Lasting Fate

by Charisse Spiers

  "I'm going to be honest, Brooks. She's probably going to have to see a Psychiatrist on the books before she can practice again. You're going to have to see the hospital administrator to be sure what the course of action will have to be, but someone has to sign off that she's mentally capable of treating patients. She's sleeping right now, but you can go in. She needs to rest and remain stress free. She needs medicine, but you're going to have to administer it now that she's abused it. She swallowed a lot of pills. If you wouldn't have gotten to her when you did, she would be dead right now."

  Dad places his hands in the pockets of his khaki's. His shoulders slump. He's thinking, and probably praying. Above all else, he's stressing. I can hear it in his breathing. "I'm going to leave you two alone. You know where to find me if you need me. I'm here for the next eight hours."

  "Thanks, Michael," Dad says and the doctor turns and leaves. Dad pulls one hand free from his pocket and begins messaging left and right across his forehead, hard enough to redden it in color. He takes the other hand out and covers his face with his hands, shaking his head from side to side.

  "Dad, it'll be okay. I'm sure with a little bit of time everything will be fine." I rest my hand on his shoulder not knowing what else to do. He turns and pulls me into a hug, squeezing me tight. I tense. The muscle-to-muscle contact is a little weird to be honest. I haven't hugged Dad like this in years. When a boy hits puberty he doesn't do the guy hugging thing anymore. I begin patting his back awkwardly.

  "I may not have told you enough, Son, but I love you. I know I'm not very good with voicing the way I feel, but you kids are everything to me. When you were gone a piece of me was missing. I won't lose my son again. Whatever you need to bring Kinzleigh back here, it's yours." He sniffs once and lets go, never giving me a chance to respond. "Come on. You need to be there when your mother wakes up."

  We're all standing in the room listening to nothing but the beeping of the machines. Everyone has been quiet for the majority of the time we've been here. There's a strange awkwardness between my brothers and I. I'm hoping it's something that will fade over time. We've always been close and now I feel like an outsider. It could possibly be that they're in shock. They haven't said more than five words since they walked in the house earlier today.

  Mom starts to stir on the hospital bed, causing everyone to stop dead in movement. My heart begins to race. I don't know what to expect when she wakes up. Maybe this isn't a good idea. I don't want to put her into cardiac or respiratory arrest when she sees Braxton and I side by side. Every other time I was alone, thus making everyone think I was Braxton.

  I stand here frozen, waging back and forth in my mind on the right decision. Her eyes slowly open and I take a step back, only to run into Braxton. He places his hand over my shoulder, halting me. "Come on, brother. We've all been living in Hell since you've been gone. It's been long enough." Finally, he speaks, aside from verifying that I'm in fact real and not a ghost. "I'm unsure of what to say, because it probably won't improve your mindset from where you've been or what you've been through, but know that not a day went by that we didn't think of you and miss you. You're my brother, best friend, and partner in crime. I'm glad you're back. It’s just a little bit of a shell shock is all."

  Mom starts looking around and I allow him to steer me towards the foot of her bed. She looks around the room confused. When her eyes end on the two of us in front of her, what she says shuts me down. "Am I in heaven?" She looks at Braxton first, long enough to differentiate which one of us is which like she always does, and then me. "Breyson," she whispers as tears develop and begin to fall. "I found you." Her voice sounds scratchy and hoarse; from the procedure I'm sure. She looks like she's in pain when she moves from the squinting.

  Damn.

  My legs develop a mind of their own and rush to the side of her bed, my hands grabbing her face as I sit on the edge beside her. She appears a little out of it, but I need her to understand. There is no holding back tears when you hear something like that, man or not. I've never been a pussy, but I'll be damned if it doesn't have an affect on my heart when I hear my mother say something like that. "Mom, listen to me. I'm not dead and you're not dead. We're all very much alive. I'm here, and I'll never leave again."

