Sirens in the distance caught my attention. Now, I had a choice to make. I could let Billy live, which would surely happen if the paramedics got here first, or I could put another bullet in him for good measure, knowing he’d never return to haunt us again. It didn’t take long to decide.
I fired another shot.
~ * ~
Three Weeks Later – Present Day
Rodney had to have another surgery last week to repair an artery they’d missed that had been nicked by the buckshot. Since then, they’ve moved him out of Critical Care and into his own room. The kids are excited to see him.
Hal was the first to arrive on the scene the night that Larry and Billy paid me a visit. He was more concerned with my welfare than what had happened. Being covered in blood like I was, I’m sure I looked horrific and my hand was pretty mangled too. He told me that Billy had led them on a wild goose chase, only to double back and kill the two officers who stayed behind to watch the house. He’d then disabled the radio in the van and headed inside. The whole thing, from the time Billy led them away, until they received a 911 call from my neighbor, good old Mr. Jameson reporting shots fired, only lasted fifteen minutes. I could have sworn it was an hour or more.
There weren’t any charges filed against me, since I killed in self-defence. Four times. They even offered me a job, once my wounds heal. I’m not sure that’s something I want to do, but it was a nice gesture.
With my hand broken in several places and my shoulder still healing, it’s made it hard to do just about everything. But I haven’t let that stop me. I spent all last week packing our stuff and having it moved. There’s no way I can live in that house again. It’s already on the market and I’ve rented a small place closer to Hal and Mary.
They’ve been great. Mary’s become a dear friend and the kids have taken to calling them Aunt Mary and Uncle Hal. We’re lucky to have them in our lives.
The kids seem to be okay. Miles had a few nightmares at first but those seem to be fading like dreams tend to do. In an odd twist of fate, my nightmares have ceased. I’m not sure if it’s because I faced down my demons and won, or if I’ve just been too exhausted to dream. I guess time will tell.
“Mommy, mommy! Look! It’s our drawings!” Addie says in her sweet sing-song voice. Rodney’s door is decorated in the kids art that they’ve been sending with me every time I visit.
A nurse who’s passing by says, “Those sure are pretty drawings. Did you make them for your daddy?”
Addie nods, blushing.
“Well, they’re beautiful. I’m sure your daddy loves them.”
“Thank you,” Addie squeaks.
Swinging the door wide, Miles holds it for us. I’ve prepared them as best I could for the tubes and machines. Miles thought it sounded cool. “Like Robocop,” he’d said.
Rodney’s awake and sitting up in bed when we burst into the room. His coloring is good. It’s was the best he’s looked since The Dead Zone.
Continue reading or return to table of contents.
Razor
Will Swardstrom
I was married to Felicia for seven years. During that time, we loved, we fought, we laughed, and we cried. It was the best seven years of my life. Just like any other marriage, I suppose, we had good and bad times, but I am an eternal optimist. I always look on the bright side of life.
Perhaps that was my mistake. Maybe I should have been more of a cynic. Maybe I should have questioned the way things were.
Maybe.
Or maybe I just made one little mistake. Over and over again. For seven years.
When Felicia and I were married, the first thing she bought me was an electric razor. She always hated the full beard I grew from time-to-time, but would lovingly rub her hands across my face if I trimmed it up. It was her little attempt to change me, and as a newlywed, I allowed it. She was the best thing to ever happen to me. If I had to trim my facial hair from time to time to keep her, so be it.
I guess I’ll never really know if she loved me like I thought she did.
Felicia died a week ago.
I haven’t shaved in that time. I’m afraid to. I’ve left my razor—the very razor she gave me—unplugged since Felicia died, terrified at the truth of what would happen if I dared to plug it back in.
When I first got the razor, I would plug it into the wall outlet to charge and often forgot about it. It was just a razor, charging on its base in the master bathroom. What’s the big deal? But the next time I went to shave, the razor’s charging cable was unplugged from the wall.
Strange, I thought to myself. I didn’t recall unplugging it, but then remembered Felicia. Less than a month into my marriage, I sometimes forgot I was a married man. I used to be the only one responsible for anything in my apartment. Felicia now shared my space, though, and she followed behind me, cleaning my little messes here and there. This must have been her—unplugging the razor when I wasn’t using it.
I just shrugged, plugged in the wall charger, and went to work on my beard. A few minutes later, I was trimmed and ready to go, and I didn’t really think much about it.
Later that night, Felicia trudged up the stairs leading to our apartment, apparently exhausted after a long shift working in the photo lab at the nearby drug store. It was the years between the end of film cameras and the beginnings of digital, and the local store was holding fast to their one-hour photography services. Most days, Felicia ran a couple rolls of film, but saw more digital cameras than not and customers trying to figure out “how to get that picture off my phone and onto a piece of paper.”
Once she opened the door, though, she was back to being my wife. Gone was the remnants of photo frustration. In its place was a refreshing smile when she saw my face.
