Null Pointer
Loquacious Lumberings
May - Brian
May Crawl - 1,433 words
Do a 3% challenge using your word count from the last crawl you finished – 57 words / 1:42.
Participate in a 10-minute word war – 287 words, loser.
Write 250 words – 7:57.
Write for 10 minutes – 222 words.
Write a dramatic scene – 546 words / 21:18.
1,433 words.
Brian’s hands were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing—outlining posters for the fundraiser the Bob-Whites were running in conjunction with the Sleepyside Florist to benefit earthquake and tsunami recovery in southeast Asia. This had been his job ever since the Bob-Whites had begun running fundraisers. He was hardly the only Bob-White with steady hands and neat penmanship, but he was always the one assigned to this task. Jim could do it as well as Brian could, but Jim was a perfectionist, and it was never perfect, which frustrated him. Honey’s penmanship was far better than Brian’s, but she could never get the spacing right; she always ended up with either a gap at the bottom or ran out of room and had to cram things in. So he outlined the posters. Di would paint them, with help from Honey. Mart and Dan would sell the Mother’s Day bouquets. Mart was a surprisingly effective salesman, perhaps because of his way with words. Dan relied on his undeniable charm, and was, perhaps, even more effective. Trixie would power the whole endeavor with unfailing energy and enthusiasm. Jim would direct their efforts and keep them all on track. The fundraiser would go off successfully and would doubtless raise plenty of money, especially if the Sleepyside gossip grapevine had gathered that, while the disaster had happened half a world away, it was at the same time much closer to home than the usual international crisis.
The problem was that it was an entirely typical Bob-White fundraiser, an entirely typical Bob-White response to a tragedy. The problem was that there was nothing entirely typical about this situation for Brian, which was probably why, while his hands were obediently doing the work, his mind was in very disobedient turmoil.
Sarai’s words repeated over and over in his mind like a mantra.
I know you’re a fixer, but you can’t fix this. It’s bigger than us, bigger than just Phil.
If he believed her, or could make himself believe her words, he could convince himself that everything he had felt and thought since that call was simple grief, intense in the moment of experience, but soon enough it would dissipate, allowing him to resume his normal life, if only changed by the loss of his friend. But he didn’t believe her, didn’t believe it was hopeless. He’d never before considered himself an optimist, but he did believe that there was always a way to fix anything, if enough people were dedicated enough to the solution. The problem here was that he didn’t know what the solution was.
Or perhaps, the real problem was that he did know the solution and was rebelling against it. He wanted to deny it, had tried to tell himself that it was all just grief, but as each hour and day went on, he began to believe it was fate pulling him down this alternate path.
The problem with this fate wasn’t the outcome. He had no doubt that he’d be one of those who would come to say “with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” That wasn’t the part that worried him. The worry was what would happen along the road. He could lose his job over this. He could lose Honey over this. Honestly, he deserved to lose Honey over this, and all that had occurred between them prior to this point of divergence. He would, without a doubt, lose all the comfort and security of diligently following The Plan. His friends had teasingly tagged him “Boring Brian”, but most days he really didn’t mind that as much as they probably thought he should. Boring was predictable. Boring was safe. He knew what was coming next with boring. This path was altogether uncertain.
Uncertain. Uncomfortable. Unpredictable. In all likelihood, downright impossible. And still, unavoidable.
He wasn’t delusional, or so deeply in denial, that he would try to claim it wasn’t at least partially grief. But he was also clear that it wasn’t all grief. Some of it was laced with feelings of urgency and necessity that didn’t belong in any model of grief. One of his best friends during his schooling was dead. A friend with a dream as bold and life-altering—for a very many lives, at that—as his best friend, Jim Frayne’s dream for a school for boys who had no other options. Brian would do anything he could to see Jim’s dream succeed in reality. He hadn’t thought there was anything he could do to see Phil’s dream to be a successful reality that Phil wasn’t already doing. But that was before the earthquake and its subsequent tsunami had destroyed the start Phil had made turning his dream into reality. That was before the earthquake and its subsequent tsunami had taken Phil’s life out of this reality.
Now there was something he could do to help this dream become a reality, stay a reality. If Phil had to die, his dream, at least, needed to survive. Whatever it took. It would take more than Brian should want to give, under normal circumstances. Of course, this wasn’t normal circumstances.
The next challenge to Brian’s plan was convincing Sarai to help him. Sarai who had already told him the situation was hopeless and there was nothing they could do to fix it. He also didn’t have forever to convince her, so wearing her down with shear persistence wasn’t an option. He wasn’t exactly an expert negotiator, but he was going to have to give it his best and fastest shot.
“Good morning, Brian,” Sarai answered her phone cheerfully enough.
Brian chuckled. “You know it’s after sunset here, and I just worked a double, covering for some doctors in New York City down with a late spring flu, right?”
“I didn’t but it’s a bright sunny morning here and I’m looking forward to it, so your sleepy gloom will just have to be smothered by my sunny optimism.”
“Optimism is what I’m calling you for.”
“Any my optimism has suddenly turned to quaking fear,” Sarai said drily.
“The last time we spoke, you said I couldn’t fix what happened to Phil. That it was bigger than just Phil. You were right. It’s bigger than Phil. His dream was too important to die with him. We both know that.”
“You still can’t fix it.”
“Not alone.”
“Brian, what insanity has grief made you consider rational?”
“I was hoping you’d ask. Tanner can keep the clinic going without Phil. She lacks confidence, not ability. What she can’t do is rebuild the clinic all by herself. What I can do is oversee the rebuilding.”
“From Sleepyside?”
“That hardly seems likely to prove successful.”
“You’re going to move to Whette?” Sarai asked, incredulous.
“Temporarily. Tanner has two semesters left. If I spend those two semesters digging Phil’s dreams out of the rubble and grave his body failed in, she can take it from there and I can return here, to my family, friends, girlfriend, practice, and patients who need me, and the patients who need Phil will not be failed by the randomness of circumstance, chance, and poor luck.”
“You’re going to move to Whette,” Sarai repeated, no less incredulous. “You’ve learned Burmese in the past two months, then?”
“No, but you know it.”
“Oh, no, absolutely not. You are not dragging me into your insanity. Don’t think it for a moment more!”
“Tell me, with a level voice, that you’re okay with knowing there’s a possibility of keeping Phil’s dream from dying with him, but that that possibility could not be brought to fruition because you refused to help, and I will hang up now and never mention it again.”
Sarai was silent for a full minute. “I’m listening,” she said at last.
Brian smiled at the small victory. “As you pointed out, I don’t know Burmese. I’ll learn it, but not immediately. If you were willing to join me, just for the first couple weeks…”
“You’re going to guilt me into this, aren’t you?”
“I was rather counting on grief compelling you as strongly as it does me,” Brian admitted.
“Give me a week to investigate the possibilities. In the meantime, don’t forget that you’re still absolutely crazy to even be considering this.”
“Understood. Sarai? Thanks.”
“I’m not committing to anything, Brian.”
“But you’re considering, which means plenty to me. We’ll talk when you’ve come to a decision.”
“I’ll call you,” Sarai agreed.