Cody

 

 

 

 

 

I GET TO WORK AND SEE PATIENT after patient with multiple cuts and bruises.

“There was a pile up,” Carrie says, as I put my jacket in my locker. “About an hour ago. I was going to go on break, but it’s too busy.”

“Great,” I mumble. “A lot of injuries or worse?”

“A lot of people are in pretty bad shape, but it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.”

I close my eyes and sigh.

“Are you OK?” she says.

“I’m just tired,” I say, sitting down. “That and Ethan is still having his dreams. The last few, though, he has stayed in bed instead of going out to the couch.”

“Well,” she says, “that’s good, though, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say, “I guess so.”

I make my way to the first room that needs me and see an old woman lying in the bed.

“Hi,” she says, smiling.

“Hi there. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” she says, “fine.”

“My name is Cody. Were you part of that big pile up?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Me and my husband, Bob. I haven’t seen him since, though, and no one has been back in to tell me if he’s alright.”

“I’m sure that he’s fine,” I say. “I will be right back, okay? I’m going to go see why no one has been back.”

“Take your time,” she says. “A lot of those people are a lot worse off than I am.”

I smile at her and make my way out to the nurse’s station.

“The woman in room eight,” I say, “has she been treated any yet or what?”

Ingrid, the nurse on duty, checks her computer. She looks back up at me and says, “Yes, someone took her vitals and everything looks fine, but other than that, I don’t have anything.”

“She said her husband was with her when the accident happened, but she hasn’t heard back about him since she got here.”

“Did she give you his name?”

“Bob,” I say. “Bob…whatever it says there.”

“Oh,” she says, “it says here that he passed just a few minutes ago. Dead on arrival, it looks like. They couldn’t do anything to revive him.”

My stomach instantly starts to sour. I close my eyes, and say, “Thank you.”

I love being a nurse, but situations like this make me wish that I wasn’t one sometimes. You never know how the person is going to react when you tell them that the person that they love has died, but you always know that they’re going to be sad.

I remember when my mom first got sick. She came home one day from work and collapsed on the kitchen floor while she was doing the dishes. I was eighteen and had just come home for the weekend from my first week of college. I had a stressful week because I was overwhelmed with everything new that was happening in my life. I sat at the kitchen table and told her about my week. She froze in place and then collapsed. I dropped out soon after that and moved back home.

My dad had died in a car accident when I was just a baby, so she had to take care of my brother Nathan and I all by herself. Nathan had moved away a few years before, so I was all she had. Nathan told me that he couldn’t come when it got worse because of work and from then on, he’s been nothing to me.

I was sitting by her bedside in the hospital, reading a book, when she told me something that broke my heart. She never remarried after my dad died and I always wondered why. I would try to persuade her to go out and meet someone and have somewhat of a social life again, but she would always smile and change the subject. But that day, she told me why.

“Cody,” she had said, “you always wanted to know why I never met someone else after your dad died.”

“Mom, you don’t have to—“

“I choose not to because I wanted to be the best mother I could to you. I couldn’t be there completely for you if I had met someone else I felt like.”

“Mom—“

“But I lived a good life, Cody. I don’t regret a thing. Seeing you grow up was all I ever wanted, and I got that.” She took my hand and said, “You need to find someone now. You need to go back to school and do something worth doing. Make a difference in someone’s life. Your heart is the most special part of you, and you need to do something where you can make good use of it.”

A nurse came in once she said that, held her hand, and smiled at her.

“How are you feeling?” the woman had asked her.

“At peace,” mom said.

I saw the woman’s eyes start to water and she said, “If you need anything, just buzz me.” She turned around and I saw her wipe a tear from her eye as she made her way out of the room. I knew right then what I wanted to do with my life.

I make my way back into room eight and smile as I sit down beside the woman.

“You find anything out?” she says. “About my husband?”

I take her hand in mine and say, “I have some bad news.”

She looks from me, up to the ceiling, and her lips start to quiver. She looks back over at me, with tears in her eyes, and says, “Do you have anyone that you’re spending your life with right now?”

“I do,” I say. “His name is Ethan.”

She laughs and says, “Well, when you get home tonight, you hold him as close as you can and you tell him you love him because you never know what could happen. We were arguing when the wreck happened. He’s really stubborn when it comes to his pills and I was telling him that he needed to take them or else, and he told me to stop worrying about him and pay attention to the road. A car sideswiped us and the next thing I know, I’m waking up on a stretcher and I’ve been in this room ever since.”

She sits up straighter on the bed and lets go of my hand. “We were married for fifty-one years this past February. It was a Valentines Day wedding. He asked me that day and we didn’t want to wait, so we went straight to the court house.” She laughs and says, “My parents told me that I was stupid for marrying him, but I didn’t think so. Bob was everything to me. He still is, I mean, but back then, all I knew was that when I looked at him, I was home.” She scratches her forward and her hand shakes as she puts it over her mouth. “I just…I can’t believe it’s over. Just like that - I saw him and now I’ll never see him again. How can that be possible? How can life just end like that and all the things that have happened are just memories?”

She sniffs and says, “I’m sorry. I’m going on and on.”

“Do you need anything?” I ask her. “They said as far as your health, you’re completely fine. But if there’s anything else you need then I can do my best to make sure you get it. Whatever it is.”

“No, young man,” she says, smiling. “You just do what I said, though, and make sure that boy knows how much you care about him when you get home. Fight for him, as best you can, and never let him feel like he doesn’t have your love. And don’t argue with him if he doesn’t take his pills. Just try to sneak them into his breakfast or break them up into his drinks like I should have.”

