Despite my strengthened and renewed hatred of the rain, the sound puts me to sleep last night. There are three thin, rough knit blankets over my body as I am curled into a ball on the seat next to my dad’s hospital bed. The surgeon said he would be sleeping for a while longer to allow the anesthesia to fully absorb in his body. The surgeon recommended lots of rest was important for Dad.
I smile over at him, glad that Dad will pull through. I kind of get why he hated on my relationship with Victor in the first place. Hell, to be honest, Dad’s intuition was right. Besides being jealous that he was losing our evening hang out sessions, Dad must have felt Victor’s dishonesty.
I look at his bandaged waistline. As Dad sleeps, I wonder what I would do without him. No matter how much I ignore him on occasion, I love my daddy so much.
“Ma’am, good morning.” The Korean nurse smiles at me, as she begins to check his vital signs. “Oh, Miss Whitson, we can’t have the phone near all this equipment.”
“Phone?” I yawn.
“Yes,” she picks up the cell phone that Victor had left me.
“Is this yours or should I take it to lost and found?” Her eyebrows crinkle.
“Yeah, it’s… it belongs to me,” I decide to grab the phone, pressing the power down button, I then put it in my purse on the chair next to me.
I won’t be calling Victor. Not ever. But if he calls me, then I might answer.
For a while, my mind is consumed by Victor D’Ross. He's an assassin who makes a lot of money by offing people. So cold. So callous. How could I love someone who takes lives? Who plays God?
I wash my face and brush my teeth in the public bathroom, and then head back to Jonah’s room. He’s still sleeping, so I grab one of the books that Victor had sent up to me after he left. My choices are a Sandra Brown mystery and a Harlequin Romance. I decide to turn the television on, volume low, and pray the idiot box burns a few of my brain cells so I don’t have to think.
“Miss Whitson.” One of the Navy Seals that Victor left me with enters. They told me that one would always be with me, and he seems chattier than the rest–well, technically because he just said the first words ever.
“Yes?” My eyebrow rises.
“You have a visitor, ‘Uncle Red’?” H says, gauging my comprehension.
My jaw drops, and I smile. “Uncle Red, let him in!” I whisper ecstatically, while hurrying to my feet.
Uncle Red isn’t really my uncle, but he’s known my father since they were in college. Both being geniuses, they were rivals, and borderline neurotic, or so Mommy would say. Gina had worked at a diner, “the kick it spot” right off the university campus grounds. Mom had attended the junior college around the way for a while but trying to take care of her own sick mother too, Gina didn’t make it. When she dropped out, she found that she still liked working at the diner. That’s where she met the two guys, they had fought over her, and I could tell deep down Red must have been the good looking one back in the day.
Anyway, Uncle Red is of mixed descent, hence the nickname Red. A chemical fire burned him in the laboratory when I was 6 years old. I remember being so afraid of him. His body was covered in burns.
It took his joking to get me to warm up to him to remember Uncle Red as the man that used to make me smile as a toddler. Matter fact, Uncle Red got on Jonah for taking the training wheels off my bike after my first skinned knee. My play uncle is always and forever on my side. As I aged, I realized that Uncle Red’s intelligent, yet elaborate jokes were confusing, but I love him all the same.
“Oh, Lux, Seems I’m always coming around when something bad happens,” Uncle Red purses his lips as he enters the room, in a beige linen suit. I haven’t seen him since Mom’s funeral, and an even longer time, the time before that, so I try not to stare at the burns on his face.
“No uncle, I’m just glad you’re here,” I reply.
“I’m glad you called, Lux.” He takes a look at his best friend, and places a Rubik cube on the table beside Dad. Then Uncle Red comes to give me a hug.
We hold each other tightly for a while. Even though Uncle Red’s my play uncle, I’ve grown to adore this man, whose real name is Doctor Charles Everhart. I know that just one dose of his jokes will raise my spirits. Maybe Uncle Red can take Victor from my mind, for just a while…
If we deny love that is given to us,
If we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss,
Then our lives will be empty, our loss greater…
~ Oprah Winfrey