“Good! You shaved,” Felicia said, dropping her purse and photo smock on the couch. “I’m so glad I bought you that razor.”
“Me too,” I said, flashing a smile. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
“Oh. You mean like this?”
She took a few steps into the room and placed her hands on my cheeks, pulling me in for a long, deep kiss. We’d been married less than a month. The new hadn’t worn off yet. I kissed her back, no need for any more words. The bedroom was our next, and final, destination of the evening.
I’d forgotten about the razor. Of course I had.
It was the first time I never asked. That was my mistake, and it would be a mistake I would repeat over and over.
++++++
From then on, I just assumed Felicia was the one unplugging my razor. For years I plugged the razor in, shaved, and left it charging. Every time I went back to trim up my beard or goatee, I would find the cable unplugged. I never saw her do it, but then again, I was rarely in the bathroom at the same time as my wife. If I was, whether or not my razor was plugged in was certainly not on my mind.
I guess I saw that simple little act as a gesture of love. No matter what, Felicia was looking out for me. Even with our ups and downs, I could always count on that little thing.
I shouldn’t have.
I don’t think Felicia ever loved me like that. Not that she didn’t love me, but I don’t think the electric razor in our bathroom was exactly something she ever put much thought into.
A few years after we were married, life had gotten to both of us. And by life, I mean our student loans. Whoever invented student loans may very well have a pact with Beelzebub himself. One moment, you are cruising through life, content with very little, but excited about the future, and the next, the payments for those unsubsidized loans begin. Crippling isn’t quite how I would describe it, but my mother taught me not to swear.
Anyway, the job Felicia had at the photo lab eventually got phased out due to the digital age. Her degree was in accounting, but unfortunately, the recession took care of any spare white collar jobs. She took a job as a receptionist at a local law firm just to make the loan payments. Then, she took a second job part-time doing basic technical service calls for the cabl
e company. Some days, she spent sixteen hours on the phone.
She wasn’t alone there. My loan payments were even higher than hers. Fortunately, I was able to catch on at the local newspaper, but only as a copyeditor. I also got on for a back-up press room operator, but those hours were a little more hit and miss. Between our multiple jobs, there were weeks where we barely saw each other, except for waking up and going to sleep.
We went weeks without sharing a meal together, days without relaxing in front of the TV, and a date night was the furthest thing from either of our minds. To us, a good night’s sleep was what we looked forward to most.
One day when Felicia was working an extra shift at the cable company, I had the night off. Rubbing my face, I realized it had been over a week since I’d shaved. I always trimmed for Felicia and since I rarely saw her, I hadn’t worried about shaving for a while. I wandered over to the bathroom sink and found my razor.
Plugged in.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew we were both busy. Life was hectic, but she had always unplugged it before. No matter what. Was this her version of the cold shoulder? Did it mean something?
I decided not to shave, after all. The bed was welcome and close, so I laid on top of the covers. I wanted to sleep, but my mind was a mess. It was rare for either of us to work less than sixty hours a week. The stress was taking a toll on us, but I guess I fooled myself into thinking our marriage was safe.
Somewhere deep inside I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t just the hours at the newspaper or the lack of time with my wife. It was stupid, but that one little thing made it all come into focus.
I needed to do something. I didn’t know how or why, but if I didn’t figure it out, my marriage was going to fall apart.
++++++
My parents had always promised to help us out, but we’d proudly refused any financial assistance. We’d gotten ourselves into this mess, and we’d get ourselves out—even if it killed us. So, as soon as I dragged myself off the bed, I called my father. For some people, Dad was the worst person to call, but my father was the most generous person I knew. I also knew he was a hopeless romantic, taking my mom on countless dates, trips, and cruises throughout their marriage. He was the one to talk to.
I didn’t even need that long on the phone. Within twenty minutes, I’d worked it out. I just needed to talk to Felicia.
Waiting until she got home was perhaps the most nerve-racking few hours of my life.
When Felicia finally walked in the door, she turned and dropped her purse on the couch before she even noticed me. Before she’d seen the lit candles.
“What? Greg?” Felicia asked.
“Let me say this: I know something is wrong. I don’t know how exactly, but we’ve gotten off track somewhere along the way. I don’t want to lose you,” I said, hardly able to contain my emotions. I had thought about what I was going to say for a couple hours, and I was still stuck for words. “Felicia, I love you. I always have, and I want to fix it.”
“Fix it? What do you mean?”
I could see the tears beginning to well in her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge something was off.
“I know what you did—or rather, what you didn’t do, Felicia. I want you to give me a second chance,” I said.
With that, she collapsed on the couch, sagging into its dusty cushions. I went to her side, but she buried her face in her hands, weeping loudly.
“Oh, Greg. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it, I swear. I promise I’ll quit if you want. I can find a different job. Please, I just missed you—I missed us so much and he was right there…” she trailed off.
I was confused. She was talking about something else. Someone else.
“What?” I asked quietly.
