by Gabe Sluis
Chapter 6- Jacob Gates
Jake made his next trip back to the stack of sheetrock. He slid the sheet off to the side of the thick stack and gently hoisted it up to the carry position in both hands and against one shoulder. He let out a slight grunt as he slowly swung himself around to his direction of travel.
“Funny how the ones at the bottom of the stack get heavier than the ones on the top, huh?” his father said with a sly grin, grabbing the next sheet.
“I wanna know who’s idea it was to have the delivery guy drop the stack off so far from where we have to bring these things,” Jake said crunching across the gravel and into the garage they were converting into living space.
“Well…”
Jake snorted at his father’s classic answer to most questions. He slowly placed the edge of the sheet on the ground near the transplanted stack and let the sheetrock drop when he heard his phone go off. Jake hurried over to the ledge where he left his keys phone and water bottle. Looking at the screen, a bright face with blue tongue unintentionally exposed greeted him.
“You’ll have to walk up the driveway to get a good signal, its terrible down here,” Peter Gates told his son.
“Cool, alright,” Jake said, punching answer on his phone as he moved in that direction.
“What’s up, Buddy?” Jake said. After a pause, “Chris?”
There were some muffled, odd noises, as Jakes brain attempted to decode what he was hearing. Pocket call? And then it clicked, Chris was holding back sobs.
“Dude, what is it? Your dad…?”
“I don’t remember what we were watching, the news maybe,” Chris began, “But it was a couple years back, when that lady went into a coma and her husband said she told him that she never wanted to live as a vegetable, but her family wouldn’t let her go. Remember that?”
His voice had grown stronger as he continued to spill the words overflowing in his mind. Jake kept walking, devastated at the color to the voice of his best friend. He would always consider both his childhood friends as brothers, but he and Chris had been the closer of the three in recent years. It was their life choices, that was all. Chris had gotten a good job at a bank and Jake was working with his dad while he went to school and did his National Guard weekends. But Donny had stayed at the strip mall where they all held various jobs through high school. Jake and Chris both had tried to spur Donny to leave his comfort zone and make changes, but it didn’t work. Donny went through his party phase and got caught up in the low point that followed. The banding together of the other two, to try to rescue their friend, drew Chris and Jake closer.
“Well, we were sitting on the couch together and he reached over to me. I remember this very clearly because it really startled me. He grabbed me by the shoulder…hard…and said straight to my face, ‘Don’t you ever let me live like that. You put a bullet in by brain before you ever let me live like a lump of lifeless shit. That’s hell Chris, hell on Earth.’”
“Dude…” Chris’s voice degraded back to being choked up. He fought to hold it together.
“And I had to tell my mom this today. I had to take charge, because it’s just me now. I’ve got to be the one to take care of my mom, sister and grandma.”
“So, he is not going to get better?” Jake said stupidly. “There is nothing else they can do? I thought there were drugs to fix strokes…”
“When they figured out it was a stroke, it was too late. I don’t know why, but they don’t use the drugs after a certain amount of time. Three hours or some bullshit.” Chris seemed to regain control as he continued, “The doctors finally figured out it was in the brainstem and that’s why he could only blink to us those first few days, he was partially paralyzed from the bridge of his nose down.”
“I still don’t get it then, why did they put him on a breathing machine and anesthetize him?”
“This specialist said it would be best so he could rest and try to recover. They have him on a ventilator because the brainstem is where the secondary respiratory control, or something, is and they didn’t want it to fail.”
“Then how do they know he is not getting better if they are keeping him asleep?”
“They do reflex tests, and blood work. They have sent him out for a couple brain images, and they can see its not getting better. Its been a week, he is pretty strong to have lasted this long.”
“I can’t believe this is happening, man. I wish there was something I could do… So, you are just going to let him go?” Jake felt hot all over saying the last part.
“Yeah,” Chris took a deep breath. “That’s what he would want. They are going to take him off all the machines tomorrow morning.”
“I’m so sorry, Dude.”
There was a long pause, a long dead silence. To stop the freefall, Jake jumped back in.
“What is your mom going to do? Without your dad working…”
“He had some life insurance through his business, but I can’t imagine he kept paying on them with how tight money has been. We will find out when we go through his papers. Without him, I’m probably going to have to help out. They will have to sell the house, everything. We got a notice that he was behind in Liz’s truck payment and that they are going to repossess it. I guess he was counting on his last job, and now it’s never going to be completed. The medical bills for this week alone…”
“I’m here for you, buddy. I’ll skip my classes tomorrow and come up first thing. Anything you need, you just have to ask.”
