Half-Truths

by Randileigh Kennedy

  “What was that about? You hang out with Wes?” I grilled Brie as we walked to her idling car.

  “Not on a regular basis, obviously, but Mountain Ridge is a small town, Whit. We can’t all run away from our past life like you did,” she teased. “Trust me, every time I run into an ex at a Starbucks, I wish I had your life.”

  I studied Brie as we climbed into her car. She was always so happy and bubbly. She had three main obsessions in life: vodka, Taco Bell, and reality dating shows, in no particular order. She was a hairstylist at one of the trendy salons in town, so it made sense she would still be connected to so many people we used to know. We talked on the phone about once a week, but we rarely talked about other people unless I was recounting celebrity run-ins in Nashville. Considering she knew me better than anyone else in my life, I did feel somewhat ashamed of the fact that she didn’t necessarily know all the boring-but-true details of my life. I didn’t want to withhold anything from her, but I had this insane longing to make her proud. Unfortunately, my current life was nothing more than a letdown on anyone’s scale.

  “So how’s Kip Bentley?” she questioned as we pulled out of the airport and onto the highway leading to Mountain Ridge. I hated the anger that coursed through me at the mention of his fake name.

  I never bothered to mention to her that his real name was Chris Jones. His “team” thought that was too boring for a rising country star though, thus “Kip Bentley” was born. I hated the name. I was frustrated in so many ways by his dual identity.

  “He’s great,” I replied. That part was true. I imagined he was enjoying his new relationship with his marketing manager. At least that’s how they had appeared when I walked in on them pressed together in his home recording studio. “He’s on tour right now, doing some shows down south, so he couldn’t make it.” That part was only half true. His tour didn’t start until next week, but he definitely wasn’t invited on this trip. “I’m not sure it’s going to work out between us anyway. He’s gone a lot, and I’m really busy.” I shrugged. In reality I was devastated about the way we’d fallen apart, but I was trying to hold it all together. I would obviously tell Brie everything soon enough, but I just needed to process it all first. The call about my dad had been completely unexpected and out of the blue, and it had really thrown me for a loop. My head was spinning.

  “Do you want me to take you to your parents’ place first or straight to the hospital?” Brie asked, continuing to smoothly maneuver the car in and out of traffic. “Have you talked to your dad? How is he?”

  “I spoke to him briefly last night, but I don’t really know what’s going on,” I answered truthfully. “The doctor indicated he was in pretty bad shape, but my dad was making jokes and my mom just called it a little ‘episode,’ whatever that means. But there was so much concern in her voice despite her words, and that’s what really shook me. I feel like no one is actually telling me anything. So I guess I should go to the hospital first.”

  Brie flashed me a reassuring smile, and we changed the conversation. We reminisced about old childhood stories and sang loudly to our favorite old songs. I felt like I was in a time capsule, carelessly driving around in a convertible with my best friend, singing at the top of our lungs with the wind in our hair. It was as if time had stopped and we were sixteen again, with bad bang haircuts and no cares in the world. Oh, what I would give to stay trapped in this moment. But the truth was, my life was so far away from this feeling.

  Eventually we pulled into the parking lot of Mountain Ridge Memorial Hospital, and Brie parked right outside the main entrance.

  “Do you want me to go up with you, or do you want some time alone with your family?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “I should probably go up alone, just to see what’s going on. Hopefully it’s nothing.” I shrugged. I tried to sound confident, but my voice wavered. “I’m exhausted, so I’ll probably crash early tonight, but maybe we can meet up tomorrow?”

  “Call me if you need something,” Brie replied, reaching over to wrap me in a tight hug. “If anything, maybe I can cut your hair tomorrow and throw in some highlights. It’s so long I almost didn’t recognize you. Let me hack it up so you can’t be prettier than me,” she teased.

  I smiled warmly at her, and we let go of each other. “I could never compete with this face,” I joked back, tugging at her chin. She pushed me out of the car.

