The Truth About Falling

by H. M. Sholander

  “There’s only going to be one other adult with me, and it would be nice to have someone else there besides ten screaming kids hopped up on sugar,” he explains, willing me to say yes and give into his request.

  I chuckle, imaging Hudson attempting to wrangle a bunch of kids. “I’m free. I’ll be there.”

  His smile is genuine now as it reaches his eyes, and a small amount of the gloom that was hanging over him clears.

  “Tell me something,” he says, sliding back and forth on his skateboard.

  “Like what?”

  “Anything.” He ponders for a moment before he asks, “What’s your favorite pizza?”

  I smile, glad to have something easy to talk about–something that doesn’t cause me to dwell on all the things I should be doing instead of sitting here talking to Hudson like I have all the time in the world. “Pepperoni.”

  “Good choice, although I’m partial to the meat lovers.”

  “Typical guy.”

  “What can I say? I’m a growing boy.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re grown already,” I scoff.

  “What? No way. Do you see how scrawny I am?” He stands, kicking his skateboard away, and holds out his arms for me to examine how ‘scrawny’ he is.

  Hudson is the opposite of scrawny. He stands at over six feet tall with muscles on his body that make my knees go weak. His arms fill the sleeves of his shirt perfectly, leaving a small gap of space, so it doesn’t look like his shirt is too small.

  His chest is wide and would engulf my small body, protecting me from harm. A chest I could lay my head on, fall asleep on, listening to the beating of his heart. A heart that has captivated me as much as his appearance.

  “Yeah, I can see it,” I say sarcastically.

  He smirks at me and moves to sit next to the slide I’m still perched on.

  “How old are you?” I ask, trying to figure out how old he was when Chris was born.

  “Twenty-three.”

  Seventeen. I can’t imagine having to raise a kid at such a young age.

  “You?” he asks, kicking the rocks at his feet.

  “Twenty-one.” Twenty-one and on a path to nowhere. I wonder where I’ll end up five years from now. Will I still be working two dead-end jobs? Will my life ever amount to more than this? God, I hope so.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, notifying me it’s time to get to work. I don’t bother pulling it out because I don’t want the words on the screen to yank me out of this peace.

  Get your head out of your ass and go to work.

  That’s exactly what my notification will say, and I did it on purpose to remind me that this isn’t reality. This isn’t real. My real life is waiting for me in the form of a sick mother, drunk men, and lazy coworkers. That’s my reality.

  Hudson? He’s just a dream. A dream that will never come true.

  I push myself up from the slide, my legs peeling like Velcro from the metal. A breeze sweeps through the air, and I close my eyes, inhaling the scent of the air around me, needing to hold onto something to get me through another day as my hair flies across my face.

  But the scent in the air changes from a scorching summer day to a welcoming musk of warmth and cinnamon.

  When I open my eyes, I’m staring directly at Hudson’s chest as he stands less than a foot away from me. I tilt my head back to him as he hovers above me with his eyes closed, hiding the depth of emotion running through them.

  He’s all around me, and I take it in, feeling like I’m a part of him.

  “What makes you human?” he whispers, his breath engulfing me, transporting me to a place where we lead normal lives.

  “I got a bonus today at work. I want to spend it on myself, but I can’t because I have to take care of my family. I can’t buy myself anything, and I hate it. But I shouldn’t because that means I’d rather be selfish than save my mom.” The truth flies out of me more freely than I thought it would. Thoughts I never expected to slip through my lips and to the ears of someone else.

  “On this day every year, I’ve wanted to be the one who was buried instead of Chris’s mom. On his birthday, I wish I could give him a piece of her. I wish she was alive, and I wasn’t. But this year, I’m grateful I’m here with him–to have the good fortune of raising him. This year I’m glad she’s dead and not me.” His eyes open as he shifts his head closer to me. “What does that say about me?”

  “That you’re human. We both are,” I say.

  He slips his hand into mine, causing me to startle, but I latch on, holding him together while we both break apart.

  “Everyone has faults, but not everyone is willing to admit it.” I let out a sigh. “Admitting the truth buried deep inside makes you perfectly imperfect.” I squeeze his hand, needing his strength as much as he needs my words. “It makes you honorable.”

  “I’m not sure everyone would agree,” he says, full of doubt.

  “I rarely think about anyone else’s opinion.” The only opinion that matters is your own. Screw what everyone else thinks.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket again, alerting me that I’ll be late if I don’t get my ass in gear. Literally, that’s what the screen would say if I looked at it, but I don’t because I’m a hopeless idiot lost in Hudson’s orbit.

  He inhales a deep breath before dropping my hand, leaving me feeling bare. “Let’s get going.” He nods his head toward the street and walks over to his skateboard, picking it up off the ground. He heads in the direction of my home as I stand in place, my body refusing to move. He eyes me over his shoulder curiously. “You coming?”

  I let out a sigh and force my feet to move, needing to grab my bike and get to work. “Yeah,” I answer dejectedly.

  And we leave, slipping back to reality.

  Floating, falling through the air,

  lungs constricting in my chest.

