Ten Seconds of Crazy

by Randileigh Kennedy

  “It’s completely my fault,” I said somewhat defensively. Everyone was acting like I did nothing wrong when I blatantly did something very, very wrong. “They said I fell asleep. I crossed the center line. All of this is my fault,” I said again through tears. Reid reached out his hand and put it on top of mine, gently squeezing it.

  “So maybe we should’ve just stayed the night where we were at. If I hadn’t been so tired, I could’ve helped keep you awake in the car. But we can’t go back to all the ‘what-ifs,’ that won’t change anything. It was an accident, that’s all. We’re okay,” he said reassuringly. I appreciated his sincerity and his calm demeanor, but it really frustrated me at the same time. Everything wasn’t fine. I hated when people pretended there wasn’t chaos around them. This entire event had changed so much for us. I couldn’t pretend like it hadn’t.

  “Your car is completely destroyed. Did you see the pictures? It’s totaled. I know it meant a lot to you,” I explained, not sure he fully knew the extent of the damage. “It’s done. Your trip, everything you wanted to do… I’ve managed to end all of it.”

  He tenderly wiped the tears off of my face with his left thumb.

  “It’s just a car,” he replied, shaking his head. “It’s just metal and leather and glass. That’s not the part that ever meant anything to me.”

  “Well I know it was your brother’s car. That meant something.”

  “Yeah, he restored it with my dad. Memories of that mean something. But those weren’t in the car, Cass. It was just a car.” He looked at me with such a sympathetic face and his tone was persuasive.

  “Preston,” I said quietly, fighting back more tears. “It’s all gone.”

  He tried to further console me, but our positioning was awkward at best with him still in the hospital bed.

  “You’re not the reason he’s gone, Cassidy,” he said softly, stroking my hair. “He was gone before you. This doesn’t change that. I already lost him. This isn’t the same thing.” His voice sounded shaky and I swear I felt a tear from his face drip down onto mine. “The trip isn’t ruined,” he said endearingly. “Nothing has ended. Look at that bag,” he said pointing across the room to a small pile of stuff. “They did bring back some of the belongings they found around the car.”

  “The urn was completely smashed, Reid. I saw it.”

  “There’s a small plastic bag in there. One I’d used for some of our excursions. He’s still there, Cass. Any physical part of him you think I’m still hanging on to isn’t completely lost. But I’m trying to tell you it wouldn’t matter either way. I don’t think that was the whole point of the trip.” He still continued to stroke my hair as he spoke. “I know you’ve been through a lot. But we really haven’t lost anything. Maybe some time and our clothes and whatever leftovers we had in the car,” he gently teased, “but that’s all. Look at us. We haven’t lost anything. That’s all just stuff. Anything that actually matters - that hasn’t changed.”

  A young doctor quietly entered the room, breaking our conversation. He checked Reid’s chart and looked over his IV drip.

  “Look at you,” I said quietly. “Laying in a hospital bed with severe injuries and you’re acting like this is all no big deal. I don’t know how you do that.”

  “It’s just a kidney. And a spleen,” he teased back.

  The doctor didn’t look amused. “You do realize those are both major organs, correct?” he stated towards Reid.

  “Yes sir,” he replied with a smirk. “But in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a couple of organs.”

  “You realize they have important functions, right? They’re key players in one’s anatomy,” the doctor further explained, still looking irritated.

  “Yes, doc, I realize that. Cut me a break here. I’m never going to impress the girl if I seem worried over a spleen,” he joked. The doctor didn’t seem amused by his humor.

  “I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” the doctor replied dryly.

  Reid and I both snickered as he left the room, causing my ribcage horrific pain.

  “Will you forgive me?” he said, squeezing my hand. “For anything that may happen today, promise me you won’t be mad at me.”

  I furrowed my brow, confused by his statement. I just totaled this guy’s car, ruined his road trip, lacerated a few of his “moderately” important organs, and he thinks I have a reason to be mad at him?

  He nodded towards the hospital room door, and it opened again. I could hear the click clack of a woman’s high heeled shoes behind me, entering the room. I didn’t recall that sound earlier from Darla.

  “Oh Cassidy, look at you!” a voice exclaimed, walking up behind me. She finally reached the edge of Reid’s hospital bed and we made eye contact. “You look horrible,” she said with a scrunched up face.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked through gritted teeth, slowly closing my eyes. I opened them back up, glaring at Reid. A pit formed in my stomach.

  “It’s your lucky day,” I muttered unenthusiastically towards Reid. “You get to meet my mom.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Reid politely stuck his hand out as I introduced him to my mom Sheila. Instead of reaching for his hand, she leaned down in her low cut black tank top and hugged him, no doubt awkwardly putting her chest too close to his head.

  “Look at those stitches on your face, Cass,” she remarked as she pulled away from Reid. She actually had a hint of care and compassion in her voice. “That’s going to leave a horrible scar.” Nope, compassion gone. Cue the fake doting mom routine. “We need to get you home. When can I get you out of here?” She looked around the room as if she expected a doctor or nurse to be waiting around to answer her question.

