by Jenn Cooksey
This coming to terms with myself happened over the course of my stay in the hospital, surrounded by countless others experiencing trials even greater than mine; some of them going through things they will never heal from or be mended whole once all is said and done.
Clearly I didn’t die like I thought for sure I had. I just cracked my head open and got caught in a miniature landslide when the semi slammed into the mountain, the echoing force bringing down layers of packed snow that were already unstable due to that fallen boulder leaving the area without support. The boys’ father I was told was there in a matter of moments once the slide ceased and was easily able to clear the snow from on top of me, so I couldn’t have been buried under much and was never in any real danger of suffocating or anything like that. It was the smack to my head and losing consciousness that had me believing I was on death’s door. That along with seeing and hearing Cole.
It was so real. I could smell him. I felt him.
I guess I was in and out the whole ambulance ride, but I don’t remember squat about it. I came to and stayed conscious as I was being wheeled into the emergency room; I was completely out of it though. All I can recall was being asked what sounded like a zillion and one questions shot at me with rapid fire, and only being able to verbalize answers to maybe four of them. I knew my name, I knew my birthdate, even my social security number, and I was able to tell them that my family consists of my grandmother who’s in a nursing home in Hemet. Then I was whisked away for x-rays and a CT scan, both of which apparently came back with normal results.
After getting my head stitched up and I was waiting for a room of my own, being admitted for a grade three concussion, I called and talked to an administrator at the nursing home to give them a heads up on where I am and how they can reach me if they need to for some reason. Once I got to my room just in time for the dinner service, which I didn’t have the appetite to eat much of, I started thinking about where I wanted to go from here. I felt alone, but not. I felt like I’m in the world, but not part of it. I briefly considered calling Cole although I didn’t have his number, and that was enough to prevent me from making the effort to try to get it. Also, I didn’t know what I would say to him.
All I could think of was something like, “Don’t be scared, but just so you know, I thought I was dying, but I didn’t, and I’m sort of contributing that to the fact that I was ready to go because you were there to make sure I wasn’t alone and that my last thoughts would be certain knowledge of how much you love me, and then I realized I can’t die because if we swapped places, you wouldn’t know…you wouldn’t have that peace and the courage you gave me.” I remember thinking that. I remember feeling intrepid, wholly safe and ready, and then in the next breath, I was panicked and all I could think was that I can’t die. I can’t die because he doesn’t know. It was just that if I were to tell him anything like that, I had no idea what I would follow it up with; no clue as to what either of us would be able to do to make things different from the impossibility of our reality as it stands.
The truth was though, I was wavering. My inner voice was whispering to me. It was urging me to consider trying. I felt I still needed time though. I didn’t want to act on impulsive emotion again. Granted, emotion is the basis for much of what’s happened, however it’s also why I was running in the first place. I was kind of thinking that if I possibly took some time to truly digest and accept the situation without automatically shoving my head into a pile of dense dirt where it wouldn’t hurt so much, then, maybe… That pile of dirt though was awfully enticing, as cowardly as it is to admit.
It wasn’t until the following day though that I finally chose to be aware of wanting something I’d been honestly and truly convinced I didn’t. Actually, I didn’t exactly choose to be aware; it was more or less forced upon me in a way that no dank cave or any amount of dirt could ever hope to hide me from myself.
“We’re gonna get just a little more blood from you, m’kay, Erica?” The nurse asks me rhetorically, as he already has the tip of the needle inches from the saline lock on the top of my hand.
“Okay. What for?” I watch the tube fill with thick, burgundy fluid.
“Well, one of your tests came back a little iffy yesterday. Nothing to worry about though,” he answers, finishing up the draw.
“What test?” I ask, feeling jittery because I’m on the other side of the fence now and speculation is running wild in my head. “I’m a nurse, so…I know we tend to say there’s nothing to worry about and that’s not always true.”
He smiles at me. “It was your pregnancy test.”
“It was iffy? Like, how? It couldn’t be positive… Because that’s not possible. It’s not.” There’s no way. It’s way too early to know…
“Iffy as in inconclusive. The test detected just enough levels of hCG to give us both positive and negative results. Therefore, inconclusive. We’ll retest and hope for a clear plus or minus this time.” He sets the vial of my blood on a cold, sterile tray and picks up my chart to make a note. “What are we hoping for?”
“What?” I ask, slightly lightheaded now, like the world just toppled over on its axis without warning.
“I wanna cross my fingers, so I need to know which way to cross ‘em,” he replies with another smile lighting his face.
“Oh. Um…negative. Yeah. Definitely.”
“Alright, I’ll get this going and hopefully be back with good news in a little while.”
He walks out the door and leaves me sitting here staring down on my tummy in wonder. Instinctually—visceral—my hands slide over my lower abdomen, my fingers spread wide.
A baby.
Cole’s baby…
47
“With Arms Wide Open”
—Cole—
“Whoa…cease fire! Cease—” my dad commands, walking up with a paper cup of coffee, snapping his mouth shut only when a snowball makes contact and explodes on his cheek. He glares at me.
