Jace

by Jessie Cooke

  “He’s stable, for now. But they found a blockage in one of his major arteries. The doctor wants to do surgery to remove it. We’ll have to wait a few days because he’s not strong enough right now, but the doctor is asking that you come out as soon as possible to sign consent forms for the procedures your father needs.”

  “I’m in Boston. I can’t give consent on the phone?”

  “It’s possible, if you got it notarized and all of that. But the doctor also asked me to tell you, sir…it’s quite possible this would be the last time you got to see him.”

  “Like he might die?”

  “He’s very ill Mr. Bell…so yes, that’s a possibility.”

  Fuck. He knew he had to go. Whatever he felt for the Colonel, the man was his father and if he died and Jace hadn’t even tried to see him one last time, he would feel like shit about it. He looked across the room at Rosie. She was smiling at the teenage dropout from next door. Jace curled his lip. It would figure that when she showed her first signs of puberty, he would go and invite a gangbanger into the house. The kid almost looked like he was in heat. No fucking way was Jace leaving until Rosie was back at her facility, and safe. He put the phone down and for a second he pressed his aching head into the wall. It was always something.

  11

  Jace left his sister in Carly’s hands against all of his best judgment. When he told Rosie he had to take her back early, she had a meltdown. She screamed, cried, kicked, and rocked back and forth and tried to bang her head into the wall. Jace hadn’t seen her melt down like that in years, but one positive thing about it was that it seemed to scare off the little gangbanger. Once the people left, all except Carly, he tried everything to get Rosie to calm down. Nothing worked, until Carly said, “I’ll watch her. If you’re not back by the time she’s supposed to be back tomorrow, I’ll take her back.” Jace laughed, but as he was laughing, Rosie suddenly went silent. He looked at his little sister and she was looking at him with her dark eyes. They were red and swollen from crying. Her cheeks and her nose were bright red too and tears still stained her face. “Aunt Carly,” she said. It was the first time Jace heard her say that. She’d been calling Carly “mama” all along. Carly’s eyes widened and she looked at Rosie with a smile.

  “You said Aunt Carly!” Rosie smiled back at her and wiped her nose on the back of her hand at the same time. She looked at Jace then and said:

  “I want to stay.”

  “Rosie,” he said, in as soft a tone as he could muster, “The Colonel…Papa is sick. I need to go see him. If I take you back early, I’ll make sure you get more time next time you come see me. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think Aunt Carly is ready to take care of you…”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  Jace reached out and touched her face; brushing a piece of dark hair away from her eyes he said, “Yes, you are a big girl. But…”

  “I want to stay.”

  Jace had growled and rolled his eyes. When he looked at Carly, she had a smirk on her lips. He had a really bad feeling about leaving her in charge. He looked back at his sister. She was a five-year-old in a teenager’s body, no matter how much she thought she was a big girl. She was as smart as a whip about things like language and math, but social skills she didn’t get. She also didn’t know how to read people. Carly might not be a monster, but she was not a good person. Rosie had no sense of that, and absolutely no sense of the kind of danger she could place herself in with a guy like “Little Ro.” Just the name made him nauseous. He could see, however, by the stubborn set of his sister’s jaw, that the only way he was going to get her in the car would be to pick her up and physically put her there…and possibly restrain her to keep her there. He hadn’t had the heart to do that. So, with a short lecture to both Rosie and Carly, he packed a small bag, kissed Rosie goodbye, and promised her he’d be back by the next afternoon.

  He was able to get on a flight right away, getting bumped up because of his family emergency. It was a really short flight, only an hour and fifty-three minutes. It was early evening when he made it to the hospital in Kentucky. He went in through the front and the woman at the lobby told him what room his father was in. As he made his way down the stuffy hospital corridor, he decided that the Colonel had to be really bad off, or he would have demanded they take him somewhere else. The walls were a dingy mauve color, scraped in places where they’d been hit with hundreds or thousands of wheelchairs and gurneys. The framed prints that hung every two feet or so along the hallway were cheap and, in Jace’s opinion, ugly. The Colonel would die for sure if he saw where they were keeping him.

