by K. L Randis
“Hailey, I’m so sorry,” Jared started.
“You should be!” Hailey shot back, standing to her feet. “What kind of person hides this from their girlfriend. She was pregnant and you never told me? So you have a kid somewhere I don’t know about?”
“No, Hailey that’s not it.”
“She called here the other day and I almost lost it thinking you were cheating on me and now I find this? What am I supposed to think Jared?”
“Wait, what? She called here? When?”
“Does it matter? Or did you want to return her call so you can talk about child support and Disney vacations.” Hailey was sobbing at that point. She pulled her hair into a ponytail and when her hand skimmed a bandage that was resting on her temple she collapsed onto the floor cross-legged, burying her face in her hands. “Look at me! I have a college degree and according to these dean’s list papers I was damn smart. Now I can’t even remember what foods I like or how many birthdays I’ve celebrated. Who lives like this, Jared? Are you cheating on me? Do you want me to leave?”
“Hailey, sweetie, the baby was ours,” Jared said. The sting in his eyes was brought on by anger. Seeing the picture made the situation so much more real and he hated her father for making that decision for her; for them. There had been a baby. A wiggling, breathing baby living inside of the woman he loved and it was taken from him before he even knew it existed.
“I…what?” Hailey said, suddenly sobering in her sobs.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you before. I didn’t know if you remembered. I had no idea you kept this,” Jared said, lifting the picture. “I didn’t want to cause any more pain if it wasn’t something you remembered. I’m sorry.”
“We were having a baby Jared? When? I mean what…” Her voice trailed off as she looked around the room for the ghost baby that wasn’t there. She quieted, tilting her chin to her chest and staring at her hands in a desperate attempt to remember. There was nothing but empty space and blurred faces for her to revisit though and after a few moments she looked up. “We were really going to have a baby, you and me? We lost it?”
Jared nodded. If she didn’t ask specifically, he wasn’t going to tell her all the gritty details. She didn’t need the heartache of hating her parents again. Since her attack she had taken their support and help in stride, calling her mom every other day and even emailing her dad pictures of the new apartment.
If Jared could rekindle the relationship he had with his parents and have a clean slate to do it with he wouldn’t want that opportunity to be shattered by something he couldn’t remember anyway. He knew that her father and mother would never bring up the subject of the aborted baby to Hailey in the future—they were mum on the subject—so he gritted his teeth and prayed he didn’t have to make her world crumble any further.
“Oh, Jared. Oh I just had no idea.” She picked up the picture again and gently cradled it in her palm. “There’s so much I don’t remember. I can’t believe I would forget this.” Her voice was soft and before she began to cry again he pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
“I can tell you anything you want to know,” he offered.
“There’s probably not much to say.”
He clung to her like a koala until she shifted her position and knelt on the floor in front of him.
“I wasn’t prepared for this,” she confessed.
He touched her cheek. “I don’t think anyone would be, baby. It happened a long time ago.”
“Not just that. I mean everything. When the doctors told me that there was a chance I wouldn’t remember parts of my life I never expected it to leave me this hollow. I wanted to believe that everything was happening for a reason or that I would miraculously get all of my memories back, you know like you see in the movies?”
He nodded.
“I have a degree that I can’t even use because I don’t remember learning anything. To be honest, I’m not even interested in the subject anymore. Everyone tells me how intelligent I was but lately I’ve been more interested in picking up a camera or a paint brush than opening a book.”
“That’s okay, the doctor’s said that might happen. It’s okay to have different interests or want to do other things.”
“The problem is I don’t know enough about me to figure out what to do. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life streaming movies and eating WaWa sandwiches to try and figure it out.” She pulled at the skin on the sides of her face, dragging it to the bottoms of her cheeks. “I mean I can’t even decide what to put on my sandwiches half the time anyway! Do I want mayo or ranch? Do I even like pickles? Not sure.”
“It’ll take time,” Jared assured her.
She nodded, picking the edge of her nail. “Maybe that’s what I need. Time.” She made her way to the doorway, deserting the picture in the pile of memories that they were laughing about moments earlier. “I think I’m going to go stay with my parents for a little while. It’s not you, I just need some room to breathe and figure out where my head is. Is that okay?”
A pang of distress rose in Jared’s chest. He was losing her again.
“You’re not losing me again,” Hailey said, reading his face. “I need to do this for me. It’s like I have Irish Alzheimer’s. I forget what’s even making me mad but damn it I have one hell of a grudge.” She forced a smile.
He nodded with his eyes fixed on the carpet. “Sure baby, whatever you need, you know that. Do you want me to drive you to the airport in the morning?”
She thought about it. “I’d rather take the bus. It’ll take longer to go from A to B, give me some extra time.”
He moved next to her in the doorway, caressing her cheek and intently checking her eyes. The last thing he wanted was for her to leave but maybe it would give him time to straighten things out at home and figure out why Tina had called. With his dad still technically missing, maybe it was better that she left the state for a while and stayed with her parents. At least she would be out of harms way and he could focus his efforts on getting their lives back. “And you’ll come back to me?” he asked.