  She stares at me, not saying a word. I can see by the way her eyes scan side to side that she's trying to determine if she's living in reality or fantasy. I wrap my arms around her frail body and pull her against me, crashing her face into my chest. She tenses at first, but then relaxes and wraps her arms around me, clutching my shirt in her fists. She begins to sob, and I let her. You want to know why; because knowing that your life meant something to someone else makes you feel valued. When you feel like an orphan for almost seven months, it's nice to be missed.

  I never look away from the wall behind her, because that means I'll have to distance myself from her and I can't bear to do that to her. I can hear the door open and shut, leaving nothing but silence. I can feel that we're now alone. My dad and brothers stepped outside to give us privacy. I can feel the wetness from her tears soaking through my shirt. I sense that she needs to get this out. She squeezes me tighter and I do to her.

  I've never seen her this emotional, and it makes my heart ache. I feel guilty that I didn't try harder to find a way back before. I shouldn't have let that much time lapse. It's ruined so many lives, maybe even my own if I don't get Kinzleigh back. I feel like such a fuck up right now. "I'm sorry, Mom." Those words only make her cry harder. She is gasping for breath from crying so hard.

  I don't know what else to say. I'm terrified to speak at the possibility of making this worse than it already is. I do what I do best when I can't find the right words, something I always did with Kinzleigh. I hold her, letting her feel my presence and know that I'm here. Body language always speaks louder than words. It's the vibrancy in someone's mood and the truth to the way that person feels.

  "Not. Your. Fault," she says, trying to catch her breath between words.

  "It feels like it." I respond. "Why would you try to hurt yourself, Mom?"

  She doesn't immediately respond. I can hear her breathing evening out slightly, but still irregular. She sighs against the dip in my chest. "I don't know how to explain," she finally says in a tone muffled against my shirt.

  "Try," I say sternly. "I need to know you won't try this again. Trying to kill yourself isn’t a joke. This is so unlike you." Moving my hand to her shoulders, I try to put a space between us, but it only makes her tighten her hold.

  "I'll explain, but I need to hold you right now. When a mother thinks one of her kids is dead a piece of her is missing. Can you give me that for a while? I know you've always been stubborn and not big on displays of affection, but I need this." She nestles her ear to the spot where my heart beats, below my exterior. With each heartbeat her breathing regulates as if it's the medication she needs to calm down.

  "Okay, Mom. I can do that. I need to know what you were thinking." The image of her lying almost lifeless on my bed with an empty pill bottle in hand will be forever etched in my memory. I have enough tragic memories floating around up there right now without adding more. It's time for some good or my mind is going to rupture.

  She begins speaking, but in a monotone dialogue similar to a narrator or golf announcer on television. "I was sad at first, but I was getting by. Kinzleigh's pregnancy kept me occupied for a while, but when she left things took a turn for the worse."

  She stops momentarily as if she just accidentally told a secret that was supposed to be kept. It's weird how my heart and mind are completely in sync with everything related to Kinzleigh, because automatically I know why she stopped talking. "I know about my son. He's beautiful."

  She digs her fingernails into my back, causing pressure points of pain as they pierce the skin. I breathe through it. She's not going to ask what she wants to know. Instead, she continues. "What I was focusing my energy on was that baby, the only part of you I had left. I suppose, secretly, I was h
oping he would look like you, so when I looked at him and he smiled, it was like you were smiling down on me from Heaven through him."

  She pauses briefly, taking every word into consideration. I think I know why. She doesn't want me angry with Kinzleigh over something she says. "When she left it was like you were really gone. I was alone. I can't blame her, Breyson. Kinzleigh was in a very bad state when she was here. That boy is, or was, good for her at the time. When I talk to her now she doesn't seem dead inside. She has a little bit of that spark back, the part of her that makes everyone love her."

  She looks up at me for the first time since I sat here, putting a distance between us. "I'll admit that she isn't the same person she was when you left, but that's to be expected for someone her age that's been through more pain and sudden change in a year than most experience in their entire lives. Y'all were meant for each other, and it’s clear to anyone that is around you two. I’ll never understand why your connection to her is so strong at such a young age, but I can see it."

