Oliver
I feel Julie’s sadness fade and her strawberry scent leaves my airways. I fucking hate when this happens; the sweetness of her skin keeps me grounded. Instead, it’s replaced with an awful sulfur smell, making me want to gag. The room is still freezing cold wherever they take me. Most of the voices that have surrounded me are now leaving, and only a few remain.
“Doctor, are you scrubbed in?”
“I’m ready…check his vitals before we begin.”
I hear shades open and the chatter of people across the room.
Are they teaching a class? Am I on display?
What the hell do they think they’re doing?
“Okay, he’s as good as he’s going to get, I’m afraid. Let’s begin.”
It’s silent for a long time while I hear shuffles and feel nothing. The doctor calls out several different names of tools he needs, followed by a second voice repeating them as they hand them over.
“There, now let’s make the incisions.”
The machines hooked up to my body beep steadily, but inside I’m screaming in fear and agony. The medicine running through my IV makes me drowsy, and I drift into a deep sleep.
Oliver, wake the hell up!
***
“Wake up, you little shit.” I hear her raspy smoker’s voice in my ear. “Wake up—let’s get the hell out of here.”
I see darkness when I open my eyes, but there aren’t doctors around me. I’m in my small bedroom in Mrs. Atchley’s quaint apartment, where she lets me stay when Dad is out of town. I look at the digital clock on my bedside table; it’s just after three a.m. and the sky is so dark that nothing is visible inside of my room except for my mother’s scowling face inches from me.
“Come on!” She tugs me so hard that I fall out of the bed and land with a hard thud on the floor. I purposely make more noise as I stand back up.
“Shut the fuck up!” a man says from across the room, near the window. “Do you want us to get caught? Get your little bitch boy and let’s get outta here!” I look up and see his grim face outside the open window. He gives me a matching grim smile.
“I’m not supposed to leave.” I act like it’s no big deal and brush off my pajamas. “Dad said I have to stay here when he’s away…I’m not going with you.” I sit on the edge of my bed.
She gets mad at me. “You’re mine too! Don’t you miss me?”
I nod my head even though we both know it’s a lie. “Yes, Mommy.”
She pulls me closer with one arm and lights a cigarette, sitting on the small bed and bringing me down with her. “Well, then…what’s the problem here? We can go anywhere you want, kid.”
I stare at her face; I haven’t seen her for an entire year, and she looks sicker than she’s ever looked before. Her eyes are lifeless and her cheeks are sunken in too. “I carried you inside of me for almost ten months—the least you can do is act like you like me.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” I say and hang my head. “Dad says I have to stay here.”
Smack!
Her hand sweeps across my small face with so much force that it knocks me backward. I have to brace myself for another blow while my little body is pushed against the corner of my dresser. I hear Mrs. Atchley stir across the hall from us, and my mother’s face grows serious and pale. She grabs my arm—harder this time—and growls at me. “Get the fuck out there with Mac.”
Mac.
The man with the scary face.
The man who beat me last year and nearly killed me.
He holds his hands open for me to jump into, but I freeze.
“Come on, you little jerk!” he hisses at me, wiggling his fingers. “Let’s fucking go!”
“No, I’m not going!” I scream and try to take my arm back from her grip. Her brittle nails scratch me and I cry, hoping that I’m loud enough to alarm Mrs. Atchley. “I’m not going anywhere with you! I hope I never see you again!”
Her face hardens. “You don’t mean that. You’re being brainwashed. What about your father is so great? He denies me when I come to him and won’t let me see you!”
The door opens and light pours into the dark room from the brilliantly lit hallway. Mrs. Atchley stands in the doorway with a shotgun in her hands, raising it at my mother without hesitation.
“Let him go or you’ll be eating bullets,” she says with a calm voice. My mother doesn’t back down, so Mrs. Atchley raises the gun higher and cocks it, ready to fire. “I won’t tell you again, Veronica.”
My mother snickers. “You wouldn’t dare shoot me in front of him.”
