by Vivian Gray
She had thin shoulders and a tiny waist but somehow managed to support a large chest that, hunched over the way she was, practically spilled out of her shirt. Her petite legs were shapely and squeezed into a pair of jeans so tight I was afraid – and hopeful – that they’d rip right at the seams.
I was watching her, thinking all manner of ungentlemanly thoughts when she looked up and turned towards me. Our eyes met, and I cursed under my breath.
“Shit.”
Thankfully, the woman and her son were gone this time and didn’t hear me, but the woman at the end of the row was still looking at me. It was Kenna, the woman I’d just saved from having sex with Buzz.
I tried to look away quickly, but she had already seen me, and her eyes felt like they were boring into the side of my head. After what felt like minutes, but had probably only been a few seconds, she stood up and took the seat next to me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her fingers were long and thin, and they tangled together nervously in her lap.
“I’m not here to see you.” I felt like I needed to make that clear before she got any romantic ideas in her head. “I’m here with someone else.”
She nodded. “Who?”
I opened my mouth to say and then remembered I didn’t know the man’s name. “A friend.”
Kenna slouched back in the chair and ran her hands across her face. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, and I kept stealing glances at them, imagining how nice it would feel to be between them. I followed the line of her body up past the swell of her hips, the small circle of her waist, and up past her breasts. When my eyes touched on her face, the dirty thoughts fell away.
Her eyes had looked gray in the dim streetlight, but under the harsh fluorescents, they looked blue as sea glass. Puddles of tears sat just below them, not quite enough to spill down her cheeks, but I could tell they were just on the verge. I wanted to reach out and wipe them away. Someone as beautiful as she shouldn’t be so sad.
Beautiful? I shook my head, pushing the thought away. The last thing I needed was to find myself involved with a damsel in distress like her. I needed to kill that fantasy very fast.
“So, did your mom die yet?”
***
Kenna
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.
Who talked to people like that? Did your mom die yet? If we hadn’t been in a hospital in front of a sea of witnesses and doctors who likely would have saved him, I would have killed Trigger. I had never felt such a violent rage towards someone before, and despite how annoyed I was at him, I kind of liked it. The anger helped distract from my worry. If only for a minute.
When I’d first looked up and seen him, a scene had played out in my mind. Trigger had felt guilty about the way he’d spoken to me in front of his friends and came to the emergency room to find me. There, he would tell me how beautiful I was, how he had never met someone with whom he’d had such an instant connection, and then we would have sex in a maintenance closet.
The thought made me blush. I was not the type for erotic daydreams, but Trigger did something to me. He was a man, through and through. Broad shoulders, square-jaw, tattoos twining around his arms and chest. He had dark hair and dark, broody eyes. He looked like the man on the cover of every romance novel I’d ever seen, except better. And real.
But then he’d crushed my romance novel dreams by being the biggest asshole I’d ever met. I sensed that maybe his anger grew from tragedy – as so much anger does – but I didn’t care enough to find out. My entire life had been one tragedy after another and I still knew how to be a decent human being. What was his excuse?
“No, my mom isn’t dead yet,” I said, praying even as I spoke the words that they were true. “The doctor said I got her here just in time.”
“Great.” He raised his eyebrows sarcastically.
“Even if you regret helping her, you did, and that’s all that matters to me. You can say whatever you want about me, but I’m going to be nothing but grateful and kind in response.”
“The kill them with kindness approach?”
I smiled, eyes narrowed. “Exactly. And I’m very kind, so you may be dead within the hour.”
Then, I saw it. A smirk. A tiny, almost imperceptible smirk. And I almost dropped my panties right there. How could a man as good-looking as Trigger also be such a jerk? Probably because if he’d been nice on top of having that body and that face, women would be chasing him down the street.
I was stealing glances at him, unable to keep my eyes to myself, when my phone rang. It was Rob.
“Oh my God. Rob,” I said, standing up and running my hand across my forehead. “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot to call you.”
“What is it this time?” he said with a bark.
Rob had been understanding, at first, but as time had gone on, he was less willing to hear about my mom’s medical emergencies. I never told him she was a user, but I suspected he guessed it. She’d come in to see me at work a few times, and one look at her was enough for anyone to know that something was wrong.
“She’s in the emergency room. She called and needed help, and I went without even thinking to call you. I’m so sorry. I can work a double tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t help me tonight, does it?”
“I can try to find someone to cover my shift,” I said, flicking through the faces of my coworkers in my head. Everyone I’d thought of had stopped answering my calls. They knew I was asking for a cover, and none of them wanted to do it anymore.
“Don’t bother. They won’t answer, and I can’t blame them. This is your last warning, Kenna.”
