Page Fifteen 

Panel 1:  Back to past.  We return to Laurie clutching Tommy as she runs across the grass of their front yard towards the car.  The reader is facing the house.  The trunk of the car faces the reader.  In the background, the window of the room this scene was once viewed from is visible.  Tommy cries and is still steaming and red.  Laurie has a nervous expression but  appears determined, biting her lip as she runs with her baby in her arms.  She is panting.

Panel 2:  Jumping into the car, Laurie keeps Tommy held to her chest.  There is a child seat strapped to the backseat, which remains empty.  She is huffing and puffing while Tommy cries.  This shot is closer to the characters and we can see the red, scalded skin now, and the steam still coming off of Tommy, though not quite as much as there was earlier.

Panel 3:  This panel is the same scene, focusing on Laurie’s face. She is now in the car with the door shut.  Tommy is being held in her lap.  The engine rumbles.

Panel 4:  This panel is outside of the car.  Through the back window of the car, Laurie’s head is silhouetted in the front seat.

Panel 5:  Same shot as the car peels out wildly in reverse and swerves out of the driveway to the right, moving just past the focal point.

Panel 6:  Same shot just after the car has sped off from the shot moving forward and left off the panel.  The exhaust can be seen coming from the direction of where the car exited. 

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Page Eight

 Panel 1:  Back to past.  Laurie holds baby Tommy, who is steaming, red and naked, in her hands, which are also scalded and red with burns. She holds him away from her body as she runs into the bathroom.

Panel 2:  Laurie wraps Tommy in a towel.  Her arms are scalded from his skin and the boiling bathe water that they were plunged in.  She is panicked and is panting from running around.  Tommy is crying loudly.

Panel 3:  Laurie runs out of room holding the steaming baby in her arms.

Panel 4:  Shot of the room after Tommy and Laurie have exited.

Page Nine

Panel 1:  Laurie runs into another room, holding Tommy, who is still steaming and crying loudly but is now wrapped in a blanket and is being held to her chest.  This room has a window with a view of the driveway outside the house.  There is a car in the driveway.

Panel 2:  Close up of Laurie’s scalded fingers as they dial numbers on the phone.

Panel 3:  Same view as first panel.  Laurie holds the phone (with a cord) to her ear with one hand; the other arm is clutching a screaming Tommy to her chest.  She is panicked and impatient.

Panel 4:  Same scene.  Laurie screams into the phone.

Laurie:  I need to talk to Dan…I don’t care, this is his wife…please, listen…THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! GET MY HUSBAND ON THE GODDAMN PHONE NOW!

Panel 5:  Same scene.

Laurie:  (sobbing and speaking quickly) Dan!  Tommy’s smoking!  I’m taking him to thehospital now!  Meet me at the emergency room — Please hurry!

Page Ten

Panel 1:  Laurie, having dropped the phone on the floor, runs out of the room with Tommy in her arms.

Phone:  What?  Laurie, wait!

Panel 2:  View of the room after the Laurie and Tommy have exited.

Phone:  Did you say Tommy’s smoking?

Panel 3:  Same scene.  From the window, Laurie can be seen holding Tommy in her arms still.  She runs towards car.

Phone:  Laurie!…

Panel 4:  Same scene.  Car skids out of the driveway.

Phone:  …Hello?

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Chapter 1

Page One

Panel 1:  Hot water pours out of a sink.

Panel 2:  Pans out to an infant bathtub beginning to overflow in the sink as the water pours into it.

Panel 3:  A woman, Laurie, notices the sink overflowing.  The woman is average, attractive.  She is around 30 in age.

Laurie:  Oh shit.

Panel 4:  Laurie stops the water.

Panel 5:  Laurie picks up her baby.

Laurie:  Is Tommy ready for his bath?  You aren’t going to kick and scream at mommy again, are you? 

Panel 6:  Laurie puts her baby into the bath.

Laurie:  I hope not.  Mommy doesn’t want a visit from Child Services.

Page Two

(NOTE:  the panels will be sliced vertically so they are side by side and each take up the length of the page)

Panel 1:  Laurie’s hands are seen washing her baby who is smiling and cooing.

