Broken

by Willow Rose

  Heather looked at me. Then she laughed. "Listen to the big doctor," she said mockingly.

  I drew in a big sigh and threw my arms resigned in the air. "Fine," I said. "Do what you want and kill yourself. I have work to do." With big steps I walked in the shower slamming the bathroom door behind me.

  "Fine!" I heard her say just before I turned on the water and drowned all sounds coming from outside the bathroom. I slammed the palm of my hand in the wall a couple of times trying to release some of the anger that had been building up through many months. Why was it so? Why couldn't I fix her? Why wouldn't she listen? I was trying so hard to make everything work here, to make this family work, and all she did was to destroy it. Couldn't she see what she was doing to herself? What she was doing to all of us?

  When I came out of the shower Heather was gone. Her car wasn't in the garage either.

  Chapter 12

  Heather stayed away for three days. Where she was I never knew. Meanwhile I decided I no longer wanted to excuse her behavior so I flat out told William that I had no idea where his mom was and that I didn't know if she would ever come back again. He seemed to accept that explanation since he had no choice. I even told her parents when they called on the second day that she had left the house and that I hadn't heard from her. Mrs. Kirk - her mother - was very upset and wanted to call the police.

  "Maybe something happened to her," she said. "Something terrible. Have you called all the hospitals?"

  "No, I haven't. We had a fight two days ago and then she left. I don't think anything has happened to her. She'll be back."

  "But we need to at least do something," Mrs. Kirk said.

  I breathed deeply while watching William. He was sitting on the floor doing a puzzle. I didn't want him to hear us talk about his mother like this. I didn't want him to worry. "Listen, Mrs. Kirk. I am sure everything is just fine. She is a grown woman and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. I'll have her call you as soon as I hear from her, okay?"

  "Well ... okay then. Keep in touch."

  "Bye."

  "So you really think Mom is okay?" William asked when I put down the phone.

  I nodded slowly. Then I walked towards him and sat next to him on the floor. I found a piece of the puzzle and placed it where it belonged. "I am certain, son. Mom is just fine."

  And she was, at least for a while. She came home on the third day, well actually I found her in the driveway, sitting in her car, sleeping in the front seat. It was almost morning and I was on my way back from the swamps where I once again had met up with Aiyana and gone hunting by her side. I was becoming accustomed to this new life of mine where I was one thing during the day and something completely different at night. The transformation occurred more smoothly now and was less painful. I had come to enjoy my nightly hunts with Aiyana so much that I was looking forward to it every night and welcoming the transformation so the small pain I felt didn't matter anymore. It was a pain followed by extreme pleasure and happiness that I - even after only three days - now knew I could never live without again. This was already a huge part of me and I was never going to let go of it again. I loved everything about it. I loved what I became, I loved what I was capable of, what it enabled me to do and most of all I loved the hunt. I loved the taste of animal blood that I got to have every night. It was like a drug. I could never go a night without it again.

  I waited for the transformation to wear off before I opened the door to the car. It was parked halfway on the lawn and had gone through the beautiful Peruvian lilies that Heather loved so much. On the floor of the car I found empty bottles of prescription medicine on top of empty bottles of strong alcohol. Gin, vodka, wine-coolers. Heather smelled like a bar. Her clothes were a mess and reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.

  "Dear God. Heather. What have you done to yourself?" I mumbled as I tried to wake her up. I felt her neck and found a pulse, but a weak one. She was alive but heavily sedated. With much difficulty I got her out of the car and carried her into the house in my arms. She started moaning as I went up the stairs.

  "I know I'm a bad mother. I know I'm horrible ..." she said.

  I opened the door to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. She opened her eyes for a second. "I am so sorry, Chris," she mumbled just before her eyes shut again. "I am so sorry, I’ve ruined everything. I’m a terrible, terrible person," she repeated with her eyes closed.

  "Shh. Get some sleep and then we'll talk later," I whispered while I stroke her gently over the head. I watched her for a few minutes after she fell asleep. "I know you are in there somewhere," I whispered just before I left her. "I know you are."

  I called Heather's mother from the office just before I took my nap that I had become addicted to as well as the hunting. This half an hour a day was still all the sleep I got but somehow it seemed to be enough for me. My body no longer needed more than that. It was thrilling to me this superior being I had become, who hardly needed sleep.

  As a doctor I was quite amazed with what my body had become capable of. The incredible night vision, the strength I had as a jaguar, and the hearing. Ten years ago, I had been able to hear Heather's thoughts and now I had the idea that if I practiced it I might be able to do it again. It was like Aiyana had said, I needed to take care of my abilities, and I needed to nurse them. Like her sister Halona who had become able to move things with the will of her mind by continually practicing it and perfecting it. My theory was that I could do the same with my hearing. I could become like Aiyana and hear people's thoughts if I only perfected it. So I wanted to try it out.

