allowed Grant a minute. 

Grant had a hundred questions to ask but the first one that came out was, “Who was that?”

“That was my nephew.”

“He was whispering something,” Grant asked without asking.

“Well I don’t know what he would be saying,” the old man said respectfully. 

He stood there for a while and when Grant realized that this man was holding an audience for him he blurted out, “Who are you?”

“Call, me Glen.” Glen looked at his watch and continued, “I really like my job.  But you just made things very complicated for me.  I must leave, this is my day off,” his sentence choppy and tone neutral. 

All Grant could say was, “Uhh.” With speed that seemed faster than possible with a cane Glen exited.

Glen’s voice echoed and his presence lingered in the white room.  The brief audience he was granted hardly seemed like it had happened.  He still had so many questions: How was I injured? Why do I feel so beaten down?  Was I poisoned or shot or starved?  How long have I been here? Why hasn’t Newtopia come for me? And what had Glen’s nephew been whispering? Something was strange about this place Grant decided.  The question that persisted through everything was one he knew Glen could not have answered anyway: Where is Hope?

It wasn’t darkness that took him but many colors, every color that bent and peeled into a familiar bath of the white ocean.  The cool water caressed his body and played the role of a gentle puppeteer.  His arms moved with the water up and down, he let them float beside him.  But then he heard her laugh somewhere behind him. He sent his arms in a flurry to rotate his body and turned his head.  The extreme nothing and white around him made him dizzy and wonder if he was turning at all.  “This place is so, cozy,” he heard her say.

“It’s just this needs to stay on a low profile, nobody can find out about us,” he heard his own voice respond, muffled and toneless as it made its way through the water. 

He saw no sign of Hope but she continued, “Whatever, we’ll make this work, don’t sound as old as you are.”  And then she laughed.  It wasn't her raw, uncontrolled laughter.  It was her laugh she used to make him feel at ease and he let it do just that.

It might have been an hour or a day later when a male nurse entered with a guard beside him.  The nurse was slender and short, he looked the part and so did the guard.  The guard was tall and stared at nothing in particular.  Broad shoulders met with a thick neck and the think neck seemed to be a serpent trying to consume the much smaller head above it.  When the  nurse undid the Velcro Grant immediately took his left wrist in his right hand to sooth the raw sensation and chaffed skin.

“Ok,” the nurse started, “You have been shot twice in the head.  You are delicate and your body is still recovering.”  A sinking, foreign feeling punctured Grants gut, twisted and bubbled to his throat.  Terrified his hand moved slowly up to his head to feel bald and then a scarred crater.  His hand recoiled before it found a second.  It all made sense though; the fatigue, the pain.  All the while not seeing any injury.

“How?”

“We have no idea.  And your recovery has been nothing short of miraculously paced.”  The nurse said jubilantly.

“No, I mean how did I get shot?”  When the nurse raised his eyebrows then lowered them without speaking he might have said ‘with bullets from a gun, obviously.’  But instead he resorted to the respectful and neutral tone Glen had used and said, “After the jury read the verdict you were leaving the courtroom when someone shot you twice.”

“Yea I know but the gun was waist high and had no angle on me.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that but these shots came from behind you.”