 

***

 

 “Work was exhausting today,” Ethan says, as I walk in the front door of his apartment. He’s making tacos and the smell makes my stomach growl from not eating all day. “There was a breach at this major law firm and I had to spend all day trying to fix the mess. Turns out that one of the guys that worked there was trying to sabotage the whole place, and he actually had people hacking in and trying to get dirt on the company.”

“That sounds exciting,” I say. I make my way behind him and wrap my arms around his waist. I rest my head on his shoulder and say, “That smells really good.”

“Well,” he says, “I do cook up a good chunk of beef. It’s the seasoning, really.”

I laugh and sit down on the chair behind him, taking off my shoes.

“How was work today?”

“Depressing,” I say. He turns around and leans against the counter, crossing his arms. “There was a big pile up before I got into work and it just wasn’t good.”

“I was wondering why traffic was backed up so bad on my way to work. I figured it was just construction.”

“I had this nice old woman as the first person I talked to from it and she lost her husband.”

“Oh, no,” he says.

“She told me about their marriage and how he was the love of her life.”

“How long had they been married?”

“Fifty-one years.”

“Wow,” he says.

“She asked me if I had anyone special that I cared about when I had told her that her husband had past. I told her yes, and she said that I needed to make sure that when I got home, I told him how much I cared about him.”

“Awe,” he says. “That’s terrible. Poor woman. I hope she’s OK.”

“You know that I love you, right?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“That I’d do anything for you? That you can tell me anything, anytime, and I’ll always stick by you no matter what?”

His eyes start to moisten and he says, “I know.”

He turns around and beats at the taco meat in the pan. I get out of the chair and make my way to the counter to his right.

I lean against the counter and say, “I’m done trying to pressure you into telling me what’s really going on. I know it’s hard for you, and whatever it is, I’ll wait until you’re ready. I just…I just really do love you, Ethan, and I want to make sure that you know that.”

He turns off the stove and makes his way to one of the kitchen chairs. He leans his elbows on the table, rubs his temples and lets out a breath.

“I’ve told you that my last boyfriend was a bad guy,” he says.

I sit down across from him and cross my arms.

“I was with him for three years. When I first met him, he was completely fine. There was no hint of any sort of jealousy or obsessiveness or anything like that. His friends seemed normal and his family, too. About four months in to the relationship, we went to dinner one night and when we got back, he accused me of flirting with the waiter. When I questioned him, he walked over to me, pushed me against the wall and kicked me in the face.”

Ethan keeps his eyes on the floor, while I sit up straighter, and my eyes slowly grow wider. I can feel the anger getting ready to surface and all I want to do is kill this guy.

“He broke my nose when he kicked me and then took me to the hospital. I was in shock. He hadn’t done anything like that and, of course, he said that he was sorry and that it was an accident and I just went with it. Over the years, it got worse and worse. He broke more things and gave me more apologies. He was smart with the abuse, though; it was always somewhere that clothes covered. In year two of our relationship, I moved in with him. I moved all of my stuff to a storage stall of Hadley’s because he didn’t have room for anything and he said that I didn’t need anything anyway when he could provide everything. So, I basically just had clothes there and that’s it.”

He gets up from the chair and goes back to the food.

He grabs the spatula and says, “During year three of it all, we went swimming with friends one weekend and I had embarrassed him, I guess. His friends - they weren’t even mine - went back to their tent, but we hung back because he wanted to talk to me. When I got close, he kicked my legs out from under me and held me under water to the point where I almost drowned. That was when it finally hit me that he was going to kill me.”

He turns around and looks at me. His eyes are moist, but he isn’t crying.

He leans his head back, blinks a couple times and says, “The last night that I was with him, I found an engagement ring in his nightstand. I was putting away clothes and when I found it, I instantly got sick to my stomach. I realized that if that ring touched my finger, that would be it. He was at work that day, so I packed up all that I had there and drove straight to the station where my sister was working at the time. I told her everything that had happened and how I had been keeping it a secret for a while. She left work and took me to her apartment and we sat there while I cried for hours. I cried so much that night; I don’t even remember it all that much. I changed my number and quit my job. I even got a different car.  I basically erased myself in everyway except for my name. The only reason I felt safe was because he had no idea where Hadley lived. I made sure during our relationship that he never knew.”

“Is he the one in your dreams?”

He nods and says, “It’s the same dream for months now. We get home to that apartment and he accuses me of cheating. Then he beats me up a little. Once he pulls a gun on me, he holds me down and the trigger goes off. Then I wake up. I come out to the couch because the sound of the TV drains out the thoughts of him.”

I hold out my hand and he makes his way over to me. He takes my hand in his and brings it up beside his heart.

“This,” he says, beating our hands against his heart, “has been dead for awhile now. You’re slowly reviving it, but it’s going to take awhile. I know that I’ve been distant lately, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to shut you out because I’m not, but I still haven’t found a way to properly handle my memories of him. To be honest, I’m not sure if I ever will be able to.”

I lean up and kiss him. He leans his forehead against mine and lets out a slow, heavy breath.

“Let’s eat,” I say.

He laughs, wipes his eyes and kisses me again. He makes his way back over to the food while I stay in the chair and try to maintain all of the anger that I can feel radiating through my body.

The fact that someone could do those things to another human being makes me feel sick. The fact that they were done to the guy I love, that makes me feel even worse.

“I’m glad I got that out,” he says. He glances over his shoulder and smiles. I smile back and get off of the chair.

“What can I help with?”

“I already prepped all the stuff for the tacos and it’s all in the fridge. So just that stuff and then the shells on top of the fridge.”

As I pull the food out of the fridge, and the taco shells off the top of the refrigerator, I promise myself that if I ever see Rick out in public, I will beat the shit out of him.