The Way We Are

by Shandi Boyes

The next hour passes in a blur. The process was one I trained for, but the confliction I felt knowing someone affected by the tragedy is something that could never be taught. All I want to do is comfort Chris, but I’ve yet to reach out to him. Regina and I were first on scene. If we had left before handing over our findings to the forensic crash team, we would have risked prosecuting those at fault for Michael’s death to the full extent of the law. Thankfully, with the legalities being officially handed over, Regina and I are now entering the hospital Michael’s body was taken to.

  “I’ll wait for you inside,” I advise Regina when she stops just outside the emergency department’s automatic doors.

  She jerks her chin up, acknowledging she heard me before slipping her cell phone out of her pocket. My unsure steps into the horrible-smelling space are halted by a lady rushing past me. Not bothering to issue an apology after ramming into my shoulder, she charges through the nearly empty waiting room like a woman on a mission, her face as hard as her stomps.

  Any annoyance from her rudeness is set aside for empathy when I notice who she's approaching. Noah.

  I jump out of my skin, startled within an inch of my life when the slap the unnamed lady inflicts on Noah’s cheek echoes around the isolated room. She struck him so hard, not only does his head rocket to the side, blood also trickles from his nose.

  “Ma’am,” I shout in warning when she raises her hand into the air once more.

  My warning doesn’t deter her in the slightest. She slaps Noah for a second time, her hit even more brutal than the first.

  “This is your fault,” she screams in his face, her shift of blame one I’ve heard many times before. “Your brother is dead because of you! If you just stopped being so selfish, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  She continues screaming insults at her son, who couldn’t be any older than sixteen, until a team of doctors and nurses rush to her side to sedate her. All the horrible things she says swirl in my head on repeat. They are so familiar to ones I’ve heard before, I’m having a hard time separating fact from fiction.

  “Ryan?” Regina murmurs when I race past her entering the hospital.

  “Ryan!” she shouts again, shadowing me down the sidewalk.

  “Ryan!!” she screams, demanding I stop using nothing but her words.

  When she grips my elbow in a firm grasp, I violently yank away from her. “Don’t touch me,” I demand, my voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

  Regina holds her hands out in front of her body, signaling she means me no harm. “I’m not going to touch you, but I need you to tell me what’s going on?”

  She keeps her tone calm, recognizing I’m moments away from blowing my top. I don’t know who I am madder at, Noah’s mom for striking him like she did, or me for not stopping it.

  “I would have given anything for someone to step in and tell my mom she was wrong every time she placed the blame for my dad’s behavior on me. But the one time I have the chance to save a kid experiencing what I went through my entire childhood, I blew it.”

  “No, you didn’t—”

  “If I had just been quiet when he was sleeping, he wouldn’t wake up so mad. If I didn’t drink all his favorite soda, his low sugar wouldn’t make him so grumpy. If I had never been born, he would have never hit her. I’ve heard every excuse in the book. Every fucking one.” I point to the glass doors I just fled through. “But that has to be the worst one I’ve ever heard. How is Noah to blame for the amount of alcohol his father drinks? How was he to know the consequences of his addiction? He’s a kid! He’s only a kid, for fuck’s sake. But instead of telling her she was wrong, I stood by and watched her hit him. That makes me as bad as her. That makes me just as abusive.”

  “No, Ryan,” Regina denies, gripping the tops of my arms harder than she did earlier. “By speaking out about domestic violence, by drawing attention to the matter, you are helping him. Whether directly or indirectly, every word you spoke will help him. You just need to continue speaking.”

  When I brush off her suggestion with a shake of my head, Regina continues, “If not for you, for every other kid in your situation. You are not alone, Ryan. I’m standing beside you. Savannah is standing beside you. You are not alone.”

  I raise my eyes to the sky and suck in several deep breaths. If I don’t center myself, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.

  My pause for contemplation is utterly pointless when I confess, “My dad is an alcoholic who beats my mother.”