Panel 2:  The water shows some bubbles and gets slightly redder as the baby stops smiling.

Panel 3:  The water bubbles moderately, redder.  The baby’s face has an expression like he is about to cry.

Panel 4:  The water is bubbling as it boils. The baby is much redder and begins to cry.

Laurie:  Aow!

Page Three

(NOTE:  splash page)

Panel 1:  Shot at an angle looking upward.  Laurie holds her baby up out of the bath.  The baby is beet red and naked.  He is dripping wet and crying.   Steam is coming off of his scalded skin.

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The song is an enchanting time machine. While I was driving my work van full of kids the other day, a song came on the radio that I hadn’t heard in about a decade. It took me back. For a moment I was an awkward young teen at a dimly lit and dismally decorated dance, held in the dank basement of my town’s YMCA. It was a Friday night in the late ’90s. In present time I almost crashed into an oncoming car, which would have had horrible implications for my career, not to mention the lives of the eight children in my care. But I was teary-eyed. I was reliving a night that would forever warp the way that I would feel about “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Aerosmith’s power-ballad written for the movie Armageddon.

Previously, said song had the same effect on me as it did most teenagers living in the suburbs of Boston. “Aerosmith used to be so cool,” I would say, thinking of my greatest hits tape I bought in the bargain bin of the local record store. “They really used to rock hard. What is this shit?” It would be this shit that would make me hide in the moldy locker room, adjacent to the dance, and cry my sorry eyes dry.

The day before the dance, Kera Russet promised me a slow dance. Kera Russet was a normal 7th grade girl. She was concerned with TRL, doing well on her school work and making plans with her friends. She was short and absolutely adorable. I was totally smitten by her. And, as with most infamous romances, mine was unrequited. With the excitement of the YMCA dance looming in our immediate future, Kera told me that she would save me a dance. I did not sleep that night.

Although I wore my coolest Jinko pants and used a liberal amount of my father’s aftershave, life did not follow my intricate planning. Granted, had I gotten my promised dance, Kera would have been seduced by my ability to sway from side to side as I held her waist and stood arm’s length away from her. And had she been seduced, surely, more than ten years later, Kera and I would still happily be swaying to the current Top 40s. Our mirthful future all but sealed, I strutted into the Y, making sure to pull my baggy pants up to my thighs, with a naive confidence.

“Um, David, that was a car.”

“Yes, Patrick,” I said, responding to the child sitting behind me in the van while wiping my teary eyes. “That was a car.” I was annoyed. Patrick was interrupting my moment.  I spent $5 to get into the dance. Once inside, I hung around the wall most of the evening with the other kids who were too cool to dance but decided to pay to go to a dance anyway. I bided my time. I don’t recall if I hadn’t yet seen her or if I was waiting for a particularly special song to dance to, but the evening was quickly approaching its end. The DJ announced the last song.

I could stay awake just to hear you breeeathin’

My heart kicked at my chest. My head spun around, the dance floor circled me. All those uncoordinated feet! Which belonged to my sweet, sweet Kera?

Watch you smile while you are sleeping, while you’re far away and dreeeeaming

I grew panicked. I was losing valuable time.

I could spend my life in this sweet surrender, I could stay lost in this moment foreeever

And then I saw her. She looked beautiful, but her hands weren’t where they were supposed to be. They should have been on my shoulders, arm’s length away from the rest of her body. Instead, she was arm’s length away from Dirk Sinclair. I stood there for a moment, dumbstruck.

Where every moment spent with you is a moment I treeaasssuuurrrre

Feeling my lip quiver, I though I would take the solitary road to the men’s locker room before anyone saw me cry. It was better that people thought I was too cool for this stupid song than heartbroken. I sat on a bench alone and cried woefully as Steven Tyler brought all the wrong emotions to my ears, muffled only by stucco walls.

Don’t wanna close my eyesI don’t want to fall asleep Because I’d miss you babe And I don’t want to miss a thing.

“David, are you crying?”

“No, Patrick. Change the station, this song is stupid.”

