CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bear
I fucking hate hospitals.
Always have.
For good reason, too. Ain’t nothing good ever has come from stepping foot in one of them. Not for me anyway. Actually, the fucking worst always happened. A wave of bad shit, along with the smell of antiseptic and disappointment, hit me in the fucking face every single time those automatic glass doors opened, followed by me frantically asking a million white-coated fuckers where the brother I was looking for was.
Usually, they were dead.
It was at that very hospital where we’d come to see Grace, through those very same fucking doors where a white-coated cocksucker came out and officially told us that Preppy was a goner.
I’m sorry. There was nothing we more we could do.
I remember everything about that night, down to the pussy-ass yellow smiley face tattoo the doc had on the outside of his hand.
The last time I was there was when I drove Ray, who was in pretty bad shape after being beat to shit by her fucking ex husband douche-bag, and King, who was all shot up, to the emergency room that smelled of unhealed wounds and misery. My immediate reaction whenever I went to a hospital has been to get on my bike and drive as far away as I possibly could.
Which sounded pretty fucking good to me as we walked down a sea foam colored hallway, the wallpaper peeling at the seams.
King and Ray were ahead of us with Thia and I staying back a few steps.
The last time I saw Grace, she was in better shape than I was. Where I had been wrestling with every demon I’d ever come across, hopped up on so much booze and blow it was a wonder I was even alive, she’d looked as if she could place in a marathon or give that juice guy on late-night TV a run for his money.
We knew Grace had cancer. She’d had it for years. More than a decade, I think. At one point, her pain got real bad and King gave her some weed and showed her how to smoke it so she could manage it better. For a while that seemed to work. After that she told us that the cancer couldn’t keep her down and that she decided she wasn’t going to die.
Crazy thing about Grace was that we all believed her. When she said she was going to do something, she did it.
Why did beating cancer have to be any different?
But in walking down that depressing ass hallway, looking into the rooms where countless other patience were hooked to tubes and machines of all kinds, I realized that this was different.
Very different.
Which was why seeing her in that hospital room with tubes coming out of her arms and a breathing mask over her face, looking every bit the frail woman she never wanted to be with sunken cheeks and deep circles under her eyes, caused me to stop in the doorway.
The woman lying on the bed didn’t even look like her. The woman I’d known for fifteen years had a fire around her that could make the biggest, baddest motherfucker out there say thank you, ma’am, and wipe his boots at the door.
“There you are,” Grace said with a low scratchy voice, her chest contracted and she gasped. “I’ve been waiting for my boys. Where is my Abel?” she asked, taking King’s hand.
“I’m right here,” I said, tugging Ti in behind me.
“Maybe you should take turns speaking with her,” the doctor stated, without taking his eyes off of his clipboard. “We don’t want to overwhelm her.”
“Who the fuck are you?” King asked, a vein in his neck pulsed and whatever the doctor said next would determine if he’d still end up a doctor at the end of the day, or a patient. The doc opened his mouth but he quickly shut it. Smart man. He scanned the barcode bracelet on Grace’s wrist with a tool connected to an iPad and made himself busy by checking numbers on the numerous machines and entering them into his tablet.
“Brantley my dear. It’s fine,” Grace said, tugging on King’s hand to bring his attention away from the doctor and back to her. Ray kept her hand on the small of his back, using her own method of calming him down.
“You guys go first,” I said, tugging Ti back out of the room without waiting for King to respond. “Doc, can I see you for a sec?”
I needed a minute to think, plus the last thing Grace needed was to witness King beating the life out of her doctor, if that’s the route he decided to take. Ti and I sat in two lone chairs in the middle of the empty hallway. I don’t mean there weren’t people in it. I meant that besides the two chairs, there wasn’t a single picture or painting anywhere I could see.
The doc followed us out, still punching the screen on his tablet. His sneakers squeaked against the dull linoleum.
Ti squeezed my hand, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this. “How long does she have?” she asked, and I’m glad she did, because although that was my question I don’t know if I would have been able to say the words. Also, there was a part of me. A big part. Who just didn’t want to know the answer.
Actually, none of me really wanted to know.
“Are you family?” the doc asked skeptically, pushing his glasses up his nose seeking answers from his tablet. His fingers flew over the screen. When he came to a stop he squinted down, his mouth moving as he read.
I stood up and crossed my arms over my chest. I towered over the little pale-faced doctor and stepped close enough to him to make him feel how incredibly inadequate he would be in this fight not worth starting.
Because if he didn’t stop looking down at that fucking thing and answer my girl’s question, there would be a fight.
“We are as much family as she’s got,” I said. “You gonna fucking tell me what me and my girl need to know or what?”
