by Sophie Stern
The place looks good. The exterior light is on and if I’m not mistaken, Georgia painted my damn house. It was white when I left. Now it looks blue. What the hell? Did she really?
She shouldn’t have.
She shouldn’t have done that.
It was a lot of work and she’s busy and has a job and shit to do. She has her own responsibilities, but she took the time to paint my house. Georgia’s not the type to delegate work, either. No, if my house was painted while I was away, there’s no doubt in my mind that my sister was out here every day, slaving on a stepladder until it was finished.
My sweet sister has a crazy heart of gold.
I head up to the front door and fish my key out of my pocket. With a deep breath, I unlock the door and push it open and I’m hit with the smell of cookies.
Seriously?
Freshly baked cookies?
Fuck.
My stomach growls because it smells so damn good in the house. I head straight to the kitchen and for a brief second, I’m worried Georgia just installed some of those plug-in wax melter scent things and there aren’t really cookies, but I’m in luck. I managed to call her yesterday and let her know I’d be back soon, so she must have come over and baked.
Sure enough, there’s a jar full of cookies on my kitchen counter with a sweet note from my sister and one from Mom.
This is amazing.
I open the fridge and even that is fully stocked with groceries: fruits, veggies, sandwich fixings, and drinks. I grab a beer and head to the living room to settle in for a bit. I could watch a movie or some television before bed. It’s late, and even though I’m tired, I’m not ready to crash yet.
I kind of just want to chill for a little while.
I kind of just want to decide what I’m going to do with my life.
I need to check in at the station sometime this week. I haven’t talked to the Chief yet. No one from work knows I’m back, and to be honest, I’m not so sure I want to go back. Not just yet.
For a long time, being a cop was my life. It was my entire world. It’s not just about catching bad guys, though, and after awhile, I started to feel a little burnt out. Dealing with helping little kids escape from abusive situations and helping people who are hurt or injured is emotionally draining. After awhile, it starts to wear on your heart. After awhile, you wonder if you even have a heart anymore.
You have to learn how to shelter yourself from the garbage you see because even living in a little town like Honeypot, there are bad apples. Even in a small town, you see stuff you were never meant to see. You face problems you should never have to know exist. Your world gets a little bit darker each time you go to work, and then you go home alone because cops are so often incapable of having real relationships.
Only I didn’t go home alone.
I didn’t have to, not before my deployment.
I could go home to Arielle. I could lose myself in her sweet body, in her soft smile. I could lose myself in her happiness, in her laughter, in her joy. For a little while, the world didn’t seem so bad. When she wrapped herself around me, when she whispered in my ear, when she promised me everything was going to be okay, the world didn’t seem so bad.
Everything seemed like it would be all right.
But then it wasn’t.
I was stupid to let her go. I was a fucking idiot: a clown. I was stupid to think that I’d somehow be able to get over her while I was away. I was naïve to think I’d be able to come back to Honeypot and life would be back to normal.
It’s not back to normal: not for me.
With a sigh, I set my empty beer bottle down and stand up. I stretch, yawning as I do, and decide to look around. In some ways, nothing in my home has changed. All the big-ticket items are still where they’re supposed to be.
My couch hasn’t moved. My dining room furniture is still in the same spot. The paintings are the same. Something feels different, though. It looks the same, but it feels different.
Is it because Arielle isn’t here?
Is it because I don’t have her to count on anymore?
Is it because I know that after work, after a long day of dealing with cases and crooks, I won’t be able to run to her for quiet comfort?
Is that my damn problem?
Fuck.
I growl and move down the hallway. I’m going to play some PC games before bed. That’s what I’ll do. It’s been awhile since I was able to lose myself in the fun and excitement of a video game, but now’s my chance. It’s not like I have anything better to do.
Opening the door to my second bedroom, the one I’ve converted into a game room, I’m momentarily stunned because my room is no longer a game room. My desk has vanished and my computer is missing. The speakers are gone and so are the shelves of books, video games, and DVDs.
Everything I owned in this room is gone and someone else’s stuff is here now: someone very small, judging by the looks of things.
“What the hell did Georgia do?” I mutter as I walk into the room. I don’t know where she put my stuff, but it couldn’t have gone far. Chances are she shoved everything in boxes in the garage or in a closet somewhere.
She couldn’t have thought that painting and redecorating my game room was going to go unnoticed. I mean, I know my place isn’t especially fancy, but even I’m not clueless. I would have immediately noticed this change. Switching the brand of toilet paper in my bathroom? That wouldn’t be something I’d ever pay attention to, but my games?
What the hell?
Yeah, that’s something I’m going to notice.
The walls are no longer beige, but blue. They’re covered with pictures of elephants and giraffes and little tiny blue and white stars. There’s a throw rug in the center of the hardwood flooring that is also blue with white stars. There’s even a rocking chair that – surprise – has blue and white stars on it.
That’s not even the weirdest thing, though.
On the right-hand side of the room is something I never thought I’d see in my house. There’s something I never, not in my wildest dreams, thought I’d get to be a part of.
There’s a crib.
There’s a crib in the room.