She nodded and kissed his cheek. “As long as you’ll be here waiting for me, I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER SIX
Two days later Jared was standing on the porch of Tina’s apartment in Stroudsburg. Even though she only moved twenty minutes from their last apartment he had trouble finding it among the other identical row homes that lined Main Street. When he had helped her move her things out of their old apartment he didn’t waste time noting the color or numbers on the side of the house but he did notice the same grey blackout curtains they once shared hanging in the window of one row home. He was sure he’d located the right place.
She always talked about moving to Stroudsburg when they were living together, like it would be a step up from their lifestyle in Brodheadsville. She treasured being able to walk the sidewalks, bouncing from getting a pedicure to a Starbucks coffee all within the same three blocks. Jared always hated the hodgepodge of shops and people that were so easily accessible. It certainly would have made his job easier in finding willing runners and pushers since statistically the more populated an area you lived in the better the chances were that someone would be looking to be a drug dealer, but he preferred the quiet of the internal town nestled between the mountains to kick off his shoes at night.
He banged on her front door for a third time, tapping his foot and checking his watch. If she still had her job she would have been home by then. The curtains suffocated any chance he had of peering inside so he made his way around the edge of the house to check for a back door. After navigating through a garden of beer bottles and broken plastic armchairs he rapped on the glass portion of her back door, calling out her name.
Nothing.
“Tina, I swear if you’re out getting your hair done,” he muttered, placing a hand over the doorknob. It turned readily and the blaring noise from the television inside alluded to why she couldn’t hear him. �
��Hey yo, Tina!” he called out.
Still nothing.
The blackout curtains held true to their promise and he stumbled around the cluttered space in search of a light switch. “Tina, it’s me Jared. You home?”
His thumb connected with a plastic piece sticking out from the wall and when he flicked it upward the disarray of garbage, furniture and used needles was paralyzing. There were two people lying on the floor next to the couch: one half-naked, the other half Chinese. Their snoring only became apparent as Jared clicked off the TV. When he noticed Tina slumped over in a corner near the front door, cell phone in hand, he ran to her.
“Tina, Tina wake up,” he said, shaking her shoulders. When her head fluttered backward at the motion he gasped, dropping his hands to his sides and staggering away for just a moment. He barely recognized her face.
Craters invaded where baby smooth skin once was, littering her forehead and jawline. The absence of her sunken cheeks was noted and glancing down at her frame he wondered how someone so skinny could even be breathing. The aroma from her clothes was abominable and if it weren’t for the fake heart-shaped hooped earrings dangling from her ears that he had bought her, he would have thought that it wasn’t Tina at all.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, pushing her head back and opening one of her eyes with his thumb.
“Mmmm damn what’s the deal?” she asked. She rubbed an eye carelessly, cursing as she smudged mascara into her eye, finally looking up to focus on the man in front of her. “Hey Romeo, you sure raced over here quick.”
“Quick? You called me almost four days ago. Tina what the hell?” he asked. He opened his hands, watching her gaze check him over. “What have you been doing?”
“Specifically which drug or literally? The answer is different for each of those scenarios. Are you going to help me up or what?”
He moved her to the loveseat that was unoccupied by strange half-naked people and tried again. “What’s going on here?”
“What’s it look like?” she asked, lighting a cigarette. “You’re no stranger to this life, I don’t think you need a college degree to put this puzzle together.”
“You’re using meth?”
“Yeah well funny thing happens when you detox from that pretty little Lace pill as hard as I did,” Tina said puffing a plume of smoke from the side of her mouth. “You literally crave everything and anything that you can get your hands on. Especially when they don’t make Lace anymore and Dex decided to switch over to making meth.”
“He did? Who said that? Have you seen him?” Jared was in Tina’s face, badgering her. If she had seen Dex in the last few weeks he needed to know where.
“Calm down killer, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him since that little shoot out at our old apartment, remember?”
“So why do you think he’s making meth?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s what everyone is saying. They’re also saying he’s dead, he moved to Mexico and he O.D’ed on Lace…take your pick of which rumor to believe. I was desperate so if there was any chance he was making meth half as good as he made those pills I was going to try it.”
Jared crouched down in front of her with his hand over his mouth. It was like staring into a crystal ball of what his life would have looked like if he didn’t finally take responsibility for himself and take rehab seriously. She was a severe junkie now. There was no way she still had her job and from the looks of the apartment and her body it was only a matter of time before she was evicted or willingly jumped into prostitution to help feed her habit.
“What’s the matter? Don’t want to witness what you helped create?” she asked.
“I didn’t do this,” Jared sneered.
