Stumble Forward

by Alex Jane

  The night before he was due to leave, he went back to the house and had dinner with his mom. It was awkward and the elephant in the room nearly smothered them both but they made it through, promising visits and phone calls. In the end, she hugged him and he realized there was nothing to be done but hug her back. There was nobody to blame.

  By Sunday lunchtime, everything was done. His stuff, what little he had, was packed and ready to go in the car. He’d said his goodbyes to everyone he could think of, including the cute waitress at Blake’s. She’d looked at him like he was demented but by the way Ethan had laughed at her reaction, the embarrassment was worth it.

  When he and Ethan arrived at the meeting, Steven was wearing a particularly festive vest in his honor and had brought an extra-large batch of cookies so that he could take some for the road. The thought was sweet but they didn’t even survive to the end of the meeting once the group got wind of them.

  The goodbyes at the end of the meeting had taken so long that Alec was considering leaving in the morning. There had been a great deal of hugging and promises to keep in touch and by the time everyone had left he felt exhausted. He walked out to where Ethan was propped up against the wall, blowing long columns of smoke out into the road. Alec hopped up on the wall beside him, and let out a sigh.

  Ethan bumped him with his shoulder. “You done?” Alec nodded, and Ethan stubbed out his cigarette. “Good. Let’s get back then, Kate’ll wanna get some food in you before we sling you out.” He smiled but Alec’s eyes were on the approaching car over his shoulder. It looked horribly familiar from a distance, more so as it grew closer and he could see the small figure behind the wheel. He hopped down off the wall as it pulled up next to them.

  Alicia opened the door and Alec placed a hand on the top of it as she climbed out. “What are you doing here, Allie?”

  She looked apologetic. “What? I can’t say goodbye? I know you’re leaving today.” Alec shrugged at her and the edges of her mouth twitched as if she were going to smile but thought better of it. “Yeah, well. Jack wanted me to give you this—” She reached into her bag and pulled out a sealed envelope. “And he was pretty insistent that I should bring it to you. I think maybe he thought I should say goodbye too.”

  Alec took it and turned it over in his hands, his heart quickening knowing that Jack’s hands had touched it too. He knew he should wait, that he shouldn’t just rip it open and read it in public, he should put it in his pocket and pull over on the way to Austin, read it in private, away from here and everyone.

  He smiled sheepishly at Ethan and Alicia and turned his back to them, sliding his finger under the flap and tearing down the side before pulling out the crisp sheet of white paper, Jack’s neat, clipped handwriting covering a square in the center.

  Ethan and Alicia’s stilted conversation, faded, at first from his attention as he soaked up every word, then all too quickly from the sound of his own blood pumping in his ears. His fingers crumpled the paper as they tensed and his insides turn to liquid. He couldn’t move, couldn’t tear his eyes away from the words—don’t hate me—but somehow he staggered and found himself turning.

  When Alec managed to look up at Ethan, he found his horror-stricken heart reflected back on Ethan’s face. “Jesus Christ, Al. What is it?”

  The urgency in Ethan’s voice broke through Alec’s panic.

  He stepped forward and shoved the crumpled paper to Ethan’s chest, snatched Alicia’s keys out of her hand, and ran to the car.

  “What the hell, Alec!” Alicia protested, but Alec was already behind the wheel, forcing the key into the ignition; and bellowing at her in his panic. “Where is he?”

  “What—?”

  “Is he at home!”

  Alec slammed the door at her dazed nod, and revved the engine. Ethan’s white face as he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed was the last thing Alec saw before he u-turned and sped away in a cloud of smoke and squealing rubber.

  Alec had no recollection of how he arrived at the house.

  He was pretty sure that in the short distance, he had run two red lights and mounted the sidewalk at least once but when he pulled up outside the house, he still thought he should have gone faster.

  He yanked the keys from the ignition, opening the door before the car had come to a complete stop.

  Alec stumbled out of the car, pushed himself up from the ground with one hand, and sprinted up the steps on legs that were too goddamn slow. He tried the door but it was locked like he knew it would be. His shaky fingers fumbled for the right key, only for the security chain snap taut as he tried to barge through.

