Jamie
The doctors had warned me. Even tried to prepare me for what I was about to see. But I couldn’t get past those select words that I somehow had comprehended.
Fractured skull. Broken bones. Spinal cord injury.
Coma.
I pushed past the doctors. My dad’s voice registered from somewhere in the sterile intensive care unit hospital room, but all I could see was Nate. My baby brother, the kid I used to taunt as a child and hang with as a teenager and young adult lay before me, hooked up to more machines than I could count. If it hadn’t been for my dad’s presence, I would have thought that I had accidentally rushed into the wrong room. Nate’s face was not just bruised, but black and a shade of purple I had never seen before.
And then there was the swelling.
I wanted to be sick. And then I did. Right there in the corner of the room, I puked up the eight beers I had consumed over the last several hours. Bent over, with my hands on my knees, the realization of what had happened, what I had done, hit me. While I had been drinking like a fish and fucking some girl I would never see again, my brother had been beaten within an inch of his life. And it all could have been prevented. He had called me to pick up his drunk ass from that party I had told him not to go to. But I had been too busy screwing around and thinking I was invincible. I had been selfish, and now Nate was paying the price.
I felt my dad’s hand on my back. “It’s okay, son. He’s going to make it. God will take care of him.”
My dad had always been a religious man, one who resorted to prayer, not anger or resentment whenever faced with a situation that just didn’t make sense. Like when my mom had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, though she had never smoked a day in her life, just to die three months later. Yes, I had heard my dad cry in his bedroom when he thought he was all alone and beg the Lord not to take his wife so soon, but his faith in the God he had introduced Nate and I to through the Sacrament of Baptism had never wavered.
Looking back, I could have gone one of two ways at that point. I could have lost my faith and questioned my dad’s loyalty and love for my mother and wondered how he could still love and worship a God who had taken such a wonderful woman away from her family. That was what Nate had done for several months after she had died. And I hadn’t blamed him for that, though I had chosen the other path. Watching my dad cope and cry as he had cared for his ill wife, my faith had been reaffirmed. My dad had stayed by my mother’s bedside, holding her hand, caressing her cheek, and telling her stories of when they were young until her last breath. He had stayed strong for her, for his two sons who still needed their mother, though they were seventeen and eighteen years old. No man could have done that alone. God had to exist. God had made that possible.
The smell of stale beer and vomit made my stomach roil, but my dad quickly shuffled me into the bathroom. I leaned over the sink and washed out my mouth and splashed cold water on my face. When I looked up, my reflection in the mirror snagged my attention. My eyes welled. My fury mounted. I hated myself at that moment. How selfish I was. How foolish I had become. My mother’s death six years ago had taught me nothing.
“This is my fault, Dad. Nate’s lying in there because of me. I promised Mom I would look after him. He was my responsibility!” I screamed.
My dad’s eyes widened and then grew fierce, something I had never seen before. “No. Those two men who jumped Nate for the few bucks he had in his pocket are to blame. They are responsible, and they will pay for what they did. God will make sure of it.” My dad might be a God-fearing man, but he also was a lawyer who believed in justice, which made for a lethal combination. I needed to get a hold of myself. I needed to be strong for my dad and my little brother. Which meant that I had to stop throwing up in the corner and go sit at my brother’s side.
And that was what I did for three days straight. I sat and prayed for Nate to awake from his coma. I begged for forgiveness, for not being there for Nate, for being a self-serving bastard. On the third day, I promised God that I would change my ways and serve him, become a man someone could respect, someone people looked to for guidance, someone worthy to walk this green earth.
And the very next day, Nate woke up.
My eyes shot open and I looked to my right. Eva was in the exact same position as she had been when she had fallen asleep several hours ago. Right after we had made love for the third time since coming home from my dad and Marcia’s.
Like we had planned, Eva had left just after dessert and I followed about a half hour later in hopes to not draw attention. But my brother had known and snickered at our juvenile attempt to conceal our relationship. My dad had just looked at me, studying me, withholding his comments for the time being. Marcia too had remained silent, but I had gotten the sense that she was catching on. But even as I had driven to Eva’s house, I hadn’t cared if they had known, and I certainly hadn’t cared when I had shown up and banged on her door. The seconds it had taken for her to answer had been torture, but when the door had swung open revealing Eva in a black nightie that barely covered her breasts, I knew that it had been worth it. I had scooped her up in my arms and had taken her to the bedroom where I made love to her over and over again.
Afterward, we had stayed up and talked well into the night. She had given me a better picture of what her life had been like when she was a kid, but she had been quick to tell me that she didn’t want to dwell on it any longer, that she wanted to focus on the here and now, and the mother she was just getting to know. She had asked me about my own mother, what kind of woman she was. I thought it would have been awkward to discuss my dad’s first wife with Eva, but like everything else, it had been surprisingly easy to tell Eva about the woman who had loved Nate and me more than anything in the world. The conversation had flip-flopped from serious to silly, and it was right around the time we were discussing our favorite scenes from The Godfather movie, when I had heard her breathing change, signaling that she was drifting off to the other side of consciousness. I had tucked her into my arms until her back pressed firmly against my chest and then I had heard her whisper, “Merry Christmas, Jamie.” Seconds later, she had fallen sound asleep, and I had cowardly chosen that moment, when there wasn’t a chance in hell that she could hear me, to tell her that I loved her.
