“What are you talking about?”
Dropping my hand to the table, I looked her in the eye and said, “She did the same thing with you.”
“With me?”
“Yeah. She told me to be careful of you, because you have a good relationship with your ex.”
Audrey’s mouth fell open in shock. “I don’t … what the …” She closed her mouth and shook her head before beginning again. “You don’t really think that, do you?”
“Hell no,” I replied and meant it. “But that’s what she’s always done. And I don’t know if it’s that she doesn’t want me happy, or if it’s because she sees outsiders as a threat, or what. I have no fucking clue. I just can’t believe it’s taken me so long to see what a fucking evil witch she is.”
“I think it’s sad,” she admitted quietly.
“Yeah,” I nodded, “so do I.”
“You know,” she went on, “just because things aren’t great right now between you two, doesn’t mean they never can be. She’s still your mom, and maybe one day, when this is all behind you, you can find it in your heart to forgive her.”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “I spent a long time hating myself because she manipulated me to do just that. You think I’m ever going to find an inch of forgiveness for her, at any point in my life?”
“I’m just saying, you never know.”
I smiled affectionately at the nearly innocent look of hope on her face. “You have way more faith than I’ll ever have.”
Audrey returned the smile and took another bite of her burger. “All I’m saying is, you never know.”
***
I woke up abruptly to a dark room and an eerie quiet. It was midnight and the house was still around me and Audrey still slept soundly beside me with her arm over my chest and her leg wrapped around mine. Snow pattered outside, landing in whispers against the window. Everything seemed calm and perfect, and yet, nothing felt right.
I focused intently on my body. Maybe it’d been something I ate, maybe the food had been bad. Yet my stomach was fine, without nausea or pangs. I didn’t have a headache, backache, toothache, or any other kind of ache to speak of.
With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I urged my worried mind to find contentedness in the woman at my side, the comfortable bed at my back, and the peaceful lullaby of the snowfall outside. It was winter, the season I loved about as much as autumn, and the brunt of my life was good. There was nothing to be worried about in this moment, and I just needed to go back to sleep.
But I couldn’t. It seemed impossible to find the calm I so desperately sought, and the longer I laid there, the harder my heart began to beat toward a panic. Finally, I let out an agitated huff and sat up in bed. Audrey’s arm dropped from my chest and I scrubbed my hands over my face.
“Fuck,” I muttered, pulling my knees up. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong, Blake?” Audrey asked groggily, now curling her arm around my waist.
“I can’t sleep,” I explained weakly, as I laid a hand against her hip. “Sorry for waking you up.”
“No, it’s okay,” she assured me. “You want some tea? Maybe that would help.”
“Yeah …” I nodded at the idea. “Yeah, I think I’ll do that.”
She nodded in her sleepy haze and rolled away. “Okay, I’ll get the kettle boil—”
I chuckled and caught her before she could leave the bed. “No, you go back to sleep. I got it.”
Humming, she nodded again. “Don’t be gone long.”
“I’ll come right back,” I promised.
In the kitchen, I waited for the water to boil, desperately trying to ignore the trepidation making itself at home in my gut and mind. It felt insane, how unsettled I was over absolutely nothing. The house was fine. Audrey was fine. I was fine. Everything was fine. I gritted my teeth, planting my palms firmly against the counter as I repeatedly chanted in my head. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. The mantra was on a continuous loop, in hopes that something would click, and I’d manage to shake this horrific dread I couldn’t pinpoint.
JAKE. The microwave clock read 12:22 when the thought hit me as I poured the boiling water into my mug. It came as a bellowing shout, presenting itself in big, bold letters as black as the water surrounding the tea strainer of loose leaves. My hands started to shake and I put the hot kettle down on the counter before my vision blurred too much to see what I was doing.
I ran from the kitchen to grab my phone, but when I got to the bedroom, it was already ringing. Audrey was sitting up in bed, bewildered as I burst into the room and snatched my phone from the nightstand to find my dad calling.
“Blake?” she asked, her voice trembling. She was scared.