Slowly, I walk over to it and peek inside. I half-expect to see a little cub inside the crib, but that’s stupid. Georgia might be crazy, but she’s not that crazy. She apparently thought it was okay to redecorate my house, but I can’t figure out why.
Did she have a baby while I was gone?
Is she planning to?
Georgia’s got her own house, though. Unless she was planning to move in with me, she wouldn’t have redecorated. She definitely wouldn’t have done it without talking to me. My sister is wild, but she’s also polite and has incredible self-control.
I pick up a little stuffed tiger in the corner of the crib. It’s soft and sweet. A tiger: just like me. I set it down and pick up the other stuffed animal. It’s a little panda bear.
“How cute,” I mumble out loud. “A little tiger and a little panda bear. Just like me and-”
And that’s when I realize that my sister is a genius and I’m an idiot.
She’s not the one having a baby.
Arielle is.
Chapter 3
Arielle
“How are you feeling today, Mr. Thomas?” I smile as I enter the hospital room of one of my favorite patients. Randall Thomas is an old shifter who is currently at St. Ann’s Hospital in Montgomery. He’s about a 20-minute drive from Honeypot and while I don’t usually do any medical social work, Mr. Thomas is a special exception.
His daughter, Ellie, sits in the chair beside his bed and forces a smile when I come in. We’ve been friends for a long time and when she asked me to be her father’s social worker, I couldn’t turn her down. I made it happen. It was a lot of paperwork and a lot of calling in favors, but now I visit him three times a week.
It’s getting close to the end with him.
“I’m doin’ all right,” Mr. Thomas says, but El
lie gently shakes her head, letting me know it isn’t true.
“He’s in a lot of pain,” she tells me. Mr. Thomas doesn’t say anything to protest her comment, so I know it’s quite true. When he first got sick, he tried to stay strong and cope with the pain medication-free, but I think Ellie and Mr. Thomas both realized very quickly that this was the wrong way to approach a disease like this one. He basically has the shifter form of cancer and there’s no cure. There’s nothing anyone can do for him but try to make him as comfortable as possible.
“Have his doctors done anything for the pain?” I ask. Sometimes a patient needs their medication dosage adjusted, but doesn’t want to ask. Even patients like Mr. Thomas, who have a terminal illness, sometimes don’t want to ask for extra medication. They feel like it would be wasted on them since they’re going to die anyway or they’re afraid of seeming like an addict. Mr. Thomas has gotten a lot better about asking for medication, but he still struggles to admit he needs the drugs.
“Doctor Alexander adjusted his mediation about twenty minutes ago,” she tells me. “It hasn’t kicked in yet, though.”
“We’ll give it a little bit of time,” I tell Mr. Thomas with a smile. I hope it’s a cheery one, but I’m not convinced it is. I’ve only been here for a couple of minutes and already, I feel my heart breaking for this poor man.
Randall is a good man. He’s kind. He’s gentle. He’s been an amazing father to Ellie and after my own parents passed away, he accepted me as one of his own. He’s always looked after me, always taken care of me. He’s always gone out of his way to make sure I’m safe, happy, secure. Now it’s my turn to take care of him and I’m worried I won’t do a good job. This is literally what I do every day, but somehow, when it’s someone I know, taking care of a person in need seems so much harder.
“Why don’t we talk for a few minutes while we give it a few minutes to work?”
“That sounds just fine to me,” Mr. Thomas says weakly, and Ellie grips his hand. Ellie has been here for her dad every day of his illness. She still works full-time, but she comes over on her lunch breaks and leaves early work as often as she can. Her boss has been incredibly understanding about the entire situation. As soon as Ellie gets off work, she comes to the hospital and stays with her dad all night. No one has the heart to kick her out when visiting hours end.
No one has the heart to make her leave her father.
I sit and chit-chat with Mr. Thomas for awhile until the drugs start to kick in. It only takes a few more minutes before his body visibly relaxes. He leans back in the bed and closes his eyes mid-sentence. Ellie continues to hold his hand as we both watch him. We keep talking about silly, mundane things for awhile, avoiding the topic at hand. Right now, having a little bit of normalcy is something we both want, even if we can’t have it.
Ellie is about to lose her father and I’m about to have a baby who might never know his. The thought pains me, but I try not to think about that. Right now, this is about Ellie. This is about Ellie and Mr. Thomas and keeping them both as comfortable as possible.
This isn’t the time for me to worry about my own baby.
The truth is that Ellie has had a good life and so has her daddy. He raised her right. He loved her with his whole heart. She’s lucky that she had so much time with him before he got sick. She’s lucky she had 30 years to love him before it was time for him to pass on.
Knowing he loved her fully and that she loved him in return doesn’t ease the pain Ellie feels right now. That’s not how pain works. It doesn’t matter how much you appreciate the people who love you, losing them is like being stabbed in the gut.
It’s this sharp, unbearable pain that doesn’t want to stop.
You feel like you’re bleeding out, like nothing will stop you from feeling faint, like nothing will stop you from feeling like you’re the one dying.
