The Clay Lion Read online

  CHAPTER THREE

  It took 3 months, 12 days, 5 hours and 37 minutes from Branson’s diagnosis until his passing. It took significantly longer for me to travel far enough along through the stages of grief that I was able to begin devising a plan to bring my brother back to us.

  It began with a simple news story, not unlike any other one that we would hear about several times a day. It caught my attention as I was idly scrolling through the television channels one night, part of yet another day that I never got dressed or made any attempt to leave the house. The clip involved a doctor being praised for the courageous use of his trip. The doctor was convinced that he had made a mistake in the diagnosis of one of his patients, who had later died. He used his trip to go back into his own life to change his treatment plan for the patient. The result was that, when he returned to the present day, he discovered his patient alive and well. They were both there, smiling on the screen together, hugging and crying. Of course, the police were waiting on the sidelines to escort the doctor off to sentencing, as he clearly violated one of the most important traveling laws. But, laws be damned. A life had been saved.

  I stopped breathing. I sat motionless, staring at the screen. The weather report began. Still, I did not move.

  A man had used his trip to change the past in order to save another person’s life. It was not the first report of someone having done it. In fact, traveling changes happened frequently enough that it was only a filler blurb in the newscast, not a top story. But for me, it was as if it was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. In the foggy delirium that had become my life since Branson’s death, many of my conscious thoughts were of our past. But suddenly, like the first large wave at the turning of the tide, I was awash with thoughts of my future. A future with my brother. A future that would require fixing the past.

  I found my breath. I took a huge intake of air. I do not know how long I had been holding my breath in the wake of my new revelation. I made a motion towards my bedroom. Slowly at first, and then I was running. When I got to my room, I found my tablet under piles of discarded clothing. It had been abandoned months ago along with my reason for living. Of course, the battery was dead which sent me into another flurry of activity in an attempt to retrieve my charger from whatever depth it was hidden.

  Once activated, I wasted no time scouring the internet for information about the causes of pulmonary fibrosis. I spent hours reading layman articles. The same information appeared repeatedly and none of it was helpful. There was a lot about possible environmental contributors, infections, and exposure to radiation. The list went on and on. After reading, “In some people, in fact in most cases, chronic pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis develop without an identifiable cause,” for what seemed to be the hundredth time, I threw the tablet across my room and it landed with a thud on the floor. I lifted my head for the first time in hours, massaging my neck and realized the sun was peeking out from below the horizon. I had been awake all night. My mother appeared at my door.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  It was such a loaded question. I was not okay and I doubted I would ever be okay again. And yet, as the day dawned, I was more okay than I had been in months.

  When I did not answer she continued, “I heard a crash. I thought you might be hurt.”

  Oh. The tablet.

  “I’m fine Mom. Just dropped my tablet.”

  She crossed the threshold and sat on my bed. She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair, the way she did when I was little. For the longest time, she and I just sat there, she stroking my hair, and I wondering if I had the courage to leave the house.

  Finally, I found my voice. “I am going to head out into town to run some errands today. As long as it’s okay with you.”

  “It’s Thursday, Brooke. Your dad and I need both of our cars for work. We sold your car. Remember? You told us to get rid of it.”

  I had forgotten about working and days of the week and school and life outside the walls of the house. Branson died in July. The day I should have moved into the freshmen dorm with the rest of the students at State, I never got out of bed. Somehow, my parents had discovered a way to maintain. To carry on. To go about their lives which included work and friends and each other. Somehow, I had not. Until that morning.

  “Then will you take me to the bus stop on your way to work?” I asked.

  She considered for a moment. “You’re leaving the house?” There was genuine concern in her voice. “Are you sure you are up for it?”

  No. Yes. No. I did not know. But suddenly I had a purpose and I felt like perhaps the past six months I had been resting. Resting for the journey ahead of me. And now, at long last, I was ready to begin it. With that realization, I felt the need to move.

  It was almost like learning to walk again. After so many months of doing nothing, and now having something to do, I did not know where to begin. It slowly came back to me. The showering, the tooth brushing, the getting dressed. I had to change my clothes after rushing outside in shorts and flip-flops only to be greeted by a fresh coating of snow on the sidewalk. I gathered my tablet and a banana and waited for my mother in the car.

  I decided that I would start in the only place that made sense. The bus dropped me off at the pulmonary clinic where Branson was diagnosed. It was several moments before I could encourage my feet to walk into the building. Returning to the place that stripped my life of hope was like entering a viper’s den. Once bitten, twice shy. I knew the clinic had the ability to strip me of my hope yet again. I almost turned around and got back on the bus. When the bus pulled away, I contemplated running home. When the snow began to fall, I took it as a sign from God. “Go inside,” He said.

  The building was sterile, just as I remembered it. Only then did it occur to me that I had no appointment. I did not even know if Branson’s doctor was still with the practice. A glance at the directory confirmed that he was still there, right on the third floor, his life unchanged by the events in mine.

