Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Diego looks sick. He is pale and sweaty and his eyes are far away.

‘I killed one of them,’ he says.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ian says. ‘I didn’t want you to have to do that.’

‘The bullet hit him right here.’ He touches his own cheek.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Right here,’ he says.

They take the white Toyota back to the falling-down house Ron lived in before he decided the world was no longer his home. Diego, Ian knows, would try to talk him into heading to a hospital if he weren’t lost inside himself, but he is, and Ian does not intend to go anywhere tonight. He is too tired. If he wakes up tomorrow he’ll think about it, but he believes he’s earned a few hours with his daughter. He believes she’s earned a few hours with her daddy.

They get to the house and open the door and go inside.

Diego finds a bedroom in the back and goes there and sits alone.

Maggie eats and talks and talks and talks, as if she has not spoken to a soul in years. Ian sits with her and listens. She tells him about the Nightmare World, and about counting till her head was filled with numbers so that the bad thoughts could not get in, and about how Henry’s brother Donald brought her books and even gave her lessons sometimes, in history and math, and about Borden and how he was her only friend, and about how she tried to escape, how she ran through the woods and how his voice, her daddy’s voice, gave her hope and made something in her that she thought was cold burn hot. She asks about Mommy and he tells her that Mommy is waiting for her return. He tells her that Mommy loves her very much. He tells her that Mommy will probably let her sleep in bed with her for a long time. He tells her that she is the strongest, bravest person he has ever met. He tells her that she is a miracle.

The hours they spend together are the best hours he’s ever lived and the truest, and when they fall asleep beside one another on the fold-out sofa-bed with Maggie’s head leaning against his shoulder and her small hand in his large hand he has a smile on his face and the dreams he dreams are of the future, a bright future full of joy and laughter.