Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [171]
These dismal thoughts ricocheted around Charlie’s mind as he quivered with the shock of the news and of Anna’s sudden revulsion and exit. He was trembling, curled over his stomach. He sat beside Nick, swept Joe up into his arms, then let him struggle free. But for once Joe didn’t go too far away, and Nick leaned into him, crouched in his enfolding arm. They watched the reporters breathlessly reporting what they had already reported, waiting right there on camera for more news. Charlie turned down the sound and tried to call Roy, but Roy’s cell phone was now busy, and he didn’t pick up call waiting. Probably he was deluged with calls. The fact that he had called Charlie at all was a reflexive gesture, a reach for an anchor. Roy needed Charlie to know what he knew. But by now he was no doubt overwhelmed. Nothing to do but wait. “Come on, Phil,” Charlie prayed in a mutter. But it didn’t feel good to say that. “Hang in there. The longer it goes on,” he said to Nick, “the better the chances are that he’ll be all right. They can do amazing things in intensive care these days.”
Nick nodded, round-eyed. Phrases splintered in Charlie’s mind as he watched his boys and tried to think. He wanted to curse, mindlessly and repetitively, but for the boys’ sake he didn’t. Joe knew he was upset, and so occupied himself in the way he usually did when that happened, getting absorbed in his blocks and dinosaurs. Nick was leaning back against him as if to shore him up. Charlie felt a surge of love for them, then fear. What would become of them in such a fucked-up world?
“What’s so wrong?” Joe asked, looking at Charlie curiously.
“Someone tried to hurt Phil.”
“A guy shot him,” Nick said.
Joe’s eyes went round. “Well,” he said, looking back and forth at their faces. “At least he didn’t shoot the whole world.”
“That’s true,” Nick said.
“You get what you get,” Joe reminded them.
Anna barged back in the door. “Sorry guys, I just had to get away for a second.”
“That’s okay,” they all told her.
“Any news?” she asked fearfully.
“No news.”
“He’s still alive,” Nick pointed out. Then: “We should call Frank. Do you think he’s heard?”
“I don’t know. It depends where he is. Word will have spread fast.”
“I can call his FOG phone.”
“Sure, give it a try.”
Anna came over and plumped down heavily on the couch. “What, you have the sound off?”
“I couldn’t stand it.”
She nodded, the corners of her mouth locked tight. She put her arm around his shoulders. “You poor guy. He’s your friend.”
“I think he’s going to be all right,” Charlie declared.
“I hope so.”
But Charlie knew what that meant. Hope is a wish that we doubt will come true, she had once said to him, on a rare occasion when she had been willing to discuss it; she had been quoting some philosopher she had read in a class, maybe Spinoza, Charlie couldn’t remember, and wasn’t about to ask now. He found it a chilling definition. There was more to hope than that. For him it was a rather common emotion, indeed a kind of default mode, or state of being; he was always hoping for something. Hoping for the best. There was something important in that, some principle that was more than just a wish that you doubted would come true, some essential component of dealing with life. The tug of the future. The reason you tried. You had to hope for things, didn’t you? Life hoped to live and then tried to live. “He’s going to be all right,” Charlie insisted, as if contradicting someone, and he got up to go to the kitchen, his throat suddenly clenching. “If he was going to die he would