“You know my name?”

  “Let’s say, I have a good a memory.”

  “Did you just draw a winkie face?” I sign, trying to puzzle out what he’d added at the the end of his last sentence.

  “Isn’t that what the kids do these days?”

  I shrug, sign: “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t, Lee.”

  “Are you my boxing trainer?”

  “No, Lee.”

  I turn toward him, drop my hands in my lap, gather my thoughts and memory and sign: “I’m sorry, but where do you know me from?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “Soon,” he spells out into my palm.

  “Well, my dog seems to know you.”

  “She is a good dog. More angel than canine. She is here to serve you and help you; she is proud of her job.”

  “Um, what?”

  “She also loves you unconditionally, Lee. She lives for you and your needs.”

  “Who are you?” I sign again.

  I can feel my heart picking up a little. Each time the man—and for some reason I suspect he is an older man—signs into my hand, I get nearly uncontrollable shivers. And flashes in my mind. Brief flashes. I see my mother before she died, smiling at me from her deathbed. She shouldn’t be smiling. Her body is literally dying. Another brief flash of the ocean. I used to run along the Santa Monica beaches on the weekend. I was a true weekend warrior back in the day. But at least I was consistent. Every Saturday and Sunday, I would run for as long as I could, pushing myself each time to go further and further. Another flash, another vision. This time of a golden retriever with big brown eyes, staring at me from over her furry paws, eyebrows raised, watching my every move. Other than Betsie, I’ve never owned a golden retriever, and try as I might, I can’t remember a friend who owned one either. Certainly I had seen them being walked, or in commercials. But I don’t remember having one look at me with such…love.

  “What’s happening?” I sign. “Who are you?”

  The man next to me sits motionless. I reach my hand out for him to sign into, but he doesn’t. Not yet. Instead, more visions come to me: of my first girlfriend, of my first kiss, of the sky at night, of the surrounding San Gabriel mountain peaks. Finally, after a steady stream of vision, he takes my hand. But not to sign into it. Instead, he takes it and holds it within both of his, and I am surprised by what I feel next. It is something I am certain I have not felt in many years, even before the explosion. As he holds my hand in both of his, as his two hands completely close over my own, as I feel their warmth and strength, I feel what I am certain is love. Radiating through his hands, through his strong grip that even now is shaking, but not with the effort of gripping my hand, no, but with the outpouring of love, the transmission of love, from him to me.

  What’s happening?

  I don’t know, but I don’t question, I don’t resist. Hell, I couldn’t resist him if I tried. The old man has my hand and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Or want to do about it.

  And so I sat there and let this man named Jack hold my hand, and let his love flow through me…

  ***

  Finally, he releases my hand, his fingers uncurling, one at a time.

  I am acutely aware—as I sit next to this stranger who may not be a stranger—that something has happened to me. I do not know what or how or why. Just something. I can feel it stirring within me, like a living thing awakening. It’s an energy, and I feel it flowing through me, swirling, moving. I imagine a sea creature moving over rocks and through coral and over shipwrecks, a moray eel looking, looking, looking.

  No. Not looking. Growing. Spreading. And…

  Healing. And not just healing my broken body, but my broken spirit. I almost sense it mending my cells, my psyche, my heart. Wherever it touches, I imagine new growth, new life.

  I’m dreaming. I’m in bed. This isn’t really happening.

  Whatever this is. Just a man. Just an older man showing me some compassion. And holding my hand. And pouring love into me. Unlike anything I’d ever felt in my life.

  I can feel myself shaking now. But not out of fear, and not even out of excitement. I’m shaking with whatever is moving through me, whatever has transferred from him to me. Love? Healing? Both?

  Using just my left hand—my free hand—I spell out the words: “What is happening?”

  He turns my hand over. “Love is happening,” comes the carefully written response into my palm, each line, each swirl, each loop, each curve, sending another shudder through me. Another and another and another…

  “Am I dreaming?” I spell out.

  “No, Lee.”

  “How do you know my name?” I ask again, now using both hands to sign. “And no doubletalk. Give it to me straight.”

  He spells: “Once a cop, always a cop.”

  I nod, and I can feel myself sweating now. I wipe my brow and pull at my collar, getting some air. Just as I’m wiping my palm, he takes my hand again, and spells: “You spoke to a little girl the other day.”

  I turn to him. If I could have blinked, I would have. Instead, my mouth drops open. I wonder if I’ve made a sound. I don’t know. I am flabbergasted and don’t know what to say—or to sign—and so, I sit there unmoving, quiet.

  “She asked you to say a prayer with her, do you remember, Lee?”

  Now, I do blink. Behind my shades. Worthless blinks, but it’s the only response my body has, the only reaction I’m seemingly capable of. Finally, after twenty seconds, I nod.

  “She prayed for your sight to return, and you prayed with her, praying as best as you could. ‘Dear God, please help me see again.’”

  I am breathing as calmly as I can through the tracheal tube. I can feel it sputtering a little. It needs to be cleaned soon. The old man is holding my hand lightly again, and I feel more and more energy coming from him. I can feel it spreading over my shoulders, moving up and down my spine. I’ve felt such energy before. But this energy feels…foreign. Not my own. Introduced, so to speak.