  At that moment, all of the waiting, all of the nothing that I had been doing for so long was too much to bear. I could not stand the thought of waiting for the elevator and instead took the stairs two at a time. Winded by the third floor, I arrived at the office. I approached the receptionist’s desk and tapped gently on the glass partition.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Rudlough,” I said.

  “Name?” the receptionist asked, without taking her eyes off the computer screen in front of her.

  “Brooke Wallace. I’m Branson’s sister,” I replied, as if the mention of his name would elicit a golden ticket.

  “I don’t have your name on the list. Do you have an appointment?”

  I hesitated. “No. But it’s kind of an emergency,” I said by way of explanation.

  “If you don’t have an appointment, I can’t help you.” She handed me a card. “Call the scheduling office. The number’s on the card.” With that, she closed the glass window between us, effectively ending our conversation.

  I knocked on the glass a second time. She slid the window open.

  “Yes?” she asked, unable to hide her annoyance.

  “I’m just going to wait here for him, if that’s okay. Maybe he’ll get a break.”

  “He’s booked for the day Miss,” she replied dryly.

  “I’ll wait,” I said.

  Six hours later, at 4:07 PM, the receptionist turned out the light in the waiting room.

  “You need to leave now, Miss Wallace,” she said.

  “Is Dr. Rudlough still here?” I asked.

  “He’s already gone for the day. I told you to make an appointment…”

  I ran from the office without so much as a goodbye and found myself in the parking lot, scanning the cars for one containing Branson’s doctor. After several moments, I saw him appear out of a door on the side of the building. I began running, but slowed my pace to a brisk walk as I approached him.

  “Dr. Rudlough?” I gasped.

&nb
sp; “Yes?” he turned around confused, “Can I help you?”

  “My name is Brooke. Brooke Wallace. I’m Branson’s sister. Or, I was. He died in July. You were his doctor. He had pulmonary fibrosis. Anyway, I saw a story on the news about a doctor who used his trip to save his patient. I don’t need you to do all that, but I think I need your help. I want to try to fix it myself, but I can’t figure out what caused Branson’s disease. I need more information. Information that I think you might have access to. Please. Please say you’ll help me.”

  Before I realized what I was doing, I told him everything. A man I barely knew. In the cold and snow, in the middle of the clinic parking lot, I implored him to help me figure out what had caused my brother’s illness.

  We stood there, me shivering in my too thin jacket, him looking as if he had been punched in the gut. There was silence as I waited. In that moment, it was as if I was balancing on the tip of a pin. I would either fall forward into the hope of my future or backward into the despair of my past. But I was going to fall. And Dr. Rudlough would decide in which direction I would be going.

  He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a few minutes,” he said. “It’s cold. Why don’t we go back inside?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Dr. Rudlough, or Bill as I would come to call him, spent the next several weeks with me at his side scouring all available resources in the search for the source of Branson’s disease. My first order of business was to go through Branson’s medical records with a fine tooth comb. I made a note of every sneeze, sniffle, and infection from birth on. I traced the origin of each vaccination by lot and serial number. I made lists of every medication he took and each bump, bruise, and scratch for which he was seen by a physician. I also rummaged through family calendars and photos in an attempt to correlate times and dates of any “medical experience.”

  It took weeks to accumulate a full picture of Branson’s medical history. My days were spent pouring over old files. I made lists of the places we had traveled and the possible contaminants to which he had been exposed. I compiled lists of water toxicity from the municipality, air quality reports from the local power plants, and soil samples from our property to be tested for trace elements. I left no stone unturned. I rarely slept. I barely ate. My parents watched me from afar, pleased that I was moving through the world with purpose, yet concerned that the purpose was consuming my every waking moment.

  For his part, Dr. Rudlough devoted his personal time to researching the disease itself. As a physician, he had access to databases and medical documentation that were restricted to me. He compiled lists of the known causes of pulmonary fibrosis and reached out to other physicians who had experience treating the disease. Many were willing to share information about their deceased patients’ exposures and histories. Together, over the weeks, with the help of others in the field, we began to put together a skeleton outline of exposures that kept reappearing.

  Finally, we made a list of each event in Branson’s history that could have possibly led to the scarring of his lungs. Unfortunately for me, it was extensive. Of those patients that had a known cause for the disease, the time between exposure and the onset of symptoms was relatively short. It was the only detail I had going for me. The odds were that whatever caused Branson’s lungs to destroy themselves initiated the progression of the disease fairly late in his life. The law only allowed me to spend six months with him in the past. The timing of exactly which six months to choose would be crucial to Branson’s survival. Out of all the possible exposures in the last year of Branson’s life, we narrowed the best cases down to merely two.

  In the middle of the tenth grade, Branson developed an extensive rash on his shins. We assumed it was a reaction to wearing his soccer shin guards, and the doctor prescribed a medication called methotrexate sodium to help clear it up. One of the listed possible side effects of the drug included lung problems or lung infections, so as small as the possibility was that the medication caused his disease, we kept it on the list.

