The Ring of Bells

Revised.

The wipers could hardly keep the windshield clear of the torrent of rain beating down. Jon was already struggling to keep the compact car from skidding either off the road or into a semi, and his son Montgomery wasn't helping things at all.

"Dad," Montgomery said, his lips thinning, "it is not a phase."

"What do you know?" Jon shot back distractedly, zooming past an elderly couple in an expensive sedan. "Honey, you know I love you no matter what, but how could you possibly know? You're barely seventeen."

"I just do!" Montgomery banged his fist on the dashboard. "And anyway, seventeen years is a long time to get to know oneself, Dad. I think I know who I'm attracted to."

"Hey, watch your temper," Jon warned, glancing over at his slight son. Montgomery was curled up in the passenger seat, methodically shredding the cuff of his hoodie with his teeth. His long, black hair hung down in his face, obscuring his eyes from Jon's view. Jon cut his eyes back to the road, continuing, "You've known you're gay for, what, a month now?"

"No," Montgomery said vehemently. "I've known for a while now."

"A while. How long, may I ask, is a while?"

Montgomery sighed, then gritted his teeth. "I don't know, okay? A while. Maybe all along."

Jon nodded skeptically. "Uh huh. And what about Sandy Merston in the seventh grade?" Turning onto the exit, Jon guided the car into heavy traffic, heading toward Montgomery's 'boyfriend's' house. He flicked his eyes to the boy in the rear view mirror. Toby looked as if he wanted to shrink into the seat and never be heard from again. His natural red hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, so there was nothing to hide him from Mr. Randall's piercing gaze. Toby smiled painfully, dark blue eyes meeting Jon's stormy grey in the mirror.

"Dad," Montgomery said, exasperated, bringing Jon's attention back to him. "I made Sandy up because you were pressuring me about not having a girlfriend and I didn't want to disappoint you."

"And Tamela?"

"Tamela's my best friend, Dad. There's nothing else there."

"You've never been attracted to girls?" Visions of a white picket fence and grandbabies were flying out of Jon's head, depressing him. It was hard to keep his eyes on the road instead of glaring at Toby in the back seat.

Reaching an arm back, Montgomery laced his fingers with Toby's, reassuring him with a bright smile. "Unless Toby decides to get a sex change someday, no, I never have and never will be attracted to girls." The redhead smiled gratefully at Montgomery, holding his hand tight to him.

Jon sighed, watching the exchange with a heavy heart. It wasn't that he was homophobic, not at all, in fact some of his best office buddies were gay. He just never expected it of his own son. Had he done something wrong raising him? He knew the divorce had been hard on Montgomery three years ago. Was this his way of exacting revenge on his father? Jon mused silently, only half paying attention to the road.

Montgomery's attention was fully on his thin, redheaded boyfriend. They had only been together officially for a month, but had been attracted to each other for years, neither brave enough to tell the other until one hot, slightly-intoxicated night in Toby's parents' camper. They had moved quite fast, and what Montgomery had been convinced was only a one night stand blossomed into a full-fledged relationship. He honestly couldn't be happier.

Giving Toby one last, reassuring smile, Montgomery turned back to look out at the road. And screamed.

"Dad! Look out!" Montgomery's frantic words barely reached Jon through the musings in his head. He glanced up just in time to see a semi bearing down, headed straight for them. He swung the wheel sharply, the car lurching to the right, then all went black, and he knew nothing.

--

Jon stared, unblinking, though he registered nothing his eyes saw. He was lost in his own thoughts, coffee cup clutched in his hands now ice-cold. Still he held it, like an anchor to the material plane. Though he didn't glance at his watch, he knew what time it was. It was almost noon.

"Jon," a feminine, familiar voice pierced through his fogged brain. "Jon, it's time." The man glanced up at the figure crouching beside him, and smiled faintly, pained. Trisha had become the support structure he had needed the past week, while Montgomery lay in a coma. His ex-wife had not once blamed him for the accident, or for the death of Montgomery's boyfriend, Toby. In fact, no one had yet to place the blame on him; except for himself, of course. Jon lived every day with the painful fact that, had he just been watching the road instead of agonizing over something so trivial as his son's sexuality, everyone would have been okay, everyone would have lived. He wouldn't have been trudging down the hall on crutches to see his brain-dead son, to watch him die.

The accident had instantly taken Toby's life, the impact snapping his neck and giving him a swift escape from this world. Montgomery however, had suffered through three surgeries to try and save his. He was stabilized, for now the doctors said, but he would be nothing more than a living vegetable forever, relying on a machine to keep breath coming into his body, with no hope of recovery. Both Jon and Trisha knew Montgomery wouldn't want to live that way. They had decided, with the heaviest of hearts, to pull the plug and end Montgomery's shattered life. Jon felt he couldn't breathe, his heart was constricting in his chest with the thought of never seeing his son alive again. Neither could stop the tears from flowing freely down their faces.