The doc cleared his throat, his face paled. He looked down at his tablet one more time. “Um… Actually, are you by chance either Mr. Abel McAdams or Mr. Brantley King?” he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose for the millionth time.
“He’s Abel,” Ti chimed in. She stood beside me, and again I reached for her hand and was glad when I felt hers slip into mine.
“Well then, you are her next of kin, according to her paperwork, so I can certainly share her status with you. Is Mrs. Jeffries your mother by chance?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. She was the closest fucking thing I’d ever had and if this motherfucker delayed one more second, me kicking his ass would wind up being my first positive hospital story.
“Well, Mrs. Jeffries cancer has spread, as you probably know. Brain. Lungs. It’s terminal. It’s been terminal. Last year we’d told her she only had weeks left, if not days, but she defied us all by lasting a heck of a lot longer. You should be proud of her. I’d never seen anything like it,” the doc said that like that bit of information was supposed to somehow make me feel like she wasn’t laying dying less than twenty feet away.
“Doctor…” Ti said politely.
“Reynolds” he finished. “Dr. Reynolds.”
“Dr. Reynolds,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You didn’t answer the question. How long does she have now? And don’t bullshit me.” Ti squeezed my hand. I gave Ti’s hand a squeeze back, looked over at Doogie Howser, Asian MD and said the one word I rarely used, “Please.”
“Not long. Due to her current condition, I would normally say only hours. But honestly, in my professional opinion, due to her rate of deterioration, it’s probably less than that. All of her major organs are shutting down.” He looked like he wanted to run as far away as possible and honestly I didn’t blame the little cocksucker.
“Thank you,” Ti said. The doctor nodded and scurried off down the hall, clutching his stupid tablet, like a mouse released from a trap.
We sat down again in the same two chairs, only to stand back up a few seconds later when King and Ray emerged from the room. For most people, I could see how King was hard to read. Especially because he never felt the need to fill the silence with words like Preppy always had. Seeing the solemn look on his face made me feel like I didn’t need to talk. Maybe a little bit of King had rubbed off on me.
Ti embraced a crying Ray. King came up to me and lowered his voice. “She keeps passing out. Her breathing sounds like she’s been smoking a carton a day for the last fifty years.” He paused, running his hand over his face. “This is it, man. You need to get in there.”
King and I had been friends since we were fifteen years old. That was the first time he’d ever reached out and embraced me in more than a pat on the shoulder, but an actual hug. It was brief, but he was my brother. Blood or not, he had my back and I had his. Even in the hospital while our pseudo mother lay dying on the other side of the wall. “She really wants to talk to you,” he added.
I nodded and reached my hand out for Ti who had her hands full with a weeping Ray against her chest. “You go first,” Ti said, “I’ll join you in just a minute.” I didn’t want to go in alone, but at the same time, I felt like I had to. There was so much to say to Grace, but where the hell would I even start?
“Abel,” Grace said, again lowering her mask and stretching out her fingers for me. I sat beside her on the chair and took her hand in both of mine.
“I’m here,” I reassured her, giving her hand a quick kiss. Her skin was ice cold.
“I knew you would be. Even though I know you hate hospitals. Are you all right?” she asked.
I laughed because Grace knew me better than anyone. She was knocking on death’s door yet she wanted to make sure I was okay because I hated hospitals. “I don’t think okay is really the word I’d use,” I said.
She smiled at me. The same sympathetic smile that got me through a lot of hard times during my teenage years. “I know what happened to Samuel felt like the end of your life too, my son.” Grace drew in a shaky labored breath. “But it wasn’t. And when I get to the other side, I know for a fact the both of us are going to have a good long laugh at your expense.” She coughed and I lunged forward to place the mask back over her face.
She took slow deep breaths, her chest lurching on every intake. When she’d calmed, I said, “I wouldn’t put it past either one of you.” She waved away my hand and looked at me with unfocused bloodshot eyes. Her lips were a light shade of blue. Her hair was covered with a light purple bandana.
“I am dying, Abel. But I swear to fucking Christ that I’m not leaving you. You need to know I wouldn’t do that. When you make Thia your wife, which I know you’ll do just from the way you both look when you talk about one another, I’ll be here with you.” She patted my hand, again comforting me when she was the one in the hospital bed. “When you welcome your first, second, third child into this world, I’ll be here. When you don’t know what to do or you don’t know where to turn, I’ll whisper in your ear until you make up your mind. Just promise me one thing.”
My heart was hammering in my chest. Tears I didn’t know I possessed leaked from the corners of my eyes and trailed their heat down my cheeks, wetting my beard. “What’s that?” I asked. My voice cracked.
Grace flashed me a weak smile, her chest rose and fell rapidly. The machines beeping and blinking with each intake of final breath. “When it comes to the girl out there.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck it up.” Grace gasped.
