Ian Caldwell - The Rule of Four

His condition is stable, says the man in the scrubs.

Stable, I think. A doctor's word. For two days after they stopped the bleeding in my leg, I was stable. It just meant that I was dying less quickly than before.

Can we see him? Paul asks.

No, the man says. Charlie is still unconscious.

Paul hesitates, as if unconscious and stable ought to be mutually exclusive. Is he going to be okay?

The doctor comes up with a look, something gentle but certain, and says, I think the worst is over.

Paul smiles faintly at the man, then thanks him. I don't tell Paul what it really means. In the emergency room they are washing their hands and mopping the floors, waiting for the next gurney off the ambulance. The worst is over, for the doctors. For Charlie, it's just begun.

Thank God, Paul says, almost to himself.

And looking at him now, watching the way relief sets over his face, I realize something. I never believed that Charlie would die from what happened down there. I never believed that he could.

Paul doesn't say much as I check myself out, except to mumble something about the cruelty of what Taft said to me at his office. There's hardly any paperwork to complete, just a form or two to sign, a campus ID to flash, and as I struggle to write my name with my bad hand, I sense that the dean has been here already, smoothing out the wrinkles in advance. I wonder again what she told the detective to get the two of us released.

Then I remember what Gil told me. Curry was here?

He left just before you got out. He didn't look good.

Why not?

He was wearing the same suit he wore last night.

He knew about Bill?

Yeah. It was almost like he thought… Paul lets the thought trail off. He said, 'We understand each other, son.'

What does that mean?

I don't know. I think he was forgiving me.

Forgiving you?

He told me I shouldn't worry. Everything was going to be okay.

I'm floored. How could he think you would do that? What did you say?

I told him I didn't do it. Paul hesitates. I didn't know what else to say, so I told him what I found.

In the diary?

It's all I could think of. He seemed so worked up. He said he couldn't sleep, he was so worried.

Worried about what?

About me.

Look, I tell him, because I'm starting to hear it in his voice, the way Curry has affected him. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

'If I'd known what you were going to do, I would've done, things differently.' That's the last thing he said.

I want to lay into Curry, but I have to remind myself that the man who said these things is the closest thing Paul has to a father.

What did the detective say to you? he asks, changing the subject.

She tried to scare me.

She thought the same thing Richard did?

Yes. Did they try to get you to admit to it?

The dean came in before they could ask and told me not to answer questions.

What are you going to do?

She said I should find a lawyer.

He says it as if it would be easier to find a basilisk or a unicorn.

We'll figure something out, I tell him. Alter I finish up the discharge paperwork, we head out. There's a police officer stationed near the entrance, who eyes us as we begin walking toward him. A cold wind sets over us the second we step from the building.

We begin the short walk back to campus on our own. The streets are empty, the sky is dimming, and now a bicycle passes by on the sidewalk, carrying a delivery man from a pizza shop. He leaves a trail of smells behind him, a cloud of yeast and steam, and as the wind picks up again, kicking snow into the air like dust, my stomach rumbles, a reminder that we're back among the living.

Come with me to the library, Paul says as we approach Nassau Street. I want to show you something.

He stops at the crosswalk. Beyond a white courtyard is Nassau Hall. I think of pant legs flapping from the cupola, of the clapper that wasn't there.

Show me what?

Paul's hands are in his pockets, and he walks with his head down, fighting the wind. We pass through FitzRandolph Gate, not looking back. You can walk through the gate into campus as often as you like, the legend goes, but if you walk out of it just once, you will never graduate.

Vincent told me never to trust friends, Paul says. He said friends were fickle.

A tour guide leads a small group across our path. They look like carolers. Nathaniel FitzRandolph gave the land to build Nassau Hall, the tour guide says. He is buried where Holder Courtyard now stands.

I didn't know what to do when that pipe exploded. I didn't realize Charlie only went into the tunnels to find me.

We cross toward East Pyne, heading for the library. In the distance sit the marble halls of the old debating societies. Whig, James Madison's club, and Cliosophic, Aaron Burr's. The tour guide's voice carries through the air behind us, and I have the growing sensation that I am a visitor here, a tourist, that I have been walking down a tunnel in the dark since the first day I arrived at Princeton, the same way we did through the bowels of Holder Courtyard, surrounded by graves.

Then I heard you go after him. You didn't care what was down there. You just knew he was hurt.

Paul looks at me for the first time.

I could hear you calling for help, but I couldn't see anything. I was too scared to move. All I could think was, what kind of friend am I? I'm the fickle friend.

Paul, I say, stopping short. You don't have to do this.

We're in the courtyard of East Pyne, a building shaped like a cloister, where snow falls through the open quad in the middle. My father has returned to me unexpectedly, like a shadow on the walls, because I realize he walked these paths before I was born, and saw these same buildings. I am walking in his footsteps without even knowing it, because neither of us has made the faintest impression on this place.

Paul turns, seeing me stop, and for a second we are the only living things between these stone walls.

Yes, I do, he says, turning toward me. Because when I tell you what I found in the diary, everything else is going to seem small. And everything else isn't small.

Just tell me if it's as big as we hoped.

Because if it is, then at least the shadow my father cast was a long one.

Look forward, the physical therapist says between my ears. Always forward. But now, as then, I'm surrounded by walls.

Yes, Paul says, knowing exactly what I mean. It is.

There's a spark in his face that brings those three words home, and I am blown back again, struck by the very sensation I'd hoped to find. It's as if my father has pulled through something unthinkable, as if he has come back and been rehabilitated in a single stroke.

I don't know what Paul is about to tell me, but the idea that it could be bigger than I imagined is enough to give me a feeling that's been missing for longer than I knew. It makes me look forward again and actually see something in front of me, something other than a wall. It makes me feel hope.

On the way to Firestone we pass Carrie Shaw, a junior I recognize from an English class last year, who crosses in front of us and says hi. She and I traded glances across the seminar table for weeks before I met Katie. I wonder how much has changed for her since then. I wonder if she can see how much has changed for me.

It seems like such an accident that I got sucked into the Hypnerotomachia Paul says as we continue heading east toward the library. Everything was so indirect, so coincidental. The same way it was for your dad.

Meeting McBee, you mean.

And Richard. What if they'd never known each other? What if they'd never taken that class together? What if I'd never picked up your dad's book?