Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1)

by Jamie Mayfield

  Yes, I need to go home!

  “Brian, that can’t happen right now,” she said patiently. “We’re going to get things settled for you as soon as we possibly can.” I noticed she didn’t say that they were going to get me home as soon as they could. She flashed a look at Hascomb, which told me clearly that she didn’t agree with any of this. I wondered if Hascomb outranked her in the grand scheme of things and that’s why she had to defer to him.

  She fussed over me for a few more minutes before leaving the room.

  Hascomb stepped forward, and I put my hand up to stop him.

  GET OUT!

  I wrote it in the largest letters that would fit on the small notebook page, not wanting him to miss the implied volume of the statement. Unable to say it, I could certainly spell it out for him.

  “Brian, you aren’t making this any easier on yourself,” he said with a hint of sarcasm. It was almost like he was trying to bait me, to get me to say something I wouldn’t say if I weren’t upset. I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity.

  I will only talk to Officer Miller.

  Officer Miller stepped forward, looking at the note, and then asked Hascomb to wait outside. Reluctantly, like a kid sent from the room so his parents could talk about him, the creepy little geek left and closed the door behind him. The detective stayed for about half an hour more, asking me questions over and over in a myriad of ways. I answered them the same way each time. I had no idea why he just kept asking the same thing. Did he think I was lying to protect Richard? If he was sexually abusing me, why would I want to go back? What sense would it make to lie about it if he was trying to help me? Didn’t he think I’d want to try and get away from the abuse?

  I really wanted a pain pill. All of the jostling, the stress, and the fear were making my leg throb. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make myself vulnerable here. If I took a pain pill and it knocked me out, anything could happen to me. I couldn’t take that chance. So when Officer Miller left, I asked him to talk to the administrator about some ibuprofen and a glass of water. He came back a few minutes later and gave me what I’d asked for, standing quietly next to my bed until I’d taken it. Returning the cup to the small table next to the bed, he told me he would come back to see me the next day after he talked to my foster parents.

  After the door closed, I lay staring at the ceiling, waiting for the pills to take the edge off the pain. It was hours before I fell into a fitful sleep, anxiety eating at my stomach, just waiting for another monster to pound on the door.

  I woke early the next morning, my distended bladder nearly cramping with the pressure of being so full. There wasn’t a call button in the room because it wasn’t a hospital, and I couldn’t just call for Carolyn to help me. The door to the room was closed, and I didn’t hear anyone beyond it. I would just have to wait. Looking up at the ceiling, I counted the grubby, stained tiles again, starting by the door, trying not to think about how badly I had to use the john. If I just let go, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I doubted whoever came to check on me would be pleased. I hoped they’d have someone help me; I was still in the T-shirt and sweats I’d been in the day before.

  After fifteen minutes, I was starting to shift uncomfortably in the bed. There was no place I could redirect my thoughts except for the pressure in my lower belly. Shifting again, off my back so I was slightly on my side, I tried to relax my muscles a little to take the strain off, but I couldn’t. It had been years since I’d wet the bed; I wasn’t about to start now.

  “Hey, can anyone hear me?” I yelled toward the closed door through my clenched jaw. The sound was muffled, but at least I could understand what I was saying. “Please, I need some help in here!” Feeling helpless wasn’t something I dealt with well. In fact, I hated it. I hated being dependent on other people, especially other people who didn’t seem to give a damn. Over and over I yelled until a small face peered in through the door.

  “Please, can you go get someone? I need to go to the bathroom,” I implored the little boy, who couldn’t have been more than five, although he was old enough to understand what I was asking for. Turning quickly, he scampered off, leaving the door partially open. I could only pray he was going to find someone to help me. Sweat beaded on my forehead with the exertion, with the discomfort.

  Pulling my good leg up, trying to relieve the cramping pressure on my stomach, I was about to call out again when the door opened. A teenage boy, maybe a year younger than me, walked in carrying a large open-mouthed bottle.

  “Here, they told me to give this to you.” He tossed the bottle onto the bed and then turned around and walked out without another word. Desperately reaching for it, I used my knee to push it up higher on the bed so I could reach it. The injustice, the humiliation of it, was almost forgotten in the relief of emptying my bladder into something other than the bed. God knows how long I would have lain in the soiled sheets before someone found me.

  The bottle was half-full by the time I’d finished, and I found I couldn’t reach the bedside table to set it down. It didn’t come with a lid, so my only other option was to set it on the bed beside me. With a slightly nauseated feeling, which was tempered only by relief of the cramping in my stomach, I set the bottle in the bed with me and waited. It was well over an hour before a woman came in who I hadn’t seen before. She took the bottle and told me, sounding rather bored, that she would bring in some breakfast in a few minutes.

  Almost as an afterthought, she asked if I needed anything else before she left. Not knowing when anyone would be back, I asked for a glass of water. My stomach was snarling because I hadn’t eaten anything since leaving home yesterday. My imagination conjured all kinds of different sickening possibilities for breakfast there. A few ideas that forced themselves into my mind were powdered eggs they had pureed in the blender, or oatmeal that was more gruel than oats. I would have to ingest whatever it was because I didn’t know when I’d eat again.

