by Nicky Shanks
She nods and pats my shoulder. “Just hang in there. I’ll be back in the morning, and hopefully his surgery will be over by then and he’ll be in recovery.” She starts to leave, but she stops when her mind apparently gets the best of her. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you care about.” Her eyes darken but she doesn’t look at me. “All I can say to you is…hang in there.”
“You said that already.”
She smiles and leaves without another word. My gaze locks onto the screen, watching the orange line like an addict. My eyes burn from watching it so hard. I never thought I’d love hearing the sound of my own voice so much.
If he can hear me, could he hear Casey before?
Does he know he’s only half-alive?
I grip his hand harder and lower my head, resting it on his lap. I could fall asleep here with him if I wasn’t under so much stress. I quietly sob into the blanket over his thighs and silently pray that he’ll just move his arm up and comfort me…something. For a second, I think I feel his warm hand on my back and I jump, but he’s still lifeless beneath me.
***
“I’m here,” I hear Oliver’s voice whisper, and I jump again. The room is dark and I can barely see my own fingers let alone whoever is standing behind me. “How are you feeling, baby?” His voice is deep and sexy—I want to turn around, but I’m afraid that he won’t actually be there. “Julie? Hey, can you sit up and look at me?”
Before thinking, I open my eyes and see sunlight pouring into the room. We’re in our bedroom at the cabin and I’m sitting on the floor; I turn my body and see a worried look on Oliver’s face, but something isn’t right. His face is…different. Older.
His smile still jolts my heart into a frenzy. “I know you’ve been dizzy a lot lately…did you faint?” The amount of concern that drips from his tongue shakes me to my core. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he isn’t cold and lifeless before me, so I’ll try to be positive. His lips thin into a small frown and his fear nearly burns my skin as he stares at me, waiting for answers.
I look at my hands and try to lift myself up from the ground, but I’m weak.
Very weak.
“I do need help.” My voice is raspy and dry. “And water, please.”
First, he takes me by the waist and lifts me into the air with almost no effort—his muscles are straining at the seams of his dress shirt. Even in his forties—I assume—working out still seems like a big deal for Oliver Jackson. He settles me into a chair and leaves me alone so he can fetch my water. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but I know that I don’t feel anywhere close to being right. I’m so weak and tired that it hurts.
“Here you go, baby.” Oliver returns and his voice soothes my insides like magic. I feel painless and at peace. I nod and he smiles—there’s nothing that can ever make me not love this man. He kisses the top of my head, and when I finish my drink, he takes my glass back into the bathroom, where he stays for a few minutes in silence.
His face is pale when he reemerges. He kneels in front of me, brushing hair from my eyes. Our gazes lock, twin sadness in our eyes, but his is just too overwhelming to ignore. I reach out and gently pull him close to me, but I feel his hesitation when he puts his arms around my body, like he thinks he’ll break me. After a few moments of trying to be stoic, he presses our bodies flush together and his woodsy scent fills my head.
I am free.
I am home.
***
“Just who the hell do you think you are?”
I hear a woman’s rough voice cut through my dream. “Hey, wake up, you little street rat!” She nudges me with her foot. I flick open my eyes, ready to tear into the person who took me away from Oliver in my head. I realize where I am and frantically look at the machines around Oliver, just to make sure they’re all still on and working. I watch his broad chest heave up and down with deep breaths thanks to the ventilator, and it comforts me.
Good. I didn’t sleep through his death.
“Hello…still here.” The woman snaps her fingers next to my face and I almost reach up to grab them so I can break them myself. I’m too tired to even try and catch them, though, as they wag in front of my fuzzy vision. “Care to explain what the hell you’re doing here? Did you come to rob him or have your way with him while he’s asleep?”
I look up at her and blink a few times. The woman standing over me looks rough and defeated. Her bleached hair is fried at the ends; her roots are chestnut brown, but the bleached part is so white that I can hear it crunch without touching it. There’s so much caked, night-before eyeliner around her eyes that it’s hard to see what color they are, but then I notice it.
They’re the same emerald green as Oliver’s.
She glares down at me while smacking on a piece of bubblegum, and I want to slap her across her gray, sunken-in cheeks. Who the hell does she think she is? She must have the wrong room. I sweetly smile and look around to make sure we’re alone before I speak to her.
“I think you have the wrong room. I don’t know you, and you can leave the same way you entered, lady,” I snarl, but the smile stays on my lips.
She doesn’t return my smile. “I don’t think so, little girl. The mistake is yours. He is my son.” Her bony fingers point to Oliver and she growls back at me, “So now you can leave.”
Rage builds inside of me; this is the most pissed off I’ve been in a long time. The woman’s oversized black dress doesn’t quite touch the floor and I can see her muddy, tattered sneakers peeking out from beneath the hem as she continues to smack her lips in annoyance.
“I think you need a reality check,” I snap. “His mother is long gone.”
The more I study her eyes, the more I see Oliver in them. I stand up and push the emergency button. Nurse Mary comes in with a doctor in tow.
