Henry Franks(23)

“See,” she said, “this is the creepy house.”

He threw the ketchup packet back at her. She caught it mid-flight.

“I can see your backyard from my house,” she said.

“So?”

“So, tonight, maybe I’ll keep watch on your stoop, check out the neat-freak cat.”

As they left the kitchen, Justine slipped her hand back into his but let go before they walked outside. A slight breeze had picked up, salty with the scent of the nearby ocean, but not strong enough to dispel the heavy air or the gnats. Somewhere in the distance a car honked, and a neighbor down the street was mowing. Their arms swung back and forth as they walked next door, their fingers brushing against each other on every swing.

Behind his fall of hair, Henry smiled and then looked at Justine. She smiled back. It was like nothing he could remember.





fourteen




His father sat at the dining room table when Henry returned to the house, warped plates and plastic silverware next to unwrapped burgers in need of a microwave. A bottle of water beaded in the heat, leaving a ring on the table when Henry picked it up and finished off half of it.

“Got your blood tests back,” his father said, laying the paperwork next to his plate and pushing the folder across the table. His skin was pale, tight around his eyes and seemed to sink into his cheeks. He kept licking his chapped lips after every bite of dinner.

Henry glanced at the numbers scrolling down the sheet then pushed them aside. “And?”

“Are you taking your meds?” his father asked. “Some levels are too low. You need to take them every day, Henry. We’ve been over this before. Do I need to sit with you every morning and night to make sure you take them?”

“No.” Henry took a large bite, staring at his plate as he shook his head. “No.”

“It’s important you take them. Every day.”

“I know.” He ripped open a packet of ketchup with his teeth and squeezed it onto the remaining half of the burger. “I’ll take them.”

“I’m serious, Henry.”

“I said, ‘I know.’”

They finished the rest of the burgers without talking, his father watching him eat, the scrutiny a heavy weight in the silence.

“Any problems?” his father asked when they were done.

“Problems?”

“Other than the itching? Odd pains?” His father shrugged, looking everywhere but at his son. “Anything?”

I think parts of me are dying, Henry thought, but he just shook his head. “No, nothing, I’m fine.”

“Sure?”

“I’m fine,” Henry said.

“We’ll be leaving after breakfast tomorrow for the hospital,” his father said.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You know I don’t have the right equipment here. Has to be at work. Won’t take too long. In and out, then back home. I promise.”

“Fine.” Henry pushed his chair back.

“There’s more if you want it,” his father said, pointing at the plate.

Henry shook his head and walked out of the room.



Henry poured the Friday PM pills out after adding CME-U to the paper beneath the box. Google had returned too many hits to bother with, from the Cebu Mistumi Employees Union to the Churches Micro Enterprise Unit. None of which remotely helped to explain Henry Franks to himself.

On the desk, each generic pill capsule looked exactly the same, but his father had drilled into him that they were all different, all vital. He had once let Henry help put them together, grinding different tablets into powder and mixing the doses by hand. Pouring precise measurements into each empty capsule. Henry hadn’t been able to keep his fingers steady enough to meet his father’s exacting expectations and, after that, his assistance was no longer required.

Henry flicked one capsule and watched it crash into the other pills before finally scooping them up and dry-swallowing them one after the other until they were gone.

With his hands on the edge of the keyboard tray beneath his desk, fingers spread out, he looked at the scar around his left wrist. The thin white bracelet was the dividing line between the light and dark hairs on his arm.

He yawned, then pulled a pushpin out of the corkboard over his desk, the sharp tip stained brown. In the dim light of the monitor, the shadows danced around him as he stabbed the tack into his discolored finger and watched the plastic body of the pin wobble back and forth where it stood. A small drop of bright red blood popped up around the fine metal shaft. With his finger, he pushed on the side of the plastic handle. A trail of blood dripped down to the desk.

He pulled the pushpin out and sucked on his finger long enough to stop the bleeding. Switching to his left hand, he pricked each finger in turn, then started on his palm. Small dots of blood spotted his skin. He reached an inch or so above the scar on his left wrist, up his forearm, before making a sound.

“Damn, that one hurt,” he said before pulling the final pin out of his arm.

He wiped the blood off with the last tissues in the box on his desk, crumpling them up in a ball and tossing them into the garbage. The place where the pain began on his arm was given a bandage, to mark the spot more than to stem the bleeding. It was higher than he put it the last time he played with the pushpins.