“Don’t look at me,” I tell him with my eyes wide, pointing to the blonde, pint-size machine gun giggling and standing next to me, “she threw it.”
He lets out a humph and deadpan, he brushes his cheek free of crystalized powder and turns on his heel to leave the front lines again.
“Daddy! I’m out! Reload!”
“Okay, pumpkin, but this is the last batch. Santa should be here soon and you wanna get a good spot for the story,” I tell her and squatting down again behind the headless snowman we’re using as cover, I start building snowballs as fast as I can for her so she doesn’t fall behind in the war going on around us.
I strip my soaked gloves off with my teeth and wince when the iced air hits my damp and reddened hands. I suck it up though, especially because I’m a way speedier barehanded snowball builder than a gloved one. She’s faster at shooting than I am at building though either way and within a minute, her ammunition is gone again.
“Daddy, I need more!”
“Lola, honey, Daddy needs a break. Look at my hands!”
She narrows her eyes at them and purses her lips together. “Unless we puke, faint, or die, we keep going, ‘member?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I answer and then reluctantly building another snowball, I mutter under my breath, “What asshole taught that to a six-year-old…”
Resting my elbows on my knees, I blow out a breath and beg my dad with my eyes to deliver me a pass for some quick R and R. He saunters over, staunch, tall and proud, defiant and completely unafraid of being pelted by white bullets of various sizes that are zooming in every direction. Lola turns and spies him on his way over, her ringlets bouncing and one of the two pink camouflage bows she’s wearing slips even further down the side of her head when she whips it around again to look at me.
“You tapping out, Daddy?”
“Just for a little bit, okay, munchkin?” I readjust the bow back where it’s supposed to be, tightening it and matching the height of the one on the other side of her head. I don’t even know why I b
other because I know it won’t last. The child will forever have lopsided hair adornments.
She nods, turns her head—the bow slipping down her silky curls again—and then hollers at the top of her lungs at one of Jerry’s kids hidden behind a solid white shrub about ten feet from us. “You better watch out, Alec Pearsall! I got reinforcements! My grampa’s fresh meat and we’re gonna destroy you!”
Clucking my tongue once and nodding, I mumble to myself, “Nice.”
From behind the shrub, a disembodied voice rises up, “Bring it, Lola, you cheater! Uncle Paul?!”
“Build ‘em yourself, Alec, or get Jenna to help you,” Paul yells over to Alec from behind the newspaper he’s reading.
“You okay?” My dad asks, picking his foot up and setting it down again on Frosty’s decapitated head. I almost laugh and then realize that he kind of looks like a winter-time Captain Morgan, and my stomach protests.
“Tryin’ to be. I’m gonna take a walk. I need some coffee.”
He nods. “What you need is to stop sleepin’ with a bottle, Son.”
“I know.” Instead of tossing and turning trying to sleep the last few nights, I’ve just been passing out. It’s so much easier. Until I have to wake up and be a dad. “I’m getting there.”
“Yeah, I know you are. I’d just like to see you get there faster. You smelled like a distillery when you came home yesterday morning.”
My brows raise and I blow out a demoralized breath. I’ve been a legitimate wreck since Erica left me bawling on the floor of my foyer, but in all fairness to myself, feeling like a goddamned teenager sneaking back into my own house before anyone was up was a new low for me. Wednesday night my dad and I tucked Lola into her new bed for the first time, he and I talked for a little while afterwards, and then against my good judgment, I did a drive-by of Erica’s place. The snow on her driveway was untouched, meaning she hadn’t been home in at least a day. She was gone.
I called my dad and asked him if he could just stay at my house for the night because I wasn’t sure when I’d be getting home, and then I went straight to Jerry’s. He took one look at me, hollered into the kitchen to tell Marcy she and the kids were on their own for family movie night, and then he ushered me into his basement turned Man Cave where I proceeded to get obliterated. Marcy woke up at about five in the morning with a hankering for waffles and fried chicken, and I was awake but still drunk and fumbling with my keys when she flipped the entryway light on, so she ended up dropping me off at home before heading to the store for the chicken she was planning to take home and fry up—just for herself.
“Sorry, Dad. And, thank you. For everything.”
“You don’t need to thank me, Cole. She’s my sweetheart, you know that. And you don’t need to be apologizing to me either.”
“I know, bu—”
“But nothin’. You’re doing your best, and it’s better than what I did. Now go. Need my lighter?”
“For what?”
He just bends a look on me.
“Dad, we quit like three years ago.”
“No, you quit. I just got real good at hiding it. And when you decide to quit again, you might wanna make sure you remember to toss all the coffee cans.”
I do a quick count… “Which one did I forget?”
He chuckles at me. “The one in the carport by the shovels.”
“Grampa! Come on!”
“I’m comin’, princess!” he tells her, simultaneously bending down and scooping up a handful of snow in his bare hands.
Smiling, I grab Lola around the waist, swinging her up and above my head as she giggles, her legs kicking in the air and the bow sliding more than half-way down the curled blonde lock of hair it’s tied around. We wrinkle our noses at each other and I lower her just enough so that I can kiss her nose with mine.
