Nick West lay upon the hospital bed, tracing the bandage on his forehead with a finger. This repetitive action threatened to dislodge the tape, but he had exhausted all other ways to occupy his time. He had long since finished studying the cat-like scratches covering his arms and would have pitched the television remote through the ridiculous shows if the cord didn’t anchor it to the bed. Nick sighed while a piece of adhesive close to his eyebrow loosened.
A pleasant voice cut the boring silence. “Hello, Mr. West.” A twenty-something-year-old in blue scrubs smiled as she snapped on the nitrile gloves. “I’m Madison. Can I get you anything?”
Nick shook his head. He hated the unnatural, forced small talk the hospital staff dispensed like pills.
Why did the nurses seem so young and naïve? Did time soften each generation or just harden old men? After all, Madison had to be the same age as Nelly when they married, and Nick would never have called his wife immature.
Madison examined his blood pressure and injuries. The nurse pulled his hospital gown down from his shoulders, revealing larger scars from decades past. “Ouch! Those must have hurt.”
“Hell ya, but those are old.” Nick puffed out his chest a bit. “The Korean War. I joined up the day I turned eighteen and caught shrapnel soon after.” He always mentioned ‘Korea’ when discussing his service. Most people jumped straight from World War II to Vietnam.
Nick pulled the cloth up like a painter covering an unfinished work of art. Although proud of his service, he never showed his scars. Not even to his children. No sense crying over the past.
The nurse replaced the bandage on his head. “Thirteen stitches. All look good.”
Nick nodded. Lucky thirteen.
“And not a single broken bone.” She collected the used medical supplies and smiled. “Try to stay on the ground from now on. You’ve earned that much.”
“Yup,” he grunted.
Being treated like a dinosaur stung, but he preferred it to being regarded as a child. At least a dinosaur received admiration and awe. Respect had deserted Nick some time ago. His children—two sons and a daughter—roamed the hospital with their families and damn cell phones. The recent years of petty fights had changed them from his kids to strangers.
They probably sat around the cafeteria table, discussing how their elderly father failed to maintain their childhood home. His finger stopped tracing the bandage. Were they right? Wasn’t that why he went up on the roof in the first place?
An amalgamation of countless conversations rang in Nick’s head. “A mid-century craftsman on the water? With that sale money, you could live in a beautiful assisted living home. A few simple fixes to the roof and yard will give it some curb appeal. We’ll pay.”
Nick dismissed his family’s concerns. “Save your money. I’ll take care of it.” They had never expected their father to tackle the project himself.
The kids failed to appreciate Nick’s pride, preferring to infantilize him instead. How little his children understood him.
Strangers.
Alone again, Nick ran his fingertips over his bandage and let his mind wander. The throbbing pain had subsided, and for the first time, he revisited the moments that landed him in the hospital.
An August sun had snuck into the winter sky that day, and the cold ocean wind remained across the street on the beach. Hand over hand up the ladder, he climbed, tool bag hanging off his shoulder like an anchor. His gloves and hat remained neatly piled on a table by the front door like a department store display. Nick basked in the February morning’s unseasonal warmth. The hatred of hats had become a running point of contention with his wife. He would argue his perennially bare head kept his hair full and healthy. Nelly would counter his hatless life had only led to the melanoma at the end of his nose. “You’re so soft in the head,” she’d say.
Reaching the roof’s apex, he caught a view of the sea and ran his fingers through his thick, white hair. Nick chuckled, wishing Nelly could experience both of these timeless wonders.
Nick lay face down on the roof and dug the toes of his boots into the rough shingles. Confident in the afforded traction, he picked a nail he had stored between his teeth and began hammering. Morning turned to afternoon while Nick patched the shingles from gable to gutter and back. With nearly half the roof remaining done, he rested on the peak like a king on his throne.
His steel-blue eyes scanned the horizon, ending on a dead structure of faded brick and broken windows. The lonely ruins had once been a thriving textile factory and Nick’s place of employment. He imagined clouds billowing from the now collapsed smokestacks, pumping the soul into the city. Life made sense back then. Sure, he missed ballgames and recitals, but all the overtime put his kids through school. Nick provided them an example of how to work and live.
The low elegiac sound of a ship called to the daydreaming man. A liquefied natural gas tanker coasted towards the interior of the bay, following the path set centuries ago by whaling ships and worn deep by cargo transports in the last few decades. The city always changed. Changed or died.
Nick looked at the remaining roof and then at the sinking sun. “Ah, for the love of Mike.” He’d underestimated the time required for the job. “Damn it.” If Nick worked his way to the widow’s watch, he could satisfy himself with saving the other half of the roof for tomorrow. He and Nelly spent countless nights on the rooftop platform, never imagining its future as a widower’s watch. Once she passed, the wooden structure fell into disrepair. By himself, Nick had no use for it and pulled the rotted staircase off the side of the house.
With hammer in hand and nails in clenched teeth, he rooted himself again, only for a cold tingle to dance up his spine. He rolled onto his sweaty back, looking to the sea. A roiling gray puff resembling the color of the house filled the horizon. His knuckles paled as he squeezed the hammer. The nails dug deep into his gums.
Larger and larger, the clouds grew. Closer and closer. The horse atop the weathervane turned its tail to the ocean and fluttered in the wind. The gray mass whitened as it thundered towards the shore, resembling a massive creature trampling everything in its path.
