What They Wanted Read Online Free PDF

with and my fingers itched to touch him, to do away with whatever strain I was putting him under.
    “It’s not such a big deal, you know,” I blundered, “leaving a dead-end logging town built around a post office.”
    He snorted. “There goes her nose agin. Haughty, by cripes—”
    “I’m not haughty.”
    “Hell you’re not. Anything outside the outports is a step up for you. A bog.”
    “Oh, foolishness.”
    “Foolish, hell. You ranks everything over the outport. The whole island’s a outport to you, and now you’ve left that— rather waitress in some oil town—”
    “Grande Prairie, Alberta, and it’s a pretty city with bars that quadruple the pay offered by any bar in St. John’s or Corner Brook. That’s why I’m there, to make fast money.”
    “Sure you’re not chasing Ben?”
    I near drove us off the road.
    “Ohh, Christ, is that what you think? That I’m chasing Ben Bonehead Rice?”
    Catching his grin, I sucker-punched his leg. Glad to have a smile back on his face, I decided to keep the application into the art program for another time, the return trip, maybe, after we visited with Father and made sure he was going to be all right.
    As though ensuring silence for the rest of the drive, he switched on the radio, cranking it loud. For the rest of the drive we sat mired within our own thoughts.

    INSIDE THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT , Chris was the first out of the car, looking up at the sprawling, red-brick structure. I followed him across the lot, starting to feel apprehensive. The warming spring sun and heartening smell of fresh earth gave way to the emptied white light of long hospital corridors and the acrid odour of sickness and antiseptic. Inside the heavy doors of the intensive care unit, cowed by the silence of pending death, Chris faltered. I took his hand then and we crept like two frightened youngsters past the hushed, uniformed figures and their whitish faces hovering over blue-screened monitors that charted failing hearts in curtained-off beds. Through an opening in one of the curtains I saw Mother’s coat draped over a chair.
    Chris hung back, pulling on my hand. “Say nothing about my going sealing,” he said lowly.
    I shook my head and then held my breath as he lifted aside the drape, nudging me forward. I expected to see them both, but there was just Dad. I near cried. So big and dark in memory, his hair fanned by the wind, his black brows shading his eyes as he stood in his boat, he now lay still beneath a white sheet, his hair without sheen, his face with the pallor of an aged tombstone. His breathing, aided by rubbery oxygen tubes pronged and taped to his nostrils, sounded long, deep, and raspy.
    I bit into my fist, watching as Chris approached the bedside, his eyes fastened to Father’s hand, brown as bark against the white of the sheets and pierced with needles and tubing. Carefully he touched a finger to Dad’s and stared into the dulled, dark orbs of his eyes, their faint glimmer of life.
    “Looks better,” Chris said thickly.
    Father blinked in response.
    “Best not to talk.”
    Father nodded, staring a steady stream into Chris’s eyes, flooding them with the confusion of his weakness. Chris, as though his heart were too full to hold more, stood back, saying gruffly, “Brought someone to see you. Sylvie—your Dolly,” he added lamely. Pushing away from the bedside, he bolted outside the curtains.
    I gripped the bed railing so’s not to run myself. Father lifted his hand weakly. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Taking his hand, I forced a smile at the needles. “A pin cushion,” I said with a shaky laugh, “one of Gran’s pin cushions.” I leaned over him and pressed my mouth against the warmth of his brow.
    “The boat,” he whispered.
    “The boat.” I forced a laugh. “Is that what you’re thinking about now, your boat? Chris got it tied to the wharf.”
    He nodded. “Next week. Home next week.”
    “No doubt. Be snowshoeing on the downs soon