“Remove this woman from the room, please,” I say to Mary. “I don’t know her and I don’t think my husband does either.” It feels weird calling Oliver that; I know the lie that comes from my mouth is so transparent that no one will believe me.
The woman laughs. “Husband? She’s a damn liar…remove her from the room! He’s my son!” I notice the screen with the orange line is going out of control. I know that Nurse Mary was lying to me and that machine doesn’t really mean what she says it does, but pretending that Oliver is right next to me in this conversation makes it easier.
The doctor touches the woman’s arm to ask her to leave, and she snarls before lunging toward me. He catches her and drags her from the room—I can hear her screams until the elevator doors close.
Nurse Mary frowns. “All that family drama…I’ve seen it before many times.”
I say nothing. She doesn’t get to talk about things like that. She notices my reservation about joining her in conversation. When she leaves, the room is quiet again.
Cold.
I wish Oliver would just wake up; he’s the one who deals with things like this the best.
A security guard nods at me through the window of the door, letting me know he’ll stand watch just in case the woman comes back. I place my head back down on Oliver’s chest, hoping I can hear something other than his slow, weak heartbeat.
Nothing.
He doesn’t come up behind me this time.
No dream.
Just silence for three straight hours.
I can’t really sleep, so I pull one of the journals from my bag. Thankfully I placed them inside and grabbed this bag before we left. I need the distraction right now.
May 15th, 1992
I have a son.
A living, breathing baby boy.
The amount of poison Veronica put into her body shows as my small infant wriggles with withdrawal symptoms before my very eyes. It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever felt—watching my own flesh and blood writhe in terror only hours into this world.
But, he is beautiful and looks exactly like Veronica; he has her eyes and her smile. I see myself in him too, but the resemblance he has toward
her is amazing. When the nurse handed him to me, I cried so hard that it was difficult to look straight at him.
Loving someone before meeting them is very possible.
Loving someone more than your own life is, too.
He’s only a day old and already I find myself forgetting my old self to be a better man for my son…and Veronica. I see the strain in her eyes—she wants to escape me again. Only this time, there’s so much more at stake here. I can’t let her take my son if she vanishes again…I have to keep him from whatever fate she has in her mind for him.
For now, she sleeps with him by her side, and they both smile. He’s finally calmed down enough that we are certain he’ll pull through. His head is covered with muddy brown hair that matches hers, and their eyes are the same exact color of green.
Oliver Frankford Jackson.
The boy who changed it all.
The boy who will never know his mother, at least not like a child should. I fear that she’s going to strip him of a normal childhood. It’s my job to make sure to counteract that the best I can and shower him with love.
A father’s love.
There’s absolutely nothing like it.
The bookmark I’ve been using, a napkin from the Lake Reed Inn, folds nicely behind the journal entry I just read. I close the book and sit in silence with Oliver for over half an hour.
I stare at the orange line the entire time; before I know it, the door opens quickly and people start pouring into the room. Doctors and nurses are chatting around us, looking down at me. One of them touches my shoulder for me to stand up, and they start pushing me from the room.
“Hey, wait,” I say in a sleepy voice as they pass me toward the door. “Wait!”
“Dr. Osmond is here to do the surgery,” a male nurse tells me. “We need you to leave.”
I rip my arm from his grip and scream at the top of my lungs. “Everyone get the hell out of here so I can have a minute alone with him!”
A tall, tan man holds up his index finger to me. “He needs to get into surgery right now—I need to see what I’m working with.”
I growl at him. “Give me sixty seconds.”
Dr. Osmond nods and the room empties again as I rub the sleep from my eyes. I look over Oliver’s lifeless body and take a mental note of exactly how he looks for what might be the last time. I quickly wonder if I should take a picture of him with my phone…just in case. Deciding against it, I kiss his forehead and push his hair back a little to somehow comfort myself in thinking he’s here with me.
“I’ll be waiting for you right here,” I whisper in his ear. “You better not go anywhere, because I’m not going anywhere, do you hear me? I love you, Oliver Jackson.”
The door opens and Dr. Osmond nods at me, letting me have space to leave before everyone filters back inside. Within minutes, they roll Oliver out of the room and I desperately watch them until they’re out of my eyesight. I collapse onto the sofa where Casey was before.
Nurse Mary finds me, covering me with a soft blanket. “I’ll wake you when he’s out of surgery.”
I shake my head. “I can’t sleep when he’s dying on a table.”
She smiles; it makes me feel better. “I promise I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
I don’t argue. I close my eyes and let the fatigue consume my body.
Damn you, Oliver Jackson.
Damn you.
Chapter Seventeen
Oliver
I feel Julie’s sadness fade and her strawberry scent leaves my airways. I fucking hate when this happens; the sweetness of her skin keeps me grounded. Instead, it’s replaced with an awful sulfur smell, making me want to gag. The room is still freezing cold wherever they take me. Most of the voices that have surrounded me are now leaving, and only a few remain.
“Doctor, are you scrubbed in?”
“I’m ready…check his vitals before we begin.”
