Inland by Kat Rosenfield Read Free Book Online

for someone, you also begin to hope you won’t cross paths with them again. You hope for health, for a cure, for secondhand news from the late-night nurse that your friend won’t be coming back again; that she has joined the ranks of the well. When we met in this room earlier, Jocelyn clutched at my sleeve and whispered the good news that her tumors were shrinking.
    Now, she notes the absence of my father and scowls.
    “Did he ditch you before the anesthetic even wore off? Geez!” she says, indignant, and I try not to smile.
    “He’s got work to do” I say. “Papers, or something.” My voice is matter-of-fact and not defensive, and Jocelyn slides back against her pillows.
    “That’s cold, man,” she says, and her own father scolds,
Jocelyn
, and I realize for the first time that her family is here. They pop out of the background, materializing with the practiced ease of hospital professionals. The parents become experts at being not-here; when the doctors are at work, or if my father should come back, they’ll fade away again. But now, they crowd around her bed, exhausted and uncomfortable and not going anywhere, thank you.
    I ache for my own hospital entourage, but just a little. I would rather have my father disappear down to the cafeteria, rather sit alone while he sips bitter coffee and mauls his students’ essays with a red pen, than watch him sit like human wreckage on the chair beside my bed.
    I like the distracted father better than the desperate one.
    “I don’t mind,” I say, and get three smiles in return.
    When they draw the curtain around my bed to listen to my chest, I wave at Jocelyn and lie back in the muted light of what passes for privacy here. I become just another moving part in this machine made up of scrolling readouts, dripping IVs, swinging doors, and purposeful steps. Connected, if only for a moment.
    It’s not perfect, but it’s familiar. It’s something. Later, I’ll fall asleep to the sound of Jocelyn’s deep and even breathing, the rush and hiss and beep of monitors making a sound track for my dreams.
    You are here.

C H A P T E R 8
    MY FATHER DOESN’T BELIEVE that the sea has a voice, but he takes its telephone calls all the same. For a month, the Gulf Coast has been calling. Twice a week, every week. An old colleague rings him up to beg. The sound of the phone is jangling and jarring, reverberant. No one ever calls here, and I snatch up the receiver at the first half ring. I’ve been out of school again, a two-week stretch this time, and the sound makes me feel like my teeth are shattering.
    I’ve never met this man, but I know he’s getting desperate; each time I answer, his voice has ratcheted up another half note in pitch.
    “Uh, hello,” he says. “It’s Mike Foster again. Is Alan—”
    “I’ll get him.”
    —
    Alan Twaddle, PhD, is more than the frustrated father to an invalid and the widower of a reckless woman. He is a legend, an innovator, an unmatched talent in geotechnical engineering. His brilliance had always been background noise in a life where other things seemed more important. When Mama was still alive, people asked why he hadn’t taken his marvelous gifts to a place where people paid for them, abandoning academia and moving on. It was there for the taking: a blossoming career, a glowing reputation, a life of comfortable luxury for his wife and daughter. At the time, he’d smile at us over dinner and say, “I told them, what’s the point? I’ve already got everything that a man could ever want.”
    But then, he lost it. And after she died, for a time, the phone calls grew frequent again. Fat-cat corporations, speculating miners and oil companies, begged his expertise. They need to know what lies beneath the earth, how to seduce it, how to worm their way in and then suck it dry. At the time, he told them no, and I was the reason why. Orphaned, helpless, clinging to the family I had left. I made a good excuse.
    Now, he doesn’t have one. Mike