“You want to hear a knock-knock joke?” Zac straddled Tim’s stomach while Tim struggled to catch his breath.
“O-kay,” Tim panted, breathing hard from having been wrestled to the floor by two little boys all too happy to have discovered a willing victim.
“Knock-knock,” Zac said.
“Who’s there?” Tim asked.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Zac inquired.
Taylor’s eyes widened in genuine befuddlement. “Why?”
“To tickle little boys!” Tim bellowed, sitting up and pinning Zac to the floor.
Laughing hysterically, Zac tried to kick him. “To-get-to-the-other-side!” he panted. “Let me go!”
“Do you know the secret password?” Tim asked him.
“Yeah,” Zac agreed.
“What is it?” Tim asked.
“It’s called ‘Leave me alone!’” Zac broke free from Tim’s grasp and launched himself over an arm chair, giggling. Tim collapsed on the couch, pushing his hair back from his face. Taylor climbed up next to him and regarded Tim solemnly, his hands clasped on top of his knees.
“I know a knock-knock joke,” he ventured.
“Better than his?” Tim inquired.
Taylor nodded. “Yep.”
“How does it go?” Tim asked.
“Knock knock,” Taylor began.
“Who’s there?” Tim replied.
“Orange,” Taylor told him.
“Orange who?”
“Orange.”
“Orange who?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
Taylor grinned triumphantly. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t say orange?”
Tim wasn’t sure if that was the way that particular joke was supposed to be told, but he could honestly agree that he was glad Taylor hadn’t said orange. He nodded, grinning.
Dan appeared in the doorway, his car keys in hand. “I’m going to the hospital now, okay?” He squinted. “Where’s Zac?”
Zac climbed the back of the chair and pointed at Tim. “He threw me back here!” he yelled. “He did! It was him!”
“That guy right there?” Dan raised his eyebrows at his younger brother, who shook his head in protest, grinning exhaustedly.
“You’re not a-sposed to tell lies.” Taylor folded his arms across his chest and sighed.
“I don’t tell lies,” Zac responded. “I just tell the truth.”
“Dan,” Isaac began, “I was thinking.”
“You were thinking?” Dan repeated. It was eight-thirty that night and Nora had gone home for some much needed rest. Isaac had been out of the ICU for a few days now and they were leaving him on his own at night, a fact that didn’t sit as comfortably with either of them as it did with Isaac, who didn’t mind at all. Still, whenever Dan found himself at the hospital at night, he’d delay leaving as long as he could, feeling guilty as soon as he started for the door.
“I was thinking,” Isaac repeated, “that actually. . . you want to know what’s weird?”
“What’s weird?” Dan asked.
“That everything in the world was invented by somebody. Like, you know those little bowling balls that you shake and they say your fortune?”
“Magic 8 balls?” Dan asked.
Isaac nodded. “The girl down the hall had one, and she said she’d ask it a question for me. So I asked if my mother would come home that night and it said ‘don’t count on it.’” His eyes grew solemn, his voice low and confiding. “And she didn’t come home. The ball was right.” He paused for a minute, then shrugged. “She probably wouldn’t have anyway. But. . . oh, yeah. Somebody was sitting there one day, and they suddenly thought, ‘hey, you know what would be a great idea? If I made this bowling ball and put a thing inside it that would tell fortunes.’ Like. . . who thinks about that kind of thing?”
“I really don’t know.” Dan shook his head. That was the kind of thing he did not want to think about. His brain would start to hurt after awhile.
“Or. . . tapioca pudding.” Isaac had discovered that this was a mainstay of hospital meals, and he had spent a lot of time over the past few days analyzing why. “For one thing. . . what is tapioca, anyway? For another thing, why would anybody decide to eat it? It isn’t even like food.”
“Yeah, or blood sausage,” Dan mused. “Or haggis. Or Fruit Roll-Ups.”
“What’s haggis?” Isaac asked, innocently.
“A food you really, really don’t want to eat,” Dan told him.
Isaac shrugged. “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll probably eat anything.”
Dan nodded. “That’s true.”
“But. . . I don’t know.” Isaac yawned. “I really haven’t been that hungry at all, so I mostly just look at it. And it looks gross.”