One day, maybe Patrick will know how that song makes me feel, even a lifetime after its original airplay. Maybe when he hears the same song in days to come he will feel the impending fear of near head-to-head car collisions. I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I like to think that there are songs like these out there for everyone. Songs we may love or not really care for, but that take us back to a brief moment in our past. That bring us back to a more innocent time, a happier time, or a heart-wrenching time.  Kera, if you’re out there - I still miss you babe, and I don’t want to miss a thing.

            My car stood still at the intersection.  It stood waiting to jump into a free flowing river of cars but the current would not stop long enough.  It would have taken me a matter of seconds to make a left turn, to drive through one lane and turn into the other, however, no one would let me through.  Three minutes.  Three whole minutes and some change, actually.  It would have taken one person in one car a matter of seconds to pause and let me continue on my way, but there is no decency on the commuter’s road.

            Many of the drivers who did not pause noticed me.  I saw them notice me.  But each must have thought, “What difference would it make?  I am in a hurry.  Someone else will let him through.”  But no, that was bullshit. The next driver, thinking similar thoughts, did not stop, nor the next nor the one after that one.  From both directions they just kept going.  Coming and going.  They were almost indistinct in their barrage of transport.  No one would wait for a single driver.  One single driver who just wanted to be on his way like everyone else in the flooding river of commuterism.

            It took effort but I hated every single one of those drivers.  As each drove by, they must have though that there were too many cars for me to take particular notice of them specifically.  But each driver thinking that was wrong.  I did hate them.  Specifically.  I took the time with each passing car to get angry all over again with that very driver in particular.  And each time I became angry anew it was more hateful than the anger a millisecond proceeding it.

            Three whole minutes is a very long time to sit, just waiting to move.  It is a long time to hate so many different strangers, one at a time.  As the stream of cars flooded the roadways, my hatred for them flooded my body.  I hit the steering wheel; I shook my head disapprovingly at the thoughtless driver who would glance over at me; I spoke horrible profanities and cursed my seemingly endless enemies.  It took three whole minutes until all my hostile anger was dammed up and drained.

            One driver in the lane closest to me slowed to a stop.  Her car stopped moving in front of me with enough room to let me in through.  I almost cursed her, too.  I didn’t realize at first that she was unlike the others; I thought she would be part of the despicable current that forbade me passage on my way.  But she stopped, and as she stopped she forced the others behind her to halt, too.  Though the immediate car behind her tried to leak through by driving around her, there was no room and the villain was forced to wait with her as she waited with me. 

            The cars in the lane I wanted to be in showed no sign of stopping, and I did not drive in front of the car waiting for me.  Yet it waited just the same.  She waited as long as I had to wait until I would be granted passage.  She sat patiently and I grew patient, too.  I no longer had to wait all alone.  I was still going nowhere and there was no telling when I would be able to move, but I was not so angry anymore.  Underneath all the beeping of horns from cars behind her was a serenity.  It was just us waiting, someone sacrificing her time to me and me, at an intersection and I knew that everything was going to be okay.

As I read on, I wondered about the validity of the story.  Maybe it was from a story my father had read about in one of his old ship books.  Maybe he had heard the story at one of the auctions he’d attended.  Or maybe he really had these visions.  Maybe any second now the phone would ring and a very embarrassed hospital employee would tell me that through some modern miracle my father had survived.  Somehow, after being given up on, pronounced dead and stuck in a drawer the unbelievable happened.  The coroner heard banging from inside the one of the slabs and almost had a heart attack.  He quickly rushed to the sound and opened the metal prism.  And up shot my father, breathing hard and praising his uncanny chance at survival.  I watched the phone on my father’s desk, which remained silent.  Waiting for the call, I continued to read.