  Jace turned a corner toward the private ward and suddenly everything changed. The whole atmosphere was different from one hallway to the next. The air didn’t smell like antiseptic. In the private ward the air smelled like flowers and the walls looked freshly painted. Jace came to double doors with a buzzer that said “Ring here for nurses’ station.” He pushed the button and the voice that said “Can I help you” sounded much too pleasant to work in a place where people were dying.

  “I’m here to see Colonel Bell in 215,” Jace said.

  “Are you family?”

  “Yes.” Of course that depended on your definition of family. “I’m his son.”

  The intercom went quiet and then the woman said, “Please come in, sir.” He heard a buzzer and pulled the door open. Once again, he knew he wasn’t in the public sector any longer. The walls and floors were so shiny that he could practically see himself in them. There were vases of flowers along the counter that lined the nurses’ station, one every foot or so, all filled with beautiful, colorful flowers and the air was fragrant with them. “Mr. Bell?”

  “Yes,” Jace told the cute little nurse in blue scrubs.

  “I’m your father’s nurse, Trina. I’ll show you to his room.” As they walked toward the room Jace said:

  “How is he?”

  “Well, I just got off the phone with his doctor. Your father is alert. About an hour ago he opened his eyes, and he’s moving around and trying to pull out his breathing tube and his IV. I’ll tell you, I was surprised. We honestly didn’t expect this.”

  Jace almost laughed. He wasn’t surprised at all. The Colonel was too mean to die. He still had misery to spread, Jace was sure. “So, what happens now?” he asked, as they stopped in front of the door.

  “Dr. Sawyer is on his way down. He’s making rounds on the fifth floor. He’s going to see if your father is ready to have the breathing tube removed.” When Jace didn’t smile she said, “It’s really good news. We were very worried he wouldn’t make it through the day.” He forced a smile, and she seemed satisfied and pulled open the sliding glass door, pushed back the curtain, and there he was. Jace had seen the Colonel drunk on more than one occasion after Myrna left him, but even drunk as a skunk, he didn’t look weak and pale. He was as white as the sheet and pillowcase underneath him, and he looked twenty years older than the last time Jace had seen him. For the first time in Jace’s lifetime, his father looked weak, and pathetic.

  He stared up at Jace as he approached the bed, but there was no expression on his face. The tube that went down his throat and forced air into his lungs prevented him from speaking. Jace stepped close to the bed and said, “I’m glad you’re doing better.” The Colonel slowly lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers. He was obviously trying to say something, but Jace had no idea what it was. He didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Today’s Rosie’s sixteenth birthday. We were having a party for her when the nurse called.” His father wiggled his fingers again, this time pointing them in the direction of the bedside table. Jace looked and saw a whiteboard there with a marker on top of it. “You want to write something?” The Colonel blinked his eyes over and over and wiggled his fingers faster. His expression still didn’t change, but he was clearly annoyed. Jace picked up the whiteboard and the pen and laid it on his father’s stomach. He tried to put the pen in the Colonel’s hand. It fell out onto the board three times befor
e he got a grip on it. Jace felt an uncommon surge of pity, slid his hand around the old man’s and held it steady while he wrote on the board. The old man made a large, crude “F” and then an equally large, crude “U.” Then he dropped the pen. The pity Jace felt morphed into that old, familiar feeling of rage. It was hot and burned his chest like acid. But just to be sure he said, “Are you telling me to fuck off?”

  The old man began to blink rapidly again and this time he wiggled his fingers and waved his hand toward the door. Jace dropped the whiteboard back onto the bedside table and said, “This is the last time, old man.” The Colonel wiggled his fingers again, until only the middle one remained standing. Jace walked out and past the nurses’ station as they tried to get him to stop.