  The second possible contaminant was the hardware store where Branson worked on and off during the year. During his final months working there before he got sick, the building had the roof replaced. In the process of removing the shingles, it was discovered that some of the plywood underlayment needed replacing as well, so Branson and some of the other boys were sent into the attic to clear out excess inventory so the work could be done. Branson came home every evening freezing and exhausted from the cold of the unheated attic space, but those nights were full of stories about the ridiculous and unusual items the boys discovered while they were cleaning up. Dr. Rudlough surmised that with the age of the building, there was possible asbestos exposure during that time.

  That was all I had to go on. I had three goals to accomplish on my journey back. Keep Branson from using the methotrexate sodium cream on his shins, convince him not to work at the hardware store, and avoid changing too much in the past so as to not convolute the future beyond recognition.

  Armed with my theoretical agenda, I headed to the local branch of the government bureau in charge of travel, the United States Department of Traveling Service, early on a Tuesday morning. Like any government agency, the employees were overworked and understaffed, and therefore, each step of the process was excruciatingly slow. I waited several hours to be seen by my assigned caseworker, Gina.

  When my name was called, I was ushered into what amounted to a warehouse divided into dozens of cubicles. Each caseworker had his or her own cube, and as far as I could see, each cube housed a would-be traveler. I had no idea how prevalent traveling actually was in our society.

  In my family, only my great uncle had ever used his trip. He returned to be with his wife on the day he had asked her to marry him. The Christmas after she died of pancreatic cancer, he arranged to use his trip as a present to himself, to see her one last time. He followed every rule established by the government to the letter and returned home to the world just as he had left it. He died before Valentine’s Day of a massive coronary. I believed his heart had broken.

  I had never entertained thoughts of using my trip later in life as I was growing up. We were taught about the early trials in school. We all knew how badly things could end up if the rules were not followed. We also knew just how difficult those rules were to follow. My parents rarely discussed the issue. They were not risk takers and were content with what they were given by grace in the present day. They believe there was a reason for how and why things were the way they were. There seemed nothing in their linear lives that would be worth risking for the chance to travel back into the past. And so, none of us ever had. Until now.

  Gina was slender, in her mid-thirties, with dark roots and spectacle glasses. She sat at her desk and silently motioned for me to sit in the seat adjacent to her. There were no formalities. Hundreds of muffled voices filled the room as she reviewed my file. She thumbed through hastily. After several minutes, she paused to read a section that seemed to hold her interest. She looked up to meet my gaze.

  “It says that your only brother recently passed away. Is this correct?” she asked.

  “Last July,” I confirmed.

  She read further into my file.

  “Is your desire to travel at this point a direct result of your brother’s death?” she asked bluntly.

  My breath hitched and my voice caught in the back of my throat. I mentally encouraged myself to take air into my lungs and reply with the answer I had prepared.

  “My brother’s sudden death has caused me to reevaluate my own life’s path and focus on not missing out on any of the opportunities this world has to offer. I have always been fascinated by the prospect of traveling and feel that there is no time like the present to take advantage of the valuable option presented to me by the government. So to that end, yes, my brother’s death has compelled me to want to travel at this time.”

  Gina considered me over her glasses. I could not tell if she was considering the sincerity of my answer or whether
she was thinking about how much longer it was until lunch. My stomach lurched.

  I could have very well been denied. People were. Criminals. The mentally challenged. Those people who the government deemed “unfit for travel.” Anyone who they thought might use their trip as an attempt to change the past. They could not take that chance.

  Again, I waited. I heard Gina’s watch ticking off the seconds. I had not let myself consider failure. Not until that very moment. I held my breath. Gina closed my file. She took out a stamp pad and a stamp, and with a thud, placed the word “approved” on my folder.

  She handed me a packet of papers. Lists of meetings and classes to attend. Final paperwork to sign. I took the papers and fled the building so as not to give her a chance to change her mind.

  The mandatory classes reminded me of driver’s education. No one wanted to be there but everyone suffered through, a means to an end. There were quizzes on the equipment that would be sending us back. There were releases to sign. There were rules upon rules to be memorized and recited.

  Many of the people in my classes became friends with one another. I was not there to make friends. I overheard them sharing their stories of when they were returning to and why. There were those who wanted to relive favorite memories. Some who had forgotten something important that needed to be remembered. A few were just looking for something to do. I wondered how many were actually on a mission like I was but were choosing to keep it to themselves. I rarely spoke to anyone during the instructional period, lest I give up too much. I did not want to spoil my only chance before I even took it.

  Eventually, I was given my certificate of completion needed to travel and in the days leading up to my scheduled voyage, I made my final preparations. I was given a psychological evaluation to be sure I could mentally withstand the trip and I was forced to view “the exhibitions,” a series of government sanctioned propaganda aimed at weeding out the weak. It showed clip after clip of families destroyed, friends forgotten, futures irreparably damaged by travelers who were unwilling or unable to obey the laws. The videos were designed to convince a percentage of the population that the risk was far too great and that it would simply be safer for everyone to just continue along on their linear timelines. The success rate for the exhibitions was just over forty percent. I was not a part of that percentage.