“I need to get you to the hospital. Your Grandmother’s had a stroke.” He looked over at Felix. “Your gay friend can come too.” Felix started to protest, but I spoke first.
“What happened?” I asked.
Rick looked at me like I was stupid. “I just told you. She had a stroke.” He stared at me a few seconds more before he felt like he needed to elaborate. “The postal lady found her lying in the back yard and called 911. I don’t know why they didn’t call you at school, but the neighbor seemed to think you were at work and called there. I got the phone call.” He looked around and then took a swig out of a pint of cheap whiskey. “Look, get in and I’ll give you a ride to the hospital. We’ll figure it all out when we get to the hospital and talk to the doctors.”
Felix opted out of going with us and agreed to drive my little Ford Ranger truck home, but made me promise to call him the minute I knew more. He nodded, gave me a pat on the back and trotted off. I walked over to the driver’s side. “Slide over, I need to drive.” It was hard to gauge Rick’s level of sobriety, or lack thereof.
Rick snorted. “I ain’t drunk you smart-assed kid.”
“C’mon Rick, you just got your license back. You don’t need to get arrested again.” Rick snorted again, but after putting up an obligatory fuss, ceded the driver’s seat to my smart, and sober, ass.
We rode in silence. Rick was listening to a talk-radio station. The host was rambling on about government conspiracies. I tuned him out. Grandma was unconscious when we arrived. I was met by the doctor before I could get in the room.
“How is she sir?” I asked tentatively. He did not answer me, at least not right away.
“Are you her only living relative?” He asked pointedly. I shrugged. “You are under eighteen I’m guessing.” I nodded. He looked over at Rick, probably smelled the alcohol, and redirected his attention back to me. “She’s had a massive stroke. She was probably lying outside for a while before being found. Her body temperature was very low when she came in. With her age and poor health, the prognosis is…”
He did not finish the sentence. He did not need to. I looked past him into the room. She was hooked up to some monitors, there were at least two IVs in her arms, and there was a tube shoved in her mouth. She looked terrible. Weak. Mortal.
On the drive over, I was strong, in control. Not now. I felt tears welling up. The doctor put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure there is no other family son?”
I wiped my eyes. “My parents died in a car wreck when I was young. She took me in. My father has family somewhere in Sweden, but I’ve no idea how to contact them. There might be some cousins out there somewhere, but I’ve never met them.” I did not tell him that my dad’s family had disowned him years ago, before I was born. I looked at the doctor. “Our only income is my job at a farm and Social Security. We’ll never be able to pay the hospital bills.”
He held his hand up. “Don’t worry about that. We have policies in place for indigent patients.” My mouth tightened at the statement. Calling my Grandmother indigent really bothered me, but it was true. Hell, she and I probably had a hundred dollars between us. She did not even own the house we were living in. I had planned on dropping out of school in order to work full time, but she would not hear of it. She insisted that I finish school and go to college.
I was not allowed to stay the night in Grandma’s room. The staff informed me in a polite but firm manner I could only sit in the lobby all night with other patients’ families. Rick overheard and interrupted. “Kid, do you really want to sit all night in a room full of strangers?” I hung my head. “If something happens, it happens. There won’t be anything you can do about it. Come on back to the farm and stay with me.” He said.
I reluctantly acquiesced. We each gave the doctor our cell phone numbers. Rick’s brain sparked a bit and he realized by letting me drive he could now drink without worrying about getting pulled over by a hard-nosed cop. He tossed me the keys as we walked into the parking lot and drank from his bottle without worry.
We rode to the farm in silence. There used to be a gate at the entrance, but somebody, a certain person who goes by the name of Rick, ran over it after a night of boozing it up at the VFW. He either forgot it was there or did not care. The next day it took us an hour to get the gate’s mangled remains out of the undercarriage of his truck. Rick was the caretaker, foreman, and jack-of-all trades at the farm. The main property owners were an older couple named the Parsons. They owned five hundred acres and contracted another five hundred from neighbors. Rick ran the farm and I worked for him. He was paid a salary and lived rent-free in the old homestead.