“Rob from the law firm. He’s some hotshot ambulance chaser. I think I told you about him when I first took the job. He talks to me when everyone else is out of the office. He...he thinks there’s something between us,” she said between tears.
“Is...is there?”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t say I didn’t consider it. I hardly ever see you anymore. Between your two jobs and my two jobs, I was sitting there one day in the office thinking, ‘what if?’ We’ve talked, but that’s it. I’m sorry—I’ll turn in my resignation tomorrow morning.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d planned this all out and then she dropped a bombshell. Whatever I expected, this was worse. I was silent for half a minute, before I regained myself. I needed to be Felicia’s husband. She was laying herself bare for me, and I needed to step up.
I took her in my arms, trying to calm her sobs. I wanted to cry as well, but I shoved my own feelings aside to alleviate Felicia’s fears.
“If you feel that’s what you need to do, I understand. We’ll make it work. I believe in you—always have, always will. Maybe you can pick up more hours at the cable company.”
She sniffled. “Maybe…”
“But, before you do, plan on taking a few days off after you’re done at the law firm. I’ve got a plan to get us back on track.”
“Us?”
“Yeah. I called my dad…”
“Greg,” she said.
“I did, and it’s too late. He’s giving us the money whether you like it or not. Anyway, we’re going to take a small vacation. We’ll go up to a cabin in the mountains for a few days—just the two of us.”
She looked at me for a few seconds, a smile threatening to take over her face.
“And I promised we’d pay him back,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t want it any other way.
Felicia threw her arms around me and squeezed.
“You don’t know how much I needed this. I miss you so much,” she said. “You aren’t mad?”
“I can’t say I’m happy about it, but you aren’t the only one to blame. It’s my fault, too, that you had to take that job. We’ll figure it out,” I said, kissing her forehead. “I know we will.”
++++++
The razor was never discussed that night. Instead, we began the work of patching up our marriage, falling in love all over again during our days away at our cabin hideaway.
It turned out the cable company wanted to hire her full time anyway, and not just doing customer service. They had liked her work ethic, and had an opening in their Accounts Payable Department. Our first day back from our mountain getaway, she started as a full-time accountant.
Life was good. We were in love and making it work. We had good jobs and were happy.
Until Felicia’s kidneys stopped working.
Here’s the thing about kidneys – you pretty much need them to live. Day after day, your blood funnels through an external machine, doing the job your kidneys should be doing. It isn’t ideal, but it does the job. The tediousness, the constant draining and refilling of your lifesource, the drudgery of it all is enough for some people to want to call it quits.
That wasn’t Felicia, but then again, she wasn’t really given a lot of choices.
I’ve learned a lot about kidneys and kidney failure since she was diagnosed, but most people endure the process over the course of years; from when the kidneys begin to decline up until the organs eventually just can’t go on any longer. From what other people have told me, the journey takes a long time and by the time you reach the end, it is an inevitability – one that has been accepted by everyone involved long before it actually happens.
Felicia went from being a healthy young woman to having two non-functioning kidneys within just a matter of weeks. The decline was so sudden, we had dozens of doctors, nurses, and specialists stumped as they tried to figure out what was happening to her. What was happening to us.
She couldn’t be placed on the donor list—not for months. I thought we might be able to wait that long, but the look I caught when the doctors were talking to each other was worrying. I’d seen that look before, and it wasn’t good. They wanted to keep her at the hospital, but I was starting to wonder if that was best. If Felicia’s days
were numbered, I wanted her to be at home. Not in some cold, sterile hospital. The doctors wouldn’t budge, telling me that she needed daily dialysis. Even then, her blood was just not keeping up with the daily dialysis.
“We’d rather she stayed here,” Dr. Anderson told me a few days after the diagnosis came down.
“What about going home?”
“You don’t have the proper equipment at home. She needs to stay here.”
I knew the main reason they wanted her to stay close was the strangeness of her case. Like I said, the kidneys usually lasted a lot longer. From diagnosis to transplant surgery or death, patients spent years being treated. Felicia’s kidneys were literally dead weight already.
Her case was so bizarre that the local television station heard about it and ran a feature on her and her abnormal kidneys. A friend ran a crowdfunding campaign on our behalf and within a week enough had been raised to bring Felicia home and to have a dialysis machine full-time at the house. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an option, but our situation was far from normal.
As we prepared to leave the hospital, Dr. Anderson pulled me aside.
“Greg, I want to prepare you for the inevitable. I think you already know the truth: Felicia is not going to get better. We’ve spent a long time going over her tests, analyzing everything about her case, but there is something wrong with her that we still can’t identify.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked away for a moment, and then refocused on me. “I’m saying her time is limited. Medical science has progressed a long way, but I think we’re still going to be figuring out Felicia’s case long after she’s gone,” he said, then added, “which probably won’t be very long.”
I was stunned. We were in our late twenties. We were supposed to be invincible. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen to you when you weren’t even thirty yet.
Terrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets Page 17