  “How sincere were you, Lee?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How sincere was your prayer? Do you believe that you can see again?”

  I smile now, certain I am dreaming, but knowing there is a small chance that this could really be happening, and an even bigger chance that someone is playing the world’s sickest practical joke on me.

  I sign, “I have no eyes, Jack.”

  He holds my hand with one of his and pats it with his other. A grandfatherly gesture. “Very well. We shall go with Plan B, as they say.”

  I release his hand, and sign: “What does that mean?”

  But he is already standing. I feel him reaching over and patting Betsie’s head. Her tail wags so hard that my shins might bruise. He’s leaving, I’m sure of it.

  “Wait,” I sign, holding out my hand into the darkness.

  A long moment later, I feel his strong and gentle hands take my wrist, turn it over, and spell out the words: “Help is coming.”

  I sense him moving away…and he is gone.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It is later, and I am just stepping inside my apartment.

  Uber is a godsend. Without it, I would still be struggling with the bus schedules and the long walk back to the apartment. With it, I get door-to-door service.

  Speaking of godsend, I cannot take my mind off the man I had just met. The man named Jack. The man who knew about the little girl and my prayer. A man who had asked if my prayer was sincere. And when my answer didn’t fully satisfy him, I was told, “Very well. We shall go with Plan B, as they say.”

  No. It’s not that my answer didn’t satisfy him. My answer showed my own lack of faith.

  I carefully hang up my keys on the keyring next to the door. I release Betsie’s harness and she trots off—I suspect over to her bowl of water. I bet she drinks loudly, really slopping up the water.

  If not for my injuries, I would still be a homicide investigator. I would have seen five years’ worth of murders and the worst of humanity. I would have interviewed hundreds of witnesses, seen dozens upon dozens of bodies. I would have done my best to connect the dots to find the killers…or, in the least, to find answers.

  I would have looked at the facts, the evidence, interpreted witness statements, decide who is lying to me and who is not. Ultimately, it is the facts that tell the stories, that hold up in court. It is the facts that solve cases, facts that put the bad guys away. I’ve lived by facts. Emotion has little to no use in my business. Emotions get in the way. Emotions cloud facts.

  Emotions get you blown up, I think, and head over to my refrigerator.

  Once there, I find the beer easily enough on the second shelf. I’m not so cool that I know where everything is in my refrigerator, but I have a pretty good idea. I twist off the cap and drink the beer down, knowing I need to soon clean my tracheal tube.

  The old man—Jack—hadn’t asked about my emotions. No. He had asked if I was sincere and if I believed. Believed in what? Miracles?

  I shake my head and drink, surprised and amused and alarmed that I had taken the conversation seriously. He was, after all, an old man. Rambling, delusional. Except, of course, he had known about the little girl.

  And my prayer.

  I drink more of the beer, and am surprised that it is already gone. How the hell had that happened, I don’t know. I open the fridge and reach for another one.

  The answer to the old man’s question—and I am certain he was an old man—is that I have very little faith. Very, very little.

  If any.

  Yes, I had prayed with a little girl. Her request, after all, hadn’t been entirely unreasonable. It had been sweet, and I needed more sweetness in my life. And so, I had gone along with her words, repeating them, or mouthing them. And, yeah, maybe for a nanosecond, maybe even less than that, I could feel the hope of her words, and they had gripped me, briefly. But I had let the hope go instantly. Hell, I had forgotten about the prayer altogether.

  Until the old man Jack came along.

  So, what’s going on here? I think into the empty kitchen, lifting the second beer up to my lips.

  The answer is: I haven’t a clue.

  Strange shit. And then I add: Sorry about the shit part.

  I’m about to head over to the couch and finish drinking the beer and pet my dog and, no doubt, dwell on all of this and more, when I feel my cell phone buzz in my pocket. Three straight buzzes. Someone is at my front door.

  ***

  I feel paws pounding over the Pergo flooring.

  No doubt, Betsie is barking up a storm. Always good to let people know that the blind man in the apartment has a big, protective dog. Nothing wrong with that. Except, this is Saturday afternoon, and the person at the door would be my brother, Robert.

  At the door, I sign: “My brother from the same mother.”

  An old joke. A stupid joke. My lame attempt to get things off on the right foot, especially with the tension lately. Instead of signing back into my palm, I feel him brush past me.

  I shut the door, turn around, sign: “Everything okay, Rob?”

  There’s no response—not for maybe a half a minute or more.

  And then, I feel him take my hand. There’s a slight pause before he signs into it: “I’m sorry, Lee.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” he signs again, and it occurs to me that my brother is weeping. I don’t know how I know this. Maybe I sense a shuddering in him, a change in the air flow around me, warmer than normal hands. I don’t know.

  But, yes, I am certain of it.

  My brother is weeping.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I ask if he wants to sit; he doesn’t want to.

  I ask if he wants a beer, and he says no, which isn’t such a bad thing, since I had just opened the last beer, I think. Still, if he had wanted a beer, I would have given what I had left of it.