“Be good, okay, pumpkin?” I kiss her cheek and set her back on solid ground again. “Go easy on Grandpa…he’s old.”
My dad doesn’t even acknowledge my jab. Instead he pulls Lola to his side and conspiratorially starts explaining that his method of snowball making is better than mine. “Come here, sweetheart, and watch, ‘cause your dad doesn’t know how to build snowballs so that they’re most effective. See, what ya gotta do, princess, is pack the center real tight-like, so there’s weight to it, and then gently roll the soft powder around it so it’s nice and round. That way it’ll go farther and sail straighter when you throw it. And when it hits your target, the powder will fly all over him and the hard stuff will pack a punch and stick.”
She’s listening to every word and watching every move my dad makes, nodding her serious understanding the whole time. “Alec is gonna row the d—”
“Rue, sweetheart. It’s rue the day, and by God, yes, he will.”
I leave the battlefield, grinning and shaking my head. I honestly never thought I’d see the day that my dad would actually play. Ever since Lola came into his life though, he does it every day. And, he’s good at it, in his own way. His girlfriend told me she discovered he’s not a fan of roller coasters—at all, not even the ones made for toddlers—but in every picture I saw of Lola on a ride at Disney World, he was sitting right next to her, a smile plastered on his face and discomfort hiding behind his eyes. He even rode the teacups with her and didn’t speak a single word of complaint when he got off and was so woozy, he actually turned green. In fact, that was the night he called when Erica was over for the first time. He apologized for not calling before Lola went to bed so that I could tell her goodnight like I did every night they were gone, but they’d stayed at Disney until it closed and the first thing he did when they got back was toss his cookies and when he was done, Lola was already zonked out. On the phone that night he told me he yakked because of something he ate, but when they got home the other day, Amelia told me he was totally lying.
Finding myself a tree to hind behind and digging in my coat pocket, I pull my pack of smokes out only to find that it’s empty. I sigh and debate buying another one. A young teenage girl laughing and chasing after a boy her age yells out, “Gimme my phone back! Eric!” It’s close enough and my decision is made. I head over to the drug store, hoping they carry cigarettes so that I don’t have to go all the way to the grocery store located in the upper part of The Village. Once I get inside though, I change my mind.
“You guys carry nicotine gum?” I ask the clerk at the register.
She nods and points. “Back of the store. The pharmacist can open the case for you.”
I walk through the candy aisle, snagging a bag of peanut M&Ms and a Caramello bar, then I grab a three-pack of Chapstick off an end-cap to add to my impulse buys, and figure since I’m here, I might as well see what kind of non-alcoholic sleep aides they have. I round the corner into the cold and flu aisle to discover all the sleep aides there are in things like NyQuil. I don’t want actual medicine. Rather than combing the aisles myself though, I get in line to talk to the pharmacist, thinking I’ll kill two birds with one stone. With four other people waiting in front of me, I turn around to peruse the end-cap closest to me. My eyes work their way from the bottom to the top and I systematically check off what I do and don’t need.
No daily or weekly medication organizers, no batter—well, you can never have too many batteries so I grab a pack of AAs—no cheater reading glasses, gloves, yes, I need dry gloves…
My hands overflowing now, I set what I can on top of the end-cap and start looking through the colors of gloves trying to find plain black. Successful, I grab them and start picking up the rest of my stuff again but have to step out of the way for an elderly man wanting to get to the medication organizers. I drop the Chapstick and it tumbles into the aisle. Turning and almost bending to pick it up, my lungs seize when standing not five feet from me is Erica. She’s just standing there, staring at the rows of vitamins on the shelves in front of her.
“What are you doing here?” I’m so shocked, it’s a wonder I can even breathe let alone speak to her. And I have no fucking
clue how to feel.
Her head swings around in surprise all her own. “I—”
“I thought you left.” She did leave. I know she did. So why in the hell is she here?
“I—I did. Sort of. Well…I was in—um…see, there was this accident an—”
“A car accident?!”
“Yeah. But I’m okay. Obviously. I wasn’t actually in the accident…I just hit my head and had a bunch of snow fall on me, and I thought I was dying, but I wasn’t. Um, it’s sorta hard to explain, I guess, but I just got out of the hospital an hour or so ago,” she tells me, although I completely stop listening because of what she has in the hand she uses to gesture behind me, “I have a prescription to fill and the hospital was out of it so they called it in here. I had to take a taxi from the hospital even because my car is still in the tow-yard.”
Staring in what feels like joyous horror at the bottle in her hand and within a matter of maybe two seconds, my head goes from being a total blank to being filled with at least a dozen scenarios. “Are you pregnant?”
Her eyes grow round and fall to the prenatal vitamins she evidently forgot she was holding onto until I asked. My first instinct is to be thrilled beyond measure until I realize that I’m going to be even more beyond miserable. I won’t be able to see my own baby everyday, change its diapers, and feed it, rock it to sleep, or even just hold it when I want to. All the things a father should be able to with his child every single day in raising that child, I won’t be able to do simply because I’m raising someone else’s. Of course there’s another option she could go with, although it’s simply nauseating and I flat-out refuse to let it take up any kind of residence in my mind.