As I walk out the front via the carport, I run through the bus timetable wondering if I have to run my ass off to the stop around the corner or if I have time to dawdle—but it doesn’t matter. My dirt bike is still leaning between the fence and the carport, under its cover. It’ll take time to get used to having my own ride.
When I kick back and start the engine, a thrill pinches between my shoulder blades. Awesome that the damn thing decided to start today. For fun, I rev the handle a couple times, inhaling the fuel fumes through the full-head helmet.
I take off and speed to the hospital. I’ll tell Mom I was close by so she won’t catch on, but I’d rather get caught for speeding than spend my life never experiencing the adrenaline rush from riding this thing. Luckily, the cops aren’t around much in the middle of the day, so I should be good.
It’s as the wind peels up my loose pants and whips at the material at my wrist that I remember I forgot my candy. As a nurse, Mom has a fucking heart attack every time she realizes I’m out in public without them.
Minutes, Dex. You could fall into a coma within minutes of what’s happening to you and you’re helpless.
What if I don’t give a fuck? What if I can cope without them, huh? The thought of my diabetes holding me back from life, from being able to eat lunch in front of anyone other than Mom, Dad and Tahny without ducking to the bathroom first to jab my insulin injection pisses me off. I hate being half fine with how things are with my body; having to hide parts of me and pretend I’m feeling confident. Who does that make me as a person? No one? When I leave my candy behind, there’s always a feeling of satisfaction that I’ve somehow won, that I don’t need to rely on sugar to save my life as per every other normal person.
To say Mom is shocked when I come up behind her and rest my hands on her shoulders is an understatement. She yelps, spinning out of my grip and turning to face me, only then bringing her hand over her chest and sighing.
As promised, she finds the nearest nurse and tells them she’s signing off for lunch and hurries me downstairs. We buy lunch: her a bean salad and me a lean steak and sushi rolls, and take it to our usual spot. When we turn the corner and methodically sit on the retaining wall, a memory rushes back to me: being worried I would crush the brown, dying leaves behind me, worried I’d get dirt on my ass, trying to smell Charz’s sweet candy perfume through the wind.
Trying to ignore those feelings I blurt out, “How’s Dad doing these days? I barely see him.”
Mom spoons a mouthful of beans, having me wait while she covers her mouth and chews. “I’ve been meaning to chat with you about this.”
It sounds like she’s thought over this conversation many times. I gulp down a piece of steak, which I’ve cut too small to chew this much, and which still somehow feels like a plug in my throat when I swallow.
“What do you mean?”
Mom spoons only a bit of the bean salad into her mouth then sets her plate to balance on the retaining wall beside her. Waiting, watching her, I kick the wall with my heels to release the anxiety tightening my muscles.
Mom doesn’t speak, though. She hangs her face in her hands, covering her features so I can’t be sure if it’s tears or rage. The words muffled through her fingers she says, “I don’t know what to do. Dex, what would you do with him?”
“You don’t have to blame yourself like you did in America,” I say, on the spot.
Mom drops her hands and shoves them under her thighs. “Why not? We’re in this together.” Her voice is shaky, and I bet if I nudge her shoulder she won’t flinch. Her body is in that spot, but her mind isn’t there. “Oh, we’re in this so bad. So many bills and…everything.”
“He’s not with those guys again…?” Those embezzling fucks who stole money from cancer patients.
“He’s stressed, and tells me he needs to go out…”
“Mom. Is he involved with them again?”
She gestures out at the world, saying, “I—we—can’t leave our home again. I can’t lose everything again and rebuild. I’m old and tired.”
I try to turn Mom into me but her body is rigid, refusing to move. “Is. He. Involved?” I ask slowly, staring at the side of her face.
“He thinks we need to do something about the money situation and he keeps hinting at something but I’m too afraid to know more.” Mom wobbles, slips off the wall and then tries to catch herself, her actions jerky and strange. Something clicks and I don’t know why I didn’t notice her jumpiness or her strange neediness on the phone, or hurrying us down to the food court so quickly before.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No drinks, Dex. Just a drink,” she mumbles.