Mrs. Atchley’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t bother looking at me as her eyes grow cold and she stares down my kidnapper. “Try me.”
“You bitch,” my mother says. “If you don’t come with me now, boy, I’ll find a way to get you later. I always get what I want. You really wish to never see me again?”
I don’t even have to think about it.
I nod my head and say nothing.
She groans and pushes Mac down the ladder and they’re both gone. Sirens surround the house and officers command the two of them to get on the ground from their loudspeakers. Mrs. Atchley leaves to put the gun away and then comes back into the room to shut the window and re-lock it.
Police officers are flooding the apartment, asking me questions I don’t understand. They rub their jaws in frustration and look at me with sad eyes. The woman that pats my hand, she’s nice and she likes to ask me questions I do understand.
“What did your mother want?”
“She wanted me to go with her.”
“Did she promise you anything? Toys? Money?”
“No.”
“Was there anyone with her?”
“Yes, Mac was with her.”
She shows me a picture. “This man? Terrance MacElvaine?”
“Yes, that’s him. That’s my mom’s boyfriend. I don’t like him.”
She smiles and pats my hand again. When the police officers are all gone, my eyes are so heavy that Mrs. Atchley has to pick me up the best she can to take me back to my bedroom. She puts me back into bed and tucks me in tightly, her warm smile almost making me forget everything that just happened.
Almost.
“We’ll deal with the rest of this in the morning, kid. Try and get some sleep—you’re safe now.” She pats my head and leaves the room.
I never want to see my mother again.
***
“He’s crashing!”
“Get his heart back online!”
“We’re losing him! Come on, get those fucking paddles on him!”
“I have to repair this tear while he’s open…I have to keep going. I said get those paddles on him right now!”
“But, don’t you see—”
“I see it, dammit! Do what I tell you to do!”
I think about my mother.
How could she possibly know about this?
Where the hell has she been for twenty years?
The only time I ever heard about her was when my grandfather complained that he was still paying her money because of me.
She’s here for money.
Julie is smarter than that—she won’t let her in.
My Julie.
***
“Yeah?” I hear her say from a room at the end of a hallway. I sit in a home office and lean back in a chair so comfortable that I don’t want to stand up.
“Where are you?” I yell for her and hear a shuffle from above me in the attic.
Her sneeze leads me toward the ladder that touches the floor. When I make my way up, I see her taking things from a large chest and throwing them next to her in a frenzy.
“Where are they?” She shakes her head and I step next to her, dodging her flailing arms that come inches within my face.
“What are you looking for?” I ask. She huffs and sits down cross-legged on the floor.
Her eyes are tired as she looks up at me. “I put Colin’s journals up here so we wouldn’t lose them, and look…I freaking lost them!”
She starts to cry, but I smile and sit next to her. “Don’t cry, baby.” I wipe the fat teardrops from her cheeks. “The journals are safe…I sent them to be rebound. No need to cry.”
Her tears stop and are replaced by giggles. “I just didn’t want you to lose the only thing you have left of him.”
My chest starts to burn and it feels like someone has punched a hole straight through my body, setting my chest cavity on fire. I feel myself screaming and thrashing around—
I’m fucking awake.
***
I thrash around on the operating table and several pairs of arms try to hold me down. They all yell at each other frantically.
“What the hell? He’s awake…he’s awake!”
“Get him sedated again!”
I hear a blood-curdling scream fill the room and realize…
It’s coming from me.
I can feel the openness of my torso, the chill that surrounds me and tries to suffocate me while I scream. I start gasping for air and I can literally feel the life draining from my body as they all scramble frantically around me, tripping over each other in the process. Dodging my flailing arms, they are trying to save me from more pain, but it’s not working.
I still can’t see a damn thing.
“He ripped out his IV!”
“Get it back in him! Now!”
“I’m trying! His arms are moving too much—hold him down!”
“Mr. Jackson, please stay still, okay? We need to sedate you again.”
“Don’t make him have a heart attack, just put the damn needle—”
Silence.
Where is everyone?