  41

  Ryan

  The first smile in hours cracks onto my face when I glance down at the message Savannah just sent me. It's a picture of half her beautiful face and the “Welcome to Ravenshoe” sign she's in the process of crossing.

  My smile fades when I read the message attached to the image.

  Savannah: I hope your shift finishes before I arrive. I’ve missed talking to you today. Once I’ve said hello to Dad, I’ll be straight over. Unlock your window for me, okay? xx

  Instead of returning her message, I throw my cell onto my bedside table, then head for the shower. I haven’t messaged Savannah since I started my shift this morning. It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to her; I just don’t want to tell her about Chris’s loss over the phone.

  Savannah usually occupies herself during her travels by giving me a play-by-play rundown of her week, so the instant I returned her message, she would have known I was off the clock. Although I am technically being deceitful, if a little white lie saves a heap of heartache, that’s alright. Isn’t it?

  My sluggish steps into my bathroom stop when a weak sob sounds through my ears. Although my first thoughts veer toward the negative, images of my mom’s tear-stained face when I informed her of Chris’s loss eases my concern. She reacted like every mother would when hearing about the loss of a child. She wept tears for both Chris and his mother. After seeing the way Chris’s mom greeted Noah today, I’m going to reserve my sorrow solely for Chris and Noah.

  My steps come to a complete halt when raised voices join the whimpering. I stand frozen on the threshold of my bathroom, certain the circumstances of my day have affected my hearing. I haven’t heard these types of noises come out of my house in weeks, if not months.

  I flick off the TV in the corner of my room before pricking my ears. I haven’t watched any shows the past two hours; I just had it on to distract my thoughts. Seeing Chris’s face when he arrived at the hospital where they had taken Michael... fuck... It will never leave my mind. Brax and I sat with him for hours. He didn’t speak the entire time. He just stared at his younger brother, as confused by the marks on his face as Regina was when Noah denied how he got them.

  Just like I have done my entire life, Noah hid his mother’s abuse.

  The noises downstairs cease the instant I switch off the TV, so I once again make my way to the shower. I shred my clothes on the way, letting them fall where they land. I’m so exhausted, I feel like I could sleep for a million years, but I won’t. Not yet. Not until Savannah is at my side.

  I take my time in the shower, loving the way the steaming hot water makes me forget for just a minute. I honestly don’t know where I am supposed to go from here. I have three days off after working seven straight, but what happens once those three days are up? I can’t just move on and pretend nothing happened. I’ve never suffered a loss before, so I honestly don’t know the steps involved to help Chris through this.

  God, I can’t wait for Savannah to arrive. She knows what to say and how to say it. She’ll steer me in the right direction like she always has.

  I shut off the water then step out of the shower. While scrubbing a towel over my hair, which is in desperate need of a cut, I hear my cellphone buzzing on my bedside table. If I know Savannah as well as I think, she's probably sending me pictures of every street she is driving down.

  A touch of guilt impinges me. I shouldn’t be smiling when my best friend is suffering.

  After curling a towel around my wet hips
, I move into my room. My eyes snap to my cracked open bedroom door when the sound of glass smashing bellows up the stairwell. My door wasn’t open when I entered my bathroom, and that loud bang can’t be mistaken for background TV noises.

  When a second smash quickly follows the first, I charge into the hallway. With my mind muddled, I take the steps two at a time. My feet thud against the warped wood as quickly as my heart pounds against my ribs. I scan my living and dining room, seeking the cause for the commotion. There’s no one in sight.

  My neck cranks to the side when I hear my mom yell for my brother to stop. I push off my feet so fast, my wet soles nearly lose traction on the shiny wooden floor. The scene I stumble into look like ones I’ve walked in on many times before. Except this time, my brother is pointing a gun at my father’s chest—my gun.

  “Damon...” My pleas for calm trap in my throat when Damon swings his head in my direction. His top lip is cut and bleeding, and his right eye is nearly swollen shut.

  “Did you know?” Damon asks, his voice quivering so much I can barely understand a word he speaks.

  “Did you know!” he screams again when I fail to answer his first question.

