But how did one come to terms with death? Was there really even a way? Was there some magic cure to take away the reality of watching the only person you gave a single fuck about and gave a fuck about you laying in a bed wasting away, veins full of drugs the doctors swore would fix her. Were there some words someone could spoon feed me that would make it make sense how a woman who had been nothing but good and giving and hardworking would end up dying slowly and painfully when rapists and murderers went and died in peaceful old age?
There was no way to come to terms with that.
She was all I had in the world.
And she was gone.
And there was nothing that could make that better.
But, that being said, I had been kicking dirt on her memory, insulting everything she raised me to strive for by throwing my feelings into bottles and powder and needles.
So I did something I would have scoffed at before- I attended a couple grief counseling meetings. After that, I finally went through my mother's things that I had stashed in storage. I kept what I wanted, I donated or tossed the rest. I kept going to meetings. I worked through the long-term withdrawal symptoms. The most prominent for me was the inability to sit still or sleep. So I walked.
It didn't get easier.
I got better, stronger.
Or at least that was what I thought until I pulled that trigger that night.
I remembered as I packed how I had sat in NA meetings and listened to people say how they had been two, five, ten, fifteen years clean when they relapsed and thinking: not me.
But I realized that night that it very well could be me if I didn't do something, if I didn't change something.
I needed to get away from my old streets, my old contacts, my old ghosts.
I needed to stop thinking about and trying to kill myself.
I needed to come back from the dead.
--
Lazarus- present
When I finished speaking, her delicate hand lowered the toast to the plate as she brushed the crumbs from her fingers and slowly stood. Her eyes were oddly unreadable for someone who seemed thus far to show every little emotion through her very open face.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when she rounded the table, walked up to stand right in front of me, and wrapped her arms around my center.
Completely thrown off, it took a long minute before I thought to put my coffee cup down and wrap my arms around her as well, squeezing perhaps a bit too tight, but I had just given her every painful, bloody, awful, ugly part of me and I was feeling a bit exposed.
"I'm sorry about your mom," she said into my chest, her tone heavy with emotion, making my hand start to stroke down her spine. "I lost my mom too," she added, making my heart do a contracting thing. "ALS," she added, making me close my eyes and let out a slow exhale. "She was fifty-two," she concluded, shaking her head, not seeming to be able to explain any further.
And she didn't need to.
That was bad enough.
I wanted to know if that was the trigger for her addiction, how fresh the wound was. But I couldn't ask her that. That was something she would need to share in her own time.
It took me years to be able to talk about my mom at all and even then, almost no one knew the details about her death.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," I said, meaning it as I leaned down and kissed the side of her head.
"Tell me it gets better," she said, and I wasn't sure if she meant dealing with the death or the addiction.
Either way, it was the same answer. "It doesn't, but you learn better ways to cope. And, eventually, it's not something you think about every single day anymore and you can start living again."
"Living sounds good," she told my chest, taking a long, deep breath and letting it out slowly before her hands gently loosened their hold before releasing me altogether.
Then she took the plate and the bottle and went back into the bed room, her slow gait likely suggesting her muscles were doing the screaming thing and she needed to get off her feet before they gave out from under her.
Not sure what to do, I fussed around in the kitchen for a while, answered some texts from Cyrus jokingly asking for updates on the sex and a few from Ross who was filling me in on details for the fight.
The food stayed in her for all of half an hour before she was in the bathroom throwing it back up. But at least it was long enough for the Advil to get in her system. After she was back in bed, I went in to find her shaking again.
I pulled the blankets up and climbed in with her.
And that was pretty much that- holding her through the chills, trying to keep fluids, Advil, and a couple bites of food in her, then feeling bad for her as it all came back up again.
We talked occasionally, mostly to try to distract her from how shitty she felt- silly little things like the shows that were on TV and the food she would want to eat when she stopped getting sick all the time.
Shower. Rinse. Repeat.
Until early Monday morning.
SIX
Bethany
It had been every bit as bad as I expected, as he had warned. Actually, because I was experiencing it firsthand and unrelenting, it was worse.
But, like he had promised, by late Sunday night, the symptoms started to lessen. I stopped throwing up which, well, I was starting to wonder if I would ever stop doing and how the hell anyone became bulimic.
The chills lessened slightly though I was pretty sure my internal temperature was still screwed up because I was simply freezing all the time.
The sweats let up.
It let me finally get a decent amount of sleep from Sunday into Monday, allowing me to wake up and feel mostly-human again.
I climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom, letting myself shower, trying to pull it together, trying to not feel quite so pathetic.
My muscles still hurt- a constant and dull ache that I was pretty sure there would be no getting used to; it would always be something I was conscious of until it eventually (I hoped) went away.
I got out and changed into another outfit Laz had gotten me, realizing for the first time just how considerate that was of him in the first place- sugar skull printed leggings in bright colors and a deep purple sweatshirt I was thankful for given how chilly I still was as I finger-combed my hair, brushed my teeth, and took a good hard look at myself.
