Light from Distant Stars Read online

  “Cohen. It’s me. Thatcher.”

  Cohen jumps to his feet and opens the door. “Get in here,” he says, pulling the boy through. “What are you doing in the hallway?”

  “I came to see you guys, see how your dad is doing, and then everything happened.”

  They all look at Calvin. He is at peace, knowing nothing of what goes on around him. Or at least that’s how it appears. His eyes are closed, his bald head now bristling along the edges with one-week-old stubble.

  “Is he . . . ?”

  Cohen shakes his head. “No, he’s not dead. Not yet.”

  They go on staring. Outside, the sun rises, light coming through the window, a fresh light. Kaye walks to the glass and stares out into the morning. It’s only when she is halfway through the contraction that Cohen realizes what’s going on. Her fingers grasp the hard sill until they’re white-knuckled. She presses her forehead against the cold glass. She manages to remain silent until the end, when her voice rises in a scratchy kind of low scream.

  Cohen walks quickly to her side. “They’re coming?”

  She nods.

  “We have to find a nurse.”

  “I know a good hiding place, a safer place,” Thatcher says. Cohen looks at him. The young man lost his hat in the chaos, and his swirling, matted hair reminds Cohen of the top of a calf’s head. “We should go now.”

  “Put your arm around me,” Cohen says to Kaye, pulling her arm around his shoulder, helping her walk.

  Kaye winces and breathes exaggerated breaths. They pass their mother at the foot of their father’s bed.

  “Mom,” Kaye says in a whisper. “You have to come with us.”

  “To God be the glory, great things He has done;

  So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,

  Who yielded His life an atonement for sin

  And opened the life gate that all may go in.”

  “Mom, what is wrong with you?” Cohen hisses. “Get up! We have to get out of here!”

  “When we walk with the Lord

  In the light of His Word,

  What a glory He sheds on our way!

  While we do His good will,

  He abides with us still,

  And with all who will trust and obey.

  “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way

  To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

  She doesn’t look at them. She doesn’t stop. Her voice grows louder, though, somewhat defiant, and Cohen can see the mother of his childhood there—the mother who mouthed the words to all his father’s sermons, the mother who stormed out onto the baseball field and threw the sock at his father’s feet.

  “Wait,” Kaye says, her entire body tensing.

  “Another one?” he asks.

  She nods, grabbing her stomach with her free hand, and her knees go slack. Cohen bears up under her weight. She tries to moan quietly, but at the tail end of the contraction her voice elevates again.

  “Not so loud!” Thatcher says.

  Cohen looks up in surprise and glances quickly at Kaye who has somewhat regained her footing. “I wouldn’t say that if I were you.”

  “C’mon. Hurry,” Thatcher says.

  Cohen pauses. Kaye walks away from him, limping along on her own, following Thatcher into the hall.

  “Faster,” Thatcher insists, and there is genuine terror in his voice, as if he has spotted the gunman at the end of the hallway. Cohen sees the boy as if for the first time, and he realizes he has come to love him in such a short time.

  But Cohen cannot leave. He looks at his dying father. He hopes his soul is far, far away. He hopes his hearing—“That’s always the last thing to go”—is long gone. But what if it’s not? Cohen doesn’t want this to be the last thing his father hears: the shuffling feet of his fleeing children, panic-stricken voices, his daughter moaning through frightening contractions.

  “Father,” Cohen says, darting to the head of the bed. He touches his father’s bald scalp, something he has never done in all these long years. The stubble is prickly. “Father, I’m sorry. For everything. For taking that sock, for not being everything you needed me to be. If you think of me somehow after you’re gone, think of us playing catch, Dad. That’s it. I promise that’s how I’ll remember you.”

  He thinks of all the long years stretching ahead of him, all of those long, fatherless years where he will no longer have Calvin to look for, to find.

  He backs away, into the doorway where Kaye and Thatcher were moments before, then runs out into the hall. He sees them walking, waddling along the hallway. It’s eerie and empty. Cohen thinks of everyone barricaded in their rooms, everyone listening to them make their way down the hall, everyone hoping they are not the gunman.

