Within Arm's Reach Read Online Free PDF Page A

Catharine and I then have to sit on the orange plastic chairs they allot to people who aren’t bleeding copiously or in some other way being obvious about dying. Catharine’s forehead has a rudimentary bandage on it now and the cut has stopped bleeding, which makes me feel a little better about the situation. She selects a magazine and holds it in her lap. I look down and count the floor tiles. There are sixty-eight tiles in the half of the room we are sitting in.
    “You’re walking slower than me,” Catharine says once they direct us to an exam room.
    I look down at her. Despite her resistance, the nurse insisted she be pushed to the room in a wheelchair. “You’re not walking,” I say.
    “You know what I mean,” she says. “You’re moving like an old man. And why are you screwing your head around like that? Are you looking for someone?”
    I almost say, I am an old man, but this would just provoke her to argue and there’s no point in that. She’s annoyed at me for bringing her here, so she’s looking for a fight. I stay out of her way by wandering in and out of the exam room until Lila shows up and Catharine kicks me out for good.
    I leave the room feeling stronger for the sight of my daughter in her white coat. My beautiful daughter, the future doctor. She makes the hospital look safer to me, more manageable. I feel well enough now to wander the halls. I stop an orderly and ask for directions, trying to ignore the fact that my heart jumps a little every time a nurse turns toward me. I blur my vision as I walk, not looking at faces. What would I do, what would I say, if I ran into Eddie’s wife? Maybe if I had known I would end up here this afternoon I would have prepared something, but as it stands now I am not prepared. All I am prepared to do right now is to find the goddamn chapel. I move through the halls—a left, a right, and two more lefts—quickly, trying to look purposeful and collected.
    But any composure I have shatters when I turn into the chapel and see the oversized wooden crucifix hung over the tiny altar. I have spent my lifetime attending church, and every crucifix looks different. On some, Jesus has the look of a sweet boy; on others, he is an emaciated man in his sixties. In the church I attended growing up, Jesus had a face as jolly as Santa Claus. The crucifix in the hospital chapel is one I haven’t seen before. In this one Jesus has the facial expression and the posture of Eddie Ortiz on the last day of his life.
    Right there on the wall is the figure of Eddie lying in a patch of tall grass, curled up on his side as if he has gone to sleep. His flannel shirt tucked into his jeans. His tool belt still fastened around his waist. His dark hair cut short. I can see part of his young man’s face. His expression is relaxed. He clearly has no idea what he just lost. On the contrary, his face appears wide open, bared toward a bright future.
    My crew had been replacing a roof on a medium-sized Colonial. It was a simple, straightforward job. A couple weeks in duration, tops. Three men on the roof, me checking in a few times a day from the ground. The work was going according to schedule, with no significant hold-ups. Eddie Ortiz had been working for me for six months. He was really good with his hands, and smart, too, a rare combination in a construction worker. He was only Gracie’s age, but he had a wife and two little kids, and I knew he had ambitions to move up and gain more responsibility. I’d decided that when this job was finished, I’d give him a raise and he could help me do some supervising. There was too much work for just me to handle by then; Eddie had come along at the perfect time.
    But on that cloudless, dry Wednesday afternoon I decided to climb up on the roof to check the men’s work. Eddie was showing me a small flaw in the roof’s structure when he took a step toward the edge and lost his footing. It happened so quickly that none of us even had a chance to throw an