  Alec stepped back, raised his foot, and kicked forward as hard as he could. The door flew open with an almighty crack, slamming hard against the wall, and rebounding hard against Alec as he launched himself inside.

  He ran part-way into the lounge, glanced through to the kitchen but everything looked still so he turned and bounded up the stairs, three at a time. He turned straight to Jack’s room, pushing the door back with one hand.

  It took less than a second to take in how neat, how tidy, and ordered everything was. Things had been boxed and labeled and there was a neat row of envelopes lain out on the bed, each with a single name printed neatly on the front. He felt his blood turn to ice water and finally found his voice.

  “Jack!”

  Once he started screaming he couldn’t stop. He ran down the hall, pushing open every door, screaming Jack’s name, until he reached the bathroom. He tried the handle but it was locked. He backed up, then ran forward barging it with his shoulder. It flexed but stayed strong. Alec backed up again, and with everything he had, powered into it. The door swung open, his momentum carrying him forward and down skidding to his hands and knees on the white tiled floor.

  For a moment, he just knelt there.

  Jack sat on the floor wearing nothing but his black briefs, his head hanging forward on his chest, hair covering his face, his back against the white bathtub. His alabaster skin almost matched it, the paleness of his body accentuated by the dark red carpet of blood that spread out from the ragged wounds in his wrists.

  Alec was paralyzed. The air and life draining out of him. His vision became stark and clear. All he could hear was his heart pounding and wanted more than anything for the horrific sound to stop. His lips moved as if to speak but the breath wouldn’t come and it was too late to say anything.

  But then slowly, very slowly Jack’s head swung towards him, his hazel eyes peering out from under his bangs and meeting Alec’s horrified green.

  Alec breathed in sharply and scrambled forward on his hands and knees, pushing through the pool of blood, the surface of it wrinkling as if a scab had started to form.

  He reached up and grabbed a towel from the rail, quickly rolling it into a ball. He straddled Jack’s legs and placed the bundle on his lap, put one wrist either side, sandwiching the material between the gashes that ran the length of Jack’s forearms; pressing them together as hard as he could, he tried to raised them above Jack’s head.

  Jack keened and tried to struggle away but he was too weak.

  Alec rested his head on Jack’s neck, and whispered, “Don’t you leave me—”

  Jack whimpered, and tried to speak, the words barely croaking out. “I can’t—”

  “Jack, don’t you leave me here—”

  “I can’t—stop—”

  “Stay with me Jack, please.”

  “I can’t stop loving you—I can’t stop—”

  Thirty seconds later, there were voices on the stairs and Alec was screaming out to them. Two paramedics appeared at the door, and Jack groaned and tried once more to pull his wrists free of Alec’s hold.

  As the two burly men stepped in, they firmly but gently pushed Alec away and he scooted back, crouching against the opposite wall, his eyes never leaving Jack’s. Jack’s expression spilled over with apology, regret and betrayal, but his eyes never left Alec’s.

  Even when Ethan arrived and dr
agged Alec out, they couldn’t take their eyes off each other.

  Chapter Twenty

  It didn’t take long to stabilize Jack at the house.

  After Ethan dragged Alec out of the way of the paramedics—Let them do their job, man—he propped him against the wall next to a stunned Alicia.

  They both stood, motionless, and empty, Alicia shakily answering the questions the paramedics were directing to her as they worked. Watching them applying huge pressure bandages and sticking tubes in Jack’s arms and pumping bags of clear fluid into him. Jack cried out in pain and anger and when he started to beg them to stop, “I can’t. Stop. I can’t stand it. Please don’t make me—” Alicia sobbed out a breath and Alec put his bloody arm around her.

  Once Jack was stable enough to be moved, he started to struggle and flail, and the only way he would agree to be strapped down was if Alec was there with him. Alicia moved towards him as they wheeled him past, eyes brimming with tears, but Jack turned away from her and covered his face with his bandaged forearm.

