by John Oakes
Winton sighed instead of answering. He splayed his hands over his thighs and nodded. “It scares you down in your guts.”
“Right down in my balls,” Julius said. “Like fight or flight. Like something’s coming.”
“Or something already passed, and we’re just catching up,” Winton said. “I can’t tell if it’s my subconscious grappling with becoming a father, or something else entirely, but if you’re feeling it too, then…”
“We’ll just have to take life one day at a time.” Julius puffed and nodded to himself as he exhaled.
“I thought I was supposed to get answers on this trip,” Winton said. “When things started getting too real, and there was this psychologist involved, I thought I’d get answers about what this thing is inside of me, how to manage it, how to wield it. But I didn’t. I’m coming away with more questions, almost like I don’t know if down is up or up is down.”
“That’s what beer is good for. Helps keep the questions in your head to a minimum.”
Winton laughed. “True, true.” He rolled his window up and leaned his elbow on the door, chin on his hand. “You’ve got choices in life. I get that.” Winton drew his fingers down around the edges of his mouth. “But it ain’t just that. You’ve got choices about the story you tell yourself about your choices.”
“Put that in English terminology for your boy, Julius.”
“Take Plimpton for example. He made his choice about keeping his home nice for his wife and continues to make the choice every day. And he knows, without hope, that she ain’t coming back.” Winton looked to see if that was sinking in. “Plimpton’s failings tend to come by inaction, being too accepting of what life hands him, and he tries to frame those failings as nobility.” Winton pointed a finger at the road ahead. “And that’s the story he tells himself.”
Julius grunted in thought.
“And then you have Jansen, a man who’s so bored or discontent with the generous wealth and status of a psychologist that he has to seek out unethical thrills and cross moral boundaries. And when he hurts others, he simply looks for a new thrill to take his mind off it. All the while, he tells himself he deserves to break the rules by mere virtue of shirking them.”
“Who is the true evil? The man who puts people in harm? Or the man who lays down in the face of such harm?” Julius blinked as if unsure the words had come from his mouth.
“That, my friend, is an old and apt question.”
They pulled up to the entrance to the hospital. “Dropping you off at hospitals is getting to be a habit.”
“You coming up?”
Julius laid his arms over the steering wheel and pressed his forehead into them. Winton had been halfway out the door and turned back. “Yo.”
Julius sniffed, eyes clenched. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I know what I gotta do.” He sniffed and lifted his gaze, cold wet eyes staring out at something Winton couldn’t see. “I see it now, painfully clear. And it ain’t all that in the grand scheme, but none of that matters. I just gotta do it. And I can’t let fear hold me back anymore.”
“A wise man once told me that fear was a motherfucker.”
Julius nodded and wiped a tear away. “So, I gotta go, man, before I change my mind.”
Winton didn’t burden Julius with any more questions. He stepped down out of the car and nodded at him. “Get to it, then.”
“I wish the best for you and your kid.”
“Come see us as soon as you like.”
Julius jutted his jaw, holding back his emotions and nodded again. “Don’t you worry, Winton Chevalier. If my gut’s worth anything, you and I ain’t done yet.”
“Mine too.” Winton shut the door and watched Julius drive away. He kicked at a rock and turned to look up at the hospital. “Here we go.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Winton didn’t shed a tear when his son emerged, but when the kid screamed, it sent a shockwave through him like a punch to the sternum.
The next few hours were a blur.
The baby got taken away for cleaning and check ups. Nurses kept up on Missy’s vitals, and moved them out of labor and delivery to a recovery room. For Winton’s sake, he tried to remember to do little things like fetch ice water and tell his wife he loved her. He meant it, sure, but it all felt wooden and surreal, like reading off a script from inside a giant fish tank.
Sometime after supper, Winton realized the nurses had stopped coming every fifteen minutes, and all was quiet in the maternity suite with Missy passed out on the bed and their baby boy sleeping in his plastic box on wheels.
Actions, Winton thought once again. And the stories we tell ourselves.
It had been circling his mind with increasing volume, almost to the point of annoyance. So Winton found the remote for the TV and turned it on, careful to get the volume low enough not to wake anyone. He flipped through the channels, almost resting on a brainless adult cartoon on the comedy channel. For half a second, he thought maybe that was just what he needed, but with one glance at his baby all swaddled in the bassinet he decided he could do better. A few channels later he saw a man with a black hat and a guitar standing on stage before a microphone in the sparkly haze of late seventies camera production. He began singing a song called “Good Hearted Woman.”
An older nurse with a quick walk entered the room clutching a clipboard. “I have the documentation you’ll need to fill out to get a birth certificate and social security stuff.”
“Oh.”
The nurse took a long look at Winton. Then craned her neck to look at the bassinet. “Have you held him yet?”
Winton felt completely limp, realizing he hadn’t.
The nurse set down her clipboard and gently lifted the baby out without disturbing his slumber. She laid him in Winton’s arms.
The weight and warmth of the bundle surprised Winton. He listened to the little breaths flowing in and out of the nostrils, saw the little twitches of the mouth and fingers.
“He’s seven pounds, fifteen ounces of perfection, ain’t he?” the nurse asked.
Winton didn’t answer.
“So, what’s his name going to be?” She picked up the clipboard.
Winton blinked. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what’s the last name again?” She looked at the chart. “Chevalier? What’s your name?”
“Winton.”
“Oh, like the Jazz musician.”
“Yeah, my momma got the spelling wrong, though.” He smirked.
“I’m sure she got it just how she wanted it,” the nurse insisted.
“I think my wife was going to pick the name. Seemed dead set on Hank or Tripp or Buck or some such.”
“He isn’t any of those,” Missy groaned into a pillow without moving. “I just can’t make sense of it.”
Winton shrugged up at the nurse. “Maybe we need time to figure it out.”
“Oh, Winton,” Missy said louder into her pillow. “You’re a man. Name your son already.”
Winton coughed a laugh, marveling once again at the woman he’d married and how acerbically perfect she was.
He hefted his son in his arms and looked at his face, cycling through family names, great philosophers, conquering generals, the coolest guys he’d gone to school with growing up. Nothing seemed to stick to the little creature in his arms.
The man on the TV hit the chorus of his song, and Winton was almost sure his baby smiled before the expression faded.
“I know I shouldn’t have to ask—the name’s on the tip of my tongue. But who’s that singer?” He nodded up at the TV.
The nurse put a hand on her hip. “Well, that’s Waylon Jennings, of course.”
The corner of Winton’s mouth turned up. “Waylon… Waylon Chevalier…”
The nurse cooed. “Waylon Chevalier. Now that sounds like a name right out of a story.”
Winton nodded.
“I’ll give it a minute and check back. We’ll need a middle name
too.”
Winton found the courage to adjust his hold on his son from that of a man carrying a bundle of firewood to something more intimate and cozy. Instead of telling his son a fairy tale story about how his life would be, full of promises of protection and fatherly greatness, Winton and Waylon sat together, just a father and his son. And good country music played from the TV.
The End…
Thank you for reading Bad Medicine. I hope you enjoyed it.
As an author, this book took me on some surprising turns, but now that I’ve finished it, I see an amazing third installment in the series ahead —> a plot I couldn’t have thought up without first exploring Galveston and its cast of characters with Winton and Julius.
If you would like to be notified when I release the next book, make sure to sign up for the email list. It’s a great way to keep up with releases, promos and other news I may have to share. (It’s definitely not spammy, and your email won’t be shared). When you sign up, you’ll get an email walking you through my other books, some of which have Winton in them too!
Until next time, I wish you all the best,
John Oakes
Sign up for email updates.