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There’s still soot all over him, Barnum notices, when he leaves the hospital ward. Phillip’s still alive, still breathing, he repeats over and over in his head. He curiously turns his shaking hands over as if he’s just realized that, yes, he did run into a fire to save the other man. No questions asked, just one last glance at his family and then he followed his instincts and sprinted into what should have been certain doom for him.
But it wasn’t.
He’s still here. Phillip’s still here -- barely -- but still here, still watched over by an anxious Anne. Lungs burning and still feeling the lick of flames on his bare arms, Barnum’s covered in the ashes of his greatest dream.
Phillip had nearly paid for it with his life -- might still do so -- and it’s such a sobering thought that Barnum’s knees give way and he slides down to the floor, the cold wall at his back. He’s so tired all of a sudden.
That’s when he sees her.
She’s standing at the entrance of the hallway, her posture rigid, and she looks like his sight alone makes her regret coming. He half expects her to turn, to leave, and he’d never speak of it to anyone, already half-convinced she’s a figment of his imagination, but she surprises him. With her shoulders squared and her head held high she walks over to him, her steps echoing loudly in the otherwise empty, dim hallway. Uncoordinated, he scrambles to his feet and still feels smaller than her when she stops in front of him.
“Mr Barnum,” she says curtly.
“Mrs Carlyle,” he greets her, his voice hoarse from smoke, and he sees something -- worry, pain, regret? -- flickering across her face before she schools her features back into a mask of disdain. “He’s alive,” he says and leaves out the for now . She doesn’t need to know that, he thinks.
“So I was told,” she informs him, staring just right of his face, like she can’t bear to look at him, and he’s at a loss for words for a moment. It’s not a feeling he particularly likes. He can usually smooth-talk his way out of anything, convince people of anything with his silver tongue. But what’s there to say now? Sorry your son has burns all over his body and a few broken ribs because debris fell on him? Sorry he inhaled so much smoke the doctors can just pray his youth will save him?
There are no words for a parent in this situation. Just a hollow ache where your child should be, alive and well. For a moment he closes his eyes and just prays that he’ll never be in Mrs Carlyle’s shoes -- he doesn’t think he’d survive it.
“You can go sit with him,” he finally offers, but she shakes her head as soon as the words leave his mouth, like it is an unfathomable proposal.
“I certainly can’t.”
“Then why are you here?” he asks her, dumbfounded. He’d do anything to be with his children if it were Helen or Caroline lying in there, barely hanging on to life.
“You’re the reason why, Mr Barnum,” she says slowly, measuring her words, and he blinks at her, not understanding. She still won’t look at him. “You took him away from us,” she states, seemingly lost in memory for a second, but then she collects herself again. “But that’s all you do, isn’t it? Take and take and take, until there’s nothing left to give.”
“I didn’t -- ” He blinks at her, unsure if she really thinks of Phillip as something to barter with, as if he has no dreams of his own.
“So you didn’t take his job?” she interrupts his thoughts. “His family, his life, to give him -- what, exactly, Mr Barnum? A life on the fringes? With no social standing? With no money?” There’s a barely concealed fury in her voice, and he’s taken aback. From all he’s gathered about Phillip’s parents this wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. Truth be told, he hadn’t expected any reaction from them. Once Phillip had joined him they’d cast their son aside like something unwanted, like one of the circus’ oddities, to be concealed and never to be spoken of again.
“He was about to drink himself into an early grave,” he finally says, slowly, quietly, and now Mrs Carlyle meets his eyes. They’re cold and unforgiving.
“And you think leaving him behind to manage that ... circus of yours all alone, with barely any experience and all these vile people shouting abuse at him, nearly killing him, helped much in that matter?” Her words cut him, twist his stomach, and it takes him a moment to realize why exactly.
They’re true.
She just spelled out what he already knows deep down. And she doesn’t care about him at all to soften the blow.
He did leave. He left one dream behind to chase another one, and he would have gone on to chase yet another and another, each one grander than the last. It would never have been enough. And he never once stopped to ask himself if it was the right thing to do, just followed his gut like he always did.
Charity was right, he thinks all of a sudden, it’s all been about him. And she was right with something else as well, he realizes -- he doesn’t have to be loved by all, just by a few good people.
And Phillip is one of these few good people.
He closes his eyes for a moment and wishes he’d have come to this realization a little bit sooner, before everything fell apart and quite literally went up in flames.
“I’m sorry,” he eventually says into the silence, and this time it’s him who won’t meet her eyes. “I truly am. Not for bringing him to the circus, no, because he is happy there, but for ... ” He trails off, trying to find the right words. “For not being there. I should’ve been there.”
“Yes, Mister Carlyle, you should have,” she agrees with him and isn’t that the worst? That they can agree on his faults, of all things? He feels like laughing and crying at the same time. “But you can be here now.” She stares at him. “The question is -- will you?”
He stares back at her, yet again at a loss for words. The distinct feeling that he’s asked for way more than his mere presence is sneaking up on him. It fills him with warmth and heartbreak at the same time.
“You could still visit -- ” He tries once again, but she adamantly shakes her head, as if to dispel any thought about not being the perfect society lady New York’s upper class expects her to be.
“No,” she says, but her voice is laced with regret, maybe even longing. It makes his heart ache even more. Maybe she’s as caged as Phillip’s been, he suddenly thinks. “He’s made his choices. I can only pray that he doesn’t live to regret them.”
“Then I’ll be here. I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”
“Thank you, Mr Barnum. And Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he echoes, but she’s already turned around and is heading for the exit. He wishes she’d stop, that she’d come back and sit with her son, but he knows it’s a futile wish.
But she came, a small voice of hope whispers in the back of his head. She came, and maybe, one day, she’ll stay.
- fin