“Are you going to fire me?” I lowered my voice so Trigger wouldn’t hear. “I need this job.”
“You’re a good worker when you’re here. But you aren’t reliable, and I’m tired of being a waiter at my own diner. One more missed shift and you’re done.”
Rob hung up, and I dropped back down into the chair, doing my best to keep from crying. I knew my tears would only give Trigger more ammo with which to taunt me, and I wasn’t in the mood.
“You work the night shift?” Trigger asked, pointing to the cell phone still clutched between my fingers.
I nodded. “And the day shift. And the weekend shift. I work all the shifts.”
He turned towards me, head tilted to the side, a multitude of unspoken questions in his posture.
“I think you’ve already made up your mind about me,” I said, remembering him calling me a skank as he’d left earlier. “So, I’d hate to tell you the truth and ruin the image you’ve created.”
“I doubt that will happen, but I’d love for you to try.”
I looked at him, surprised. Honestly, I was surprised he was still sitting there, let alone that he wanted to talk to me. He had made it clear from the start that he wasn’t at all interested in my friendship. Part of me wanted to treat him the way he’d treated me. Leave him sitting alone in the hospital while I walked away, making some cutting remark about him being a no-good criminal – though I had a strong suspicion nothing I could say would truly hurt him.
But I couldn’t. Partly because I’d just sworn to him that I would be nice. And partly because I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted one person to listen to me talk about my life and maybe, if only for a few minutes, feel bad for me.
“My mom has been a mess for as long as I can remember. She was on prescription pills, and then those ran out, and she was at the walk-in clinic all the time with some fake injury or another, trying to get a prescription. When they barred her from coming back, she turned to dealers,” I said, jaw clenched.
Telling the story of her descent was still enough to make me emotional. Sometimes I cried, other times I was angry. When it came to my mom and her addiction, both emotions existed in equal measure.
“We didn’t have enough money for her to have a drug problem, but that didn’t seem to stop her. She borrowed from friends and family, claiming I needed medicine or school supplies. Pre
tty quickly, everyone we cared about realized she was full of shit and stopped talking to us. That’s when she took out credit cards. She would buy everything from electronics to jewelry and then take it to the pawnshops for some quick cash. She buried us in debt.”
I hesitated. While it felt good to tell someone the story, I also felt guilty. Like I was betraying my mom by telling her secrets, by revealing how messed up she really was. Even though my mom had ruined everything for us, she was still my mom.
I could remember her holding my hand as she walked me to the bus stop and buying me a huge lollipop from a snack stand at the zoo. Deep down, I knew she still loved me. It was just that the drugs had taken up so much space, that part of her was getting a little squished.
“So, you work multiple jobs?” Trigger asked.
I nodded. “I work at a boutique during the day, a diner at night, and as part of a cleaning crew on Wednesday and Saturday nights.”
Trigger let out a long, low whistle. “That’s a lot for a young girl to take on by herself.”
“I’m not a young girl,” I snapped. My annoyance passed quickly. I didn’t have the energy to sustain it. “And it’s not really a choice. We barely have enough money to keep the lights on. If I cut back, we will both fall through the cracks.”
“Have you ever considered letting your mom fall through the cracks on her own and saving yourself?”
“Yes.” I decided to answer honestly.
Of course I had. I’d thought a thousand different times about how easy it would be to abandon the house and start over. If I wasn’t paying off her debts, then I could leave and start over. I’d have enough money to rent a small place on my own and start saving money. Maybe I’d even be able to go to school, or at least take a few classes. I could buy a house and buy a new car and live my life the way normal people did.
Except, I wouldn’t have my mom.
“Even though I know she’s ruining us both,” I continued, “I can’t leave her. I can’t just pretend she isn’t my family. She is my responsibility, and I have to take care of her. It’s why you found me back there with Buzz. It would have been the worst thing I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t let my mom die there. I couldn’t walk away and pretend I hadn’t seen anything. It would have haunted me forever. The guilt would have killed me.”
I waited, wondering whether Trigger would apologize about what he’d said to me, about how harsh he’d been to me. But he didn’t, and that made sense. He honestly didn’t seem like the apology type. He just stood up and stretched.
“Are you leaving?” I asked. “What about your friend?”
He waved towards the double doors. “He’s either dead, or they don’t need me anymore. Either way, I’m tired of sitting here.”
I nodded, wishing I could leave with him. But I couldn’t. Not with my mom laying in a hospital bed somewhere down that long hallway.