Trisha entered the room first, which was already occupied by Montgomery's doctor, and held the door open for Jon. His crutches made things awkward, but he wanted, needed, to be there for his son. For Montgomery.

Entering the room, Jon looked up and stumbled. There, sitting in the window, was a thin slip of a boy, red hair spilling all over.

"Toby?" his dry, unused throat croaked.

Trisha looked at Jon, puzzled. "Honey? Jon?" She pressed a hand to his cheek.

Jon didn't notice. His eyes, wide and silver, stared unblinkingly at the boy. Toby smiled faintly, and jumped down from the window ledge into the room-- right through the panes of glass keeping the outside world at bay. "Mr. Randall, " he greeted quietly. "I've come for Montgomery."

Jon's mouth opened to say something, anything, but the words wouldn't come. He was vaguely aware of the doctor and Trisha fussing about him, but he was locked on the image of Toby standing before him, one hand ghosting over Montgomery's sleeping face. Toby's face twisted.

"I can't feel him. Mr. Randall, please let Montgomery go. He's trapped, and I can't feel him. I've been watching him for days, and I can't get to him." Tears welled up in large, blue eyes, spilling over ivory cheeks to drop unheard onto the tile floor. Toby pleaded Jon with his eyes, still trying to touch Montgomery's face.

"Jon, what's going on?"

Trisha's voice cut through Jon's subconscious, and he glanced at her, really seeing her for the first time since entering the room. He nodded at her, his face set in a grim line. "It's time."

As Dr. Scott moved to cut off the respirator, Jon clutched Trisha to him. They leaned on each other heavily, both to offer and gain support, Trisha's hand to her mouth as tears rolled down her face. Jon's eyes were on his son's face, Toby's ghost-hand entering his vision every so often.

When the machine finally clicked off, the room was silent. Jon could have sworn that with Montgomery's last dying breath, he smiled, though he couldn't be sure because of the respirator tube still covering half of Montgomery's face. His body lay, pale and lifeless, gone from the world forever. The doctor patted both their shoulders as he passed, murmuring something about giving them time before the body would be taken away.

Trisha's hand clutched at Jon's, and now she was sobbing openly. Jon finally tore his eyes away from his dead son's face, and sucked in a breath.

At the window stood Toby, resplendent, with a pair of large, pure white wings surrounding his small frame. In his arms was Montgomery, looking nothing like the pale and lifeless body in the bed, his head resting on Toby's bare shoulder. Slowly, while Jon watched on in amazed shock, Montgomery's eyes opened, clear and silver as they ever had been. Jon watched his son move, as if alive, one arm raising to circle Toby's neck. He watched his son's eyes fill with the purity of true love, and cried when they kissed. He had never known love could be so amazing.

It was only until Trisha's worried voice brought him back did he realized he had slid onto his knees on the floor, cast sticking out at an odd angle. He looked up at Trisha, tears in his eyes, and smiled at her. "He's going to be okay," he whispered.

--

It didn't take long for Jon to convince himself that what he had seen in the hospital room that day had simply been the mad delusions of a father suffering from grief. He couldn't deny how much it had helped, though, to imagine that his son truly had gone on to something sweeter, more perfect, and that he was safe now.

Montgomery's funeral, held on an overcast Saturday, was only a bittersweet affair, because the entire time Jon couldn't help but become distracted by a lone angel statue that stood near Montgomery's grave site. The sculpture was female, that much was obvious, but Jon thought the cherubic face and long, loosely flowing hair looked entirely too much like Toby. So much so, in fact, that when the funeral had ended and everyone had finished saying their last words, Jon told Trisha he would be along in a moment, and stopped to stand before the statue.

Looking down at the stone slippered feet of the angel, Jon made sure that he could not be overheard and asked in a whisper, "You'll take care of him, right? He was a good kid, and I know now that he loved you very much." Jon gazed around himself, and laughed, shoving his hands into the pockets of a pair of pants he hoped he wouldn't be wearing for a good, long time afterward. "God, I'm such an idiot, talking to a statue." He glanced up at the face of it ruefully, and stopped cold.

On the serene face of the angel that looked so much like his son's first and now only love, was a streak of clear liquid dripping slowly from unseeing eye to cheek. For a few seconds, Jon's breath was stolen from him, and all he could do was stare up at the angel that seemed to be crying for his son. Even when another raindrop fell from the grey sky and hit his shoulder, he vowed never to forget to believe in miracles. He smiled up at the statue, said a quick, "I trust in you. Keep him safe," and walked away. He could have sworn that just before he'd turned, just as the church bells chimed throughout the cemetery, he had seen the stone statue smile down, just for him.

The End.