I hear shades open and the chatter of people across the room.
Are they teaching a class? Am I on display?
What the hell do they think they’re doing?
“Okay, he’s as good as he’s going to get, I’m afraid. Let’s begin.”
It’s silent for a long time while I hear shuffles and feel nothing. The doctor calls out several different names of tools he needs, followed by a second voice repeating them as they hand them over.
“There, now let’s make the incisions.”
The machines hooked up to my body beep steadily, but inside I’m screaming in fear and agony. The medicine running through my IV makes me drowsy, and I drift into a deep sleep.
Oliver, wake the hell up!
***
“Wake up, you little shit.” I hear her raspy smoker’s voice in my ear. “Wake up—let’s get the hell out of here.”
I see darkness when I open my eyes, but there aren’t doctors around me. I’m in my small bedroom in Mrs. Atchley’s quaint apartment, where she lets me stay when Dad is out of town. I look at the digital clock on my bedside table; it’s just after three a.m. and the sky is so dark that nothing is visible inside of my room except for my mother’s scowling face inches from me.
“Come on!” She tugs me so hard that I fall out of the bed and land with a hard thud on the floor. I purposely make more noise as I stand back up.
“Shut the fuck up!” a man says from across the room, near the window. “Do you want us to get caught? Get your little bitch boy and let’s get outta here!” I look up and see his grim face outside the open window. He gives me a matching grim smile.
“I’m not supposed to leave.” I act like it’s no big deal and brush off my pajamas. “Dad said I have to stay here when he’s away…I’m not going with you.” I sit on the edge of my bed.
She gets mad at me. “You’re mine too! Don’t you miss me?”
I nod my head even though we both know it’s a lie. “Yes, Mommy.”
She pulls me closer with one arm and lights a cigarette, sitting on the small bed and bringing me down with her. “Well, then…what’s the problem here? We can go anywhere you want, kid.”
I stare at her face; I haven’t seen her for an entire year, and she looks sicker than she’s ever looked before. Her eyes are lifeless and her cheeks are sunken in too. “I carried you inside of me for almost ten months—the least you can do is act like you like me.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” I say and hang my head. “Dad says I have to stay here.”
Smack!
Her hand sweeps across my small face with so much force that it knocks me backward. I have to brace myself for another blow while my little body is pushed against the corner of my dresser. I hear Mrs. Atchley stir across the hall from us, and my mother’s face grows serious and pale. She grabs my arm—harder this time—and growls at me. “Get the fuck out there with Mac.”
Mac.
The man with the scary face.
The man who beat me last year and nearly killed me.
He holds his hands open for me to jump into, but I freeze.
“Come on, you little jerk!” he hisses at me, wiggling his fingers. “Let’s fucking go!”
“No, I’m not going!” I scream and try to take my arm back from her grip. Her brittle nails scratch me and I cry, hoping that I’m loud enough to alarm Mrs. Atchley. “I’m not going anywhere with you! I hope I never see you again!”
Her face hardens. “You don’t mean that. You’re being brainwashed. What about your father is so great? He denies me when I come to him and won’t let me see you!”
The door opens and light pours into the dark room from the brilliantly lit hallway. Mrs. Atchley stands in the doorway with a shotgun in her hands, raising it at my mother without hesitation.
“Let him go or you’ll be eating bullets,” she says with a calm voice. My mother doesn’t back down, so Mrs. Atchley raises the gun higher and cocks it, ready to fire. “I won’t tell you again, Veronica.”
My mother snickers. “You wouldn’t dare shoot me in front of him.�
��
Mrs. Atchley’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t bother looking at me as her eyes grow cold and she stares down my kidnapper. “Try me.”
“You bitch,” my mother says. “If you don’t come with me now, boy, I’ll find a way to get you later. I always get what I want. You really wish to never see me again?”
I don’t even have to think about it.
I nod my head and say nothing.
She groans and pushes Mac down the ladder and they’re both gone. Sirens surround the house and officers command the two of them to get on the ground from their loudspeakers. Mrs. Atchley leaves to put the gun away and then comes back into the room to shut the window and re-lock it.
Police officers are flooding the apartment, asking me questions I don’t understand. They rub their jaws in frustration and look at me with sad eyes. The woman that pats my hand, she’s nice and she likes to ask me questions I do understand.
“What did your mother want?”
“She wanted me to go with her.”
“Did she promise you anything? Toys? Money?”
“No.”
“Was there anyone with her?”
“Yes, Mac was with her.”
She shows me a picture. “This man? Terrance MacElvaine?”
“Yes, that’s him. That’s my mom’s boyfriend. I don’t like him.”
She smiles and pats my hand again. When the police officers are all gone, my eyes are so heavy that Mrs. Atchley has to pick me up the best she can to take me back to my bedroom. She puts me back into bed and tucks me in tightly, her warm smile almost making me forget everything that just happened.
Almost.
“We’ll deal with the rest of this in the morning, kid. Try and get some sleep—you’re safe now.” She pats my head and leaves the room.
I never want to see my mother again.