The force struck Nick like a wall and enveloped him in a cold so complete it burned. After an eternity of seconds, the tsunami of clouds passed, leaving flurries of snow and sleet. Steam poured from his mouth as he peeled his back from the roof. The ladder had disappeared, blown to God-knows-where. Against his will, he slid downward. All traction had vanished from the ice-cloaked shingles. The more he struggled, the faster he fell. He spat the tacks, released the hammer, and pounced on the weathervane.
Nick’s fingers clamped around the metal base and tightened against its biting chill. He watched as his hammer abandoned him, skidding down the incline, bouncing on shingles, and picking up speed near the drop. At the edge, it hopped like a drunken cliff diver into the abyss. He imagined the hammer plummeting into the thick bramble of roses below. Nelly wanted hydrangeas, but Nick pushed for roses—the thorns appeared more masculine. His breathing slowed as he looked at the widower’s watch. Alone again.
Time passed, and the sun sank into the sea. Nick tried—and failed—to use his warm breath to blow smoke rings, a trick he had learned with cigarettes in boot camp. Tobacco had been his best friend in Asia, but he had dropped it half a century ago. The twilight air cooled, and no matter how much he hollered, neither the passing cars nor the tiny human specks down the beach responded. The widow’s watch’s remaining steps mocked him—three shattered wooden boards leading to nothing but air.
Sure could use that staircase now.
Darkness ripped the remaining heat from his body. He shivered and mocked himself. “My pockets are for my keys and wallet, not a phone.” So soft in the head.
What would Nelly think of him now? Nick could only imagine the pain and grief in her eyes if she somehow, somewhere, saw his plight. Nelly had fought death past its scheduled arrival. The terminal prognosis, last rites, and final goodbyes were over a year early. She walked out of the hospital and returned home, caring for her family the same as always. Even when the final sickness hit, she lived at the hospice center so long the employees said they would name a wing after her. Nelly joked she’d get back home or die trying. At times, Nick forgot his wife lived on death’s door.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the ignition of a pale glow. A snow flurry localized on the widow’s watch and tightened into a pillar. Inside the white powder, Nick could almost make out a human. Though transient, when the light hit the flakes just right, an unmistakable face looked back at him.
Nelly? What the hell?
With a wince and a yelp, he tore his fingers from the weathervane. Flights of fancy were never his thing. Hallucinations brought on by low body temperature and hunger was a more plausible explanation for his vision than anything otherworldly. Still, a peculiar attraction pulled him to the elemental ghost. Nick inched his way over the roof pinnacle towards the roof deck. Upon reaching his goal, he steadied himself with the rail, but dared not enter. The flurry coalesced and pinched in at several spots, forming a neck and waist of something almost human. As Nick stared into the swirling snowflakes, he beheld Nelly’s face on their wedding day.
Nick outstretched his hand to touch the form. The cold no longer stung, and his eyelids grew heavy. Was this meant to be? A supernatural ‘true love’ sent to escort him to the other side?
The flurries glowed like the white flames from the old black and white movies he and Nelly loved. African Queen had been their favorite. He’d use his awful Bogart voice, and she’d deliver an even worse Katharine Hepburn impression. Both would feign annoyance while trying to pry bursts of laughter from the other.
Before climbing over the rail and joining her, Nick needed one more look into Nelly’s eyes. While mustering his strength for the leap, Nick’s eyes glimpsed his withered and aged hand gripping the railing. He pulled back. The pair had experienced so much since they wed. A mental dam burst, and the decades they spent together flooded back.
Only after Nelly passed did it all fall apart with his children. Starting at the funeral, his kids countered every crumb of sadness he offered with over reactionary pandering. Each time they wanted to sleep over, chauffeur, or shop for him, it served as a reminder his wife was gone. Nick snapped at his family and took the phone off the hook. Showing emotional wounds to his children meant examining the wounds himself.
After Nelly passed, Nick had packed his bags more than once, feeling out of place in his own home. The lack of a destination was the sole reason he stayed. It took years before the house he now sat atop became a home again. The days and nights spent crawling back to life proved harder than anything Nick faced in Korea.
Or now trapped on this roof.
Someone would find a dead old man if he stayed glued to the widow’s watch all night. People would hear about it and shake their heads, blaming senility instead of a freak storm. Nelly wouldn’t want him going out like that.
Snow danced around the sky, more beautiful than menacing. The coruscation of the icy roof resembled diamonds. Nelly had looked so radiant at the end. Peaceful in her bed—wrinkles, age spots, thinning hair, and all—she proved a beauty for the ages, unlike the youthful allure of this frosty version. A sigh escaped from Nick, puffing out both steam and his last traces of nostalgia. He’d take his chance with the roses. After one last vain attempt to blow smoke rings, he smiled and let go.
Nick recalled little after that until the hospital, though his scratches confirmed the roses caught his fall. Busy fingers had worked the bandage loose again. Wobbly, the man walked to the mirror. Loose gauze dangled from his wound. He smiled. The black stitches resembled railroad tracks stretching cross-country across his head. Bout time for a fresh scar, he thought. My old ones have faded.
Selling the house never crossed his mind, but why kamikaze through his remaining years? Nick missed the union between him and Nelly, but he could form new relationships, starting with his children. Was that why she had visited him in the storm? He had lived his life leading by example. Now was time for telling instead of showing—time to talk about all his scars.
A din of boisterous children and hushed adult voices in the hall signaled the return of his family. He attempted to stick the bandage to his skin before giving up and holding it in place. Would the scar signify a badge of survival or a fragile senior citizen? Nelly would want him to teach them the difference between visible and invisible scars.
They entered, voices quieting as if they feared to wake a dragon. He outstretched his arms and allowed the bandage to fall.