Rick walked in and flipped on some lights. After getting the fire going, he made himself comfortable in his tattered easy chair, and I sat on the couch. We listened to the crackling wood in a somber silence. “You want a drink?” I arched my eyebrow at him. He chuckled and drank a hefty swallow. “You want to talk about it kid?” I shook my head. “Look here kid, you’re hurting. I can see it plain as day. I’m asking if you want to talk about it and you give the obligatory no. This is the part where I’m supposed to coax it out of you. I’m not going to do it. You want to keep it all bottled up inside of you, that’s your call. If you want to talk, I ain’t going nowhere. We can talk all night.”
Well, he had a good point. I guess I felt like I did want to talk about it. At least, a little bit. “What do I do Rick?”
“Well kid, you always plan for a worse-case scenario. And, you always recognize the inevitability. The inevitability is your Grandma is going to die.” Rick said it in a matter-of-fact tone.
I was taken aback. “How do you know?”
“Hell Zach, how old is she, 84? 85?” I responded to the latter. “Okay, 85. Her health is not good. She has a stroke and falls over in the back yard on a cold day. No telling how long she’d been lying out there. I’m no doctor, but I’m not giving her good odds kid.”
I nodded in silence. Rick was an old alcoholic who was very rough around the edges, but he also had wisdom borne from a life on the streets and some rough time in Vietnam. I liked him. He was easy-going, and in his own way had a lot of worldly advice to give a teenage kid. My thoughts were interrupted by his loud snoring. The alcohol had put him down for the night. I got up, got the bottle out of his hand, and put a blanket on him.
I tried to call Macie several times, but her phone was apparently turned off. I left more than one voice mail. I then called the hospital. They advised me there was no change in Grandma’s condition. I tried calling Macie once more, and drifted off to sleep with my phone grasped tightly in my hand.
Chapter 4 - The Worst Day of My Life
It was the crack of dawn when I woke up. I immediately checked my phone. No call from either the hospital or Macie. I called the hospital first. They were very vague, but said her condition had not changed. I then tried calling Macie. Her phone was still off. So I called Felix. He answered after the first ring, but he was still groggy from sleep.
“How’s your Grandmother?” He asked immediately.
“She’s not good. I’m not going to school today. I’m going to be at the hospital.”
“No problem bro. I’ll let the principal know where you are. Is there anything else I can do?”
“Yeah, if you see Macie, have her call me as soon as possible. I tried calling all night and this morning, but her battery must be dead or something.” Felix agreed and we hung up. Rick woke up while I was on the phone. He was grunting and farting like, well, like an old hung over man. “Hey, you mind driving me home? I need to clean up and get to the hospital.” He did not respond verbally. He went into the restroom. A moment later I heard the sound of him urinating, followed by the sound of the toilet flushing and the faucet running. He came out a moment later and halfheartedly grabbed the keys off of the kitchen counter. His brain wasn’t ready for verbal communication. He pointed toward the door and walked out.
I sat with my Grandmother all day. She looked even worse.
Old, tired, and feeble. I held her hand and tried talking to her, but she did not move. Not once.
I wished she could hear me. I would have told her what a good person she was. I was just two when my parents died. She was already old. She could have let the state put me in a foster home, but she took me home and cared for me. She never yelled at me, always made sure there was food on the table, and never failed to tell me how much she loved me. On my fifteenth birthday, she took me to get a hardship driver’s license and then surprised me with a blue Ford Ranger truck. It was well used and had a few miles on it, but overall was in decent shape. She refused to tell me how much it cost. It was the best present I had ever received.
The charge nurse, a matronly looking dark-skinned woman with breasts like watermelons tolerated me for a few hours, but finally shooed me out. I must have looked bad, because she ordered me to get some rest and promised to call me if anything changed. I was just about to walk out the door when the alarms on the machines started sounding. The nurse pushed me out just as several other personnel rushed in.