Mom doesn’t drink. What Dad drinks makes up for her abstinence threefold. But on the job?
“Hey,” I say, turning her to me with force this time.
Her body’s heavy with resistance, but I’m stronger than her. She drops her chin into the space between her collarbone and shoulder and refuses to look at me.
“What’s happened?”
It’s strange that Mom’s only feeling it now. However, her actions seem more impaired by emotion than alcohol. That much I can tell. In fact, when I watch her sob into her hands, I’m sure of it. It’s happened to me.
On one night, I could be climbing fences and lying in the streets, and shouting shit to weird people driving by in their cars with my head spinning, stomach sloshing, a sick feeling in the back of my throat.
But sometimes—like when Raych smashed my cell phone in a jealous rage because she does stupid stuff when drunk, although we were never dating to begin with—I’m stone cold sober after many beers, punching a brick wall beyond the moment my knuckles graze, bleed or throb.
Sometimes I get emotional. I think Elliot has been the only one to hear me. I’ll whine about how I hate that my body doesn’t work and hate God for doing this and ask him to cure me and profess my hate for jellybeans. We’ve never discussed it the next day or anything.
But now, with Mom, I feel like I’m inside her head. Her hands are trembling when I take them in mine. He face is streaked with tears and she’s sniffling. I pull her into me and her chin plops on my shoulder and her body goes limp. Alcohol brings out the stuff you try to hide.
I would know.
Which makes me want to belt the shit out of Dad. It’s clear I’m not getting anything coherent from Mom today. I ask if she wants me to grab her stuff but she holds up the bag slung over her shoulder.
“In that case,” I say, lifting her up.
She stands, wipes away her tears and breathes deeply, trying to rid herself of the telltale facial features that don’t go away for half an hour after crying.
“Go home. I’ll let the staff know.”
She wavers, wanting to say something but hesitating. In the end, she says, “Don’t worry. I’m fine. I need to get back to work.”
“You can’t, so stop being stupid and catch the bus back home.” Because Dad drops her off and lets her go home on the bus, little shit. He keeps the family car and lets his wife catch a bus home after hours slaving away for sick and dying people.
“No, I need to. I can’t leave. I need…I need to get back,” she says, trying to push past me.
I grasp her shoulders and force her to look at me. “If you don’t go home and let me tell the staff you’re sick, I’ll tell them you’ve been drinking on the job.” As soon as I say it, my mouth feels dry and I feel like shit. I shouldn’t say this to my mom, but it works. She scowls but then tension disappears from her shoulders and she looks like she’s carrying less of a burden. She needs rest. She doesn’t deserve Dad’s shit.
Mom supposes she could go home and kisses me on the cheek before dragging her feet off to the bus stop in front of the hospital.
But she stops. Turning, she says, “I didn’t buy you your coffee, Dex.”
“Who’s your boss?” I ask, without answering her question. I have an idea and waiting for a coffee isn’t part of it.
�
��Rhonda. Ask for Rhonda.”
I wave her off and hurry back inside to the elevator. Stupid, I think, so stupid. Why was I badgering Mom for answers, possibly getting myself caught up in Dad’s mess when I have my source right here?
When I’m up on Mom’s floor, I ask for Rhonda and tell her about Mom having something of a bad day but I didn’t ask questions because I think it was “women’s business” I quote. She shakes her head sorrowfully, empathy on her face, and tells me she’ll check on Mom’s next patient, Walter, herself.
Agreeing, I say goodbye and make as though I’m leaving. Instead, I hide around a corner and watch as she goes into room 311, reappearing a minute later.
When she’s out of sight, I slip into the same room and jam the back of a chair under the handle behind me.
13. Crushing Confession
Dexter
Walter is not the Walter we all used to know when I see him.
