Chapter 20

Authors Note: I hope I provided an adequate ending to the novel! It was hard to go from a moment of intense crisis to wrapping up, so I had to jump into the future a little bit. I hope you all enjoy it, and thank you all for a great semester!     

        For a long time there was nothing but numbness. Feeling nothing at all was better than turning her mind’s eye to the sight of Bill, lying on a gurney with burns all over his skin, or the terror in Susan’s eyes when she told Nat about Cody. This was all too much, things like this weren’t supposed to happen in tiny towns in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. It seemed like the moment the wheels of Nat’s plane touched down on the runway in Unalaska, things had begun to shift and spin out of control to the place where they lay now, broken and crumpled and completely unlike anything she could have imagined. 

The funeral for Cody had occurred the day before, but the doctor said Nat wasn’t well enough to leave the hospital yet. She had argued with the attendants, insisting that she had to go, but they had repeated over and over with blank faces that it was simply not possible. It hurt Nat to think about Barrie, the first person she had met in Unalaska, standing by the grave of the son whose card he’d given her on her first day. It was strange to think about that afternoon weeks ago, laying eyes on the cathedral and the hotel and the mountains for the first time. After the service ended, Susan and the other members of the crew came to Nat’s hospital room to sit in silence with her, each wrapped in their own thoughts without much energy for conversation. Bill had even wheeled himself into the room in a wheelchair from down the hall, still covered in bandages and a little loopy from the pain medication dripping into his arm from the IV stand he carried with him. 

Her mother stayed by her side in the hospital day and night without cease, and a few hours after the news had broken her father came too. Jack had come for a day and gone, claiming business in LA pulled him back, but Nat had a suspicion that his sudden departure was because he just didn’t know what to say to her. Now, there didn’t seem like much he could say to make it better. Sometimes Nat woke in the night to see her mother slumped over her bed, her head on the stiff hospital sheets. Her father sat in the chair in the corner, occasionally making runs to the the vending machines on the ground floor to sneak Nat and her mother bags of chips or candy bars. The sugar and salt of the junk food was a shock to her tongue in contrast to the bland hospital food. That is, they were when she could eat at all. 

         Nat watched her parents nod off beside her bed with a pang in her stomach unrelated to her illness; her parents deserved better than the harsh words and contempt she had so often shown them since she had left their house for college, then left California and their good graces. Despite the distance, both physical and metaphorical, they had come to her side without a thought or a word of reproach. They loved her, and they had loved her brother. They still did, and no matter how she held the hurt inside her like a private sorrow, it would have to be let out somehow. That was what the movie had been all along, she realized. She had lost herself in fervor and effort to protect a memory that could be shared with others. She did not have to remember alone: she couldn’t anymore. 

Looking at her parents provoked something strange in her. She didn’t know how to begin to mourn something she hadn’t even wanted, hadn’t anticipated. Yet the thought of a baby, as alien as it had seemed when she first discovered she was pregnant, had been a secret source of comfort in the hectic days of filming and long nights alone at the Grand Aleutian Hotel. When she had placed her hand on her stomach, it had felt like comfort, but now there was nothing. Maybe it was for the best: she had been wildly unprepared for this to happen, by all means. Her relationship with Jack was a gigantic unknown floating in the back of her mind. Now there was nothing but nostalgia to bind them together anymore. The movie couldn’t continue without a lead actor, any cameras, or a director that could hardly eat or stand without assistance. Everything was coming to an end. Soon there would be nothing left to do but get Eugene to drive her in his tiny pick up truck on the bumpy road back to the airport, and a few hours in the air before the wheels touched down where the weather was warm and the sun was shining. 

Three days later, she was released from the hospital. After assuring her parents for the millionth time that she had improved enough to be left alone, Eugene drove her parents to the airport. She had convinced them that she needed time to say goodbye to the town, to all the people she had met during her brief time here. Nat spent an hour in the hotel room packing up her things. She hadn’t realize how accustomed she’d grown to the wheeze of the ancient air conditioner, to the tiny bottles of shampoo and bars of soap lining the edge of the bathtub, and the itch of the old comforter on the bed. She sat reading at the desk for a while, but soon grew restless in the silence without the clicking of her laptop keys fixing the script or the soft click of the mouse editing film. She decided to walk to Amelia’s for a final time. Maybe the jolt of caffeine would give her the energy she needed to finish packing and pull herself together, she thought.

The short walk to Amelia’s seemed longer with the aches and pains her body still experienced. It was a relief when she made her way inside, the bell on the door giving a familiar tinkle, and sat at the booth that had seen so many script revisions, conversations with Cody or Susan, and internal panics about the status of the movie. Maria brought her a cup of steaming coffee without a word, yet the way she patted Nat’s hand when she reached for the mug was reassuring. Everyone in town must know, she thought. She sat with her thoughts for a while, cupping her hands around the warmth of the mug. She heard the door bell chime, and soon Eugene settled with a sign into the booth across the table from her. 

“How did you know I’d be here?” she asked after a moment. 

“Just intuition. There’s not that many places to go, and I guessed you’d want some time to think,” he said. 

Nat looked at him, at his faded flannel shirt, worn boots, and the map of lines at the corner of his eyes. Of everyone she had met in Alaska, Eugene knew her best. 

“You know Nat,” he said suddenly, then cleared his throat as if uncomfortable. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Maybe, Eugene. I’m not so sure right now.”

“Things may not have worked out here the way you thought they would (hell, the way any of us thought,) but you’re smart. And you’re capable. And you’re going to be okay.” 

She couldn’t say anything for a while, giving him a weak smile. He patted her hand fiddling with the silverware. “I promise.” He stood and left Amelia’s without another word, the door bell signaling his departure. 

She finished her coffee and left as well, walking in the melting snow along the road to the Holy Ascension of Our Lord Cathedral. Inside, the air was cool and quiet as always. She settled into a pew near the back and hugged her arms around herself. The weak afternoon sun shone through the stained glass, making patches of blue and red light dance on the floor around her. She had filmed Cody here only a few short weeks ago, and he’d looked so much like her brother that she’d filmed the same shot for minutes at a time, lost in daydream. She remembered the way Cody smiled and his unkempt brown hair, and the way her brother had been so fierce about his desire for adventure, that need he had to distinguish himself and find himself again in the mountains. She missed them both, but they didn’t seem so distant in the cathedral. The course of her life had taken so many unexpected and strange turns, and in its windings she’d lost them both, and now, she felt, found them again. She didn’t need a movie to remember them–they were, and she realized, would always be, safe and happy in her memories. Nat didn’t know what the future would hold once she left the Grand Aleutian, left Alaska, and entered again the world she’d left behind. But as the light of the stained glass danced around her, she knew she would be ready for it when it came.