A code blue. Cardiac arrest. I watched quietly. Helplessly. They tried, they really did, but it was Grandma’s time.
I spent the next hour with the hospital administration and a chaplain who was preoccupied in an ongoing cell phone text conversation. They were polite, but business was business. They needed to know what to do with Grandma’s body. It got worked out somehow. I was mostly in a daze. Tired, stressed, and miserable. All I wanted to do was go see my girl and hold her in my arms. I tried calling her. No answer. At least her phone was back on, so I sent a text message. I then called Felix and filled him in.
“Oh, I’m so sorry bro. Is there anything I can do?” He asked.
“Yeah, find Macie and tell her to please answer her damn phone. I’ve still not gotten in touch with her. There must be something wrong. Have you spoken to her at all?” Felix was silent. “Are you there?”
Felix answered. His voice had a different tone. “Yeah I talked to her. Listen, don’t worry about her right now. Go on home and I’ll meet you there, okay?”
“What’s wrong Felix?” After a bit of arguing, he told me. He told me everything. It seemed as though it was all over school but I knew nothing about it. Macie was now Jason’s girlfriend. Jason Argos, that guy. The massively popular jock. With my girl. Apparently they had hooked up recently at a party, which coincidentally I was not invited to, and now they were officially dating. I hung up the phone and sped towards Macie’s.
That was my first mistake. I tried to play the sympathy card and told the cop about my Grandmother. It did not work. He chided me about driving like a maniac, and smirked when he handed me the speeding ticket. I kept my speed down, and after what seemed like an eternity finally made it to her home. She was there. So was Jason. So were a few other people. All of them were seniors, none of them were my friends. They were all loitering around the front yard laughing and having a good time. A couple of them were holding forty ounce beers wrapped in brown bags.
Macie saw me and quickly walked up the front steps to her house. I made a beeline toward her. Jason stepped in between us before I got more than a few feet. “Out of the way fucker. I need to speak to Macie.” I tried to step around him, but like I said earlier, Jason is tall and muscular. Taller than me, definitely more muscle. He deftly stepped in front of me again and held up a hand.
“Just stop and listen to me dude. Macie and I are dating now. It’s nothing against you, it just happened. These things happen. You need to go.”
I stared at him. He seemed sincere, perhaps even sympathetic. I inhaled and tried to keep my emotions in check. “So, how long has this been going on?” I asked quietly. My voice was cracking and I was literally shaking. I could see two of his boys standing behind him grinning and pointing at me like I was some sort of carnival act. Some girl I’ve never seen before was holding her cell phone up at me.
Jason sighed. “It’s been going on a couple of weeks now. Listen Zach, this is not Macie’s fault. She was just confused. She likes you, but just as a friend, okay? The best thing you can do is leave. I’ll have Macie call and explain everything to you later.” My body was numb. I could feel nothing except for a tightening in my chest. Macie refused to look at me. Jason was holding his hands up passively. I was about to turn around and walk away. And then, he smirked.
Aside from the cop, I had seen that smirk once before. Felix, Macie, and I had gone to one of the school’s baseball games a couple of months ago. Jason pitched a terrific game. Only one of the opposing players was able to get a hit in, which was a home run. A couple of innings later, Jason hit him in the head with a wild pitch. After the game, a group of us gathered and we watched as a local newspaper reporter interviewed him. He asked him about the wild pitch. Jason was very apologetic. He said he was trying to throw a slider and it got away from him. He went on to say he was very sorry for injuring the other player, and he would pray for him. The reporter thanked Jason and turned away. When the reporter was not looking, Jason smirked. Just like he was now smirking at me.
I took a swing at him, a roundhouse right I was certain would knock him out. He easily blocked it and replied with a one-two combination. I hit the ground, dazed and humiliated. That would have been enough, I was done for. Once the stars circling in front of my eyes went away, I was going to get up and walk to my truck with as much dignity as I could muster.
It was not to be. While I was lying there, his two boys decided to join in. They ran up and started viciously kicking me. The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was Macie looking at me.