  I couldn’t even describe my relief when the woman came back with some kind of instant breakfast drink. It was chocolate and similar to what Carolyn would give me at home. A pang of loneliness and homesickness pierced me so forcefully that it hurt even to breathe. Carolyn always took such good care of me, even before I was injured, and I don’t think I’d ever really appreciated it. I knew I never told them that I appreciated anything they did for me. With that thought firmly lodged in my head, and my heart aching, I fell back into an uneasy sleep.

  The next two days were much the same as my first at Hudson House. I drank artificially sweetened drinks for every meal, left by a different person on each delivery. Sometimes it was an adult care worker, others it was one of the other kids. On the second day, I had to relieve myself in a bedpan, much to the utter disgust of the center employee assigned the task of helping me. It was humiliating to be so helpless in front of strangers, infinitely worse than being helpless in front of Richard and Carolyn at home.

  Home.

  It had been three days since I’d seen or heard from my foster parents. Three days of sighs at my slowness, three days of pain because I was too afraid to take my pills, and three days of mean-spirited teenagers who thought it was funny to torment me. The second day I had asked the boy who came in to bring me yet another drink if he could grab the paperback book from the front of my suitcase. He did, and set it just out of my reach with a satisfied laugh. The girl who brought my drink that night dumped ice-cold water onto me after being told to empty the bottle they’d given me to pee in. On and on it went, but as bad as it was for them to torment me, it was better than the hours of solitude that spanned between their visits. Officer Miller had been in once since I’d been imprisoned to see how I was doing. He carried no answering note, no message from Richard and Carolyn.

  Tears started to leak from the corners of my eyes. They hadn’t been to see me, or even called. It must be a relief for them not to have to deal with me anymore. My parents left me, Jamie left me, and Richard and Carolyn were leaving me. To my utter deva
station, I realized there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. My body ached, but the ache in my heart was infinitely worse.

  “Brian, can I come in?”

  The voice alone would have brought me comfort, but to look up and see Kyle standing in my doorway filled me with a tremendous sense of relief. My world must not have spun so far out of control that nothing in it was recognizable anymore. He carried my schoolbag into the room with him, heavy and decidedly welcome. I could have sobbed with relief merely because that bag would give me something to do besides watch the dreary beige paint peel from the walls of my prison.

  I nodded frantically, nearly begging, and he pushed the door all the way open. He looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him, right down to the sweater-vest and brown loafers. Just that bit of familiarity made the tears come again, more forcefully than before. Kyle dropped the bag on the floor next to my bed and sat on the edge.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, the weight of his concern settling on me like a blanket. It was warm and comforting, and I reveled in it, not knowing when I’d find that again.

  He reached down to the bag at his feet, pulled out my whiteboard and marker, and handed them to me.

  I’m okay. I’m really glad to see you.

  “Well, if you’re looking forward to homework, then this place must be pretty awful,” Kyle said, chuckling, and that flippant reminder was all it took. The sobs came in earnest, the first since I’d been ripped from my home and deposited here. Aware of our precarious position, he merely laid a hand on my arm and handed me a tissue from the box on the table, but I got the sense that he wanted to hug me.

  “It’s going to be okay, Brian,” Kyle said, but he couldn’t guarantee that. It had nothing whatsoever to do with him. He could walk right out that door, and I would have no further effect on his life.

  You don’t know that. They haven’t even been to see me.

  “They can’t come. You don’t know what kind of hoops I had to go through just to be able to work with you for school,” he said, shaking his head. “This guy who’s running the investigation is really determined. I don’t know what it is he’s looking for, but I did hear that he went to a Baptist college and is close to that preacher over at First Baptist. So I have a pretty good idea.” The disgust in his voice was obvious.

  First Baptist is where Jamie went. Is it retaliation for them leaving?

  “I don’t think it’s retaliation, no, but I know that preacher thinks he can ‘fix’ us. Of course you had to be molested, normal people aren’t gay, there has to be a reason.” He rolled his eyes. “I had to go through the same damn thing, only it was my father who thought I’d been molested. He tried everything to find a reason for me being ‘abnormal’, anything that didn’t reflect on him, but he couldn’t. So, instead, he kicked me out. I was fifteen years old.” A harsh, bitter look crossed his face. It was plain he hated his father for humiliating and abandoning him.

  What did you do?

  Alone on the streets at the age of fifteen. I couldn’t imagine how he had survived. I knew that in the abstract, the same thing was going to happen to me in less than a year. When I turned eighteen, that would be it, I’d be on my own.

  “I lived in a homeless shelter and panhandled for about six months. I had to learn, mostly the hard way, how to survive. One day, while I was out trying to beg for enough money for food, the woman I’d held my hand out to turned out to be my aunt. She’d had no idea my father had kicked me out. Apparently, he’d told people I was away at boarding school. Susan was shocked to see me, filthy and almost painfully thin. She said it would have killed my mother, were she not already dead, to know I was living that way. She gave me a home and an education, for which I’m eternally indebted to her.”