  I waved goodbye to her as I rolled my small suitcase toward the hospital. The warm summer air felt good on my face, and although I hadn’t necessarily been looking forward to this trip back home, I wondered if it might settle my nerves in some way with everything else I had going on.

  I made my way up the hospital elevator to the eighth floor, surprised by how eerily calm everything seemed. I hadn’t spent much time in any hospitals, but from what I’d seen on TV, they always seemed full of noise and chaos. Apparently this cardiac wing was the opposite of that.

  I nonchalantly peered into the rooms with open doors as I passed. I mostly spotted elderly men with oxygen tanks and thick socks, lying in bed. The only sound I heard was rhythmic beeping, erratic beeping, and horrible infomercial sales pitches.

  810. This was the room. I knocked softly and slowly entered. There were machines everywhere, ugly curtains, and an empty chair near the hospital bed. My mom must’ve gone down to the cafeteria to get some snacks, or perhaps she was pestering the doctors for more information on my dad’s condition. Other than the doctor’s explanation that he was in congestive heart failure, I didn’t know much else.

  I smiled as I saw the contents on top of the table next to the hospital bed: my dad’s glasses, his favorite leather journal, and a family picture taken on the beach before I moved. It was such a happy picture of us, splashing in the clear water on a bright summer day. We spent all of our summers that way. Well, until I moved away, of course. The following year my younger brother also moved away, to an out-of-state college in Utah. My parents were supposed to be enjoying life with their children out of the nest, but instead here they were in the hospital, my dad only fifty-two.

  I quietly approached the hospital bed, growing confused when I discovered there appeared to be only pillows underneath the sheets. Without warning, my dad jumped out from behind the curtain, making a loud grizzly noise, while my mother popped up from behind a hospital couch and snapped a picture.

  “Gotcha,” my dad said with a huge grin. He grabbed his mobile IV drip and reached out to hug me. I think I was in shock.

  “What’s going on here? I thought you were sick,” I huffed, baffled by whatever game they were playing. “I came all the way home, and you’re not sick? What’s wrong with you guys? Mom made it sound serious. That’s a horrible thing to do!”

  “Well, it is serious, sweetheart, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.” My dad shrugged, climbing back into his hospital bed.

  “You were crying on the phone when you first called, Mom,” I replied with a hint of anger in my voice. “You said this was serious. I spent a lot of money to fly out here as soon as I could.”

  “It is serious,” my mom repeated as if I hadn’t heard my dad. Her tone and expression finally turned a bit less jovial. “Your father is really sick. His heart is in bad shape.”

  “And you’re jumping out from behind curtains, scaring people?” I questioned. “Aside from all the tubes, you look perfectly fine. What’s really going on here?” I looked back and forth between my parents, hoping there was a good, reasonable explanation for all of this.

  “Well, we do need to have a serious conversation. The doctors say I’m not going to make it,” my dad stated quietly, losing the smile he’d held on to seconds earlier. He pulled a blanket over his legs. “They said this is it for me.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I repeated several times as my parents just stared back at me with sad eyes. “You’re perfectly healthy. We Skyped last week, and you said you were just winded from your afternoon hike.” I studied my father in the hospit
al bed before me. I don’t know what I expected to see when I walked in, but it certainly wasn’t this. Other than the medical equipment surrounding him, he looked exactly the same as when I last saw him six months ago, on their last visit to Nashville.

  “We thought it was some type of walking pneumonia,” my mom explained, settling in the chair next to my father’s bed. “They ran some tests, though, and it’s far more serious than we thought.”

  “I still don’t understand it,” I responded, shaking my head. “Did you have an actual heart attack or something? I saw all of these other patients up here. They’re all old and dying. They’re ancient, with purple skin and wispy white hair. You do not belong here.”

  “It wasn’t a heart attack,” my dad replied calmly, shaking his head. “Apparently I have two bad valves that have caused my heart to work far harder than it’s supposed to, and it’s been swelling beyond belief over time without my knowledge. I need an aorta repaired too, but my heart is so enlarged from the stress it’s been under. It’s not an easy fix.”