So was I.
I didn’t respond to her as I quickly answered the phone. “Dad?”
I waited for his voice to say something to me, anything, but it didn’t come right away. First, I heard someone else. Someone I didn’t recognize.
“Ma’am, I understand. I need you—”
Then, my mother’s voice, shouting, “Don’t you tell me to calm down! I can’t … I can’t …” She was crying, sobbing, and unable to control herself.
My heart couldn’t possibly beat any harder, or any faster, without exploding. “Dad?” I repeated, once again going ignored.
“Diana,” Dad spoke, forcing a calm that wasn’t coming naturally. “Go with them. I’ll meet you there. Okay?”
Then, he acknowledged me. “Blake, listen to me—”
“What the fuck is going on?” I blurted, my voice strained and choked. “Dad, I want you to tell me right now what—"
“Listen to me!” he barked without the intent to be cruel, but to shock me into shutting the fuck up. “I don’t have time right now, Blake. I just need you to get to the hospital. Okay? Are you listening to me?”
My legs felt weak, so tired and fragile, and I dropped to sit at the edge of the bed. Audrey hurried to kneel beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and wiping her hand against my face, and it was then that I realized I was crying.
“Dad, what the fuck happened?”
“Blake, please just do what I’m telling you,” he begged exhaustedly, his voice cracking.
“What happened?” I pleaded with him.
Dad sighed, clearing his throat and coughing before saying, “Jake …” The name came out fragmented, splintered with pain, and I laid a hand over my eyes to catch the dripping pieces of my broken heart.
***
The world was a blur of white snow and bright lights, a palette of blinding beauty, muddied by the chilled, ugly black eating away at my heart. Audrey drove to the hospital, careful to remain calm and not speed, but I still caught her stepping on the gas a few times as she struggled to keep her composure.
We didn’t know what was going on. My father hadn’t confirmed, when I demanded to know, if Jake was okay. He had simply told me to get to the hospital as quickly as I could, and so that’s what we did. We were barely dressed when we ran from the house and into the car, with Audrey in her flimsy pajamas and me in a pair of sweatpants and my leather jacket. She had at least thought to grab her flip-flops, while I was only in socks but did I care? Did I feel the cold seeping through the cotton to freeze my heels and toes? No.
Because all I could think about was, I should’ve been there. I should’ve never let him go back to my parents’ house. I should’ve been more attentive, more aware, more proactive in keeping him separated from them. Why hadn’t I gone to the cops the moment I knew my mother had been a manipulative bitch for so long? What could the cops have even done? I didn’t know, but it seemed like an appropriate response to finding out I’d suffered emotional and mental abuse for over twenty years. Why couldn’t I have been a better brother, a better protector, a better … a better … better…
Why couldn’t I have just been better?
“Blake,” Audrey cut through the deafening silence with urgent concern and re
ached out to grip my thigh.
I was shaking all over. My teeth clacked together, my hands clenched and trembled, and my legs jounced relentlessly. I willed my limbs, my jaw, my lungs to find calm and resume control but they wouldn’t stop, they couldn’t stop. They would never stop until I knew what the fuck had happened to my brother.
“Blake, talk to me.”
I shook my head. I was scared to speak, or even to open my mouth, scared to know what might come out. Would I puke all over the dashboard? Would I scream like a broken animal? Would I speak with an unsettling amount of control?
“We’re almost there, okay?”
I nodded and a fresh batch of tears welled in my eyes. Fuck. I wanted to be there, wanted to know what had happened, wanted to know what was happening now. And yet … I didn’t. I didn’t want to face whatever the fuck was going on. I didn’t want to be at the hospital. I didn’t want to see my parents, didn’t want to find Jake hurt or—
“W-w-what if he’s d-dead?” I spoke aloud for the first time since hanging up on my father. I turned to face her, eyes wide and wild, without any attempt to stop the tears from spilling and soaking my face. “What i-if he’s fucking dead?”
“Blake,” she whispered, then swallowed. Her eyes glassed over and she blinked rapidly. “Don’t say that.”