  Yeah, to everyone but the person that matters. I wish someone would tell Kinzleigh that.

  "A couple months ago the depression was starting to consume me. I couldn't even get out of bed. Your father made me an appointment with a colleague and I started taking an antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication. I got a call this morning from Kinzleigh's mother that Bryce was born and that she was flying back to California for a few days. She wanted to know if I wanted to come with her. I wanted to, I did, but everything started closing in on me. All I could process was that you missed the birth of your son, that you wouldn't get to watch him grow, and that I couldn't experience my son bonding with his son the first and most important week of a father's life. Everything was crashing down around me."

  She looks as if it's paining her to speak. "You don't have to talk if it hurts you. You've said enough."

  She shakes her head. "I need to get this out. I need you to understand."

  She lays her head back on my chest as if she needs to be touching me while she finishes telling me. I can feel fresh tears on my already damp shirt. "When I got off the phone I ran to your truck. I went to your tombstone first. I wanted you to know you were a father now. My mind broke down and nothing made sense. I started thinking you were just lost and that somehow I could find you. It sounds crazy, but I felt like you weren't dead. I told myself that surely I was distraught and my nerves were sparking like fireworks, so I ran home. I knew I wasn't in the state of mind to drive or someone could be killed, so I locked your truck and left it there."

  Her voice lowers to almost a whisper from the hoarse state it's in, and her tone saddens. "When I got home I was in hysterics and drenched in sweat. I remembered how I used to always find Kinzleigh in your bed when she was having a hard time coping that day. You could always tell which days were worse than others, because the bad days she woke everyone in the house up screaming in her sleep, and Briar would have to hold her until she calmed down. The good days I would find her the next morning wrapped around your pillow in your clothes. I thought I would see if it helped me the way it helped her, so I went and got my medicine from the cabinet before walking to your room."

  She stops talking and sniffles a few times, catching her breath from talking nonstop without inhaling between sentences. I'm trying my best to focus on her and only her, but it's becoming a little more difficult now that she brought up Kinzleigh again. It's hard not to visualize the image of her waking up in terror that is now forming in my mind.

  The thought of her in pain over me kills me. It makes me want to throw everything down and say fuck it, fly back to California, and throw her stubborn ass over my shoulder, bring her back, and make love to her every morning and every night until I prove to her that she was wrong. I don't know how many people in the world are given the opportunity to find the person that has them as crazy in love with someone as I am about her, but I know that it's got to be rare. I'd have to be an idiot to just let her go, hell no.

  She's been mine since the day I laid my eyes on her and she'll be mine until the day I die. I feel like I'm going fucking crazy without her. The more time I waste, the more time I'm away from her. I need to have a talk with Braxton and Briar about these nightmares and sleepovers in my bed. I want to know more.

  "It just didn't seem to help. The sadness; it consumed me. I went into a panic and took a pill. It didn't help, then led to another and another until most of the bottle was gone. I wasn't plotting a means to die." I'm broken from my thoughts as those last few sentences are voiced out loud by my mom. “I just wanted a temporary break.”

  I haven't been back in the country but a few days and already my to-do list is long. Standing in the airport that cold day in February, I would have never imagined the destruction that would be left behind after that plane took off. Not only do I need to get my life back, but everyone else's. "You'll never have to go through that again, Mom. That I promise."

  I zone out as I continue to hold her, making up for lost time. In time I want to tell my family everything that I've gone through. I want to tell them that even though I was gone, I was also taken care of by an amazing family. I want to share the events of that night and what I've been doing over the last six months, but now is not the time. There are too many things that need to be mended right now, starting with my heart. I can't concentrate on anything with half of it across the damn country.

  "Breyson..."

  "Yeah."