  “But there’s a fix, right?” I asked, not sure what to make of all this information. Their reactions were confusing me. My dad made it sound like he was going to die, but my welcome into the room suggested the complete opposite. My head couldn’t make sense of it.

  “I need surgery,” my dad continued. “But there’s only a five percent chance I’ll make it through that.” His eyes became a bit moist as he spoke, and I could finally tell by his face that this was in fact a very serious thing. “We’re not making a decision tonight,” he added, looking at my mom. “We want to wait until your brother gets in tomorrow, and we’re still waiting to be seen by another surgeon for a second opinion.”

  “Thank goodness,” I gasped, feeling at least a little relief. “So another surgeon might have a better prognosis.”

  “No, the last guy refused to operate because the odds are too low. But if I don’t do anything, my odds are zero.” He shrugged. “So we need to figure out what to do.”

  “Well, they have to fix you,” I stated a little too loudly, as if that was one of the options he had just detailed.

  “They don’t think they can,” he replied, staring back at me. His eyes looked like they had completely lost the spark they held before.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked directly.

  “That means this might be the end for me.” My dad’s eyes welled up as he said it, and my mom let out a soft cry.

  I stared back at the two of them in disbelief, expecting to throw up at any given moment.

  Chapter 3

  I was awoken many times throughout the night by the erratic beeping of the machine next to my father’s bed. It tracked his heartbeat, and I started getting lost in which sound I preferred. The silence of it jolted me awake, as I realized that in those moments his heart was stopping periodically throughout the night, but the loud, chaotic beeps startled me as well. I struggled in the darkness to keep track of what it all meant. My mom had gone home for the evening at our request. She seemed in denial, and she looked like a ghost. She desperately needed a good, quiet night of sleep to regroup before our meeting with the new surgeon in the morning. I, however, couldn’t leave. My heart ached a thousand different pains, and it felt like an anchor in my chest, pinning me to the uncomfortable vinyl pull-out hospital couch.

  I got up around seven but stayed quiet so I wouldn’t wake my father. I headed out to the lobby area, just to be greeted by my past all over again.

  “How is he?” Wesley asked, holding out a cup of coffee for me. For some reason I thought of Sawyer in that moment, grateful that this cup wasn’t spilled all over my clothes.

  “What are you doing here at the hospital?” I asked, reaching to take the cup from him. His presence caught me off guard, especially this early in the morning.

  “Marissa told me about your dad,” he replied quietly. He awkwardly put his free hand into his jeans pocket, and his fitted red V-neck shirt made him look as handsome as he had yesterday at the airport. At the mention of Marissa’s name, however, I wanted to slap him. “She works at the hospital, you know.”

  “And how’s your engagement coming along?” I asked snidely. As if it wasn’t enough for him to give me up, he then went on to date and propose to a girl Brie and I used to be best friends with. I really didn’t mean to be so catty about it. I knew it was immature, but the whole thing really made my blood boil, even after all this time. You want your exes to pine after you and regret not holding on to you, or at the very least you want them to age poorly and become less attractive. Wes, however, hadn’t lost any time by moving on with her only weeks after I moved, and he was somehow getting better looking with time. All of it made me angry.

  “I’m sure you already heard the story from Brie.” He shrugged, unaffected by my sarcasm. Of course I’d heard it all from her. Marissa was a nurse at the hospital, and Brie knew the whole scoop from some other medical staff who were regulars at her salon. Apparently Marissa had cheated on Wes with one of the doctors at the hospital. Actually, she’d been cheating on him most of their relationship. The genuinely kind side of my heart wanted to feel bad for him when I heard about it. He was a good guy who didn’t deserve that from her, as I’m sure he treated her well, like he did me while we were together. But the way he abandoned me at the end had left a bitter taste in my mouth, so I couldn’t feel much sympathy over his failed relationship.