  And so, we stand there some more, just inside the front door, one of us weeping and the other confused as hell. I can feel Betsie’s tail whooshing against my ankles. She always loved my brother and was, undoubtedly, doing her best to patiently wait for the scratches that had yet to come. Okay, maybe there are two of us confused as hell.

  After a moment, I sign: “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” he signs quickly back into my outstretched hand. My brother and I have been signing like this seemingly forever. I know my brother’s fingertips better than any brother should ever know. My brother is a sloppy signer, not always finishing his signs, and often seguing too fast into the next letter and leaving me to guess what he is saying. I usually guess correctly. Or maybe he just never bothers to correct me.

  I wait. Betsie waits, too. Her tail has stopped swishing. I can almost see her looking at my brother, head cocked to one side, ears perked up. Big, brown, wet eyes looking concerned. The way only a dog can look.

  “You sure you don’t want to sit?” I ask.

  He taps my shoulder twice for no, our own private sign language. Our brotherly sign language. Now, I’m getting concerned. My brother doesn’t exactly have a history of having made good choices. To this day, he still asks to borrow money, and so, I give it to him. He never repays. Ever. Despite saying, each and every time, that he will. Then again, what use did I have for money, other than to provide for my basic needs?

  It is better to help him, I often think, than to never see him. I’ll take what I can get. He is, after all, the only family I have…and the only person who visits me on a regular basis.

  And so I stand there and wait, wondering what my brother has gotten himself into. Wondering if I am going to have to pull another favor to bail him out again. The last favor was when he’d been arrested in a prostitution sting. Apparently, my brother frequents the back pages of want ads, the kind of back pages that can get one arrested. I had called in a very big favor…and my brother had been spared, although he’d spent a night in jail, for which I don’t think he’s forgiven me.

  Like they say, you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.

  Over the last five years, my brother has done much to help me. I would love to say that we’ve grown closer because of the experience—that my brother is a better man for having helped me, that he’s matured and grown and become more responsible, that he embraced the situation and rose to the challenge. I would love to say all that and more, but I can’t. My brother is, if anything, growing more bitter with each visit, more resentful. I do what I can to make his life easier. I do all the chores and errands I can safely do, so that when he gets here, there’s only the matter of, say, going through my mail with me. Or of going online and paying bills and transferring funds. Or, if he has the time, of going through my emails with me. He usually doesn’t have the time. I haven’t checked my email accounts in many months.

  And so I wait with my dog, who’s sitting obediently at my feet, waiting for the attention that my brother never gives her. I hold her harness, although I know she will never run. Holding her harness is, if anything, for my own peace of mind.

  What happens next hasn’t happened, I think, ever. Definitely not since my accident, and I doubt before, either. My brother hugs me tight, snatching me in both hands and pulling me toward him. He buries his face in my neck and, yes, I can feel his hot tears against my skin. I stand there, stunned, holding Betsie with one hand. Finally, I reach up with my free arm and hug my brother in return. Now, he is weeping into my neck, hard enough that I am certain my neighbors can hear. Or not. Maybe he’s crying silently, with lots of wheezing and gasping. But I don’t think so. I think my little brother is crying loudly. After all, Betsie is trying to claw her way up to him, reacting to his sobs in ways that she generally reacts to my own.

  As I hold my brother in return, as perplexed tears find their way to my own eyes, I am thinking my brother has finally turned the corner. Finally letting go of his anger toward me. Finally embracing our current situation, tough as it might be.

  Finally, he pulls away and I feel his tears still on my cheek and I am smiling like a goofy, proud older brother. I leave one hand on his shoulder and pat him and nod, and mouth the words: “Feel better now?”

  As I hold his shoulder, I feel him shake his head, and then he takes my hand from his shoulder, holds it before him, then signs into it: “I can’t do this anymore, Lee.”

  “Can’t do what?” I sign, completely confused.

  He takes my hand again, and I can feel him sobbing some more, perhaps even harder. “This,” he signs, “will be my last time.”

  Something inside me shuts down. Maybe my lungs. Maybe my ability to process thought. Hell, maybe my heart. And so I just stand there, too stunned to move or think or respond or to feel or to hope or to believe.

  “I’m leaving, Lee,” he continues into my palm. “I’m leaving California. Moving to Florida once I pass a few tests. I met a girl. We’re happy. I need a break from this. All of this. It’s too crazy for me. Too much. I can’t handle it anymore.”

  I release Betsie’s harness and point inside. I feel her trot off into the apartment. She will stay. She always stays.

  “I’m sorry, Lee,” he signs. “I’m sorry.”

  I raise my hands. “Will I see you again?”

  “I’m sorry, Lee.”

  He hugs me again, crying and convulsing. I pat his back and mouth the words, “It’s okay,” even though I know he can’t see them, even though I am not sure I even mean them. No, I am certain I don’t mean them. I continue patting his shoulder and the back of his head as he sobs into my neck, and with each sob, I know that things won’t be okay. With each sob, I know the likelihood of me seeing my brother again drifts further and further away.

  He’s really leaving me. A part of me doesn’t blame him, although a bigger part of me is too wounded for thought or feeling or action.

  All I can do is pat his head and tell him it’s going to be okay, even though he can’t hear me or see my lips moving.