Breakup in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  “Dad, you’re smushing me,” Frankie said after a long moment.

  Adam loosened his grip on the boy. “I love you, kiddo.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.”

  He glanced at Jenny, unsure what to say next. She glanced at the clock. Almost time to leave for school. “We have to get a move on. Eat, eat.”

  Frankie grabbed one of the pancakes from his plate and began slathering peanut butter over it with a butter knife. Then he folded it over and started eating it like a sandwich.

  Jenny offered a small smile. Adam took her hand, holding it close to his heart. How could he have been so stupid as to think he should walk away from this? From Frankie and Garrett? From her? He’d been such a fool.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.” Jenny rested her head on his shoulder. “I love you, too.”

  The six of them walked to school together, Garrett hurrying ahead to pick flowers from the neighbors’ yards, Frankie leading Mrs. Hess’s puppy, and Sheba pushing the little dog ahead with her nose from time to time. Adam held Jenny’s hand, enjoying the feel of warm fall sunshine on his face. He nodded to a few of the other parents.

  None of them seemed to notice the cane or the dog beside him. Of course, none of them had paid too much attention to the wheelchair, either. Maybe the curious glances and pitying looks had been figments of his imagination. Or exaggerations. He’d been so uncomfortable in the chair he had to have made the people around him uncomfortable, too.

  Garrett divided the bouquet he’d picked in half, offering part to a girl wearing a Princess Leia outfit and the other to a girl wearing a firefighter’s hat.

  Their little caravan turned the corner, and the school block spread out before them. Older students wore team hoodies or held fake badges. Several of the elementary students wore superhero-themed Halloween costumes, like Garrett. A few wore football jerseys. Only Frankie hauled a small dog as part of his costume.

  For the first time, Adam went up the steps to the school, stopping his older son before he went inside.

  “Let’s check in with the office before you go to class. Deal?”

  Frankie nodded. Garrett launched himself at Adam, hugging him. “See ya after school, Dad,” he said, and disappeared into the crush of little bodies going inside.

  Jenny took the leash from Frankie. “I’ll just hang on to Kujo here, while you get approval from the office.”

  “His name is Gandy, Mom,” Frankie said, shaking his head. “Come on, Dad.”

  Sheba circled Adam, almost seeming to prance. Adam used the hand command for heel, and the dog settled down. She kept looking back to the puppy, though. Probably worried it would follow.

  Adam held the school door open, nodding to the teacher watching the kids flood through. “We need to approve part of his costume before school,” he explained.

  The teacher pointed them toward the office, at the other end of the entryway.

  “Hand, Frankie,” Adam said, and the little boy tugged on it.

  “You already have my hand, Dad.”

  Funny, he hadn’t felt like he was holding on to anything. Probably just the distraction of Gandy and Sheba and the surreal quality of this morning. He glanced at Frankie, and the little boy’s face seemed to waver before him.

  “Sorry, kiddo. Let’s go get that approval.”

  Adam and Frankie continued through the entryway, and waited at the sliding window of the office while the secretary went to find the principal.

  “You think it’ll be okay and Gandy can stay?”

  “We’ll see.” Adam blinked, trying to bring the office into focus. Everything seemed blurry, which was odd, but no matter what he did, focus seemed just beyond his reach. Sheba whined behind him and he reached to pat her head. But she wasn’t there. “It’s okay, girl. Just a few more minutes.”

  “Dad?” Frankie’s voice seemed to come to him from a long way away, but Sheba’s whining seemed louder, as if she were right in his ear. Which was wrong. The dog was louder than the boy, but not that much louder.

  “Dad?” Frankie’s voice again, only this time there was a tremor.

  Tingling started in Adam’s fingertips, which was a relief because until the tingling started, he couldn’t feel Frankie’s hand in his. The little boy squeezed, and repeated, “Dad.”

  “It’s okay, buddy.”

  But it wasn’t okay. Adam’s hand still tingled, and the brick of the office wall seemed to waver like Frankie’s face had done a few minutes before. The voices in the hallway were loud, but Sheba’s bark was louder, and seemed almost frenzied. Which was odd. Sheba was the calmest dog Adam had ever known. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but that only seemed to make things worse.

  “Dad?”

  He needed to sit down. Maybe he should have eaten breakfast with the boys this morning. Usually, the medication cut his appetite, but this morning he’d felt hungry. He’d been too distracted by Frankie’s costume to eat, though.

  “I’m just going to sit down for a second,” he said. There was a bench against the wall. He needed to sit there. On the bench. Adam turned, but the wall was a blur of brick and mortar, and he couldn’t make out where the bench might be. Still, he stepped away from the wall.

  Adam’s knee buckled under him, and he tried to catch his weight with the cane, but his hand couldn’t grip the curved top. He felt himself falling, saw Frankie’s eyes widen in terror as the floor rushed up toward him.

  Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JENNY PACED THE hallway of Springfield Regional Hospital, cell phone to her ear. She could still hear Frankie’s screaming voice echoing in that damned entryway.

  “Yes, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Right now, all I know is that he’s stable.”