“What if he is? What the fuck do I do?”
“Don’t think about it right now,” she commanded, hardening her tone.
“I-I’ll fucking kill them. I will fucking crush them, Audrey. I’ll fucking b-b-break their goddamn necks and—”
“Blake!” Her hands smacked against the steering wheel. “Blake. Let’s just try to calm down and find out what happened, okay? Please, just … just try to calm down. Just breathe.”
“Breathe,” I repeated, snickering and shaking my head. And why the fuck could I not stop crying? How the fuck did I have so many tears in me? How the fuck had they not dried out yet? “I can’t fucking breathe.”
But somehow, I managed, sucking in the air and puffing it out, and by the time we pulled into the hospital parking lot, I had calmed my lungs to something manageable. Audrey parked the car and held my hand as we hurried through the sliding doors into the emergency room on legs that moved too slow.
We found my father meandering aimlessly in a corner of the large room, full of people waiting and complaining. Their voices all blended together into an annoying cacophony as I released Audrey’s hand, ignoring her insistence to hold on, and moved quickly with my sights set on my dad’s straight face.
“Blake!” Audrey shouted, alerting a few people to our presence. “Stop!”
“Where the fuck is he?” I demanded, grabbing my father by the arm and forcing him to look me in the eye with a jerk.
“Mom’s with him,” he replied, emotionless.
My grip tightened on his arm, yanking him closer to me. “Answer my fucking question! Where the fuck—”
“Blake,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “It’s not good.”
I continued to hold his arm but my fingers loosened. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare—”
“Mom got into a fight with him,” Dad explained, looking right through me, his stare was so blank. He was in shock, barely blinking and barely breathing. “He wanted to go home, he said. He wanted to be with you, he only ever wanted to be with you. He said he hated us, and Mom sent him to bed. We didn’t know he was gone. We didn’t know he left. He took the damn dog. That fucking, fucking dog … Jesus, Mickey …”
I watched in crippled horror as my father fell apart, his face crumpling as he stumbled forward to lean against my trembling body. His arms wrapped around me, hugging so tightly, I thought he’d crush me. Tears hit the leather on my shoulder, pattering rapidly as he cried and struggled to catch his breath.
“I-I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry. My fucking God. I’m so sorry.” Who he was apologizing to, I didn’t know. It could’ve been me. Could’ve been Jake, Mickey, or even God, for all I knew. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was sorry, and he was in pain and so was I.
I hugged him back. I held him and he held me, holding each other up when otherwise we’d fall. I forgot Audrey was there, standing behind me, until her hand gently touched my shoulder.
“Blake,” she whispered, afraid to penetrate the moment that was so simultaneously heartbreaking and precious.
Quickly, I stepped away from my father, as I wiped at my eyes, and saw my mother enter the ER waiting room. She looked about ten years older from the last time I’d seen her on Thanksgiving, all frail and ready to shatter. She approached us like a ghost, her feet barely moving along the floor, until she stood in front of us. Her eyes moved from my father to me, and then to Audrey, when she curled her lips into a snarl.
“Why the fuck are you here?” she spat through gritted teeth.
“Don’t you talk to her like that,” I immediately reacted, raising my voice and stepping between my mother and girlfriend.
“She shouldn’t be here. I never said for her to be here.” She turned to my father, replacing her hurt with anger, and snapped at him, “Why the hell is she here, Paul? She’s not family!”
“Diana,” he muttered, lowering his gaze to the floor. “Just stop. Please. Just stop. Tell us what’s going on.”
“I won’t say a damn thing in front of her.”
I moved forward and backed my mother into a wall boasting a poster about keeping the ER clean. She gasped as I towered over her, and I realized that she was scared. Scared and terrified of her own son, and all I could think was, good.
“We wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you!”
“Blake, stop,” Audrey said, grasping my arm and pulling me back.