Trigger reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and a pen, wrote something down and then balled it up in his hand. “I’d tell you to ditch your mom and start over on your own, but I know you won’t. So, I’ll just tell you to take care of yourself and never go back to Buzz’s for any reason. If you fall in with his crowd or your mom’s crowd, you’ll never get out.”
I nodded. I had no intentions of ever seeing Buzz again in my life, but it felt nice that Trigger seemed to care enough about me to mention it, so I didn’t say that.
Just as he was turning to go, he tossed something into my lap. It was a crumpled one-hundred-dollar bill with his number scrolled across the top.
I held it in my hand like it was a precious jewel. I already felt tears pricking the back of my eyes.
“It’s a crime to write on money,” I said.
He stopped and chuckled. “If the police come after me, that’s the least of my worries.”
That was probably true. I wanted to let that be my parting words, but I couldn’t. I had to kill him with kindness just like I’d promised.
“Thank you, Trigger. For listening and for… this,” I said, shoving the money in my coat pocket and sniffling back tears.
A better person than me would have handed the money back and never accepted it, but I was desperate enough that I’d never turn away cash, even if it was charity.
“God. Do you ever stop crying?” he asked. And with that, he turned and walked out of the waiting room.
A few minutes later, the nurse who had been at the front desk when I’d brought my mom in came through the double doors and scanned the waiting room. Her mouth pulled to the side and then she sighed and took her seat behind her desk.
I guessed she was looking for Trigger, and I also guessed she had the same thought: why did such rugged good looks have to be wasted on such an ass?
Chapter Five
Kenna
Nurses came in and out all night. Every time I closed my eyes and managed to drift off, the door would open, fluorescent light from the hallway would stream in and blind me, and then they would change one of the clear plastic bags hanging from the metal rack behind my mom’s bed. Or they’d take her blood pressure or inject something into the line that fed into her arm.
I tried not to think about how much each of the medications was worth. I also tried not to think about how we would pay for them. We didn’t have insurance. We certainly didn’t have the money to pay out of pocket. Someone came in with official paperwork, and I just kept telling them my mom would handle it when she woke up. She was an adult, right? I didn’t need to take on this burden, as well. I’d saved her from the crack house. Surely, she could fill out her own forms when she woke up.
If she woke up.
The doctor was a tan man with no wrinkles and bottle-brown hair. He told me gently that my mother’s system was full of drugs as if I’d be surprised. When I didn’t react, he nodded and continued, dropping the pretense.
“If she doesn’t get clean, the drugs will kill her. If she doesn’t eat well and continue receiving regular medical care, she’ll die,” he said.
I’d been thinking these things for years, so I wasn’t surprised to hear them from the doctor. I just nodded and agreed, wondering whether he expected me to feed her and keep her clean. Because that wouldn’t happen. I’d been trying since I was a kid and look how that turned out.
“Her body is shutting down. She’s lucky she got here when she did because she wouldn’t have survived the night. If she keeps using, she won’t survive the month,” he said. “I’m sorry for being blunt, but I don’t want to beat around the bush.”
“When do you think she’ll wake up?” I asked.
He shrugged and flipped the chart closed. “It’s hard to say. Could be in a few hours, could be tomorrow.”
“But she will wake up?”
“We have every expectation that she will wake up,” he said, careful to avoid any promises.
She woke up just before dawn. Her eyes fluttered open, and for a few seconds, I could tell she was lost. She didn’t know where she was or how she’d gotten there. I wondered how often she’d had that feeling. How many nights she’d woken up in an alley or in a stranger’s house and wondered where she was.
Then her hands flew to her arms to check they were still there and then moved downward until she found the IV. She tugged on it and followed the line up to the metal thing behind her bed that looked like a coat rack. That’s when she saw me.
“Kenna,” she said, her cracked lips pulling into a smile. She patted the edge of the bed, and I moved over to her, letting my knees sink down to the cold tile floor.
“The doctor said you almost died,” I said.
She patted my head and made a shush sound, the same way you would to a crying baby. “But I’m not dead. You saved me.”
I nodded. “For now. But you can’t keep using. It’s killing you.”
“Did the doctor say that?”
“Yeah, and some of the nurses. They all say it’s really bad, Mom. That you should go to a program. Rehab or something.”
&nbs
p; She swatted me away. She’d done rehab several times. The programs she went to were free and the people running it were down on their luck therapists getting paid by the hour. They told her to count from one to ten when she wanted a hit or to suck on a mint instead. She ate half a bag of peppermints before shooting up.
“I don’t need anyone to tell me how bad my problem is,” she said weakly. “I know I’m addicted, but I want to get better. That was the last time you’ll find me at a crack house. I’m going to get clean and take care of you and be the mother I should have been.”