  There is the distant sound of gunfire. Screams come up at them through the floor, through the air vents. Cohen thinks of all the children above him; he hopes they’re not afraid. He hopes they don’t someday wrestle with the question burning him up from the inside.

  Where is God?

  “Where are we going?” Cohen asks, catching up to Kaye and Thatcher. The boy has one of Kaye’s arms around his shoulders. Cohen lifts her other arm around himself so she’s supported on both sides.

  “She’s been hiding up here, in this closet. She’s been here the entire time.”

  “Your mom? You found your mom?”

  Thatcher nods, gives a half smile. He stops walking and at first Cohen keeps going. Why stop here? But then he sees a utility closet, the door painted the same color as the wall, with air vent slats along its bottom half. Thatcher turns the handle and the door clicks. It takes Cohen’s eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside.

  The closet is fifteen feet deep, narrow from one side to the other. Pipes and electrical conduits line the ceiling and terminate at the back in a series of panels and switches. On the floor is a sort of bed made up of white hospital sheets and pillows. Thatcher’s mother stands there like a ghost, like someone who no longer exists. A naked bulb hangs above her, glowing.

  Thatcher pulls the heavy door closed. It does not have a lock on the inside.

  “She’s in labor,” he whispers to his mother. “Twins. They’re coming.”

  The young man’s voice crumbles at the end, folds in on itself, and he bites his knuckle but that doesn’t stop a whimper from escaping.

  Kaye gives a heavy exhale and starts rubbing her stomach. She bends over and Cohen reaches to support her, but this time she pushes him away. She shakes her finger at him but doesn’t speak, simply hums. She hums her way through the contraction, a monotone kind of buzzing that grows steadily louder.

  “Ma’am, they’ll hear us,” Thatcher whispers.

  Kaye glares at him, moaning louder. Thatcher’s mom holds out a towel, and Kaye puts it against her mouth, muffling the sound.

  “It’s happening fast,” she says in a hoarse voice after the contraction passes. “The twins are coming. I can’t stop it. They’re coming.” She starts to cry.

  “Honey, honey,” Thatcher’s mother says, and her voice is soothing like warm milk, but also somehow solid, reliable. “You can’t stop it, so don’t even try. You are going to do this because you can do this. And I’m going to help you. I’m a nurse. I’ve delivered thousands of babies.”

  “And calves!” Thatcher chimes in, trying to be helpful. A low round of chuckles spreads through the closet.

  “Yes, and calves,” she says.

  “Twins?” Kaye asks, her eyes desperate.

  “Plenty.”

  “Here comes another one,” Kaye says, her voice timid, as if asking for permission to have another contraction.

  “Okay, go into it with strength. You walk or pace or squat or hang from the ceiling, whatever it takes to get through each contraction. Or squeeze this man’s hand. Make sure he’s not wearing any rings.”

  “He wishes,” Kaye says, grimacing as the contraction grows closer. The other three stand there wincing with her, holding their breath. Coh
en is in awe of what he’s seeing, what Kaye is capable of.

  Again he hears the rapid spit of gunfire, closer this time, either on the floor below them or in the stairwell. Cohen looks at Thatcher, then at his mother. Where are the police? The light bulb winks quickly off and back on. The announcement sounds again through the hospital’s public address system.

  “This is an emergency. This is not a drill. I repeat, this is an emergency. There is an active shooter in the hospital. Please go into the closest room and lock the door.”

  Cohen stares at Kaye. He wonders if she heard it—but of course she did. Does she comprehend it? He wonders if she’s thinking about their father only a few doors down, or their mother, who won’t stop singing. She doesn’t appear to be thinking about anything except the gathering wave of the next contraction.

  “Here comes another one,” she says, grimacing again. “I can’t breathe. I have to take off my pants.”

  “Go ahead, honey.”

  Thatcher looks horrified. He turns and faces the wall, arms crossed, while Kaye rips her pants off. They fall to the floor, and she crouches into the next contraction, moaning, muffling her moans with the towel.

