Free An Invisible Client by Victor Methos Page A

buildings. Once, when I was unemployed and sleeping on a cot in a room I shared with three other guys, I’d stared out at the city from a place not unlike this hallway. I’d sworn I would be rich. I smiled, just thinking about it. A kid with nothing—no money, no connections, and no education—had sworn he would be one of the elites. The balls it took to make a promise like that to myself . . .
    When I stepped off the elevator, the floor was empty. The nurse behind the desk said that visiting hours were over, and I said I was Joel’s lawyer.
    “Family only.”
    “He is family,” Rebecca said, coming up behind me. “This is my cousin. And he’s Joel’s lawyer.”
    The nurse looked from Rebecca to me. “Cousins, huh?”
    I signed in, and Rebecca and I walked toward Joel’s room. Rebecca didn’t say anything, but her face seemed to glow. I still didn’t understand why my visit would mean anything to either of them.
    She opened the door for me. Joel was playing on a phone. He put it down and grinned when he saw me. He looked puffier than he had the day before.
    “Hey,” I said. “You got any of that ice cream left?”
    “It melted, but we can go down to the cafeteria and get some.”
    “Joel,” his mother said, “they don’t like you moving around too much.”
    He grunted and forced himself up on the bed. “I’m fine. I wanna get outta the room, too.”
    Rebecca and I helped him up. Joel had one arm around my elbow and the other around his mom’s elbow. We started toward a wheelchair pushed up against the wall, but Joel said, “No, I wanna walk.”
    Rebecca nodded to me, and I got the door as we headed out.
    People stared at Joel, and I wondered if he noticed. The cafeteria wasn’t far, but it was high up—on the top floor of the building. It sat on the crest of the mountain the hospital had been built on and offered a nearly 360-degree view of the valley. Joel and I sat by the windows while his mom went to get ice cream.
    “She’s scared,” Joel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family isn’t in Utah.”
    “Where are they?”
    “Arkansas. That’s where I was born. We moved out here for my daddy’s job, but then he got sent over there.”
    I didn’t have to ask where “over there” was.
    “You miss him a lot, huh?”
    “All the time. We was best pals.” He swallowed, and I could hear wheezing in his breath. “I remember when those soldiers came to the door. My mama didn’t even have to talk to them. She opened the door and started crying. The soldiers held her, and they cried, too. I knew my daddy was dead then.” He breathed for a few moments, and I could see the struggle, the difficulty of just doing something everyone else took for granted. “Where’s your daddy?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I left home, I never called him.”
    “He’s your daddy, though.”
    “Yeah, well, sometimes I wish we could choose our daddies.”
    “What’d he do that made you not like him?”
    I looked away, a sudden flash of memories I hadn’t thought about in a long time filling my mind. I had never discussed my father with anyone but Tia. “He drank a lot. And my mom left us when I was a kid. She fell in love with someone else. I never heard from her again. My dad always said I looked like her. I think he took out his anger at her on me.”
    Joel was listening intently, though I didn’t know if a child of twelve could understand what I’d just told him.
    Rebecca had been standing with a group of other people, a set of parents and some kids about Joel’s age. She came and sat down. “Brandi and Brandon are here, Joel. Would you like to talk to them?”
    He nodded. His mother helped him up and led him over to another table. The two kids sitting there said hi to him. They wore hospital gowns as well. Rebecca came back and pushed a cup of ice cream in front of me as she sat down. I took a spoonful in my mouth and watched Joel. For the first time since I’d met him, he