  I’m not sure how I got here,

  but I never intended to fall.

  “I’m sorry, but if your mother doesn’t have surgery soon, she won’t make it,” Dr. Collins says, urging me to speak to my mom and knock some sense into her. I wish I could.

  I avoid his eyes, gazing down the hallway of the hospital, but when I see a man walk out of a room with tears streaming down his face, I look back at Dr. Collins. I’d rather look at him than see someone who has just been destroyed.

  “How much longer does she have?” I ask, needing to know how much more time I have to scrape together every penny I can.

  Since I’m paying in cash, the hospital is giving me a thirty percent discount on the cost of her surgery. That doesn’t make it any cheaper, though. I have to front $18,000 in cash, and they will let me pay off the remaining balance in installments.

  But as of right now, I’m short $1,784.

  His eyes slide to my mom lying in the hospital bed through the open door of her room. “Two months, and that’s being generous.” He flips through the chart in his hands, reading all the medical jargon on my mom. “She’s been in the hospital three times in the last month. It won’t be much longer until she will need to be here long term.” He closes the chart, tucking it under his arm. “The longer this goes on, the more pain she’s going to be in.”

  I cross my arms over my chest, staring at the ground, willing it to give me the answers.

  What does he want me to do? Does he think I like watching my own mother deteriorate before my eyes? Because I don’t. I don’t want to watch her fight to breathe or see the anguish written across her face because she feels like her heart is being ripped out of her chest. I don’t want any of this, but what choice do I have? I can’t force her to do anything. I can beg and pled, but at the end of the day, it’s her decision, not mine.

  I wish I could tell her that I have the money right now to cover all the expenses of her surgery, but I don’t. I could lie to her, but she would see straight through me.

  What do you do when your mother won’t let you help her the way she helped you your whole life?

&n
bsp; Nothing–you do nothing, because she won’t let you do anything, no matter how much it kills you.

  I look up at the doctor, not really seeing him. “I’ll, uh, try to talk to her.” It’s all I can do, and that in itself makes me feel utterly useless.

  “Let me know if you have any questions,” he says before he walks away, leaving me in a busy hospital hallway–alone.

  I feel that way often–deserted, forgotten. Even in a crowded room, surrounded by people, I feel like I’m the only one standing, like I’m the only one who feels broken and defeated while everyone else passes by, carrying on with their lives.

  Doctors and nurses rush around me, carrying charts and talking on their phones, while I stay rooted in place, tired of doing this song and dance. Everyone in this hospital is fighting to live–fighting to survive. Everyone but my mom.

  My eyes close, needing the world around me to disappear–fade away into nothing. Pounding reverberates through my ears, mimicking the beat of my heart. I focus on the rhythm–steady, sure, and consistent. It’s reliable and always there unlike everything else.

  The constant worry and anxiety that courses through me dissipates as I focus on each beat, inhaling and exhaling each time my heart pounds in my chest.

  Opening my eyes, I find the same whirlwind of doctors and nurses passing through the hallway, caring for patients. Everything keeps moving no matter how much you will it to stop–if you stop, if you die, the world continues on without you. Just like I’ll have to keep moving if my mom dies without getting her surgery.

  If she went through with the surgery and died, I could feel a little bit better, knowing she tried. She would have tried to get better, to keep living.

  But this? This…her withering away at home and at this hospital, I can’t accept it because she’s giving up without putting up a fight.

  I clench my hands at my sides, wanting to drive my fist through the wall.

  She’s willingly letting herself die when she could save herself. She could save me–from the wrenching pain, from a life of guilt–but she won’t because she believes she’s saving me by killing herself.

  How messed up is that?

  Turning around, I take the few steps back to Mom’s room and push open the door. I sit in the all too familiar teal cloth chair and watch my mom as she watches the television hanging from the ceiling in front of her.

  I scoot the chair closer to her bed and reach for her hand, holding it in mine. Her head turns to me, and she regards me with soft eyes.

  Will I be able to look at my own reflection if she dies? Or will I only see her hazel eyes in mine?

  “I know what you’re going to say,” she says, her voice hoarse.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  She smiles weakly. “You want me to have the surgery.”

  “Yeah, I do, because I want you to live.”

  “Oh, honey.” She slips her hand out of my hold and pats the top of my hand. “I’ve lived–I’ve lived a good life. I had you, and I’m proud of the woman you’ve turned in to. A woman who gave up her life for me. Now let me do the same.”

  I’m not sure if I should be angry or sad, but both overpower me. I’m mad that she would give up because she thinks she’s helping me–saving me.

  “This is wrong,” I whisper on the verge of crying, tears pooling in my eyes, threatening to spill over and fall onto the bed.

  “It’s my decision, Jade. I made it a long time ago because I wanted these years with you. I know it’s been worse the last couple of months, but I had extra time with you. Time I might not have gotten if I had the surgery.” She sighs. “I won’t leave you with a mound of bills from my surgery when you’re already killing yourself working. Not now, not ever. I know you think I’m giving up, but I’m not. You’ll see.” Her hand cups my cheek, holding me like I might break. “It will be okay,” she says reassuringly.