“MacCormack had his pistol ready at his side as he moved to the door.  He opened it and jumped sideways as eight men running with a large wooden log, mid-charge, barreled passed him.  The men, who intended to break down the bolted door, sailed through the room and battered against the side of the ship, smashing the captain’s desk and jolting the entire boat.  MacCormack, who had stumbled into the wall, flung around and gave his attention to the rest of the crew.  They ambled in, a dense mob.  The captain raised his gun and fired a shot straight ahead.  One of the men shrieked and grabbed at his torn ear.  The rest, startled, moved away.  Yelling with his gun raised, MacCormack dashed through the opening.  It was clear that the fear of death spurred them, though they had acted so gracelessly when given the gift of life.  Yet, once MacCormack had charged down the deck they were after him again.  Their sheer numbers could withstand the power of the pistol.  They were determined to equalize, to kill.  The boat rocked gently on the calm water, freed from the hands of its crew.

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It was past midnight when I got off the phone with the doctor.  It took me some time to hang up.  I felt like as long as I didn’t hang up the phone the news would not be final.  When I finally did hang up, all I wanted to do was go sleep in my childhood bed.  I wanted my parents to be across the hall.  I swallowed my pity and tried to act my age.  It was too late to go to the hospital and take care of the business that death brings.  I walked back to my father’s desk and picked up the story where I had left off.

“Moving as quickly as dying men can, the corpse bearers left the newly dead bodies on the floor and rushed to get their captain.  He was found within the clouds of his quarters staring into the tobacco smoke distantly.  The pipe lay in front of him on the table.  The men explained that there was a commotion coming from within the sanctuary.  MacCormack did not ask what it sounded like or if they inspected what was making the racket.  Instead, he looked like he was awakened from a dream.  Heeding the words his crewmen spoke a second time, he nodded silently.  He had trouble looking into their eyes underneath their puffy faces.  Rising from his chair he walked passed them out the door, as if he knew just what to do.  They followed at his feet in a hurry and ended up back at the door of the sanctuary.  Standing over two dead men lying on the floor, they all heard the sound of some nameless creatures trying to open the sealed door from the other side.

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           My father had a small sailboat and a sense of adventure.  As a child, I would venture aboard with him about once a year.  He loved the feeling of being surrounded by the ocean.  It made me feel helpless.  Dad seemed to have a second life out there - a place where he could get away from the first one.  I think everyone needs something like that, to put things into perspective.  As he grew older, his interest in nautical themes grew, too.  He sailed further away from the land he had started.  I wonder if it was having a family that held him back from living a life at sea.  I wonder if he really wanted to leave it all behind and sail out.

            “The shop was a cluttered mess of unrecognizable artifacts all on top of each other.  Smoke emanated from someplace unknown but filled the shop.  Despite the great silence inside, everything seemed it would chime if MacCormack were to touch it.  He kept his hands by his sides.  As he walked through the narrow shop he found that it expanded considerably in length, becoming much larger than it had appeared from outside.  And yet before he was even halfway through, still unable to see where the store ended, from somewhere between the trinkets and displays the shopkeeper appeared before him.

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            By the time I was brought into his hospital room, my father was in a coma.  He was not expected to awaken.  I was given an explanation of how his digestive track was sluggish, his teeth were too weak to chew the proteins he needed, his heart had slowed and his lungs were fragile.  Then I was left with the dying man.  At this early point, I took the news better than expected.  I was close with my dad and love him with all my heart, but I know what happens when people get old.  I talked to him the entire night, sharing my memories and telling him where my life was going and all the things he’d missed in between.

            “Captain MacCormack, a merchant ship captain, was hired to sail for Queen Victoria.  During her years of seclusion, she gave him orders to sail his crew all the way around India to the Pacific island of Tedha on the outer circle of Melanesia.  It was a long journey with a simple purpose.  MacCormack was issued to make a pick up.  The rest of the details remained foggy in my smoke induced dream.

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  Mixed between some deeds and tax slips, I found the story.  My father was not a writer, and it seemed out of character for him to have written it.  The story was scribbled in a desk journal of black leather.  The journal was covered amidst white paper filling the boxes of his dark study. It was about the captain of a clipper ship, which was less surprising.  My father had a penchant for the nautical.  He always had.  A week before I found the story I was called up by the hospital he was resting in.  He was a lively, strong and light-hearted man.  I can’t quite get used to think of him in the past tense.  But I realize that the man I call my father is now gone.

  The story began like this:

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