  “Sir, there are papers you need to sign…”

  He kept walking until he made it to the elevator. The nurse had chased him down the hallway but when he turned and looked at her with a scowl on his face, she backed away and let him step onto the elevator without another word. He barreled through the lobby, almost knocking a few people down, and he didn’t take a breath until he was outside in the fresh air. Once he filled his lungs, the rage began to recede and it was replaced with the numbness that he’d carried around for most of his life once again. He hailed a cab and headed home. As far as he was concerned, he no longer had a father.

  It was close to midnight when Jace made it home. All the lights in the house were on when the cab drove up to it and he rolled his eyes. He knew Carly couldn’t handle this. Rosie should already be tucked into bed and in dreamland…for hours now. When he got up to the door, he stuck his key into it and realized it wasn’t even locked. Getting more annoyed by the second, he pushed the door open and stopped in his tracks as soon as he stepped inside. The house was twice as torn up as it was when he left, which he didn’t understand since everyone had left before he did. He sniffed the air and caught the distinct scent of marijuana too. What the fuck? As he began walking through the living room he surveyed the damage and his eyes fell on the empty beer cans and alcohol bottles that hadn’t even been in his house full, much less empty. He turned toward the hallway and opened the first door, Rosie’s door…and his heart sank into his stomach when he saw the empty, made bed. “Fuck.” He turned and opened his bedroom door across the hall and that time the “Fuck!” came out at the top of his lungs.

  “Oh shit!” Carly sat up, pulling the blankets to her chest. The tattooed, bald fuck next to her was cursing as he sat up and wiped the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked in a voice thick with a Spanish accent. Jace was shocked by the entire situation, but mostly by the realization that the guy in bed with Carly was just a kid. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old.

  “I’m the last fucking face you’re going to see if you don’t get your naked ass outta my bed,” Jace said. Then he trained his glare on Carly and said, “Where’s Rosie?”

  “She’s not in bed?”

  “No you stupid, stupid bitch! She’s not in bed! Where the fuck is she?”

  In a whiny voice she said, “I don’t know, Jace. She was hanging out with Little Ro…”

  “Oh my God!” Jace felt like he was having a heart attack. The little piece of shit that had been in his bed was trying to head for the door. Jace stepped in front of him and grabbed him by his shirt. He pulled him up off his feet and said, “Where’s my sister?”

  “Fuck if I know, man.”

  Jace turned and slammed him into the wall and repeated the question. “Where is my sister?”

  “You talking about that retarded girl?” He got slammed twice for that. He was about to get knocked out, as soon as he told Jace where “Little Ro” had taken his little sister. “Fuck, man, that hurts.”

  Jace pinned him to the wall with one hand and got so close to his face that he could smell what the asshole had for dinner. “You don’t know hurt yet, motherfucker. Where does Little Ro hang out?”

  “I think he was gonna take her to Mad Jax’s party.”

  “You’re wasting time, asshole. Nobody here knows where Mad Jax’s party is. Talk!”

  “Just over on Malsbury, the blue house.” Malsbury was the next street over. Jace had the information he wanted. Carly was screaming something at him, but he ignored her. He wanted to beat the shit out of her, but he couldn’t bring himself to put his hands on a woman. Instead, he carried the asshole he had hold of out through the living room and into the front yard. As soon as he let go of the piece of crap, the guy tried to run. He wasn’t fast enough, however. Jace’s big fist caught him on the side of the head and sent him sailing back about five feet. He landed on his back and his head hit the ground, bounced up and hit again…and his lights were out. Jace left him there, and he took off running down the street. As soon as he turned the corner on Malsbury, he saw the blue house, surrounded by cars and with lowlifes spilling out the front door. Rosie better be okay, he thought, as he ran toward the house, or he was going to burn that motherfucker to the ground.

  12

  “Who da fuck are you?” some little punk asked as Jace ran into the yard of the dilapidated house.