I wasn't sure when the last time I had done it was. I guess it was a side-effect of being self-loathing; I didn't want to see what I was doing to myself. I didn't want to see the pupils that were off or the way my eyes would look like they were bugging or the way I would nod off even standing.
I looked the same. I should have looked different, it seemed, to become an addict. But I was still me with my freckles and pale skin and brown eyes and cleft chin. Maybe I was a couple pounds thinner, but that was more likely to almost seventy hours of vomiting and not eating than it was the drugs themselves. There were purple smudges of sleeplessness under my eyes.
But otherwise, just me.
Hopefully, from then on out, I could just be me. I could still face myself in the mirror. I would stop self-destructing.
Thanks to Lazarus.
On that, I moved out of the bathroom toward the sounds of him in the kitchen. Somewhere in the living room, a dock was playing something soft rocky. Lazarus was standing beside the stove, chopping something on a block steadily- the way chefs do it, without fully pulling the knife up each time. It was something I found oddly hot for reasons I didn't even begin to understand.
"Figured you might be up for some food today," he said, having heard me walk up though I did it silently.
"I think I can handle it," I agreed, putting a hand to my belly which was painfully empty.
"Trying for somewhat bland," he said as I moved in closer to see what he was chopping- potatoes and onions. "Breakfast potatoes and plain scrambled eggs. If you can handle that, we can maybe consider your wish for ravioli for lunch," he offered, making m
y lips turn up. "Nuh-uh," he said when my hand went toward the coffee pot.
"Why not? Oh, God," I groaned, my face no doubt looking as pained as my heart felt at the very idea. "Don't tell me I can't have coffee anymore!"
To that, he chuckled, giving me a big white smile that had a strange warm feeling spreading across my belly. "Let's not get too crazy. No, I just think since coffee dehydrates maybe you might want some water first so you don't keep feeling wrung out."
Wrung out was a good way to describe how I felt.
And, seeing his logic, I downed a glass of water before I got some coffee as he cooked.
It was companionably silent for a long time before he broke it. "Tell me about your mom."
There was a gut-punch feeling at that request, so unused to people asking about her. Granted, I had been the one to bring her up after the story about how his mother suffered and succumbed to her illness. I couldn't help it; I understood that pain all to well- the plight of the motherless child. There was no way for someone who didn't go through it to understand.
"How long?" he prompted when I didn't immediately say anything.
"Two years," I supplied, the time making it no less painful.
"It wasn't the catalyst then," he said as he dropped the potatoes into the pan, the sizzle sound filling the almost tensely silent room.
"Not really, no."
"Tell me about her," he urged, half-turning toward me while still mixing the potatoes so they didn't stick.
I felt myself shrug a little. "She was a rock. My father is, and always was, a complete asshole. I think she spent most of her time trying to make up for that. Being a stay-at-home mom, she didn't really have a way to get away from him so she just stuck it out and tried to shield us from him."
"Did he hurt you?" he asked, voice tense.
"No," I said, shaking my head, smiling a little wryly. "That would mean he actually gave a damn enough to even notice we were there. He treated her like shit though. Nothing she ever did was good enough. He didn't even tell us that she was sick even after she was in the hospital for respiratory problems associated with the ALS."
"Sounds like a real fucking prince," he agreed, shaking his head as he reached to grease the second pan and put the heat on under it. "How'd you find out?"
"My older sister came in to visit. She and my mom were planning her wedding. When she found out what was going on, she told me. My mom," I said, shaking my head as I looked at my coffee, "didn't want to 'burden' us with the truth."
It had only been maybe a month since I had last seen her, mostly due to a two week vacation I had taken so I didn't lose the days before the end of that year. Only a month, but when I walked into that hospital room, she had lost so much weight that she was practically a skeleton- just skin draping over bone.
Normal, that was what the doctors said.
Apparently, so was the shaking and the difficulty swallowing and the muscle aches, fatigue, and breathing issues.
They also said things like: not as common in women, and she's a bit young, and two to five years.
Two to five years.
That was how long she had left.
Two to five years to say what she needed to say.
Two to five years for us to try to come to grips with the reality of her eventual death.
But even if I had ten years, it wouldn't have been enough.
She was released when her respiratory infection went away- to the loving care of her husband. Knowing that was a sure death sentence, I had quit my desk job at a dentist's office and all but moved back home to take care of her.
It was a humbling experience to do something like that, especially when she was so young- to brush her teeth and hair, to bathe her, to dress and feed her, to cook and clean up after her.
My father became mostly MIA and I was glad for his absence.
While she got a slight tremor to her voice, she spent as much time as she could before fatiguing to tell me her stories, to impart her wisdom, to tell me her hopes and dreams and fears for me.
Stop pushing the good ones away, Bethy, she told me, knowing that my father had given me some pretty impressive trust issues with the opposite sex, leaving me somewhat unable to believe a man when he was being genuine and good to me. I always ended up breaking up with them before they could, I thought, hurt me.