  Nancy sighed audibly over the phone. “We can come. All of the projects are on schedule. Shutting down the business early won’t hurt anything.”

  A single day wouldn’t hurt things; Jenny knew that. What she didn’t know was if this was a single day or another long-term stay. What if Adam seized again while getting the MRI? The paramedics had gotten him stabilized quickly, but epilepsy was different in every patient, especially those who contracted it because of head injuries.

  “Thank you, I appreciate that. But I’d appreciate it more if you could stay. Frankie and Garrett are going to need familiar faces around them.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. Seeing Adam on that floor had been terrifying. Seeing the horror on Frankie’s face had nearly undone her. Then she’d had to leave him.

  Jenny blew out a breath. “Would you pick them up from school? Take them to your house—it might be easier for them.”

  “Jenny, I need to do something. I can’t just sit on my thumbs here while my son—”

  “What you can do is take care of the boys until I can get there. Adam has the best doctors in the state. They’re familiar with the injury. He’s stable. I’ll call you when I know more.” She hung up, put the phone in her purse, then continued to pace.

  He would be okay. The doctors would figure out a new drug regimen. This was bad, but it wasn’t the end of the world. She’d known, they’d known, more seizures were not just possible but probable because of the scarring on Adam’s brain. It was just a setback, something that had to happen so that the doctors could find the thing that would cure him. That was all.

  Jenny took a deep breath.

  It wasn’t all. While the paramedics had stabilized him, he’d still been unresponsive in the ambulance. What if he’d hit his head hard enough to cause more scarring? What if this wasn’t just the last seizure before the doctors found the right medication for him? What if this was the start of something much worse? The epilepsy had been semicontrolled before this morning. What if this meant it was now out of
control?

  How did she explain that to the boys, who were just now getting used to the changes in their father?

  How did she make sure Adam knew, no matter what the doctors said in the next few hours, that it didn’t have to change anything for them? Whatever this was, they were stronger now than they had been three months before. Rough edges? Sure, every couple had them. But the bond she felt with him now was so much more than it had been when the tornado struck.

  They had so much to live for. And so much to lose if this setback thrust Adam back into that dark place that had nearly taken him before.

  The doctor rounded the corner, wearing his familiar lab coat. His collared shirt was wrinkled and the khakis he wore were stained at the bottom. Not an overall inspiring look. Then again, this was how he had looked every other time she’d seen him. She had to stop thinking in negatives and focus on the positives.

  Like the fact that he seemed relaxed. How the hell could the man be relaxed at a time like this?

  “Mrs. Buchanan, I’m sorry for the delay. There was a traffic accident on the south side of town, putting Adam on a wait list for the MRI machine.”

  She didn’t care about a car accident, and Jenny knew that was heartless of her. But the doctor hadn’t added the word fatal, so she assumed the people involved weren’t in dire need of medical attention. Not like her husband.

  “Is he okay?”

  “The seizure has stopped, and we’re not seeing any abnormal brain activity. For now, he’s fine.” He motioned for her to follow, and continued talking about the treatment course as they moved through the maze of hallways between the waiting area she’d been assigned and the private room where Adam rested.

  Once in the room, Jenny focused on Adam. His eyes were closed, and he looked so still. Beeping machines sent a fresh shot of adrenaline through her system. There were pads and cords hooked up to Adam’s chest, his forehead. An alligator clip was snapped onto his index finger. And he looked so very still.

  She wanted him to move, just a little, but Adam remained immobile.

  For now. Not the clean bill of health she wanted, but she would take those two simple words.

  “Is he awake?”

  “He’s had a sedative, but will wake up in a little while.” The doctor wrote something on Adam’s chart before focusing on her. “I know you want answers, and right now I don’t have any. We’re going to make a small adjustment to his meds, but until the full results are back from the MRI, we won’t know what triggered this episode. Even after we have the results, we may not have a clear indicator.”

  Right, she remembered this part. The part where the doctor said brain injuries rarely responded in typical fashion. That each patient was unique. That what worked for patient A wouldn’t necessarily work for patient B.

  “But he’s okay?”

  “Pressure is stabilized, he responds to stimuli. Yes, he’s okay.”

  Jenny closed her eyes. At the side of the bed, she reached for Adam’s hand. It was cold in hers, and she rubbed it, hoping for some kind of reaction. The machine’s beeping didn’t change, and Adam didn’t open his eyes.

  “Can I stay?” she asked. “I want to be here when he wakes up.”

  “Of course,” Dr. Lambert said. Jenny focused on Adam’s breathing.

  He wasn’t hooked up to a breathing machine, like he’d been after they’d found him in the rubble. That was a positive sign, she told herself. Breathing on his own was definitely positive. The numbers on the machines were similar to the numbers that had bleeped in the few days before his initial hospital release. Another positive sign.

  “He can have visitors later this evening.”

  Adam would hate visitors.

  People staring at me like I’m some kind of carnival exhibit.

  His voice echoed in her mind. His parents and she had taken turns sitting with him and staying with the boys after the tornado. When he woke up, his parents had been on duty. When she came to relieve them a few hours later, the first thing he’d said was that he didn’t want them to come back. That they made him feel like he was on display.