  “None of your fucking business.” The punk stepped in front of him and one of his homies did too. Filled with rage and sure he didn’t have time for this shit, Jace shoved them both to the ground and then stepped on an arm as he made his way to the front porch of the house. He ignored the screams of the man with the now shattered arm and the voices of the people yelling all around him. He had tunnel vision and when he broke the screen door off its hinges and tossed it aside, he scanned the crowded living room for his prey. A blur of movement alerted him that Little Ro was on the move, but two steps and one long arm later, Jace had a hold on the little bastard, and his eyes on his little sister, sitting on the dirty couch with a red Solo cup in her hand. Little Ro was twisting and kicking. Jace slammed his head into the coffee table and Rosie screamed.

  “Rosie, go home.”

  “Jace! No!”

  Jace never raised his voice to Rosie; he simply changed his tone when he needed her to listen to him. But there was no time for debate this time. He wanted to scare her so she would leave. “Go the fuck home, Rosie! Now! Go home, lock the door, and stay there!” He was screaming at her and cussing at her and she looked like she was scared to death. He was worried for a few seconds that she would just have a meltdown and not go anywhere, but realized quickly that she was too shocked or afraid to even attempt a fit. She stood up and with tears streaming down her face, she turned and ran from the room. People stepped out of her way but kept their eyes on Jace and the now drooling little gangbanger he still had in his grasp.

  Jace started to drag the little bastard out of the house––he wasn’t satisfied yet with his punishment. When he reached the front door, it was blocked by a line of shaved-head, tattooed punks in baggy pants. Jace wouldn’t have worried about that, but the little sons o’ bitches all had switchblades in their hands. “You ain’t going nowhere, motherfucker,” one of the guys said. He jerked his head at Little Ro and said, “Let him go.” Jace smiled down at the guy. He was five foot nothing; they all were. None of them weighed over 150 pounds and they couldn’t be over seventeen or eighteen years old. If not for the knives, Jace would be wiping up the floor with all of them in five minutes, without a scratch on him. The knives would make it tricky, but if he was leaving in an ambulance or a body bag, he was taking as many of them with him as possible.

  With a tight grip on Little Ro, he pulled his leg back and kicked the guy directly in front of him. The little punk screamed and flew back toward the open door, landing on his back on the front porch steps. Another guy came at Jace with a knife and Jace threw Little Ro at him. He heard the gangbanger scream like a girl as the switchblade sunk into the soft part of his belly. The guy holding the knife was knocked backwards and a bleeding, screaming Little Ro landed on top of him. There were two left, but neither looked all that confident. Jace was beginning to thin
k he might get out of there without so much as a scratch.

  “Get out of my way and I won’t kick your ass,” he told them.

  In a voice wracked with pain Little Ro said, “Cut him!” Both kids with knives lunged at Jace at once. He grabbed one of the punks by the arm holding the knife and heard the weapon clatter to the floor as the kid yelped in pain. At the same time he had put his left hand up. The other kid sunk the knife into Jace’s palm and excruciating pain shot up his arm. He heard himself cry out when the punk pulled back and ripped his hand open as he pulled out the knife. He dropped the guy he was holding in his right hand and while doing his best to blink back the blinding pain, he brought his hand around and slammed the knifer’s head into the door frame. He dropped as if a ton of bricks had been tucked into those baggy pants, and Jace kicked him out of the way and stepped through the door. He probably looked like something out of a horror flick by then. He was filled with adrenaline and rage as his blood ran down his arm. He could feel the warm spatter of other people’s blood across his face. As soon as he stepped underneath the porch light, kids started scattering in every direction, and girls were screaming.

  He was clutching his torn-up hand and almost stumbled on the porch steps. He didn’t reach any opposition until he was almost out the gate, free and clear. That’s when another punk with a knife stepped in front of him, and this one meant business. His knife was no flimsy switchblade. This one had a steel blade with a serrated edge; most likely it was made for hunting. It was the kind of knife that could slit a man open from one end to the other, and the evil little punk looked like that’s exactly what he had in mind. For the first time Jace wondered if he’d make it out of there alive. Instinctively, when he saw the knife, he brought both of his hands up. Blood was still oozing out from his left palm and now it ran down his arm to his elbow and dripped down onto his boots.