I take a deep breath and smile again, trying to chit-chat with Ellie. We’re both completely forcing the conversation. It’s not even fun, but we feel like we need to fill the air with something. Words. Any words. Words are better than silence sometimes, at least in this case.
Once she’s sure her dad is asleep, Ellie lets go of his hand and begins to fidget. Ellie looks more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen her look before. She looks terrified. I take a deep breath because I know that look. This is when things get real for me and Ellie. This is when she tells me what bothers her the most, what hurts the most. This is where I have to step up and be not only her friend, but her social worker. This is the part where my training kicks in.
“I’m scared, Arielle,” she admits.
“You’re in a hard position,” I say gently. “It’s understandable. What exactly are you scared of?” My question sounds clinical, even to me, but it’s an important one. When it comes to death, some people completely freak out and lose their cool. It’s not surprising. Death is a terrifying thing for many of us because it’s the ultimate unknown.
Maybe she’s scared about the idea of an afterlife. Maybe Ellie is worried there isn’t anything there after you die. Maybe she’s worried there is.
I don’t know what it is she’s scared of, but asking for specifics is the only way I’ll be able to find out.
It’s the only way I’ll be able to encourage her.
“He’s all I’ve got. He’s the only one left. All of my other family members are dead or gone. It’s been just the two of us for so long. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”
I’m a huge, swollen mess, but I get up and waddle over to Ellie. I reach down and give her an awkward hug. She wraps her arms around me and rests her head on my belly, and I just hold her for a little while.
It’s not supposed to be like this. I’m supposed to refer her to counseling or give her some real, tangible advice, but sometimes, when you’re about to lose everything, you just want a fucking hug. You want people to stop trying to fix you and to just hold you for a little bit.
It doesn’t make everything better, but it helps a little bit. It gives you a little peace of mind. Her father is going to die in a matter of days, according to the doctors. All we can do is make him as comfortable and content as possible.
“I took off work for the rest of the week,” Ellie whispers. “I want to be here when he passes. I can’t stand the idea of it happening when I’m not here.”
“Oh, pumpkin,” I reach down and stroke her blond curls, and she continues to cry a little bit. “You’re so brave, Ellie.”
“I’m going to miss him so much.”
“We all are.”
Mr. Thomas has always has a positive attitude. He’s always been a fighter. He’s always been brave. I’ve known him and Ellie since I was a young cub and even when he was going through a nasty divorce, even when his own parents died, hell, even when his own son died, he took it like a man.
He never let life get him down or hold him back.
And he passed that same bravery on to Ellie.
“Your dad is the bravest guy I’ve ever known,” I tell Ellie. “When Ezra passed away, we were all so sad, all so lost.”
“I know. The world didn’t seem right after that.”
“He got us through it. Remember what he said?”
“I remember.”
“He said the sun still rises when you’re sad and it still sets when you’re sad. He said the sun is steady, just like Ezra’s love for us. He said no matter what happens, we gave Ezra a good life and he was loved, and he loved us well in return.”
“He really did love us.”
I take her hand in mine and squeeze it softly.
“Ezra was a good kid. He was the brother I always wanted, but didn’t have. Soon your pop is going to join him and they’ll be smiling down on you.”
“I always thought heaven was a crock,” she admits, but as tears fill her eyes, Ellie nods. “But to be honest, I might be starting to come around.”
We sit there together for a little while in the silence. There’s not really anything else
to say. Ellie has a therapist she can talk to if she wants to and I’m always happy to listen, but we both know that sometimes silence is really what you need.
Sometimes when you’re hurting, you just want someone to be with you so you don’t have to go through it alone.
When Ellie’s brother was killed in a boating accident, we thought the world was going to end. We made this tent in her bedroom and we crawled in there and we stayed there for days. Mr. Thomas would bring us drinks and food and snacks and books and we just stayed there until the funeral.
Then we came out, went to the church, and spent the day at the graveyard. When we got home, the tent was gone. Mr. Thomas told us it was time to move on. It was time to let Ezra be buried and it was time for us to move on with our own lives.
Mourning Ezra and sitting around in a tent wasn’t going to bring him back.
But it sure felt nice to have that solitude while we did mourn him.
It felt nice to mourn with a friend, to not have to go through the pain alone.
Eventually, the doctors come in to check on Mr. Thomas and I politely excuse myself with promises to come back in a couple of days. Something in the way the doctors are looking at Ellie tells me I’ll probably be coming back tomorrow. I give Mr. Thomas one soft kiss on the forehead, but he doesn’t even move or wake up.
Good.
The old man deserves his rest.
He’s had a long life. It’s been a good life, but it’s been hard, and he’s tired. He deserves eternal peace. We’ll miss him and we’ll be sad, but he’s been in pain for so long that I think deep down, we all understand that it’s time.
It’s time.
Still, this knowledge doesn’t stop me from crying when I get to the car. I rest my head against the steering wheel and cry until I can’t cry anymore, then I drive back to Honeypot.
I have to file some paperwork at my office, so I head straight there and park my car in the small employee parking lot. I take a few deep breaths as I sit there, just staring out the window. Today was hell and I know the next few days are going to be even worse.