It was the day before Thanksgiving. It was my sixteenth birthday. And yes, it was the worst day of my life.
Chapter 5 - The Beginning
I regained consciousness in an ambulance. My mind was in a fog. I could not yet fully fathom what had just happened to me. The only thing I could really grasp was this ambulance ride to the local ER was going to be yet another bill I would not be able to pay for. The paramedic, an attractive blonde who reminded me of Macie, was asking me simple questions, what was my name, what day was it, did I have any communicable diseases. When she was finished she smiled and squeezed my hand. I guess I answered to her satisfaction.
The ER personnel were nice, but hurried. The place was full of patients. Even the police officer, the same one who gave me a speeding ticket, was very polite as he took a report of my assault. He was even kind enough to turn his head every time he coughed.
I had multiple contusions, a black eye which had swollen shut, a mild concussion, a rib or two were broken, and my testicles felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to them. The doctor said I would live, but would be in pain for a while. If only he knew how right he was. He gave me a prescription for some pain medication and kicked me loose, no pun intended. I had no insurance, I wondered if it made a difference in my treatment.
Felix and his father were waiting for me as the orderly pushed me out in a wheelchair.
Felix. What a friend. He heard what happened within minutes. Word gets around fast in High School. He called Macie, who was gracious enough to fill him in. He and his father drove over to get my truck and then hustled over to the ER.
The two of them stared at me with pitiful expressions. Mr. Stewart was an older clone of his son. He actually looked like Mr. Magoo. They both wore the same thick eyeglasses, they had the same build, and even their haircuts were exactly the same. They gingerly helped me to my little Ford Ranger and Felix drove me home in silence. I kept my eyes closed to try to alleviate the pain and prevent needless conversation.
“Okay buddy, we’re home - oh shit.” Felix gasped. I opened my eyes and looked. Someone had decided they needed to rub it in a little. They had spray painted some choice graffiti on the front of my house. Let’s just say there were some disparaging references to my gender, my sexual orientation, and my penis. Very nice. I guess losing one’s grandmother garnered little sympathy these days.
Mr. Stewart parked on th
e other side of the street and waited. He seemed not to notice the graffiti. Felix stared at the vandalism. “Bro, that is so fucked up. Why would they do that to you?” He shook his head in disgust. I would have too if my head did not hurt so badly. “You want me to stay the night? Pops won’t mind and I can try to clean this stuff up.” Felix was looking at me with those big pathetic eyes like he was the one who had just taken a beating.
I shook my head, making the pain worse. “I appreciate it Felix. I really do. But I just want to be alone for a while.” I was interrupted by a tapping on the truck’s window, which startled me. I guess I was still shell shocked. I turned my head quickly, which caused a bolt of pain to shoot through my body.
It was Felix’s dad. When I rolled down the window, with great difficulty, he patted me on the shoulder and suggested I grab some clothes and stay the weekend with them. After all, it was Thanksgiving tomorrow. I shook my head. “I really appreciate it Mr. Stewart, but I just want to go to bed. I’ll give Felix a call in the morning, how’s that?” He started to argue with me but opted not to. Instead, he nodded somberly and walked back to his car. Felix made me promise him I would call if there was any problem, and gave me one of his usual pats on the shoulder, which sent yet another spasm of pain down my side.
I made it inside and to my bed without too much pain. I was lying there watching TV when my phone rang. I looked at the caller I.D. It was Macie. My brain told me not to answer, but my heart won out.
“Are you okay?” She asked.
“Wow, what a stupid question. What do you think Macie? Let’s see, my Grandmother just died, you tear my heart out, I got my ass kicked, and when I come home from the ER I discover my house has been vandalized by some immature idiot with a can of spray paint. What do you think? Do you think I’m okay?” She did not respond. Something told me she was already aware of the graffiti. I let the silence build a moment. “So, are you going to tell me why this all happened? Or should I just go to my grave thinking what an evil bitch you are?”
Zombie Rules Page 2
