In the last chapter Ohmie saw Nurse May, and her younger sister. Ohmie and his father, Sam, cook up a scheme to deal with Sam’s dirty boss as well as Grandpa.

“Oh. Master Ohmie, that was wonderful! You could play in Vienna.” Mme Benoir said. “May I please hear the fiddle, now. I understand you can make a violin sound like a fiddle.”

I did. It wasn’t as good as I played for Grandma, who’d gone home to deal with Grandpa, hopefully to keep him from eating his gun now that that business was behind us. Those were a hard couple of days. I had to keep telling myself that we could have all been killed, and that no one was going to jail, we just couldn’t be around him. I felt especially bad for Grandma. My whole life I never knew that she loved anybody. She did, she was just weighed down with the conflict. I hope she’ll come back often. She’s only forty miles away.

But, anyway, like I said, it was fun playing for Mme Benoir. I carefully moved from the bar stool to the couch.

“Ohmie, I must ask. This girlfriend that you have, what about your girlfriend at Jungfraujoch?”

“What’s this?” Mom asked. “Did I miss something?”

“I think so, Virginia.” Mme Benoir was chuckling. “I’m afraid we might have a heart-breaker among us. Girls may wish to hold tight to their heartstrings, with Ohmie dashing around the globe.”

This time it was me who got to turn red blushing. “You got me, Mme Benoir.” I told Mom about my gift story.

“Timothy Westlake!” It was rare I heard that anymore. Mom had been too sensitive, afraid that the last thing she ever says to me might be something negative.

I gave her my best Home Alone kid grin. She tried to look stern, but her lip twitch gave her away.

Mme Benoir asked about May, my May, not older sister, Nurse May.

“She is an angel, Mme Benoir.” I got a little spacey right then. Both Mom and Mme Benoir caught their breath for a moment, thinking the worst when I was really just kind of swept into a state thinking about May.

“She’ll be here next Saturday,” Mom said, “You can meet her then. Unless Ohmie dreams up some reason for us to drive to her house.” Mom gave me a look as if I’d swiped a cookie.

“Well, she did kinda forget to take the sheet music with her.” I grinned big.

“Ohmieeee, you had it hidden, didn’t you?” Addressing Mme Benoir, Mom told her that May was going to practice her guitar so they could play a piece together.

I took as deep breath as I could, closing my eyes and sinking back into the couch. “I think I’ll go lay down, Mom. I’m really tired.”

‘I’ll help,” Mom offered.

Lifting my arm in protest, I gently told her that I wanted to do it myself. She let me.

Both women watched me take about a week to cross the room and ease down onto the chair lift. In my peripheral I saw them both wiping at their eyes, their lips trembling. I felt sorry about that. I decided to visualize May, and Mom and Dad, but mostly May in better times, in times where I wasn’t sick.

Almost unwillingly, I thought of Dad. My repose was not quite ready. Closing my eyes for a second I saw Dad, my partner, my team-mate, more than my partner, my brother. It was as if I’d had a twin, but never knew it. Dad was me. I was him. Grandpa attempted to intervene, but I held onto Dad as he this very moment walked the halls of the Langley building, summoned to the Director’s office. I felt the eyes on him, the stare, and glares, as if he was responsible for the past days’ chaos and the resultant emergence of the new order. Some faces betrayed knowing smirks, glad that their day had finally come. Others stared in concern, was an enemy lurking? Would this day reverse the fortunes of those whose fortunes had just been made? Would chaos return?

Each fateful step… each landed heel the only audible sound, Dad’s leather heel in the stilled halls of the C. I. A. Headquarters. Who awaited his arrival? The Director, alone, or his Goebbels, Goring, and Himmler, Adolf Hitler’s henchmen? Were there executioners lying in wait? I thought of Dad, and extended myself to him, adding my feeble strength to his in the seconds that passed as I began to focus.

