Anne Duquette - Fleet Hospital

When his father came to get him, Michael cried some more, and after the first surreptitious mint, ate the rest of the Certs in the front pew in full view of God and country. He sat between his parents, and they didn’t seem to notice.

Michael saw that Anna’s little coffin was now closed and latched. “Is Anna back in there?” he whispered to his father.

Dad nodded.

“Are you sure Mom didn’t hide her somewhere?”

Dad nodded again.

“Positive? Can I see?”

His wet-cheeked father murmured, “Trust me,” and took his hand. Michael’s dry-eyed mother, watchful nurses on the other side of her, didn’t touch him, didn’t even look at him. Michael swiveled around to check out the pews and saw Klemko was gone. So was the Scoutmaster. Good riddance. They didn’t deserve to be in the same room with Mom and his poor baby sister. He wished he could see Anna one more time. He should’ve looked at her earlier when the coffin was open. Now it was too late. He’d never see her again. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. He started crying again and ate another Certs.

The service didn’t last long. The Navy chaplain rattled off that funeral faster than Michael’s father drove on a Friday-night payday.

THE HEAT CONTINUED the next day and the next and the next. The sun beat down with a fierceness Michael hated. Only one thing made it bearable—he was allowed to sweat at home, instead of in school. His parents were on compassionate leave and home from work. It felt strange. He felt strange.

His mom insisted on going back to the hospital three days after Anna’s funeral. Michael clung to his father when she announced her decision. He didn’t want her to leave. The house was too quiet with Anna gone. His parents were too quiet with Anna gone. It frightened him, especially at night.

He was glad his father said, “Honey, don’t go.”

“You two can finish watching the baseball playoffs on television.”

“But, Mom—”

“Michael, don’t talk back. If I don’t do something, I’ll go crazy,” she said. She wore her white nurse’s uniform with her Navy officer’s cap.

“The last place you need to be is in surgery,” Patrick argued. “You’re in no better shape to be working the OR than I am to be flying.”

Mrs. McLowery shook her head and the Red Sox game continued to play on the television. “I already talked to my CO. She’ll let me have morgue duty. I can’t do any damage there. It’s all paperwork.”

“You hate morgue duty!” Patrick McLowery said. “Every time you work it, you have nightmares about getting trapped in the freezer.”

Michael shivered. He hated nightmares, and he’d been having a lot of them lately.

“You won’t even go near the morgue without a corpsman on the outside and one on the inside.”

“I don’t care!” she shrieked.

Michael winced at the nails-on-chalkboard sound of her voice.

“This heat is killing me! I have to get out of the house!”

“Fine. We’ll take a drive to the Ala Moana Mall for ice cream. We can walk around there and cool off.”

“No. I’m going to work.”

“The hell you are!” Michael’s father rose to his feet, almost tipping over the box fan whirring on the floor. “The last thing you need to be around is a bunch of you-know-whats!”

Bodies. Dead bodies. Like Anna’s.

“I need some quiet, Patrick,” she said. “I made dinner for you and Michael. There’s a chicken potpie in the oven. Listen for the timer. I mixed up some cherry Jell-O and bananas for dessert. It’s on the second shelf in the refrigerator.”

“For God’s sake, sweetheart—”

“I already ate. It’s time for me to leave or I’ll be late.”

“At least let me drive you in!”

“No, Patrick, I’m fine. Really I am. Keep the car. I’ll take the bus.” She bent to grab her purse. She didn’t even kiss Michael or Patrick goodbye. “I may work an extra half shift, so don’t wait up.”

Michael didn’t see his mother again that night.

He didn’t see her in the morning, either. Dad said he could stay home from school once more. Michael was on his hands and knees out front, driving his red Tonka truck full of green plastic Army men through the grass, patiently waiting for the base bus Mom took home. It always stopped at the corner, three houses down.

An official military car, gray with blue lettering on the side and government plates, drove up and stopped at his house. Two men in uniform climbed out. Automatically Michael checked the men’s collar insignias. One of them wore a cross.

Right then he knew. Every military kid knew what it meant when two uniforms came to your house and one of them was a chaplain. Dad was home from Vietnam—safe inside the house. He’d just seen him. Anna was in the ground. That meant…

“Dad!” he screamed. One of the men started toward him. Michael backed away. “Daddy!” Michael screamed even louder.

He dropped the toy truck and the Army men, ran into the house and hid under the kitchen sink, his spine jammed against the hard metal J-pipe. His father called him. He heard the front screen door slam, heard nothing for a while, heard the door again, then his father calling him over and over.

Michael didn’t answer. He couldn’t talk. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. All he could do was shiver amidst the slightly rancid fumes of sacked potatoes and onions, the antiseptic smell of cleanser and dish soap, the commissary grocery bags stored in his hiding place.

His father opened the cupboard doors, found him and pulled him out. He told Michael what he already knew.

“Your mother’s dead, son. The night crew found her.”

“At the hospital?”

“Yes. The chaplain said she was…she got trapped in the refrigeration unit at the morgue.”

“Dad, they’re lying! She’d never get locked in there!”

Michael fought to escape from his father’s arms, his father’s words. He couldn’t escape either.

“Listen to me, Michael! The next shift found her inside. They tried to revive her, but…” His voice cracked.

“Where was everybody? Where was the corpsman?”

“Gone home, I guess. She had her car keys and purse with her.”

“Why was she in there?” Michael sobbed. “She hated that place!”

“She wasn’t in her right mind.”

“It’s because of Anna, right? She didn’t want to come home.”

“Everyone says it was an accident,” his father said.

“It wasn’t an accident, was it?” Michael forced himself to ask.

His father looked away. “At least she had the decency to take off her uniform before she went in. She didn’t disgrace it,” he choked out. Tears rolled down Patrick’s cheeks.

Michael had his answer. Mom was really dead. She’d killed herself. He started to cry, his sobs harsh and violent. Patrick picked him up and, on the kitchen floor amidst potatoes and cleanser, rocked him the way Mom used to rock Anna.

THE SAME CHAPLAIN they’d had for Anna’s funeral droned on and on during his mother’s closed-casket service. With two deaths in the family, Michael thought he’d blab less. Then again, maybe the chaplain wanted to make up for Anna’s short sermon. Whatever the reason, his mother’s took forever.

Michael’s whole Scout pack—minus rat fink Dennis Klemko—wore their uniforms to the second funeral. Michael flatly refused. He hated Scouts. He hated everyone who’d ever been a Scout.

Without a uniform, he had nothing formal to wear. His father said he wasn’t up to taking him shopping and didn’t even know Michael’s new size. Michael had outgrown his old church suit ages ago, and the Scoutmaster’s wife couldn’t get off work to take him shopping, either. So the Certs lady—his Scoutmaster’s single sister-in-law with the silly name of Sunshine Mellow and sillier plastic go-go boots—guessed his size and showed up at the last minute with a new black suit and white shirt from the Navy Exchange. Apparently it was paid for by the Scout troop, which made Michael almost want to reject it.