  “Mom, I’m fine. Really. I appreciate you coming and all that. But they’re going to keep me here for at least another day or two. So honestly, if you have something to get back to,” I explained, trying to let her know she was off the hook. I knew she had something else, anything else, she’d rather be doing right now.

  “Darling, how could you say that? A girl needs her mom at a time like this,” she said with a fake, endearing tone. “I’m always here when you need me.”

  “You didn’t show up to bail me out of jail when I got in trouble,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “You can cut the doting mom act.”

  “Honey, I was in Sedona with Rick when that happened,” she said looking back between Reid and me. “I was on vacation, it was bad timing.”

  “Right. Well my life appears to be bad timing for you,” I said snidely.

  Darla and Kent walked into the room in that moment, interrupting our conversation.

  “This is my mom Sheila,” I said politely, introducing everyone. A nurse came in at that time, needing to check Reid’s vitals and draw some blood for his lab work. The room felt overcrowded and stuffy. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Visiting hours are almost over,” the nurse said courteously, looking around at the room full of people. “We’ll have to get you back to your wing of the hospital,” she said towards me.

  Within minutes I was being whisked away from Reid’s room back down the elevator towards the area of the hospital I was staying. My mom followed closely behind, and I hated the way her heels sounded on the tile floor. I really wanted a few more minutes with Reid, alone, but clearly that wasn’t happening tonight.

  As the nurses settled me back into my hospital bed, my mom made up the pull-out couch as if she was really planning to stay the night.

  “I’m sure there’s a motel nearby,” I said dryly. “I don’t expect you to stay here. You can go somewhere more comfortable.”

  “I know you’re mad at me, Cass,” she said shaking her head. “You haven’t returned my calls for three months. Let’s just get it all out already. What’s making you so crazy?”

  Crazy? This psychotic woman, with her secrets and her make-believe love life and her fake concern for me now - she was making me out to be the irrational one in the room?

  “We don’
t need to do this,” I said calmly, shaking my head. There was no point. We’d started this conversation so many times before. I knew how it ended.

  “Mothers and daughters aren’t supposed to get along. That’s just how the world works,” she began, one of her many excuses. “I did the best I could you know.” Sadly, I believed that was true. I didn’t believe she was capable of ever offering me more of a life than the one she gave me. I didn’t really blame her for that. The older I got, the more I realized people all had a ‘ceiling’ - that point they hit where they just couldn’t be any more than what they were. The cap of their potential, so to speak. “What do you want from me?” she asked directly.

  “Nothing,” I sneered, feeling frustrated to perpetually be in this argument with her. “Don’t you understand? That’s the point of the unreturned phone calls. I don’t need anything from you. I’m an adult now. So you either did your job and I’ll turn out just fine, or it’s too late and I have to figure out the rest of this life on my own. Either way, this conversation is pointless. I don’t want anything from you.”

  “I gave you shelter,” she began.

  “We stayed at all of your boyfriends’ shitty apartments.”

  “You had nice clothes, nice shoes,” she continued.

  “That you stole from other people!” I hissed back.

  “I always tried my best,” she kept talking, finally showing some emotion in her voice.

  “And I believed your ‘best’ was when you were passed out on the sofa from a heavy night of drinking,” I said angrily. “Do you realize that was the only peace I ever saw in you? I believed that was your best, because it was the only time you weren’t screaming at some guy you barely knew, or crying behind a locked bathroom door. And so what if that was your best? I never asked you for anything more. I expected it, sure. I probably dreamed about it a few times. But I never asked you for anything more than that. You were still my mom and that mattered to me despite the rest.”

  “Then why aren’t we close?” she said quietly, a slow tear rolling down her cheek.

  “I’m not some scared girl anymore, praying at midnight in my bedroom that all the fighting will stop,” I replied, still angry. “I told you, I don’t blame you for any of it. I don’t resent you for any of it. But I’m just trying to move on from it. It’s your life. Make your own choices, I don’t care. But you no longer get to make mine.”

  My mom stood there silent, not sure how to respond to me. She almost looked defeated in a way. The look in her moist eyes also told me she was hurt by what I’d said.

  “Look, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings,” I said honestly. “But I just want a chance to screw up my own life instead of you doing it for me.” I smiled as I said it, trying to lighten the mood. She smirked.

  “Do you know why I decided to have a baby?” she asked warmly, sitting down next to the side of my hospital bed.

  “Two-for-one tequila night?” I said with a slight laugh, despite thinking that was somewhat true.

  “I’m being serious,” she interjected, staring right at me. “Did you ever wonder why a single nineteen year old dancer would keep you?”

  “I’ve wondered my entire life,” I said as a slow tear slid down my face. “Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s the single only thing I’ve never regretted,” she replied nostalgically. “I never had faith in myself that I would get much right in this life. That was never in the cards for me, and I knew it at nineteen. But you,” she continued, “you I got right.”

  Slow tears continued to fall down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop them.

  “You were the only adventure I would choose to have again and again,” she said wiping my wet face. “I knew I could never do right by you. And I knew my effort was never enough. But I also knew it didn’t matter. You were such a strong, brave, independent girl, even as a child. I knew you’d never turn out like me. I knew you could only end up better, and that alone was my saving grace. That was enough for me to know that I at least did something right.”