Grandpa. He was to have stepped down. But he did not. He merely stepped back. He went to the mattresses, calling the shots from his bunker. Dad was his son, and as wrong-spirited as the son was, he would be given a degree of deference. Dad was the father of his grandson, the winner and recently lauded hero of the netherworld battle. Dad would not be gutted on the open field, perhaps garroted in an alley, but not gutted. I felt it. I reached and helped Dad hold his head high. I helped him see what he was before him.

The vision of Dad blurred and vanished. I began to struggle, but not really. It was like I was under water, but swimming down instead of up. Breathing was worse than hard. I just couldn’t get my breath. I’d fallen onto the bed and just laid there on my face for a while. I felt like a fish on the river bank. I was exhausted, but I wanted my clothes off. I thought of the work of whoever… later. Finally, I got under the sheet. That’s all I wanted – a clean, white sheet over me. I don’t know how I managed. Again, I tried to get just one clear, full breath. Then I asked myself why. Why do I need the next breath?

I relaxed.

A fleeting thought of Mom and Mme. Benoir downstairs passed through, how they wanted to help me. But they couldn’t help me. No one could. The thought of Mom’s love for me was overwhelming. She was a part of me…. She was me. Then I thought of Nurse May, how she cared. More than my health, my disease, she cared how I was, how my soul felt. And her sister, beautiful May. When I first saw her, I saw an angel… a real, literal angel sent from heaven to hold my hand, to guide me… to make the way as beautiful, as beautiful could possibly be. Her smile, her eyes, her nature. May’s body even, displaying curves of promise of fulness yet to come.

I remember, for whatever reason, the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  I wondered whether Michelangelo even recognized the inspiration guiding his hand as he painted the hand of God. Did Michelangelo want to paint anything between God’s hand and man’s, a priest? As he painted God’s hand, did he imagine that it was truly there all the time, and Adam, need only reach out to touch him? I saw myself as Michelangelo, his painting hand wanting to close the gap between the stretching fingertips.

I relaxed more. An ease overcame me. I don’t know how long since I’d pulled up the sheet. Maybe minutes. Maybe only seconds. Maybe less. It didn’t matter.

A noise, the rush of air, a presence… I felt it. Eyes closed, the struggle for breath at an end, a hand touched mine. May, beautiful May. To guide me, maybe… to show me the way? Then I heard the soft whisper of her voice. Taking pains not to startle me, she whispered my name. I felt her breath against my cheek, her essence penetrating my skin, the resonant vibrations of herself meld with mine. My chest fluttered as if stirring, searching for rhythm. Gradually, over the course of seconds, it found its beat beneath May’s gentle hand. I turned my unopened eyes to her, and saw her beauty, her smile, her lips near mine softly speaking my name.

“Ohmie, we need you. I need you. Ohmie. It’s May!”

I wasn’t sure that I heard anything. Then, suddenly, I was certain what I heard… and its verity.

I blinked. And May smiled.

“Mom!” It was May’s voice, not mine. May projected down the stairs to my mother, who was alight in an instant, bounding up the stairs to me. May’s voice hardly penetrated the doorway, yet propelled Mom to my side.

“Mom,” May said. “Ohmie has work to do. And he’ll need his strength back to do it.”

Mom reached out and touched my face with the back of her hand, like when she used to take my temperature. Her smile was from somewhere within. “Eggs?” she asked. “Scrambled with milk?”

I gave her my Home Alone grin... a weak version, anyway.

Everyone laughed, Mme. Benoir having joined us. Even I chuckled a little bit. I started to reach out to hold May’s hand, but realized that I already was.

I breathed. For the first time since I didn’t know when, I breathed. I almost passed out from breathing, but I breathed.

Then I allowed May to help me up. That is, until I remembered my state of undress and motioned toward my clothes and for her to go to the door. She knew to wait for me just outside the door that she’d partway closed. What lie on the other side of the door, I dared not hope.