Some nurses came rushing in because his monitors had been going haywire, and they kicked me out of his room. I was glad at first, because I was beginning to feel his pain. When he was talking about that little boy, I started to think about my own boy, and how he died with my wife when the car I was driving went off the road. And I started to see his face, all covered in blood, and looking up at me for help, and I remembered how I tried, I tried everything I knew how, but it wasn't enough, I wasn't enough, and he got taken away from me. He and his mom got taken away from me. And I feel as though I died in that crash too, but my body stayed behind. And I've been trying to go with them, but my body won't let me. Not completely. It's like part of me has gone to find them but the rest of me can't catch up, and I'm in agony as I try to pull and push and rip and tear and claw away at whatever's holding me back.

     And I've been trying to wash all that blood from my boy's face, so I could see him, and he would be all right again. But I haven't had anything but tears to wash that blood away. And at first they flowed like rivers, and then like streams, and then like rain. And then slowly they ran out, there just wasn't any more. And sometimes I see his face, and sometimes he's even smiling, and sometimes my wife is there too. But it's not enough, it's never enough. I want more, I need more, I want to feel my boy tugging on my hand, and hear him laughing at my jokes, and watch him catching a ball when I throw it to him. I want to feel his arms around my neck hugging me so tight I can hardly breathe. I want to feel my wife's hand, and her heart beating against my chest when she puts her arms around me. I want to feel her breath on my neck as she smiles and laughs at the day. I want them back so much there's no room for anything else inside me, just that want, that need, that ******* hole of an ache, to have them back again.

     And all these years I've been trying to dull that pain, day after day, hour after hour, bottle after bottle, ounce after ounce. And I've been building scars, like bricks in a wall, to try and keep the hurt away. But listening to that guy in the hospital, I felt like his words had been picking away at those scars and tearing down those walls. And then, after seeing my boy's face again, and thinking about my wife, I felt like l needed that pain. That somehow it gets me closer to them and maybe I'll lose them if I stop feeling whatever is tearing away at me. So I went back to see him the next day, and we talked for a real long time, and made a pact to go up to his village and try to get the herring and seal to recover, and to fight the oil companies, and kumbaya. And I gave him my number to call me when he got out of the hospital if he needed a place to crash, and he said he would. And about a week later I got a call, but it wasn't from him, it was from a deputy sheriff in the next county saying they had found my number in the pocket of a guy who had been beaten to death and it was all he had on him and would I come over and identify the body?

     I went over there and it was him lying on a slab in the morgue. I just couldn't leave him there, so I called that lawyer who got me out of jail and she was kind enough to help me make arrangements to have his body sent to his village for burial, and she lent me some money to go along. I wasn't sure how his father would react, or what would happen when I got there, but I knew that I had to keep up my end of the pact that I had made with my friend.

     It was time now, so I took a final look around. The apartment looked smaller somehow, now that it was empty. Then I grabbed my bags, opened the door and said to the wind, "OK Irniq, let's go home."