Careful not to wake her, I slipped out of bed as gently as I could and escaped into her master bathroom. When I was safely locked inside, I went to the mirror and stared at the man looking back. I cringed at the sight. Because I recognized him. He was the man I had seen in my brother’s hospital room that night. When I had made a promise to God, one that I had not kept. And there was not a doubt in my mind that I had disappointed God because of it.
Because why else would I have dreamt of Nate’s attack? It had been so vivid, so detailed and painfully coherent. Where many dreams tend to deviate from reality and often make no sense whatsoever, the one I had last night was so spot on that it might as well had been a memory. Even under the confines of sleep, I had felt myself wretch and heave and tasted vomit mixed with bad beer.
What I had experienced last night, while I laid in Eva’s bed with her body molded around mine hadn’t been a dream, but a reminder. God’s reminder that I had strayed. All those nights I had prayed for a sign, that he would show me my path and guide me . . . and I finally had my answer.
I tried to control my breathing but it was too late. Panic seized me, squeezed my windpipe until I thought I would pass the fuck out. I fell to my hands and knees, crawled over to the tub and climbed in. I was covered in sweat, my hair matted down. I sat in the middle of the empty tub with my head in my hands and cried . . . and mourned the loss of a woman who would haunt me forever.
Eva
I had been having the most wonderful dream when suddenly it had taken a turn, more like a nosedive, and I begged myself to wake up. I had pinched and scratched my skin. I had tried to scream, but the words wouldn’t rise above a whisper. One minute, Jamie and I had been walking along the beach hand in hand with the sun setting in the background and the next he had been swept out to sea, all the while screaming that he was sorry. The sky had grown dark as I had watched his head bob above the water and then he was gone. “Jamie!” I had screamed, or at least I had tried to.
And then suddenly I was awake and back in my bedroom. I sat up and looked around. Jamie was standing at the foot of my bed and staring at me. Although he looked completely put together as he was fully dressed, his hair still wet from a recent shower, his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was ghostly pale.
“Jamie, what’s wrong?” I wrapped the white sheet around my naked body, slid out of bed and went to him. I cupped his cheek with my hand. His eyes closed briefly and then when they reopened, I could tell he was on the verge of tears. His stare unnerved me. It felt like he was trying to brand my face into his memory. My heart quickened. My palms grew sweaty, and my stomach twisted into tight, unbreakable knots. “Jamie?” I asked again. I watched his Adam’s apple roll as he swallowed hard. I saw everything. His red-rimmed eyes. The beads of sweat on his brow. His clenched jaw. His short, forceful breaths.
Bile rose in my throat, and my eyes welled. I knew that look. He had worn it before, right before he had told me that we couldn’t be together, the night he had taken me in front of his altar in church. My now trembling hand fell from his face. “You’re leaving me. Aren’t you?” I wasn’t going to allow him to just stand there and stare at me. If this was it, if he was abandoning us then I deserved to hear the words, not endure his silence.
“Eva,” he said, or rather choked out. The first set of tears spilled over at the sound of my name but I didn’t bother to wipe them away. More would follow. “I can’t do this. I can’t continue to break my promise to God.”
I knew that this was a possible outcome. That he could make the noble decision and choose his church over me. A voice in my head told me to gracefully step aside and assure him that I understood, that it was the honorable thing to do. But another voice drowned it out, causing the first to be just a pathetic whisper, and that bellowing voice told me that I had just had my heart ripped straight from my chest. I whipped around, giving him my back and hugged that damned sheet to my body. I couldn’t look at him.
“I know I’ve hurt you,” he said. I felt his hands grip my upper arms from behind.
The one time I had given myself completely to a man and this is what happened. Why was I surprised? “Hurt me?” I asked. I shook him free and stepped out of his pitiful embrace. “Hurt me?” I repeated, rage beginning to tremble in my voice. He had once told me that he cherished my honesty, and that was exactly what I was going to give him before he walked away for good. I turned around and faced him. “You made me fall in love with you, Jamie.” His breathing hitched and his lips parted. “But you already knew that.” I choked back a sob and hugged myself tighter. “You knew I loved you and you slept with me anyway,” I said, my voice quaking. I didn’t even attempt to wipe my tears away. I let them flow freely. It was so fucking selfish, but I wanted him to see my pain.
“We didn’t just sleep together, Eva. You must know that,” he said, his voice firm.
He took a step forward but I held up my hand, and he froze in place. “Don’t, Jamie. Just go.”
“Don’t you see that this is killing me? To know I can never touch you again or hold you as you fall asleep? I have no idea how I’m going to survive this, not when your soul is tied to mine,” he said. His voice broke and I watched a solitary tear slide down his cheek. I wanted to take his beautiful face in my hands and kiss the tear away but I couldn’t. Because I wouldn’t be able to let him go if I did. “I physically want to be sick at the thought of some other man comforting you, cherishing you, telling you how beautiful you are . . . because of a promise . . . because I’m not free to love you.”
The promise.
I wanted to ask why he had made such a promise to God. Something must have happened to make him choose this path. But I didn’t have the strength. The anguish in his voice had drained me dry. My already fragile heart shattered into a million pieces, and I cried into my hand. Through my tears and sobs I told him to leave.
I didn’t stick around so I could stare at his back as he left. No, I cowardly ran into my bathroom and slammed the door shut. I crawled into the tub and lay there yelling at the same God who had taken Jamie away from me. Was this our punishment? Why would He let two people find each other only to strip them bare and leave them broken?
I wasn’t sure how long I had sequestered myself in my bathroom. It could have been hours for all I knew. But when I did finally emerge, I found my bedroom empty. Only Jamie’s sandalwood soap scent remained, reminding me that he was truly gone.