  “There you go, there you go,” Thatcher’s mom says while the contraction fades. “Honey, how long have you been having contractions like this?”

  “A few days,” Kaye whispers.

  “A few days? Oh my. Can I check you?” She motions for Kaye to lie down on her back. Kaye nods and gingerly spreads out on the floor, and now it’s time for Cohen to look away. A wave of light-headedness spreads from his eyes, a kind of numbness.

  “Dear,” she says, “you are going to have these babies any minute. You’re almost there. I can see the hair of the first child!”

  Kaye starts crying again. Cohen feels like he might faint. Kaye does not get up off the floor for the next contraction—she simply turns over onto all fours. With each one, her moaning is louder, longer, escaping the towel she has balled up and crammed into her mouth, the towel she now bites in anguish.

  “Good, good,” Thatcher’s mom whispers, and for a moment they’re all still: Kaye on the floor, naked except for her top, eyes closed between contractions; Thatcher, facing the electrical boxes; Thatcher’s mother, on her knees at Kaye’s feet; and Cohen, facing the door, eyeing the ventilation slats, holding his breath as he hears voices coming out of the stairwell.

  “This it?” one of the voices asks as the door to the stairwell slams open. Cohen gets closer to the slats, tries to see through, but they’re angled down so he can only see the floor tiles outside.

  “Yeah, this is the right floor,” a second voice says. It sounds like Thatcher’s father.

  Thatcher turns toward the door, skirts Kaye where she lies, and joins Cohen, listening. He reaches up and turns out the light, and all Cohen can see are the white lines of the light coming through the vent.

  “Is that your father?” Cohen asks in a breathless whisper, more a mouthing of the words than an actual saying of them.

  Thatcher’s eyes are wide, suddenly terrified. He nods.

  “Who’s with him?” Cohen asks.

  “Sounds like my uncle.”

  “Your uncle? He never came when your grandpa was dying, did he?”

  Thatcher shakes his head. Outside the door, the men walk farther away, down the hall.

  “But he’s willing to kill people over your grandpa’s death?”

  “My dad’s family,” Thatcher whispers without looking at Cohen, “his whole family, they don’t need a reason.”

  The uncle’s voice comes to them, loud and abrupt. “You think that doctor’s up here?”

  “Wasn’t in his office, was he?” Thatcher’s father growls.

  “Didn’t mean you had to shoot folks,” his uncle mutters. “I thought we were here to scare ’em.”

  “What was that?” Thatcher’s father hisses. The men stop walking. For a moment the hallway is silent again, but there is something distant, something rhythmic. Something foreign.

  “It’s a helicopter,” Thatcher’s father spits out, laughing. “A helicopter. It’s serious now. Stay away from the windows, boy, unless you want to get picked off like a groundhog.” He laughs again, the sound of it echoing through the empty hall, creeping in through the vents.

  The uncle mutters a stream of profanity. “How we getting out of here, Jim?”

  “Oh, I know a way.”

  “With a helicopter out there?”

  “Tunnels,” he says, and the way he says it, it sounds like that one word is the solution to every problem. “Tunnels under the hospital, under the street. I saw ’em myself. Now, room by room. Room by room. We’ll find him. Then we’ll get out.”

  Cohen turns away, glances in Kaye’s direction. Her face glows white from the lines shining through the slats. She looks at him, a pleading expression bearing down on her face as the next contraction squeezes in. It seems strange to him in that moment how little control Kaye has over her body. In nearly every other instance, he thinks, a person decides what their body will do: eat or run or prepare for sleep. But Kaye has lost the controls. Her body is moving on without her—it has decided what will happen next. She’s only along for the ride.

  But no, she’s not along for the ride anymore—he can see it in her face, something new, some kind of fierce determination. He can’t describe how he knows this, what it is about her expression or her posture that communicates it. He simply knows. She no longer cares about the shooter or where she is giving birth. She doesn’t care who is there in the closet with her. It’s only her and this labor, her and these babies.