  “Know what? I don’t know what you're talking about.”

  Hearing the confusion in my voice, Damon nudges his head to his left. My heart falls from my ribcage when I follow his gaze. My mom is cowering in the corner of the outside patio, struggling to conceal the bruises extending from the waist of her pants to the collar of her shirt.

  “I came out here for a smoke because Ma asked me not to smoke in the house anymore. He was in the shed. He was hitting her in the back fucking shed like some kind of animal.” Spit flies out of his mouth during his last confession. “And what does she do when I try to protect her?! She fucking hits me. She hits me!”

  “Damon, she’s sick. She doesn’t know any better.” I place my hands out in front of my body to show him I mean him no harm as I take a hesitant step toward him.

  My mom squeals when Damon pulls back the hammer on the gun, wordlessly advising me to stand down.

  “Damon—”

  “No, Ryan,” he interrupts, still shouting. “I’ve tried it your way. It doesn’t work.”

  “Then we’ll change tactics. We’ll make him pay for what he has done. Even if Ma doesn’t want to press charges, we’ll do it.”

  Damon looks at me like I’m crazy, knowing years of keeping secrets and pretending everything is okay won’t change in an instant.

  “We don’t have to keep quiet anymore. There are programs that will break the cycle. Domestic violence doesn’t just affect those being abused, Damon. It affects everyone around them. That’s why you hit Molly even knowing it was wrong. They wired us to believe this is normal. It isn’t. The fact you got upset shows that you know violence is never the solution. It doesn’t solve anything. It just makes more mess.”

  When the moisture in his eyes triples at the mention of Molly’s name, I know I am getting through to him. That’s why he returned home months ago. He wanted to show Molly that he wasn’t the same boy he was when he left. His time in rehab turned him into a man, not just because he faced his demons, but because he beat them. He’s been drug-free ever since.

  “Don’t look at him, Damon. Look at me,” I demand when my father’s snickering at his tear-stained face undoes all the work I’ve just put in. “He’s a nobody. His opinion doesn’t matter to anyone.”

  I’m not even looking at my dad, but I can feel his anger burning up. It's so volatile, it has me forgetting I’m wearing nothing but a towel. “Do you want him to pay?”

  “Yes,” Damon pledges, nodding his head so rapidly tears splash onto his cheeks.

  “Then trust me enough to know I will follow through with my promise. I will make him pay; I just need you to put down the gun.”

  Damon’s hand shakes when he lowers his gun by an inch.

  I continue chipping away at his hesitation. “Trust me, Damon. I will never let him hurt you again.”

  With the determination of a man knowing he's moments away from paying for years of abuse, my dad uses Damon’s distraction to his advantage. He charges for him like a bull running for a red flag. A roar unlike anything I’ve ever heard leaves Damon’s mouth in a grunt when they smash into the concrete patio with force. Their brutal collision is quickly followed by the ricochet of a gun dislodging, then a mangled scream.

  “No! No!” my mom yelps on repeat as she rushes to pull my father off my brother.

  Because years of drinking has added to my dad’s midsection, it takes her several tugs to roll him onto his back. When I spot a large puddle of red blood seeping into Damon’s shirt, I fall to my knees next to him. I frantically search for the cause of the massive bloodstain as fury roars through my veins.

  If he has hurt Damon, I am going to kill him.

  “It’s not me. It’s not my blood,” Damon stammers out, clearly in shock when I raise his shirt to compress the bullet wound.

  He turns his massively dilated eyes to the crazy lady sitting next to us, shrieking and hollering obscenities at the top of her lungs. Our mother is cradling our father’s head in her hands. His are clutching the bullet wound in the middle of his stomach.

  Fuck.

  “I’m going to jail. I-I-I killed him. He’s dead, isn’t he? I killed him.”

  While Damon cowers away from the red pool of blood sliding our direction, I move toward it.

  “No,” my mom shouts, slapping my hand away from my father when I attempt to check if he has a pulse. “Don’t touch him. You’re not allowed to touch him. This is your fault, Ryan. This is all your fault! You killed your father.”

