Elliot Ackerman - Dark at the Crossing

“Baba?” the boy said to Jalindar, his eyes small and black with fear.

“It’s okay,” assured Haris. He lifted the boy gently beneath the elbow and picked up the game of tic-tac-toe, leading him into the corridor.

Daoud looked back toward Jalindar, confused by their separation, willing his uncle to make some protest. Planted in the doorway, the young doctor stood with his arms folded across his chest. Jalindar said nothing to the boy, but kept his grip fixed to his brother’s bedframe as if in that grip he held on to a chance, no matter how remote, that what had been destroyed could be restored.

Haris led Daoud from the room, pushing past the doctor. He shut the door behind him, and it closed with an unexpected slam, startling the boy.

The corridor was quiet. A jumble of cots, filled with patients surrounded by their families, sprawled in every direction. An occasional nurse or doctor circulated among the cots, never finishing with one patient before the next called after them. Just outside the doorway, Haris and the boy sat side by side, their backs to the wall. Between them, Haris spread out the tic-tac-toe game.

They began to play.

Daoud placed a tiled O in the center of the top row. Haris put an X in the upper-right corner. Daoud placed another O in the board’s center. Haris blocked him in the bottom center. Daoud moved to the center-right column. Haris blocked him again. Between moves, Haris considered letting Daoud win. He didn’t, though, and they played to a draw.

“Again?” asked Daoud, dissatisfied at the result.

Haris cleared the board and let Daoud begin. “Your first move should go in the corners or center.”

Daoud didn’t say anything, and again they came to a draw.

“I don’t want to play anymore,” said Daoud.

“That’s not right.”

“When I play against Baba, I usually win.”

“I’m not your father,” said Haris, laughing a bit.

This angered Daoud. He cleared the rest of the pieces. They played again and Haris won.

Daoud stared at the board. A row of diagonal Xs ran across it. The little boy anxiously picked his nose, his grubby fingernails edged in dirt. He needed a bath, and his spiteful gaze remained fixed on the board. He seemed unable to set it up for another round. Haris knew he should feel sorry for this child — his dying father, his masquerading uncle — and he wondered if at some subconscious level the little boy knew the truth. A part of Haris felt the boy deserved a small victory. A game of tic-tac-toe.

The boy picked his nose again.

“You shouldn’t do that either,” said Haris.

“You’re not playing fair!” snapped Daoud. He bounded to his feet and bolted toward the hospital room.

Haris lunged after him, catching his wrist. Daoud picked up the tic-tac-toe board and flung it down the corridor. Its edge caught Haris across the temple. Daoud shook free from Haris’s grasp and pushed through the door to where his father was. Haris followed.

In the room, Jalindar sat on the stool. He had pulled it up to his brother’s bedside. Across the foot of the bed, the doctor had spread forms, which Jalindar signed as Daphne explained them one by one.

“I’m sorry,” said Haris. “He got away from me.”

Daoud clutched his uncle’s leg. He cried, burying his face in Jalindar’s lap, his breath coming in little huffs. Haris froze in the threshold. Jalindar was silent. He gently rested his hand against the side of Daoud’s head. The boy kept crying as Jalindar signed the last few forms. Once he was done, the Turkish doctor gathered the papers, returning them to the ream he carried. He spoke some last point to Daphne, who nodded as he strode out the door.

“If you want to take a few minutes to gather your things, that’s fine,” she told Jalindar.

He looked into the room’s empty corners.

Daphne nodded to Haris, and they both stepped outside.

Standing in the corridor, Haris asked how she’d convinced Jalindar to leave.

“I threatened to tell Daoud about his father if he insisted on staying.”

“That seems cruel.”

“Look at that boy,” said Daphne. “You think he doesn’t already know?”

She was right, Haris thought. Daoud knew. As much as the boy needed the lie, he knew. “Where will they go?” he asked.

“If they leave now, I promised to take care of their bus fare back to Kilis. The boy will live with his uncle. He’s lucky.”

Haris wandered down the corridor. Strewn across it were the small X and O tiles from the tic-tac-toe game. He gathered them up along with the board. Just as he finished, Jalindar stepped from his brother’s hospital room, carrying Daoud in his arms. The boy rested his cheek on his uncle’s shoulder, looking backward, toward his father.

Jalindar walked by Daphne. At first he ignored her but, after just a few steps he turned around, patting his front pocket, where he’d put the bus fare she’d given him. “Thank you,” he said.

Daphne dipped her eyes to the floor.

Before Jalindar could go farther, Haris ran up to him. “This is his.”

He offered Daoud the tic-tac-toe pieces and board. The boy refused them, burying his face in the crook of his uncle’s neck. Jalindar took the game instead, cramming it into the same pocket as their bus fare.

“Why did your game upset him?” asked Daphne while she and Haris watched the two head toward the elevator.

“I wouldn’t let him cheat,” said Haris.

“You wouldn’t let him cheat, or you wouldn’t let him win?”

“Letting him win is cheating.”

All through that morningand into the afternoon, Haris helped. When a surplus of medical supplies arrived from the hospital’s upper floors, Haris inventoried and stacked the myriad cardboard boxes in a storage closet. When lunch arrived from the cafeteria, he joined the nurses who passed out the trays. And, in the brief moments when he had nothing to do, he watched Daphne negotiate between the Syrian families and the Turkish medical staff everything from the position of a cot in the hallway to the cocktail of medications a patient received.

Shortly after lunch, as Haris gathered empty food trays along the corridor, the young Turkish doctor with the threadbare lab coat returned. A squat, ancient nurse plodded alongside him, her chin leading her body forward. The two stepped into the room containing Daoud’s father. Haris looked up and down the corridor for Daphne, but he couldn’t find her. He wondered where she’d gone, and quickly realized she’d known what was coming. She had decided not to watch.

A few moments later the nurse and doctor pushed the bandaged, broken man out of the room on a litter. Disconnected from his trickling IV bags, he’d become wholly inanimate. Until his death, his life would be an issue of storage somewhere in the hospital. No one looked in his direction as he passed by, but all along the corridor the chattering families fell to silence. The stubborn squeak of a loose wheel wobbling against his litter’s axle became the only noise.

Haris felt a tingling in the hinge of his jaw, an aftertaste of electricity. The memory and sensation of his paralyzed body splayed in the sodden earth returned. He pressed his fingertips into the sides of his legs. This minor act of dexterity calmed him. He remembered how Athid had betrayed him at the border, abandoning him in no-man’s-land. This unfeeling, unknowing man was about to be abandoned in the same way. Haris swallowed. He could do nothing.

The doctor and nurse didn’t push the litter toward the elevator. Instead, they unlocked a steel door at the corridor’s far end. The doctor kicked a wedge beneath it. Haris caught a glimpse of a ramp, sloping down, to a level beneath the basement. Somewhere deep under the hospital Daoud’s father would remain out of sight.