I know my wedding dress isn't in vogue anymore, she told me another night, motioning to the dresser where there was a picture of her wedding day with her in a lovely A-line gown that had a lace bodice and lace sleeves. I had always thought it was the loveliest dress I had ever seen. But I want you and your sister to take parts of it then for your wedding days. You can have the lace stitched in somewhere.
I wanted the dress. The whole thing. My heart broke at the idea of cutting any of it.
My sister, Dorothy, ended up not wanting even a strip of it, not even when her wedding ended up being just two months after our mother's death. It was something I could never, and never wanted to, understand.
Don't let him bury me, she had told me, the last night as it turned out, of her life. I don't want to be in the ground.
She had gone to sleep after I promised I wouldn't let him do that and I had slipped off to go do some laundry in the basement for an hour. By the time I went back upstairs to bring her her favorite robe fresh from the drier, she had passed.
I never could figure out if maybe she had known and that was why she chose that night to tell me her wishes for her body.
Either way, I broke.
There was no other way to put it.
My sister was eight states away. My father was who the hell knew where. I was utterly alone as I called the police, sobbing so hard that the lady on the line had to get so stern with me that she was almost yelling. I had to sit there as they came in and officially pronounced her, as we waited for the coroner to come, then for the coroner to wait for me to calm down enough to tell him which funeral home he should call to have her moved to.
Then I had to be the one to pick out her casket, her urn, her outfit, to arrange her viewing, close-casket as was her wish, to order flowers, to call caterers, to call family and friends to invite them, to place the ad in the paper.
Everything.
I had to do every damn little thing.
And I sobbed every single step of the way.
It was amazing anything got done, that anyone could understand me. But, I guessed, those people were used to dealing with grieving loved ones.
My father did show up to her viewing.
With a date.
A fucking date.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Lazarus interrupted my story, shocking my attention to him, finding him pausing mid-way through plating both of our breakfasts. His dark eyes were unreadable, but there was a ticking muscle in his jaw that suggested even though he didn't know any of the people involved, he was angry for my mother regardless.
"I did say he was an ass," I said, giving him a humorless smile as he put both of the plates down and closed the few feet between us, his large hands reaching out to frame my face unexpectedly.
His head ducked slightly, pinning my eyes with his.
"I'm sorry about your mom, sweetheart. And I'm sorry you had to go through that alone."
Then, I kid you not, he lowered toward me and pressed a kiss to the center of my forehead.
Whether I was just dehydrated from the past three days or was just that blown away by the casual sweetness of it or what, but I actually freaking swayed on my feet.
And I had been silently praying he wasn't aware, a hope that was dashed all of a second later when he pulled back with an amused grin. "Guess we should get some food in your system before you faint on me," he said, releasing my face only after trailing one finger across my jaw then down the cleft in my chin.
So then he turned around to finish plating the food as I walked somewhat numbly back to the table, wondering what the hell was wrong with me.
Maybe it was just the wi
thdrawal.
Or maybe I was getting that damn Stockholm thing after all.
Whatever it was was freaky.
"Ketchup?" he asked as he put my plate down in front of me. "Hot sauce is a bad idea," he added and I smiled.
"Ah, I think I'll keep it bland for right now," I said, reaching for the salt though.
He sat down, pouring me both a glass of water and orange juice before reaching for his fork.
"I have to go out tonight," he said when I was about two bites into my food.
"Out?" I repeated, brows drawn together.
"I have, ah, work."
"With The Henchmen?" I asked, wincing a bit in case I shouldn't have been advertising that I knew who he was affiliated with.
"No, but they'll be there too. I have a fight."
A fight?
Like... a boxer?
That would explain his hands. Sort-of.
"What kind of fight?"
"The illegal, underground kind," he supplied, giving me a somewhat devilish little smile I couldn't help but respond to.
"So you're, what, a cage fighter?"
"Only when one of the other fighters can't fight for whatever reason. This is my first one in a while."
"Are you... nervous?" I asked, not sure what would make anyone want to get into a fight on purpose. I once went at it with the boy who lived next door when I was seven and I was pretty sure I still wasn't over it. Who signed up for fat lips and bleeding gums and black eyes?
"About a fight?" he asked, seeming confused at the very prospect. "Nah, sweetheart. I've been doing this for years. It's just another Monday night for me."
And then the words came flying out of me. Really, I wasn't sure they had even crossed my mind as thoughts before they were out of my mouth.
"Can I come?"
His head jerked up, brow raised. "You want to come to the fight?" he clarified.
"I, ah..." How did I explain that I wanted to see him as something other than my somewhat-captor and somewhat-savior? That I wanted to know what he was like out in the real world with other people, with his boss, with his biker friends? I was pretty sure there was no real way to say any of that without sounding completely out of my freaking mind. "I'm just curious."
Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7) Page 7