  Jack clung to Alec. The fingers biting into Alec’s wrist were a relief, whatever damage he’d done seemed to be limited to the middle two fingers of his left hand, which made no attempt to grip him. Jack didn’t talk, didn’t try to speak to him, and Alec didn’t either. They just looked at each other, the ambulance rocking them as it sped along, the siren still loud from inside. The paramedic bustled about, rechecking Jack’s blood pressure, attaching sticky pads to his chest and ankle, doing his best to not look at them and their silent communication.

  When the nurse had taken him to one side and gently asked like it was a given, “You’re Jack’s brother?” Alec looked at her for a long time trying to decide how to respond before nodding.

  She’d asked him lots of questions that he couldn’t answer about Jack’s medical history. Alec could only shake his head and repeat, “Allie will know,” for what seemed like a thousand times until finally Alicia arrived.

  Alicia stood next to Alec at the desk, calmly answering questions, and signing papers with shaking hands. Alec was relieved that she was there but he was also gripped hard by bitterness. She knew Jack was allergic to penicillin, who his medical insurance was with, the last time he had a tetanus shot—all the things Alec should know, would have known if the chance hadn’t been taken from him.

  Instead he stood there, unable to contribute a single thing, gradually drawing away from them until his back found the wall. His redundancy was hammered home when the nurse took Alicia to see Jack. Alec wasn’t just ignored; Alicia actually looked back and shook her head when the nurse started to gesture for him to follow.

  It felt like it had been hours. Nurses scuttled to and fro or stood chatting casually at the nurses’ station, acting as if Alec’s world wasn’t ending. Orderlies pushed gurneys laden with sleeping shapes, doctors huddled around light boxes, pointing at X-rays with their pens, and still nothing happened. So Alec sat quiet and still, and wondered how long it would take for Jack’s blood to wash off his hands.

  Alec rubbed his flattened hands together, turning them over and back. He splayed his fingers, transfixed by the whorls and lines in his skin that he’d never noticed before, now horribly defined. The deep russet stain of Jack’s blood ingrained in Alec’s flesh; edging his cuticles, and dark under his nails.

  When Alec shifted, his sneakers squeaked on the linoleum floor, bringing attention to his soiled shoes and the hard red-brown crust running up the front of his jeans. He scratched the edge of the line where it formed at his knee and it crumbled. He brushed the dust away and tried not to breathe in. The spent blood had abandoned Jack, and Alec wanted no part of it.

  A nurse had tried to persuade him to go home and change but he only had to look at her for her to understand that he wasn’t going anywhere. He’d scrubbed at his hands in the dingy bathroom of the ER, having to go back to the sink and scour his neck with wet paper towels when he glanced in a mirror on the way out and realized the strange sensation on his neck was drying blood.

  Then he’d taken up his position back in the same rickety plastic chair the nurse had sent him to, when the paramedics had finally managed to pry Jack’s fingers off Alec as they wheeled him out of the ambulance.

  He looked up when he heard Ethan’s voice. The big man was standing at the far end of the corridor with a nurse who was pointing at Alec. Alec didn’t bother getting up when he approached. Ethan sat down in the chair next to him and held out a sweater. “If you won’t go home, at least change into this.”

  Alec muttered, “Thanks,” and pulled off his t-shirt. It wasn’t until it was in front of him that he could see how bad he must have looked sitting there, blood spattered down his front. He balled up the ruined shirt and Ethan dumped it in the trash while Alec pulled on the fresh one. He was about to ask Ethan if he could scrounge up a coffee when Alicia appeared out from around the corner.

  Alec jumped up and rushed towards her. “Well?”

  Alicia nodded, and didn’t quite smile. “He’s out of danger. It looks like he may have some ligament damage but they won’t know for sure until the swelling goes down. They—they said, five minutes later and—” She looked up at him, all her earlier composure crumbling away as she fell sobbing into Alec’s arms.

  <•••>

  “You need to know I didn’t lie.”

