A Little Too Late (Madigan Mountain)

January 2012

Reed is in the library. He’s supposed to be writing a paper for this year’s J-term class—a retrospective on food and culture.

He should already have written five pages on the origins of modern breadmaking, but instead, he’s doing online research for next year. He’s dreaming about what the future holds. Skiing for him. Med school applications for Ava. And a baby for both of them.

He has a hundred new bookmarks on his web browser. Lamaze classes, baby names, US ski team qualifiers, apartments for rent in Colorado.

He and Ava lie awake in his bed each night for hours, discussing the possibilities. They might have to move home to Penny Ridge for a while after he graduates. He can work during the spring and summer and tap his trust fund during ski season.

Ava is experiencing a lot of emotions. She says the hormones are making her cry about everything. “Even dog-food commercials. It’s like living on a roller coaster. Including the nausea.”

There has been a lot of puking, but Reed takes this in stride, holding her hair and carrying wet wipes and mouthwash in his backpack wherever they go. And she is so grateful.

She can’t wait to feel a little better. Otherwise, money is her greatest fear. “My mother won’t help me at all.”

He’s done his best to reassure her. “I have some money, and I’m not afraid of hard work. We’re the lucky ones, baby. You’re graduating right on time, and so will I. Not everybody has the advantages we do.”

Another young man might be overwhelmed by all the obligations and possibilities, but not Reed. He feels focused and deeply optimistic for the first time in a long while.

Snow falls past the library window as he opens up a new browser tab and googles how to get a marriage license in Vermont. He’s thinking about proposing when Ava graduates next month. Eloping sounds like fun. His mother isn’t around to help him plan a wedding, and Ava barely speaks to hers…

His phone lights up with a message from Ava. His smile is automatic as he picks it up.

When he reads the text, his smile slides right off his face.

At the hospital, Reed notices how kind the nurses are to Ava. So gentle with their hands and so soothing with their words as she waits for the doctor to come into the room and talk to them.

But Reed’s heart is already a heavy weight inside his chest. He’s been here before. He’s smelled the hospital disinfectant and heard the uncaring buzz of the fluorescent lights.

The kindness of the nurses is almost worse, because he already knows they lie. Sometimes everything isn’t going to be okay. Sometimes everything goes to shit right before your eyes—like when your mother’s odd clumsiness and forgetfulness turn out to be Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a disease so rare that the doctor has never seen another case in his lifetime.

Even then, you try to lie to yourself. Imagining you’ll beat the odds. But it doesn’t work. You have to watch someone fade away. Your mother will forget your name before she forgets how to breathe. Your father will wall himself off. Your family will suffer in silence.

The black cloud has returned. It fills the little exam room. Reed can hardly breathe. He holds Ava’s hand and makes all the right noises. But he’s already pulling back. He’s mentally closing all those tabs on his browser window, because he’s made a colossal error.

Every plan, every thought, every waking moment these past few weeks was an act of hope. A vote for a future that wasn’t shadowed by grief and loss.

He bet the house on love. But that was stupid. He should have known better. He’s smarter than that.

And when the doctor finally comes in, snapping on his latex gloves, firing up the sonogram machine, Reed already knows what is going to happen. He already knows what the doctor will say.

The future he built in his mind wasn’t real. It has no heartbeat.

It’s already gone.