  She gently squeezed my left hand, and despite her many shortcomings, I knew she meant every word she said.

  “I know you’ve heard me say a thousand times that I’ve changed,” she explained. “And you’re right, you’re an adult now. I don’t expect you to believe me at my word like a child would. But I’ve made real changes. Good changes. Big changes. And all I want you to know is that you’ll see it in me.”

  “I’m not the judge of what you do,” I said softly. “If you’re looking for some kind of approval from me, I don’t even know what that looks like.”

  “I moved to Arizona,” she said, her whole face lighting up. “I got a place just outside of Glendale, outside of the city. I haven’t had a drink for seventy-eight days. How about that?”

  “When I talked to you a few months back you were barely coherent,” I said in disbelief.

  “That’s what changed,” she replied softly. “After our angry phone conversation, you never answered any more of my calls. I drank heavy for a week straight. I ended up in the hospital,” she admitted.

  “No one called me?” I questioned, thinking about the timeline in my head.

  “I begged them not to,” she stated with a shrug. “I knew that would only make things worse. But that was my breaking point, Cassidy. For the first time I realized that our adventures were over. You’d moved on and I hadn’t. I know it took too long, but I finally realized I had to be more for you. For me. And I know I can’t make up for our life before this point, I’ll never get that back. I’m completely undeserving of a fresh start, but I’m still asking that of you.”

  I had to admit, she did seem different to me in so many ways. She never confessed to her shortcomings before. I swear there were so many times I thought I was the only single thing she did regret, not the other way around.

  “I’m proud of you,” I said sincerely. I wasn’t completely sure this woman in front of me was a new person, but in my eyes, any changes in her had to be a step up.

  “You’re going to need some time to heal and recuperate,” she replied, changing the subject. “Are you still taking classes this summer? You won’t be able to write for some time with your wrist wrapped like that. Maybe not even by your fall semester.”

  I so badly wanted to blurt out that I had a full-ride scholarship for school in Mountain Ridge in the fall. That lie came so easily to me when I said it to Reid. But for some reason, I couldn’t say it.

  “I was saving up this summer for my fall semester at Mountain Ridge Community College,” I explained. “But then, I don’t know, this detour happened, and I’m just really not sure of my plans at this point.” I wasn’t sure how to explain this entire thing with Reid. Unfortunately though, it was like she could read my mind.

  “Who’s the boy?” she asked with a smile. “The hospital gown wasn’t a great look for him, but otherwise he was quite handsome.”

  “We were just on a road trip,” I began, still unsure of how much to say. “He’s going to school in Michigan this fall.”

  “And you’re still headed back to Mountain Ridge for school?” she inquired. I really didn’t want to talk about this with her, but she was wearing me down. Other than Maria, I really didn’t have anyone to discuss this with anyway. Maybe it would help clear my head a bit to talk it all out.

  I told her about how Reid and I met and all about his road trip. I obviously left some of the more intimate details out - those weren’t helping anything. She listened intently as I spoke, and the moment felt so surreal - like we had this bond together that we were never able to recognize before.

  “So he asked you to stay in Michigan once you get there?” she repeated for clarification.

  “Yeah, sort of. I mean, it was in the middle of a ‘moment’ where that probably seemed like the right thing to say, you know?”

  She nodded her head at me like she completely understood what I was saying.

  “As much as I’d love to stay and explor
e whatever this is with Reid, the logical part of my brain is screaming at me to get out now before my heart gets desecrated,” I tried to explain.

  “You must’ve gotten that logical brain from your father,” she teased. Sadly, she was probably right.

  “I know you’re the last person on earth I should probably be asking for advice, but I’m asking. But not in relation to all of your past choices - I want to know what you think as my mom. That’s it.”

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “my own stupid past choices aside… I think any mom would say that has heartbreak all over it. Have you ever had your heart really, truly broken?”

  This was such a weird conversation to be having with my mother. We’d never talked like this before. I thought back to Colton and prom night and the whole embarrassing incident when I was eighteen. That felt like heartbreak. Maybe it was mostly humiliation, I don’t know. But those two feelings seemed the same to me. It was heavy. Unbearable. Time helped, sure. But if I could take back that entire experience, I would in a heartbeat.

  “As a mom, all I know to do is steer you away from heartbreak,” she reiterated.

  It wasn’t the answer I expected at all. My initial thought was that she would encourage me to stay with Reid. That was the exact path she’d chosen so many times before. Then I expected the rational side of her, if one existed, to tell me to run and learn from her mistakes - some kind of plea to make any decision other than the one she’d become so familiar with.

  Heartbreak. She was right on that. If I walked away now, surely that kind of pain would be mild in comparison versus what was to come if I stayed. If I spent more time with Reid, and even his family, and things didn’t work - that would be beyond heartbreak. That would be full-on catastrophic.

  “You look exhausted,” my mom said sympathetically, breaking up my thoughts. “The doctor said you need plenty of rest. Maybe we should call it for the night.”

  “Right,” I replied with a slight nod. My brain felt like it may explode.