  “Do you think he can come home soon?”

  “We’ll monitor him for the night, but barring any major changes, I’d say we can release him tomorrow. I’m going to check on a couple of things, but I’ll be back in a half hour.”

  One day. It was better than the three weeks he’d spent here before.

  She nodded and the doctor took off, leaving Jenny alone in the room with the beeping machines and her sleeping husband. She knew she should call Nancy. Aiden. Adam’s friends. But she couldn’t let go of his hand, not even for the few seconds it would take to fish through her bag to find her phone. She squeezed, but there was no response from Adam, only the beeping of the machines monitoring his condition.

  * * *

  NOTHING FELT RIGHT despite both Jenny and Dr. Lambert insisting that things were fine.

  He was in the hospital. How fine could any of this be?

  “We’ll do another MRI next week, but for now, this is very promising.”

  Promising. Right. After more than a month without a seizure, he’d been knocked to the ground—in front of his kid—by his malfunctioning brain. Didn’t seem very promising to him.

  “Adam, it’s just a drug adjustment,” Jenny said. She sat beside him in the familiar plastic chair with the gray-and-blue striping on the back. He hated plastic chairs. No design, just hard surface. Utility.

  Wooden chairs, now they had style. Grace. Smoothing lines, surprising features. Like the chair he’d worked on with Aiden in the shop, made from different types of wood. He supposed hospitals didn’t care much for design elements. They wanted function for their patients, their patient’s families.

  Both Jenny and the doctor stared at him, and he realized they were waiting for an answer. “Right. Simple adjustment.” The two exchanged a glance that Adam didn’t need clear vision to read. Pity.

  Worry.

  His two least favorite emotions.

  The two of them started chatting again, but Adam tuned them out. He didn’t need to hear their positive talk about drug interactions or the promise of the MRI taken earlier that afternoon. None of that mattered.

  This wasn’t going away.

  He’d fooled himself into thinking that the epilepsy didn’t matter. That the longer he went without a seizure, the less likely it was to happen again. He couldn’t block out the look of terror on Frankie’s face as Adam had fallen in that hallway.

  It didn’t matter if the seizures were far apart or back-to-back. He wouldn’t put the people he loved through that. Not when he could prevent their pain.

  Not even if preventing their pain meant opening a bottomless pit of his own. He had to let go of them, all of them. His boys. His parents.

  Jenny.

  God, he didn’t want to let her go.

  Seeing her with the distributor, having a slice of pizza, had nearly killed him; it still made him feel pain in parts of his body he didn’t want to feel pain. And that was after he knew the pizza was only a business lunch.

  “Tomorrow morning, assuming there are no more setbacks, I’ll release you to go home.”

  Home, ha. The RV wasn’t his home. Jenny’s bedroom certainly wasn’t his home. Slippery Rock wouldn’t be his home for much longer, because staying there would only keep the wounds open and bleeding. He needed to staunch the blood, and to do that he would need distance.

  So would Jenny.

  “And I’ll see you in my office in three weeks. If there are any more incidents, or if the medications feel off—they give you pain, blurred vision, anything at all—I’m only a phone call away.”

  “Thank you,” Jenny said, a relieved smile playing over her face. She looked expectantly at Adam.

  “Thanks, D
oc,” he managed to say. Thanks for nothing.

  That was unfair, and he knew it. Doctors weren’t miracle workers. They did their best with the machines and treatments and knowledge that they had. Sometimes, those things just weren’t enough. He should have known that by now.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER, Adam dumped hot spaghetti noodles into a colander to drain, dropped a pat of butter into the still-hot pan and set it back on the stove. As the butter melted he turned on the burner under the spaghetti sauce and put garlic bread in the oven. The boys were with his parents for the night, and for that he was glad. Because he had to tell Jenny goodbye. He couldn’t keep doing this to her. He’d already done enough.

  Over the past week he’d watched as the circles under her eyes returned, darker than ever. Seen her hands tremble over the simplest tasks. Because she was exhausted with taking care of him, with keeping things normal for the boys, keeping the business running smoothly.

  While he sat in the RV with the service dog, waiting for the next seizure.

  Last time, she had asked him to move out. This time, he knew she wouldn’t. She had always been a strong woman, stronger than he gave her credit for, but over the past couple weeks, he’d seen that strength and determination grow even more. Jenny wouldn’t give up on him; the thought both terrified and awed him. Which meant he had to do this final thing for her—not because he was afraid of her leaving him, but because he knew her life could be so much more if he wasn’t in it. Pulling her down. Making her afraid.

  God, he’d thought things were getting better, had hoped the doctors were right. The rational part of his mind told him that people with epilepsy had fulfilling relationships all the time. The emotional part didn’t want to ever see the looks of fear from Jenny or his boys again. Not ever.

  So he was letting them go.

  He just needed one more night with her. First.

  “Dinner will be ready in five,” he called.

  “I’m not hungry.” Jenny’s voice was quiet behind him. “At least, not for food.”