  I let his story sink in. Kyle had been turned away by his father, forced onto the streets. My heart broke for my friend, whose eyes were still downcast, his posture defeated after talking about the father he hadn’t seen in probably at least a decade. The father he probably still loved, at least on some level.

  That’s why you worry about me, isn’t it, especially being in this place? You think I’ll end up on the streets?

  “Yes, that’s one of the reasons,” he admitted. “It isn’t easy to support yourself without any kind of education, no skill sets for you to fall back on. In six months, I couldn’t even get my feet under me; I just kept slipping and sliding, forced to stay in the shelter when they had a bed for me.” Turning away from me, he looked out the window for a long time.

  Before Kyle left, he moved the side table until it was touching the bed so I could reach out to it when I needed to. He also brought the table from the other bed and sat it next to the first table so I had more space. A couple of bottles of water and cans of soda from the vending machine made a stash in the first drawer of the bedside table. I couldn’t even express how grateful I was to him for coming, for helping me, for just being there. Putting his hand on my shoulder, he looked into my face.

  “They’re working on it, Brian. When I talked to Carolyn this morning, she was meeting with their attorney. It will be okay,” he assured me. This time, it didn’t feel so hollow.

  Were you at the house?

  “Yes, I stopped by to pick up your stuff, and Richard said that….” He stopped as I wrote frantically.

  Why was Richard there? He should have been at work? Did they fire him?

  “I don’t think so, but we didn’t get into any specifics. I didn’t want to seem too familiar with them, because it would have been looked on badly not only by the school but by this Hascomb fellow. He’s been around a few times to talk to me. I don’t think he knows I’m gay because he’s been very friendly.” Kyle shrugged and looked around once again to make sure everything was in place.

  “Do you need anything?”

  Just to go home.

  I’D WORKED late into the night after Kyle left, doing math problems I cared nothing about, working on an essay for a lot longer than it normally would have taken, and generally just dragging things out to give myself something to do. Again, I tossed and turned until dawn. It was virtually impossible to find a comfortable position on the rock-hard mattress. More than that, though, I was restless. I just wanted something to happen. It was like being on a building ledge for days not knowing if I was going to fall off or be rescued.

  The door opened, and Mrs. Dillon popped her head in.

  “Brian, there’s someone here to see you,” she said, opening the door with a flourish. There, standing behind her, were Richard and Carolyn. Hope reared its ugly head deep in my chest. My heart rate accelerated as the smell of Carolyn’s soft floral scent reached me. Oh please God, please…, I thought desperately as Carolyn rushed to my bedside.

  “Are you okay, son?” Richard asked as Carolyn threw her arms around my neck. I nodded, not bothering to reach for the board. Looking back and forth between them, I was desperate for any news on the so-called investigation. Carolyn seemed to understand.

  “We’ve come to bring you home, darlin’,” she said quietly, and relief flooded through me for an instant before I noticed her guarded expression. When I looked up at Richard, I noticed that his was just sad. It was almost as if they regretted their decision to do so, and my heart constricted painfully. I reached over the side of the bed and grabbed the whiteboard.

  What’s wrong?

  Richard sighed, and it sounded like a sigh borne out of frustration and exhaustion.

  “Nothing is wrong, Brian. It’s over now; let’s just go home,” he said, and he sounded older, more weary than I had ever heard him.

  Please, tell me?

  “We can talk about it when we get home,” Carolyn said, smoothing my long, dirty hair off my forehead. “After we get you into the shower. They didn’t take care of you at all here, did they?” I could tell she was trying to keep the anger from her voice. They’d taken away her son and hadn’t cared for him; it was obvious that made her very angry.

  We can really go
home?

  “Yes, they wouldn’t provide an ambulance even though they took you from us in one, but we can manage in the car,” Carolyn said as she began to pull the items off my bedside table and pack them into the suitcase. I don’t think I’d ever been so comforted in my life. When she got to the bottle they’d given me to urinate in, she snorted in disgust and left it right in the middle of the table, half-full. Richard walked out into the hallway and grabbed the battered wheelchair they’d borrowed from the hospital to help me get around. It took several minutes, but they helped me into the chair and out to the car much like they had when I’d been discharged from the hospital. I could have cried from relief and joy.

  I was going home.

  When we arrived at the house, they got me inside with some effort, and it seemed strange to me that nothing in the house had changed. My whole life seemed to have swung on its axis in just a few days, forcing my helplessness to the forefront. The fact that even my battered dictionary was still sitting in the same place I’d left it struck me as unreal. True to her word, the first thing Carolyn did when we got into the house was get me into the shower. I hadn’t had a proper shower or bath in days, and it felt really good to wash my hair and put on clean clothes. To be honest, it felt better than I could even have articulated to her, but she seemed to understand. Carolyn kissed my clean, wet hair after I put on my new T-shirt, and then wrapped her arms around my neck.

  “I’m so glad to have you home where you belong,” she said, and I could hear the tears in her voice. I wasn’t sure if the tears were for what they’d gone through with the investigation or for the prospect of losing their foster son, but I just let her affection surround me like the heat of a warm fire after spending days in the snow. When they helped me back into my bed and pulled up the comforter that had been mine for the last six years, I felt like I was truly home.