  The mangled cry rolling up her throat can’t stop my brain from registering her remark. “I didn’t kill him. This wasn’t me.”

  “It was your gun. He’s your brother—your responsibility. Don’t touch him,” she screams again.

  Ignoring her repeated pledge to make me pay, I press my fingers to my father’s neck. For the second time in under twenty-four hours, I fail to find a pulse.

  Fuck.

  Fuck!

  Fuck!!

  Curse words aren’t the only things filtering through my hazy mind. Millions of horrible, evil thoughts are adding to the panic engulfing every inch of me. None of them are pretty. Even through the madness, some of my mom’s comments make sense. I’ve never hid my dislike of my father from anyone, and he was killed by my gun. This can’t get any worse for me.

  When I return my eyes to Damon, they answer the silent stream of questions pumping out of him. We killed our father. We murdered him.

  I should be feeling guilt, but all I am feeling is panicked relief.

  “I’m going to be arrested. It was an accident, but they won’t care. I killed one of their own. They’ll hunt for my blood,” Damon chokes out with a sob. “They are going to kill me, Ryan. I’m going to be buried right alongside him. Don’t let them bury me with him.”

  I vehemently shake my head. “You defended yourself. This was self-defense—”

  “They won’t believe that when they test my blood,” Damon interrupts, shaking his head so violently he blurs my vision. “They’ll say it was the drugs. That I killed him because of the drugs.”

  I glare at him, shocked and confused.

  “Damon...” I breathe out heavily when reality smacks into me. That’s why he has been extra jittery this week. He’s using again.

  “She wouldn’t take me back. No matter what I did or said, Molly wouldn’t forgive me,” he mutters, as if it's a plausible excuse for him to break his sobriety.

  “Jesus Christ, Damon.”

  I want to say more, but words fail me. This makes matters ten times worse. All the prosecution needs is one reason to make out this wasn’t an act of self-defense, and he will be charged with first-degree murder. I can’t save him from that. I am a rookie police officer, not a genie.

  “Go!” I shout seconds later, panicked by the alarmed cry of our neig
hbor advising she has called the police. “You can’t be here when they arrive. You need to leave.”

  When Damon remains cowered in the corner of the patio, I crawl over to him on my hands and knees. My hands rattle when I curl them around his quivering jaw to raise his head, but my resolve remains strong. I just watched my best friend lose his younger brother; I’m not going to lose mine the same day.

  “If you want me to keep my promise, you need to leave now. The police are on their way.”

  Damon’s eyes snap to mine when my last sentence breaks through the torment swallowing him whole. “I can’t let you take the blame for this.”

  “It’s not your choice, just like Molly’s decision not to forgive you isn’t your choice.”

  I hate that my confession adds to the pain in his eyes, but with this being my last-ditch effort to stop him following in our father’s footsteps, I’m going to give it everything I have.

  “Promise me you won’t turn out like him, and I promise I’ll never breathe a word of this to anyone.”

  Damon’s eyes drift between our father’s lifeless body and mine for what feels like hours but is mere seconds before he nods his head. I don’t know if his lack of gratitude is because of the drugs running through his veins, or because he’s become so accustomed to violence the direness of our situation doesn’t register as real to him, but whatever it is, now is not the time to evaluate his coping mechanisms.

  After aiding Damon to his feet and watching him race out the front door of our family home, I take a moment to assess the scene. Other than the government-issued pistol used to kill my father sitting just to the right of the large pool of blood seeping from the exit wound in his back, there's no other evidence Damon was here.

  Knowing evidence will be the first thing officers will collect after securing the premise, I gather the gun in my hands and remove Damon’s fingerprints from the barrel and butt with the towel wrapped around my hips.

  I freeze not even two seconds later when a familiar creak sounds through my ears. My heart rate climbs to an astronomical level. That wasn’t a creak of someone sneaking across the front porch of my family residence; it was from the side gate only one person uses: Savannah.