I remember a big grin for the cameras, and high-quality action shots from a photographer who snapped him for an article. I’m used to seeing him larger than life and he’s anything but someone with the upper hand on life at the moment.
He looks like crap because of what I did. Anything I planned to say to him is an untouchable thought, now, in the same way you can’t grab a puff of smoke. I plonk my ass into the guest chair by the foot of the bed. There’s one up by his shoulder too, but that feels too personal, too close.
This man here has his eyes shut and an IV drip feeding into his hand. He’s lost every bit of that potbelly I’ve seen him in the papers with, which should have been a good thing for his health. Now, however, I bet his loved ones would give anything to see that weight back. And although he’s probably at the correct weight for his six foot or so build now, it’s more wrong than I can put to words.
Yellow. That’s his skin. Almost like Simpsons yellow. A shiver slices along my spine, reminding me that you (stab) did (stab) this (stab).
Walter’s body is littered with bruises. It’s their coloring that delivers another stab, but this time to my heart. I clutch my chest and keel over, breathing through my legs. Seems to help, but it takes five minutes curled that way and trying to convince myself I wasn’t the reason for that IV drip, for the yellow tinge to his skin, or the fact he’s probably lost weight equal to that of a five-year-old kid before I can sit up again. Those things take a long while to unconsider.
But it doesn’t even look like him.
That thought plants a seed that sprouts into hope. Because there’s no way I’d have the ability to do that to another human.
Yesterday, last week, always—I’ve re-imagined how the wire snapped from that lift. The split second in which my instincts pumped adrenaline, sending white-hot pain searing through my nerves, the victims had begun shrieking in terror. Their desperation tore at my heart as I uselessly fingered the tops of the controls, trying to figure out what to do when my thoughts were a garbled mess anyway.
An official police investigation as well as an independent investigation arranged by Mason’s determined I was innocent. The regular company who maintained the wires, lifts, and other electrical had bypassed standard procedures for signoff. Of course this proved I wasn’t guilty.
But who doesn’t like a good controversy?
Most days that technical garbage does not give one ounce of calm to my guilt. It really doesn’t matter. Those people’s lives were my responsibility and I was there, therefore giving any other legit excuse no weight. I was there. Period.
When I’m able to look up without my neck automatically forcing my head down, I take in Walter again. See, some people can comfort themselves by repeating shit to make memories disappear but for me it’s bullshit. I don’t live in a world of fantasies or else Tahny wouldn’t have become a mother so young and her boyfriend wouldn’t have freaked and fucked off. We’d still be in Chicago and I’d have a proper bunch of “friends”. I’d never have done this to Charz…
At the thought of her name I stagger from my chair and into the guest seat at Walter’s shoulder. I reach out because his hand is right there, but it’s also too far.
From this position, where I’ve just discovered he has the slightest freckles, that his nose isn’t dead-straight, and that Charz gets her long, thick eyelashes from him, it’s hard to remember what Walter looked like pre-accident.
I try squeezing my eyes shut to block out distractions around the room, but his image stays in my mind, a shadow of a body. I force warm, chocolate-colored eyes full of life into the picture because they’re the ones Charz has, and force on dirty-blonde hair because it must have been the same as Charz has in an earlier time, just now dusted with grays. He has strong cheekbones, not sunken ones, after I force them on him too before I give up.
Before I know it I’ve gone and wrapped my fingers around the frail hand of Walter May. I stare at my hand, the way it captures his with what would look like tenderness to anyone else, but for me? I’m wrapping the truth around him, making him read my thoughts. See? I wasn’t drugged out. I wasn’t even faint from having a hypo. See? I would never do this to you, to Charz’s parent. See? I swear to you I didn’t so much as plan or know about any of it.
“See?” I tell Walter’s face. “I’m not a worthless piece of shit.”
He doesn’t reply. He ignores me, not even the hint of a flutter in his eyelids. Just an ever-so-slightly slack jaw and an expressionless look in his sleep. He doesn’t even grin or shiver or anything, like you do when you dream and your body physically reacts from what happens as if it were real.