  “No, it won’t,” I say, my voice raising an octave. “You’re dying. You’re killing yourself. Nothing is okay. This life…everything about it…is not okay.” I stand from the chair, shoving it behind me as I back away from her. “Do you want to know who I really am?”

  “Jade, I know who you are.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand.

  I scoff. “You know who I was, but since this”–I wave my arms in the room indicating our surroundings–“happened, I’m someone else entirely. I’m bitter and full of loathing for the existence of everyone around me. I have an attitude that will eventually get me fired from both of my jobs, and I spend every minute I’m awake, not at home, worrying about if you’ve died alone at home because Dad is useless. When I see that you’re alive, I breathe a sigh of relief, but that relief only lasts for a minute before the worry kicks in all over again.”

  My chest heaves as I pace in front of her bed, heat rising to my face.

  “I’ve spent the last three years working my ass off for you–to take care of you, so how do you think it makes me feel when you won’t let me?”

  I stop in front of her bed, staring down at the woman who would rather die than be my mom. “All of this has turned me into a cold and lonely person because I can’t stand to watch another person I might care for suffer the way I’ve watched you. I can’t do it. So I avoid everyone, and push them away.”

  Tears stream down her face as she sniffs, wiping at her nose, so I close my eyes, needing to not see that I made her cry. I unloaded on her. Everything that I’ve held in for years, I threw at her, and why? For what? Did it make me feel better? No, I feel terrible because I’m the reason she’s upset. I did this. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have kept my big, fat stupid mouth shut, but that’s what happens when you hold everything in for so long–it breaks like a dam, swallowing the people around you whole until there’s nothing left.

  I open my eyes and see the grief scrawled across Mom’s face, painted clear as day. I move the chair back toward her bed and plop down. My head falls to her pillow, resting next to hers, as I cry for the first time since we got the news three years ago. I haven’t allowed myself to feel anything but anger since then because I knew if I felt anything else I would crumble to the ground and never get up again. I needed to be strong, so I turned to anger and lived by it.

  So much good that’s done me.

  Her hand softly lands on my head, and she strokes my hair, being the mom I haven’t had in a long time. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I don’t bother saying anything, but this is one thing we’ll never agree on. I don’t want her to die, and she wants to die for me.

  Life is cruel that way–never giving any of us exactly what we want.

  I stand as far away from the crowd at the park as I can. I’m positive I look like a creeper, standing off to the side while a bunch of kids run around in front of me. I’m not a creeper. I was invited, but I’m not too sure what to do with myself.

  Kids. They aren’t my thing.

  Why I said yes when Hudson asked me to come to his son’s birthday, I have no earthly idea because frankly, it was a horrible decision.

  Shifting on my feet with my arms crossed, I lean against the lone tree that’s providing me shade from the sun ten feet away from the party.

  I watch as the kids play on the playground hopped up on sugar from the soda they’ve been drinking for the last hour. It’s the same park that’s in our neighborhood, yet it’s completely transformed for Chris’s birthday.

  Everywhere I look are Star Wars decorations. A table off to the side is covered with a Star Wars tablecloth, along with plates and cups to match. The cake is pretty damn funny. It reads ‘The Force is Strong with Chris,’ and there’s a goofy picture of Chris grinning from ear to ear, showing off all his missing teeth. When I saw it, I had to slap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  There’s even an R2D2 cut-out for all the kids to take pictures with, and poor Hudson is dressed as Darth Vader, scaring half the kids and eliciting the other half to attack him with their Lightsabers.

/>   I might be awkward surrounded by kids, but I enjoy watching them have fun, being carefree, not knowing life is a million times more complicated than playing with your friends at a birthday party. I envy their innocence and bask in it while I can.

  Hudson gathers all the kids back to the table and divvies out the cheese pizza that arrived five minutes ago. They shove the greasy goodness in their mouths, not able to scarf it down fast enough.

  Hudson heads in my direction with one plate in each of his hands, and a smile that is so genuine it elicits one of my own.

  “Hungry?” he asks, holding out a plate with a slice of pizza on it for me.

  The steam wafts in my face, and my nose catches the scent of cheese and marinara sauce, causing my stomach to growl. “Yeah, thanks.” I take the plate from him and immediately bite into the pizza. I groan in satisfaction when the pizza hits my taste buds. I inhale it almost as fast as the kids do, but that might have something to do with me not having eaten all day.

  “Sorry I hung you out to dry today,” he says with a tinge of guilt as he moves to stand under the shade. “I guess I didn’t bother to think of the fact that I would have my hands full and wouldn’t be able to talk to you much.”

  “I can fend for myself.” I’ve done it longer than I care to admit. “I’m having fun.” I shrug my shoulders, actually meaning what I said–even if I am off in my own world.

  “Don’t lie,” he says with a quirk of his lips.

  “I’m not,” I argue. “It’s nice being here. It’s different for me. Something happy.” I shovel the last bite of the pizza in my mouth, not very ladylike, might I add. “Plus, the fact that I get to see you dressed as Darth Vader is pretty funny.” I chuckle.