I shrugged her off but didn’t say anything else as I waited for my mother to speak. “Don’t you dare blame me. Don’t you dare put this on me! You are the last person who should be blaming me!” she cried as tears zigzagged along her cheeks and dripped into her mouth. Then, she sputtered, “Don’t you fucking—”
A throat being cleared grabbed our attention, and we turned to face a doctor. He wore an expression so grim, I thought of him as an angel of death, here to deliver the bad news.
“Mr. and Mrs. Carson,” he spoke to my parents, eyeing me warily. “I’m afraid I—”
“Oh, God. Oh, no,” Mom pushed out between trembling breaths, and to my astonishment, Audrey rushed to her. She wrapped her arms around my mother’s shoulders, holding her tightly, and Mom didn’t shove her away.
The doctor stood, patient and waiting, before continuing, “It doesn’t look good. He flatlined and we thought we’d lost him.” I choked on an immediate surge of bile, rampaging through my throat to meet my tongue. Swallowing and gasping, I pinched my eyes and forced myself to listen. “We brought him back, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look promising. As of right now, the machines are all that’s keeping him alive.”
My mother combusted with a sob, holding on to Audrey and crying. My father backed into the wall, using it to hold himself up before he gave in to the need to collapse. My eyes remained affixed on the doctor, on the cold, clinical look on his face as he spoke of my brother, not by name but by his gender. He spoke of Jake like he was just a body, a body on a table to try and save. And if he couldn’t, oh well, there were others. There’d always be others. But Jake wasn’t just a body, he was my fucking brother, and this asshole with his white coat and nametag was standing here, instead of saving his fucking life.
“So, why the fuck aren’t you saving him?” I fired at him, tensing my fists at my sides.
The doctor shook his head. “Sir, we’ve done all—”
“Don’t tell me you’ve done all you can do!”
He sighed morosely. “I am telling you that, because I promise you, I have. It’s up to him now.”
I shook my head and looked away. At a time when I was so dangerously close to shattering into a thousand pieces, I felt unreasonably proud that I’d turned around to face
the wall, instead of thrusting my fist through his face.
Dad cleared his throat and wiped at the tears staining his cheeks. “Can we, um, can we see him?”
“He’s in a coma,” the doctor informed us. “But yes, you can see him.”
The words rose to my mouth and I spat them out through clenched teeth. “He has a name.”
“What was that?”
I whirled on my heel, forgetting I was only wearing socks—why the hell hadn’t I grabbed my fucking shoes?—and nearly fell on my ass as I faced him. “I said, he has a fucking name, you son of a bitch.”
The doctor’s face was now etched with a sympathetic pain that told me maybe he had a heart inside his cold, crisp exterior. But still, he said, “Sir, I understand what you’re going through, but if you can’t calm—”
“You’re not listening to me,” I shouted, stepping toward him. I hardly noticed that Audrey had released my mother and was now turned to me, reaching out to grab my arm and saying my name. “He has a fucking name. Just use his fucking name. None of this he, him bullshit; use his fucking name!”
The doctor swallowed as he nodded once. “I understand. But if you cannot calm down, I’m going to need you to leave.”
“Oh, my God,” I laughed darkly. “You can’t just say his goddamn name. Do you even know what it is? Do you even care what it is? Does anybody fucking—”
“Sir, I’m gonna ask you to come with me,” a deeper, authoritative voice said from behind me. I looked over my shoulder at the security guard with his hand resting on the taser at his belt.
I never stopped to realize that I was behaving like a raving lunatic. I never once took a look at my own erratic behavior and thought to stop. Neither of my parents said a damn thing as I left the emergency room of my own accord, walking with an angry purpose to drop myself on the curb just outside of the sliding doors. The cold was bitter in a dark world full of bright snow where the slush accumulating along the sidewalk seeped through my socks and to my feet. Yet, I didn’t feel it. I felt nothing but the agony chewing its way through my skin and tendons and bones, and I felt it all so deeply. So internally, beyond my physical self, that I knew, without a doubt, there was more to me than this sack of skin and bones. I was so much more and it took my brother lying on what could be his death bed for me to realize it.
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