I slide my hand from his and clench mine in my lap. I slouch in my chair and stretch out my legs, toeing the metal bars of Walter’s hospital bed.
“I have a confession, Walter. My dad, or at least one of his connections, put you in this condition, I think.” I close my eyes, and that’s when I remember Walter was the one with the brown, wiry hair, and Melissa was the one with the blonde bob.
“Your wife…Melissa,” I say. And then I let out a breath through my nose. It sounds loud and stressed. “I will find the motherf—” But I stop myself. Dad’s made me grow up and not blink an eye at swear words like that. Thanks for nothing, I think to him, deliberately not swearing. Maybe that’ll be my pledge, I’ll stop swearing and no more tats and no drinking, and I will tell Raych I stopped wanting to think of her with her clothes off a long time ago. Or even wanting to think of her at all.
“Here, I’ll tell you a story, Walter.” I shut my eyes and dip my head back once more. “I’ve been in love with your daughter Charz since high school. I don’t know how it is that we went to the same school even when you were—are—a millionaire. Is it that you didn’t want Charz to see herself as any different from the next kid? I may never have that answer but you’re a good man. Walter, you are.” I peek through my lids to check on him and then shut out the world again.
“It’s funny ‘cause she’ll be driving that silver Audi A3 and be wearing this glittering necklace like a clump of diamonds, but she’ll be kind to everyone and acting totally normal. One time she was sharing a package of macaroons with a bunch of other kids. They’re those half-moon crusty looking cookies in hot pink or magic purple or lime green with the cream filling. I don’t have enough to waste my lunch money’s worth on those, but they look tasty. And she was giving them to whoever wanted some.
“Okay, I’m off track. Where was I? Okay.” I slap my thighs and force myself up, pushing past the feeling that my body is heavy and doesn’t belong to me.
In a cruel twist, Walter has a window in his room. Although only four storys from the road, it’s high enough to see across corporate buildings and the shopping mall is more visible from here than from any other height in town. Colorful banners of half-naked chicks supposedly selling clothing hang off the sides and other smaller banners display brand names in electric colors. The overhead wires from the underground train line criss-cross the sky farther away, where a sea of cars is shoved into a tight parking lot. Roads, pedes
trians on the sidewalk, strollers filled with babies, angry drivers honking their horns.
There’s a mini world outside of Walter May’s window and all the money he has won’t pay for him to wake up to see this. Not right now, anyway. I freeze and turn, but he’s still asleep, of course, so I clamp my hands on the glass in front of me. The coolness from the window is at war with my flesh, which feels like it’s burning up against it.
Looking down to the road below, I say, “I’m in love with Charz, Walter. I’m not sure I know what love is but I swear to God she’s an explosion in my heart of every type of emotion. And I’m learning what love means to me through her.
“She was my crush from childhood. The young me wouldn’t have believed it if I said she’s the one I think about when I picture my life in a decade or two or three. But she is. She’s everything unhealthy about an addiction because I can’t have her now more than ever, but I can’t get her out of my head. You’re not angry, are you?”
I glance over my shoulder. He’s still ignoring me, the bastard. “Okay, good. Fine. Well, I thought I couldn’t have her at sixteen because she was too rich and cute. I thought I couldn’t have her at seventeen because she had the legs of a model and the heart of an angel. Now at twenty she’s still just as classy, and she’s finally interested in me. Ain’t it funny how that doesn’t matter anymore because it feels wrong having her want me, want this.
“I’ve got myself good this time.” I slide my hands down a fraction and the imprint of where I was on the glass is a hot, cloudy outline. The new bit of window is fresh and just as cool against my palms. “Please make me unlove her because I can’t love her with everything going on, and not being with her is hurting us both. And I wouldn’t want her to get involved with a guy like me because Charz deserves to be treated like she’s the only girl on the planet. That when I look at her—”
Drowning in You Page 10