I held her hand up to my lips. “I’ll try my hardest not to. I promise.” I chuckled, tasting the salt of my tears. My shoulders shook, and for a small moment I allowed myself to wallow in my grief.
“Thank you, sweet boy,” Grace said, bringing my hands to her mouth and giving them a dry-lipped kiss.
“For what?” I asked, wiping my cheek on the shoulder of the shirt I’d put on as we were walking up to the doors.
“For being the son I always wished for. You, Samuel, and Brantley. I prayed for sons every single day since the day I married Edmond, and it took long enough, and you boys didn’t come to me in a way I ever expected, but suddenly you were there, and you made me the mama I’d always wanted to be.” Machines beeped and blinked again. Some sort of alarm went off on the far wall. The room flashed in red light.
“There is so much I need to tell you,” I said, holding on to her more tightly as if she was going to slip out of my grasp at any second and physically fall to her death.
“I know, and there is so much I need to tell you.” Grace looked to the ceiling and then back to me. “I need to apologize.”
“For what? Dying?” I asked, the word coming out broken.
“No. For lying. I lied to you Abel, and I’m so sorry. I really hope you can find a way to forgive me some day. I thought it was for the best, but looking back, I think I should have fought harder. Come up with another plan. I…”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters,” I said just as Grace started to choke. She cleared her throat several times before she could speak again.
“It’s all there for you to find out,” she said, and I didn’t know if she was still talking about the same thing, or if she was on any pain medication that might have just kicked in. “As I said, I’m dying, but I’m not going anywhere. Even death couldn’t keep me from my boys.”
“Kind of like Preppy,” I said, forgetting that I’d never told Grace about hearing his voice.
Grace flashed me a tight, blue-lipped smile. “You hear him too.”
“Sometimes,” I admitted, “Although, not as much anymore.”
“He was a good boy, my Samuel. Never could let anyone get a word in when he could say it louder, ruder, and a lot more inappropriately.” Grace chuckled and then coughed. I reached over and sat her up, feeling the outline of the bones in her spine and the outline of her ribs as I did.
When the fuck did she get so skinny?
“Thank you,” she said, after the coughing fit subsided. “Dying hurts.”
“Not funny,” I said.
“I didn’t mean for it to be. It’s just the truth.”
“I should have been there more. I should have—”
“No,” Grace said, effectively shutting me down. “Stop with that ‘should have’ shit. I have no regrets and you shouldn’t have them either. I love you. No matter what. For as long as I’m in this life and for as long as the next will have me.”
Grace’s eyes darted over my shoulder toward the door.
“There you are,” she said, holding out her other hand. Ti stepped up and took it in hers, going to stand on the other side of Grace’s bed.
“What’s going on with the alarms?” Ti asked.
“It’s nothing,” Grace said, “I’m just dying and they know it, but the machines don’t have human brains so they seem to think I’m salvageable. They’ll stop in a second.”
Sure enough in another three seconds, the room calmed and returned to the sickening halogen green glow it was cast in when I first came in.
“Thia, my dear, remember what I told you,” Grace said, without letting go of my hands. Thia leaned over and held on to Grace’s forearm. “Be good to my boy.”
“I will. I promise,” Ti said, wiping her own tears. “Always.”
“That’s my girl,” Grace said, followed by another coughing fit, this one twice as long as the last. More alarms buzzed and sounded, yet not a single nurse or doctor came bursting into the room.
“Is there any music around?” Grace asked, again moving the mask away from her mouth. “I don’t want to die in a room full of alarms, silence, or sobs. I want to go into my Edmond’s arms surrounded by beautiful music.” I was about to get up and go ask the nurse’s station if they had a radio when Thia chimed in.
“What do you want to hear?” she asked.
“I want to meet my dear husband surrounded by Sinatra,” Grace said, with a smile. “It was his favorite. We danced to every Sinatra song there was in our living room.”
Ti nodded. “Any particular song?”
Grace shook her head and covered her mouth again with the oxygen mask. She then took my hand and laid it on her chest and did the same with Ti’s. Grace held on to the both of us when, much to my surprise, my girl cleared her throat and started to sing. “Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars…” her voice was throaty and raspy, yet clear and perfect. Grace relaxed into her pillows and held our hands tight as the machines went haywire once again.
This time they didn’t stop.
Just as Ti started the third chorus, Grace’s grip on our hands started to loosen. “I see Edmund,” she whispered, staring off into the far corner of the room with a big smile on her face. “Edmund, my darling.” She paused for a moment. “Where is my girl? Where is she? And my Samuel? I want to see my…” Grace’s sentence faded away just as she did.
Grace slipped quietly and peacefully into her death surrounded by love, music, and the threat of eternal haunting.