Another deep breath from Chris’s end. “Okay. I’ll let you know. I gotta go talk with my mom. Thanks for listening to me. I’m sorry to call you like this…”
“Not at all, brother. That’s what I’m here for. We have been through too much. He’s like a second dad to me.”
“I know. Tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
That night Jake lay awake in bed. He tried to sleep, but he never felt himself truly slip beneath the waves. He tossed and turned, got up to use the bathroom, and again to drink some water. Nothing helped. He checked the time on his phone, and timed creaked by. At thirty-five of ten, he lay on his back and stared into the darkness. Seeing nothing, it was more bearable on his eyes to close them.
We are too young to be loosing our fathers, he thought. That is something you do when you are our parents age, not when you are in your mid-twenties. He thought about the phone call that had started it all. He hoped he had said all the right things he needed to make Chris understand what he felt, and comfort his friend in any way.
He had meant it when he had said that John was like a second father to him. From the age of twelve, when he felt he really made his own decisions and became aware, he had spent all his time with Chris and Donny. John had always been there, taking them camping, on trips, having the boys work for him, giving them advice. His size and imposing personality was all they needed to respect him, not just his position as parent. He was the type of man you knew was a kid like you once. The stories he told of his youth made them know that, and the boys were easily influenced by this type of positive role model.
John had given Jake great advice about getting and using his first credit card. “Buy a little something each month and pay it off right away. That’s how they gettcha, you spend too much and get stuck with the interest. Don’t play into their pockets. You have to use them to get that good credit score.” It was the advice any young person should hear, but funny he was unable to stick to it himself in the hard times. Funny how life turns out.
Jake knew that Chris’s dad favored him over Donny, too. Everyone knew of Donny’s problems, but John was always hard on the kid. Make smart decisions, John preached. John could be really straight laced at times; he always disapproved of Jakes few tattoos. Permanent ink was on that list of poor decisions, and he made it clear that if Chris ever got one, no more help or living under his roof. Different generation, different ideas, Jake chalked it up to. But on the other hand, he was overly proud of Jakes choice to get
in with the National Guard. That was no surprise to Jake, everyone knew how much John loved his country, but the fact that this level of pride came from his best friends father meant just a little more.
The next memory that came to mind, lying in the quiet room, was one from just this year. Jake had crashed at Chris’ house one weekend and awoken Saturday morning to the birds singing in the spring sunshine. Chris was in the shower and Jake had heard Liz and Mae leave on one of their weekend shopping trips. The house was quiet as Jake sat up in his sleeping spot beneath the window of the second floor. Outside, John walked out on the driveway, unaware he was being observed. He called for Winnie, the families Jack Russell Terrier. But instead of the big gruff call one would expect, John switched his voice to a falsetto, called and baby talked the dog into coming over where he continued telling her how good she was.
The smile that spread over Jakes face at this image, compelled him to sit up and open his eyes. He was gone from that warm, bright spring morning, back in his hot dark room. Had he finally fallen asleep? It didn’t feel like it, but the dull numbers on his phone read just before two in the morning. Without thought, Jake pulled on his jeans and a baseball tee and left his room.
As if he was sleepwalking, he found his shoes on his feet and the key to his motorcycle slipping into the ignition. He came back for a second, Where am I going? But the answer was clear, and he was off in the night.
Up the highway he roared, the big headlight leading the way with his jeans flapping around his legs. Jakes mind was blank, not out of his control, but blank. He stared at one spot on the road as the highway fled before him. Some sort of song was stuck in his head, not quite tangible. The places for the words were there, but they were absent. He reached his turn. He was compelled.
Into a spot in the empty parking lot and the engine was shut off. The young man in the night dismounted and pulled off his helmet, locking it in its place. Jake walked, as if he were on a moving walkway at the airport, right through the front doors of Faith Hospital. Not a soul was in sight as he walked down a short hall and opened the unlocked door to the Intensive Care Unit. No nurses, no doctors, only movable racks of sheets cluttered the hall as he walked up to the closed door of John’s room.
A slight shock zapped the fingers of his right hand as he opened the door and stepped inside. Chris stood looking down at his father at the right head of the bed. Donny stood at the left head looking at Jake as he entered. The room was empty, except for the three boys and big John. Jake’s place was at the foot, and he took his mark, as if he were a prop on a stage. Jakes eyes were fixed on the man he knew, laying in the bed. Donny turned his gaze to match. The clock on the wall behind Jake read 2:19 A.M.