  After my nap I called my secretary Julie in to take a memo. She sat in the chair in front of my desk with her notepad on her lap and a pencil in her hand. I smiled and started dictating my letter. As she wrote it all down I focused my thoughts on her. I fixated everything on her. My eyes, my every thought. I remembered how Aiyana used to say that she needed to be still in order to distinguish my voice from the many others she heard in her head. I had thousands of voices talking and whispering at this very moment. In the beginning they had almost driven me insane but after ten years I had gotten used to them and they faded into the background, except when they were persistent or especially insistent in a way I could no longer ignore. Then I was forced to listen. Now I wanted to be in control. I wanted to be the one to decide which voice to listen to, and I chose Julie who was sitting in front of me as I spoke and she wrote on her pad. I closed my eyes and listened until I found it. The thoughts, the words that sounded just like her voice. It was a mess at first, a lot of words just coming at me with no sentences or structure or anything. Then somehow I figured out a way to decipher the words and little by little they started to fall in place creating sentences like 'wonder if he ... how shall I be able to afford... what if I asked my parents for help?'

  I opened my eyes and stared at her. Suddenly I felt a deep doubt. What if I listened in on something I had no business of knowing. After all she was my secretary. I was her boss. There were many things I didn't want to know about her. This might just have been a very bad idea.

  But soon I realized that once I had opened her chain of thoughts it wasn't so easy to shut it down again. It just kept coming. All those words kept floating inside of my head. Then pictures, images of the man I knew as her husband but couldn't remember the name of at a table in a dark casino, a gambling table playing cards, losing, then on to playing something else, losing again, his hands shaking because he knew this was his last chance. If only he could win this one time, that was all it took, just one more win like the one he had had in the beginning. Then I saw the kids, the two small girls of only four and six. 'Needs new shoes' Julie thought. 'How will I pay for their school next year?'

  I shook my head heavily. I stared at Julie. A newfound sympathy for her grew inside of me. Suddenly she was no longer simply an employee. I knew something about her life, something she had kept a hidden as secret even from her parents who had no means to help her with. I felt overwhelmed with grief fo
r her and her children. I knew her husband as a good man, but everybody apparently had something in their lives. Everyone had their demons.

  "I’ll lend you the money. Hell, I’ll give it to you," I blurted out. "I’ll will even pay for your husband's treatment. Just get him out of this addiction of his. Get him out of his gambling addiction before you'll have to leave your house."

  Julie stared at me for a long time. She was frozen, shocked. I leaned back in my chair and felt the tears pile up behind my eyes. "Now just go and leave me alone for awhile."

  She stood up. Thoughts were storming through her head.

  "No, your ears don't deceive you," I said. "I’ll take care of everything. Take the rest of the day off and go be with your family. At least you have one."

  She started walking, perplex and fumbling. Then she turned and looked at me.

  "Whatever you do, please don't thank me. Just leave," I said.

  When she left I leaned over my desk and hid my face in my hands. Then I cried. Silently. Soundlessly.

  Chapter 13

  Heather had a fever again when I got home from work. Sarah was in the kitchen with William when she told me.

  "She took a sleeping pill that knocked her out, so she is sleeping now, but that awful cough is back," she said. "The Mrs. is not well."

  "You can say that again," I said and walked to the living room where I poured myself a drink. I stared out the window at the water. A thunderstorm had just passed by and it was still raining heavily. Big raindrops made the water look foamy. I still had an hour before sunset and the transformation would come. How I longed for the change. I needed it more than ever. I missed running through the swamps, climbing the trees, hunting in the water, I missed the freedom, the air, and the smells. I missed looking into her glowing eyes and the feeling of belonging out there with her.

  William came in and hugged my leg. I put the drink down and took him in my arms. "Don't worry buddy. She'll be fine. She came home like I told you, right?"

  He nodded while leaning his head on my shoulder. I tried to hide my growing concern for Heather's health. The fever coming back like that wasn't a good sign. Neither was the cough.

  "See just like I told you. And now I am telling you she will be fine. We just need to help her get well, alright?"

  "But how do we do that, Far?"

  I smiled at the way he said 'far,' the Danish word for dad. He always did it with an American accent. It sounded really cute. I looked into his eyes intensely and made sure he was listening to my every word. "What always cures the princess in the fairytales? What can always break the curse?"

  William smiled widely. "True loves’ kiss!" he exclaimed with much joy.

  I pointed my finger at his chest. "Exactly. Mom is just like a princess in a fairy tale. All she needs is lots and lots of kisses from the people that love her. Okay?"

  William hugged me tight. "Okay, Far."

  "Now run along and I’ll be up to tuck you in in a few minutes." I put William on the ground and picked up my drink.

  "Read me a story, will you?" He asked. His blue eyes looked expectantly on me.

  "Of course. But only one, okay?"

  "Okay."

  While I heard his small feet run up the thick-carpeted stairs I emptied my glass and put it down. I closed my eyes and exhaled deeply.

  Someone cleared a throat behind me. I opened my eyes and turned. Sarah stood in the opening.

  "Yes, Sarah? You can leave now if you want to. I can take William from here."

  Sarah took a step closer. "I know perfectly well it is none of my business," she began.

  I turned away from her. "But what, Sarah?"

  "But I am concerned about Mrs. Langaa. I think she is very sick."