  “I know a bit about it,” I caved, not mean enough to make him recant the entire story.

  “Well, I just wanted to check on him, on you, to see how you’re all holding up.” He said it so sincerely that I believed him.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on with my dad, to be honest,” I replied.

  “I wish I had known you were coming home,” Wes said quietly.

  I wasn’t sure how to take that comment. “I’m not sure I’m glad to be home,” I answered truthfully. It felt weird being in a place I’d known all my life. It should feel comfortable and familiar, but instead I felt like an outsider. “I hadn’t planned on coming back for a while.”

  “Too busy living the dream?” he asked casually.

  “Something like that,” I murmured. I think that’s the part that was making me feel out of place the most. I had moved away to become something, but I didn’t seem to be anything different from that uncertain, heartbroken girl who left this place three years ago.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” Wes asked bluntly. “Between us?”

  “That’s an old story with a sad ending.” I shook my head. “Now I’m back for what appears to be another sad ending with my father. I don’t have it in me.”

  Wes looked at me with sympathetic eyes, and I assumed he didn’t know what else to say. “Do you ever think about it?” He paused. “Everything that happened with us?”

  Only every day for the last three years.

  “It’s crossed my mind,” I stated, trying to sound nonchalant. “But it’s all in the past, right? Not a lot can be changed now.”

  “What if something could be done about it?” he questioned, staring intensely at me. “What if we could change everything? Maybe we just need a new start.”

  “A new beginning just gets us another ending, Wes. And, truth be told, I didn’t survive the last one so well.”

  “I think we should at least talk about it.”

  “Wes, this isn’t the time.” I sighed, shaking my head. The crazy thing was that I had planned this conversation in my head many times. For so long I wanted to confront him to ask why he let me go. I was so hurt over it for so long. But now, I felt a whole different kind of heartbreak throughout my body, and the way he had hurt me seemed so trivial in comparison to the news that I may lose someone much more important. “Thanks for the coffee. And for coming by. I know you mean it. But I can’t do this.” I offered him a half smile and turned around, heading back into my father’s hospital room.

  My throat felt choked up. I wasn’t sure if it was ol
d feelings for Wes or the sight of my father attached to machines, sleeping uncomfortably in a portable bed, but I lost it. Tears flooded my face, and I laid down in my unmade pull-out bed, wishing the entire world was kinder to me in this moment.

  Sometime later, I was startled awake by a gross wet finger in my ear—the last thing I expected. Of course it was my little brother, Warren, being disgusting. “You idiot,” I moaned, slapping his arm away from me. He reached out and pulled me into a big hug, and I so badly needed the embrace.

  “How is he?” he asked quietly as my father still slept.

  “He’s in too good of spirits for the words coming out of his mouth.” I shrugged. “One would think he has a head injury instead of a heart condition. He was joking one minute and then talking about death seconds later. It was weird.” My brother handed me a cup of orange sherbet he had snagged from the nursing station, and we sat together, eating out of small Styrofoam bowls.

  “I looked up some stuff last night,” my brother began, “and I didn’t find a lot of good news.”

  “That’s because it’s the Internet. I look up things all the time just to learn I have leukemia or some kind of rare tumor once a month.” I brushed him off. “Once I had Lyme disease for three solid weeks. The Internet cannot be trusted.”

  “Are you kids eating ice cream for breakfast?” my dad chimed in with a smile, finally awake. It was an inside family joke with us. Whenever things got bad, we pretended that life’s problems could be ignored with ice cream.

  “Your impending doom is a good excuse for orange sherbet,” my brother replied, moving to awkwardly hug him while leaning down beside his bed. My mom walked in shortly after. She looked rested and had her usual glowing expression—eternal positivity.

  “The new surgeon will be in momentarily,” she stated, reaching out to hug my brother. In a way it felt surreal to all be together. Other than one Christmas when all three of them had joined me in Nashville, we hadn’t been together since I moved away. It felt nice.