  He moves to her side. She twists until she’s on her hands and knees again, and when the next contraction comes, she arches her back. The towel is in her mouth like a horse’s bit, and she moans loudly into it, bites the cloth. Fluid leaks from her, and blood, and feces. Thatcher’s mother presses on Kaye’s back for the duration, and in another moment Kaye is spent, heaving, gasping for air. Thatcher’s mother is saying soft, kind words while cleaning her legs and replacing the sheets and pillowcases, and Kaye is someone else entirely.

  She’s from another world, Cohen marvels, staring at her closed eyes. Her hair is wet from sweat, and muscles have appeared out of nowhere in her arms, firm as a twisting ripple in the trunk of a tree.

  He glides back over to the door, listening for the men. Thatcher is there beside him.

  “Where are they?” Cohen whispers.

  “He won’t shoot us. He won’t.”

  “Are they still on this floor?”

  Thatcher looks at Cohen. “He won’t shoot us.” He keeps saying the same thing, but his words hold no conviction.

  “Where are they?” Cohen asks again, gently.

  “They walked to the other end of the hall. I can hear them opening doors, asking about the doctor. But they haven’t shot their guns.”

  Cohen looks at him. Again he sees himself in the boy. His love for a father he does not understand. His certainty crumbling.

  “They haven’t shot anyone yet. Have they?” the boy asks.

  Cohen reaches over and messes up the boy’s hair. It’s soft and matted out of place.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Cohen whispers. “All of us.”

  sixty

  In the Beginning

  “Okay,” Thatcher’s mother says quietly. “It’s time, Kaye. I need a few good pushes and the first baby will be out.”

  The look on Kaye’s face is that of someone who has finished a marathon only to be told they must start another one immediately.

  Cohen looks over his shoulder at Thatcher still standing by the door. “Anything?” he asks.

  Thatcher shakes his head. Cohen looks at Thatcher’s mother.

  “Now’s the time.” She nods.

  “Here it comes,” Kaye whispers through gritted teeth. “Someone hold my leg.”

  Cohen grabs her leg and she lies on her side. Between her legs emerges the crown of a head matted with dark hair,
streaked with white vernix. Only the top. Kaye’s moan turns into a pushing groan and then a scream, muffled poorly by the towel she is nearly biting through. Cohen has one hand on her heel and one hand on the inside of her knee. It takes everything he has in him to hold it in place.

  The contraction passes and the baby’s head slips back inside. Cohen sits there holding Kaye’s leg. The seconds pass in silence. Kaye looks like she’s fallen asleep. Thatcher’s mother rests her hand on Kaye’s shoulder and hums a song Cohen cannot recognize. But her humming reminds him of his own mother down the hallway, behind the closed door of his father’s room, singing those old songs, singing a piece of Cohen’s past that will never come back.

  He sees it all again while he kneels there beside his sister, knees aching, waiting for the next contraction. He sees the inside of the old church, the swaying congregants, the flash of light on his father’s head, the abrupt way he pulls the handkerchief out and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He sees the ushers hovering around the back, waiting for cues to turn down the lights or open the windows. He sees their old piano player slipping onto the piano bench from the dark corner where he waited the entire service. His fingers tickle the keys, so quietly that at first Cohen can’t hear it, but the sound grows louder and louder until he feels his emotions coming and going with the sharps and the flats.

  “Here it comes,” Kaye says, and she sounds hopeless, lost in a maze of pain, afraid that she will never find her way home.

  “You can do it, Sis,” he says, his voice sounding more confident than he feels. “You can do this.”

  She braces herself. Her body shudders and her stomach turns to rock. The little head emerges, and her screaming groans cannot be contained by the towel. The head comes farther, nudges out so that it’s free all the way to the neck, and there’s the little face, bunched up and folded in wrinkles, eyes still closed, bright pink lips and a face somewhere between red and purple.

  “One more good push,” Thatcher’s mother says.

  Kaye cries with despair, but she pushes and out the baby comes, suddenly slippery, shoulders and arms and belly and bottom and knees and feet and finally the trailing cord.

  “Thatcher, a towel.”