  I exhaled deeply again. "She is a drunk, Sarah. She's an addict. She misuses pills and alcohol. She has just returned from a three-day bender that's why the fever is back, that's why she is sick again. Her body can't take it any longer. And you're right. It is none of your business. You can go home now."

  "Very well," Sarah said. "But I am also concerned about you, Doctor. You have hardly eaten anything the last many days. Nothing for breakfast or even dinner, not even my lasagna that you normally enjoy so much."

  "I haven't been that hungry lately," I said hoping to get her to leave it alone. I could hardly tell her that I was full all day from my bloody feasts at night. "I’ll eat some lasagna later. You can go now."

  Then she left. I immediately regretted being rude to her and decided to buy her flowers to make up for it. There it was again, I thought to myself. I was just buying my way out of everything. Fixing everything with money. But at least this was something I could actually fix. I had lost control over so many other things in my life. The few things I could fix gave me joy or at least some sort of comfort.

  I heard William call me from his room and went up to see him. He was already in bed and Sarah had brushed his teeth before she left. He was sitting up with the comforter covering his legs and a book on top of it. He handed it to me as I climbed into bed with him and put my arm around his shoulder.

  "Snow White, huh?"

  William nodded eagerly. "She is just like Mommy. When she eats the apple it is just like when Mommy drinks from those bottles that she hides between my clothes in my closet."

  "She does that, huh?" I asked tightening my arm around him.

  "Yeah. But I can't tell you. It is our secret."

  I sighed deeply and stroked William on the head. "I’m sorry, son."

  He shook his shoulders. "It's okay, I guess."

  I opened the book and turned to the first page. I swallowed the huge lump in my throat. I realized that I could no longer let my son be alone with his own mother. I couldn't trust her with him. I couldn't let her drive with him in the car when I never knew when she was drunk and when she wasn't. I couldn't let him be alone with her in the house even at night when I left for the swamps. What if something happened to him while I was away? What if he woke in the middle of a nightmare? I had to start thinking like a single parent in all I did. Even if Heather was in the house I was truly a single parent.

  "Just give me a minute," I said and got up from the bed. I ran downstairs and grabbed the phone. I called Sarah and said my excuses for being such an idiot earlier, telling her she was right in what she had said and then asked her if she would mind spending the night taking care of William while I had to go out. I crossed my fingers and hoped she wouldn't ask where I was going and luckily she didn't. She just accepted my request. Fortunately for me she was alone in life; her kids were grown and had moved out long ago.

  "I might even have to ask you to stay in the house until Heather is feeling better, which might take some time," I said and closed my eyes thinking this was taking it too far. She would never agree to this. But she did much to my surprise.

  "I will do anything for William, you know that" she said.

  "You're the best. You can move into the guest-quarters above the garage," I said and put the phone down after we had said our goodbyes.

  I ran upstairs as I realized that the sun was about to set outside. I felt the tickling sensation in my fingers and knew I had to hurry. William was waiting patiently for me in his bed.

  "William. Daddy has to go now. I have to get back to work for a little while. But Sarah will come and be in the house with you. She'll be in the guest-quarters above the garage if you need anything, okay?"

  "Okay," he said with a too adult smile for such a young boy. "But, Far?"

  "Yes, buddy?" I could feel my skin start to tickle and itch. The fur was just about to spring out. I was sweating as well and had to take off my shirt.

  "Could you read the book for me as you promised?"

  I was sweating heavily now as my body temperature rose to that of a jaguar's. One hundred-two point two degrees was the body temperature of a jaguar. I had looked it up the same day. That was why I felt feverish and warm every time the change came upon me. My fingers hurt painfully as the claws were
about to come out and replace the human fingers.

  "Oh the story. Yes of course. But ... but daddy has to go. I have to be somewhere by now."

  William's eyes were about to burst into tears. This was just more than a little boy of only five could handle.

  "Okay, I said and sat next to him, hoping to be able to delay the transformation just a few minutes longer. Just enough to read the story of Snow White.

  William leaned his head on my shoulder. "I like it when your eyes glow, Far," he said. "It looks really cool."

  Luckily for me the transformation still took a while since my body wasn't quite used to it yet. Luckily William was so tired that he started to doze off as soon as I had read the first page. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on my arm and didn't even notice when the claws grew out of his father's fingers holding the book or the skin that was slowly replaced by a thick layer of soft black glossy fur. By the time the fangs came he was sound asleep and I could put him back on the pillow where I listened to his heavy breathing for a few minutes while I took the rest of my clothes off and let my body go through the last steps of the change.

  Minutes later I ran through the yard and on the other side of the house I spotted Sarah's car in the driveway. I saw her taking out her suitcase and walk inside.

  Then I sprinted for the swamps.

  Chapter 14

  I was reliving one of my many encounters with Aiyana in the swamps in a dream, when the phone rang in my office and woke me. I tried to ignore it and picture her in front of me. She was rolling on her back while I was biting and licking her soft fur. We were running wild and playing in the water, splashing at each other, biting, lashing out while growling, when I was ripped back to real life by the persistent ring of my phone.

  I exhaled and picked it up. Julie spoke in the other end. "I know that you don't want to be disturbed, Dr. Langaa, but it is Dr. Harris calling. He says it’s important."