  "If you've seen Bryce I'm assuming you made a detour to California first, so where is Kinzleigh and the baby?" I can hear the longing in her voice. She probably misses Kinzleigh almost as much as I do, not to mention the grandchild she has yet to meet. My parents are family oriented people, and whether I'm eighteen or twenty eight they aren't just going to forget their own blood as if they don't exist, even if Kinzleigh and I never got back together, in which we are, she just doesn't know it yet.

  "She stayed with Preston in California." Even saying that name leaves a bad taste in my mouth, giving me the urge to spit. It's hard to like the guy when he has something that belongs to me. I don't take it easy on people that steal from me. I tried to remain calm, but the hurricane is about to begin. I'm giving him a little more time to hand over what's mine, and then I'm going to start tearing shit up.

  "Why?"

  It's a simple question. Do I even know the real answer? I like to think that I do, but really I don't. Maybe because it's the stupidest shit I've ever heard, but yet I have to go along with it, because, well, what other option do I have? My temper wants to flare each time I think about the fact that she's living with another man, making me want to kill him, snapping him apart limb by mother fucking limb.

  One thought. That's all it takes and I can feel the rage begin to rise. I don't know how I thought I was going to do this. Lauren said to give it time and get my life in order, but I don't think that's going to work for me.

  Fuck.

  "Hell, I don't know. She thinks I'm better off without her. She has some warped idea that what happened to me is her fault, that, and the fact that I don't have a place for us to live. She agreed to marry him, Mom. She's not fucking going to marry him. I will evermore, fuck his rich-boy, preppy-ass shit up. He didn't even see half of what I'm capable of in that hotel room." My next sentence comes out muffled as she raises her head and slaps her hand over my mouth.

  Her eyes grow wide. That was the key to drying up her tears. The only thing that remains is dampness left behind from the previous ones. "Breyson Patrick Abercrombie, you may talk that way around your friends, but I am still your mother. I do not want to hear that filth, is that clear?" She removes her hand, allowing me to respond. A simple nod won't suffice.

  "Yes ma'am." Her tone says she's serious. She raised three boys and she knows how to get her point across when she feels disrespected as a woman. One thing I've learned over the years: do not piss off Ava Abercrombie. No one wants to see her wrath, I promise. The woman can be scary when she wants to be. I never tho
ught of this before, but maybe that's where I get my temper. Dad's more laid back, more or less like Briar.

  "Good, now we can discuss this like proper adults. Besides, if you're going to raise a child, as I expect you are," she says as she raises one brow. "Then you need to control your tongue. Have you ever heard your father or I curse like that in front any of you kids?"

  Here goes the lecture.

  I drop my head into the hand of my arm that is resting on the inner side of my knee. "No....ma'am," I say in a bored, and drug out tone.

  "Now, I know how girls work. She will come around, honey. She's just confused right now, I'm sure. Everything will fall into place. You know your father and I will help you in any way we can. No one expects you to be on your feet the second you get home when you've been gone..." Her octave raises and she jerks my head upward to look at her. "Oh my gosh, where exactly have you been?"

  "Mom, I'll tell you everything at some point, but right now I'm not really in the mental state to do so. I would really appreciate it if we could keep to some type of normalcy until I'm ready to elaborate on the last six months, almost seven now. For now, every detail doesn't have to be rehashed." Her eyes narrow slightly as if she's about to scold me for talking back, but then she sighs and drops the subject.

  "Fine. I guess I can understand, given the circumstances. I know you didn't come back to everything being as smooth as honey, but everything will work out the way it's supposed to. You have to believe that, baby. Your dad and I always taught you that sometimes you have to sacrifice things to get what you want. It may take some time, but in the end it'll pay off. If you love her the way I think you do, then you're going to have to be her support, her backbone. Don't push too hard or you'll push her over the edge."

  She begins running her long fingers through my hair like she used do when I was a kid. It's already time for a haircut again. She is starting to look like she's floating on cloud nine the more we talk. "My babies are growing up so fast. I can't believe y'all are in college. I know you're behind, but we'll get you caught up, so don't worry."