“Oh right, it was me who snuck out at all hours of the day and night to run an underground drug empire while my significant other slept. Give me a break. You think your role in this is innocent? Look around. I’m not the only half-empty soul lingering around this town anymore. You brought this crap into my life and now I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to think clearly again.” She tapped the side of her temple with her eyes closed, rocking herself and inhaling a deep drag of her cigarette. “Shit it’s cold in here, you see a sweater anywhere?”
Jared wasn’t about to go poking around the room looking for a clean or needle-free garment so he stood up and pulled his sweatshirt up over his head. He flattened his t-shirt and turned the hoodie right side in before handing it to her.
“Yummy,” she said sleepily, crushing the butt into the carpet and pulling the warmth over her head. “Smells like you.”
“Why’d you call Tina?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Who else was I supposed to call? I have no money, no food. My electric is about to be turned off and I haven’t worked in weeks. The high is all I’m after anymore, I can’t even sleep without thinking about it.”
“You need help.”
“I need you to help me. Do you have anywhere I can go? Some money maybe?”
He started to open his mouth but stopped. There was nothing he could do for her. He already knew how the scenario would play out. He used to do it himself, for too many years. She was going to go to rehab, probably once or twice. She would relapse, hit rock bottom harder than she ever thought possible and swear to never do it again. Her family would be robbed blind of their money, their time and their resources if they let her. The idea of her having any semblance of the life she had before was destroyed the moment she let Dex slip that red and white pill between her soft lips. His heart ached for her, but it also ached for himself.
And for Lacey.
And especially for Hailey.
It was sobering, staring into the face of someone he cared so much about at one point in his life and feeling nothing but disgust and regret. He saw himself in her position, begging someone who she thought still cared for money that would ultimately wind up getting shot into her veins later on that night. The cycle was depressing, dark and deadly.
“Jared, what the hell?” Tina exclaimed as Jared picked her up over his shoulder and started towards the front door.
“Tell your friends goodbye, you’re going on vacation,” he said. He offered her no explanation as he carried her into the brisk fall air, kicking and screaming the whole way.
“I’m not even wearing a bra!” she shouted.
“Shhh,” he said, pressing his finger to his lips as he set her down in the front seat of his car. “Quiet now. You called me for help, I’m here to do that. Let me or I’ll walk away and you’ll never hear from me again.”
She settled down and eased her breathing as he rounded the car, starting it and pulling onto Main Street. “I didn’t ask to be kidnapped,” she said.
“You might as well have.”
“Where are we going?”
“Where do you think?”
“I can’t go to your place, Jared, I don’t think Hailey would appreciate that too much.”
“My apartment?” he asked, looking at her for just a moment as he turned onto Interstate 80. “You’re going to rehab Tina.”
“The hell I am! You can’t bring me there, pull this car over right now. I’m not living in some half-way home for junkies talking about my feelings.”
“If you seriously wanted my help you’ll do it. And stop shouting I’m sitting right next to you.”
“I’m upset!”
“Good!” he yelled back.
“Jared please, I can’t afford rehab there’s no way I can pay for it.”
“Not buying it Tina. Your parents are loaded and you know they’d pick up the tab if they needed to. If they don’t then you’ll find a way to make it work.”
“It won’t work! Rehab doesn’t work Jared.”
The rumble strips exploded underneath the car as Jared veered off the road and onto the shoulder, throwing the shifter into park so suddenly that Tina put her hands out in front of her to stop her face from colliding with the dash.
“It works if
you want it to damn it, don’t you see me?” he exploded. “You think I don’t wake up every day thinking about getting high or how fun or relaxing it used to be? It’s easier to bake myself into a coma or go sit on my couch melting into the day, it’ll always be easier. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and I have a dead sister hanging above my head constantly reminding me that I fucked up. I killed someone Tina, a baby girl is dead because of me, and I have to live with that every day. Every time I need to make a decision or take responsibility for something I want to go sit in a corner with my baggie of pills and let it all fall away but I can’t. My parents have disowned me and it takes every cell of my being to not run back to that life. I’d be a millionaire if I had a penny for every single time I think about how different my life would be if I hadn’t started popping pills after high school, but it doesn’t matter. None of that shit matters.”
Jared’s rage filled the car. “What matters is that I finally woke up. I finally snapped out of the fog that kept me suffocating and running back for more and as much as I hate to say it out loud, God help me for saying it out loud, Lacey dying was the best thing that ever happened to me. I can’t let her down twice, I just can’t. So if you want to keep going down the road you’re headed down I can tell you there’s nothing but pain and death, along with the loss of every valuable relationship you will ever have in your life. I can drive you to rehab, I can sit in the classes and hold your hand through them and I can pretend that the money you ask me for isn’t going towards your addiction. But at the end of the day the only person you have to answer to is yourself and if that alone doesn’t crush your soul to the core and make you wake up and change something then you never will and your life as you knew it is over. No one can do this for you, but if I don’t at least try to get you to see that then I’ll have let two people I cared about die and I can’t…”