  Alec turned to Alicia. She had been sitting in silence for some time, cried out and resigned to waiting for the surgeon to assess the damage to Jack’s wrists and the psych department to send someone down for a full evaluation. But as soon as Ethan had disappeared around the corner to fetch coffee or at least something with caffeine in it to get all of them through the next few hours, she spoke. “I didn’t realize exactly what you were thinking. I just reacted and—I didn’t correct you. Any of you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Alicia glanced up at him, but couldn’t quite meet his gaze and looked away. “I was so angry—I know I should have said something but Jack was being so—and I just couldn’t bear the thought of the two of you—”

  Alec raised his eyebrows. “Allie. What did you do?”

  Alicia looked like she might start crying again. “I didn’t know this would happen! I never thought he’d do anything like this!”

  Alec’s mind was racing and he grabbed her arm roughly. “Jesus, Allie! Tell me!”

  Alicia stared at him until he released his grip, her face superficially hard but the swirling guilt and panic beneath showed right through. Her voice was almost steady when she started to speak. “I didn’t lie—about Dad leaving because of your mom—” she paused and closed her eyes. “But it wasn’t the only reason.”

  She swallowed and opened her eyes, looking down at her hands as they picked at a Kleenex. “Jack—Jack was ill. He got sepsis, an infection, when he was a baby. It looked bad for a while. They thought he might need a blood transfusion or something. Dad was in the hospital with him when the doctor came to talk to him about giving blood because Jack is Type O. But you see he shouldn’t have been—because Dad was B and Mom—” Seeing the confused look on Alec’s face, Alicia stopped, turned slightly in her seat towards him and took a deep breath. “He realized. That Jack couldn’t be his. That-that they couldn’t be related.” Alec still couldn’t take in what she was saying but Alicia carried on, “When Mom got there, he confronted her and she denied it at first but then—then she admitted it.” Alec still looked confused, like Alicia was speaking a foreign language and he only understood the odd word. She looked at him like he was either very stupid or very cruel for making her spell it out. “She’d been having an affair, for a long time. Jack wasn’t his. Isn’t his. Isn’t—”

  “Isn’t my brother,” Alec interrupted with a whisper and wide-eyes.

  Alicia shook her head, tears welling up so fast she couldn’t seem to get any words out before she started sobbing again. Alec knew he should put his arm around her, draw her to his shoulder, and comfort her in some way. But right then, h
e couldn’t even look at her, so he just stood up and walked away.

  Somehow, he found himself outside. It was nearly dark when the door slid closed behind him, but the street lighting was glaring in the parking lot and Alec could see Ethan smoking just down the path. He wandered down and leaned against the railing alongside him.

  Ethan put a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “Any news?”

  Alec barked out a laugh, loud enough to make himself feel uncomfortable. He covered his face with his hands and then dragging them down said, “Yeah. Yeah but not—I have to go.”

  Ethan pulled his hand away. “What?”

  Alec stared blankly at him. “Allie just—Allie just said something and I don’t know what to think. I can’t sit there with her. I think she did this, not on purpose but I think she pushed him into this. She—she lied—about us being brothers.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Ethan muttered under his breath.

  Alec nodded and whispered, “I know. Believe me, I know”

  Ethan stood away from the railing, dropping his cigarette butt and crushing it under his toe. “So, what do you want to do?”

  Alec shook his head. It wasn’t the first time Ethan had asked him that question and it probably wouldn’t be the last. “I don’t know, Ethan. I really don’t know.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I wish they had told me you were coming.”

  “Do—do you want me to go? I just thought—”

  Jack laughed and reached out to slap at Alec’s arm. “No, stupid! It’s just—I would have showered.”

  They sat on the only bit of furniture in the tiny room, a small single bed that matched the pastel blue and cream décor. Whoever had designed it had done their best not to make it feel too much like a hospital and the whole place lacked the feel of anything medical. But sitting there, in Jack’s room, all Alec could think was, prison, and it wasn’t just because of the wire mesh on the window.

  Jack was wearing a grey t-shirt and blue jeans, not a hospital gown. Other than the weird slippers on his feet and the plastic-paper identity bracelet over the bandages on his wrist, they could have been sitting anywhere.