Where are all of the voices?
Where are all the doctors and nurses?
Where the fuck am I?
I’m alone…that’s where I am.
I miss Julie.
Is she biting her fingernails and anxiously waiting for me to wake up? I have no doubt that she’s tried her best not to fall to pieces; I hate that she’s under so much stress. That isn’t good for her body or the baby.
Our baby.
Is there a baby?
I’m breaking so many rules now that I can’t keep up.
Rules between the living and the dead.
I broke my second rule and I took life for granted.
My father is rolling over in his grave knowing that I won’t be there for my kid…if there is one.
“Finally, he’s back online. Gave us quite a scare there, Mr. Jackson.”
“Let’s get this over with so he doesn’t flatline again.”
I listen as they work on my insides but I feel nothing. I’m back to just hearing their voices and wondering what the hell is going on. As long as they can fix me and send me back to Julie, I’m fine with whatever they’re doing to me. I laugh at myself—obviously no one can hear me—because this shit is torture. I know I’ve done some messed-up shit in my life, but this…this is fucking torture.
I don’t deserve to die.
Breaking the rules shouldn’t have this much punishment.
I have to get back to Julie.
She needs me.
I need her.
We need each other.
I’d like to think that Julie can’t even live life without me, but that’s a little too real to think about right now, inches from death. I thought death was supposed to be graceful and filled with bright lights and comforting music playing over loudspeakers as you walk toward the white marble gates to meet your maker.
So far…nothing like that has happened.
I’m just stuck in between.
I’m not coming or going.
I’m not living or staying dead.
It’s crazy being this alone. I could probably hear a pin drop from miles away with how quiet it is in my head. I can’t even hear the doctors around me anymore, but I can feel my life still clinging onto me.
I start to make a mental list of things I’m going to do when I wake up.
A new set of life rules, maybe.
First, I’m going to tell Julie I love her every single fucking day.
Second, I’m going to write Julie into my will.
Third, I’m going to ask Julie to marry me and never let her go.
Lastly, I’m going to run my tragic mess of a mother off without giving her the money that she wants.
I wonder why I haven’t had any memories of my grandfather. I think about moving into his house after my dad died, and I hardly saw him the first month I lived there. Anita, the maid, was the only contact I had with him. She would always lie to me and tell me he was out of town on business, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was shacking up with someone he shouldn’t be—somewhere he shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t hard to figure out Victor Jackson.
There were a few times where I seriously should’ve been taken away by CPS, but nothing happened that was worse than what my mother did to me. I remember Greta Miller’s eighteenth birthday party that I hosted at my grandfather’s mansion; I distinctly remember him snorting a line of cocaine and having sex with Greta’s married mother in the hot tub—not even a hundred feet from the party and her own daughter.
That was good ol’ Vic for you.
I hardly remember his face anymore, really; I do remember the awful stench of his whiskey and cigars that smelled like mint cloves and oranges so badly that I had to have his house steam cleaned from top to bottom before I sold it.
I wonder where Anita ended up.
I know where Mrs. Atchley is; I made sure she was taken care of when Vic died. I bought her an apartment down the hall from mine so she could be close.
I owe Mrs. Atchley my life.
“Okay, let’s get him stitched back up.”
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
“That’s good, keep going. Be careful not to move him too much; it’s imperative that he doesn’t rip those stitches.”
“There, he’s all done.”
I hear sighs of relief and cheers from the distant crowd. The doctors and nurses around me laugh with each other and tell me what a good job I did…even though my eyes are still glued shut and they don’t know I can actually hear them.
“Mr. Jackson?” I hear the second-voice nurse say to me. “I’ll let your wife know you’re out of surgery and she can see you soon, okay?”
Thank you, second voice.
It’s still cold around my body, but I can hear the beeps of my monitors so I know I’m still alive. He’s fixed what he went in for; I might have a fighting chance now.
“You heard the doctor, everyone. He wants us to monitor Mr. Jackson for the next day so he doesn’t rip out his stitches. We can take him out of sedation around that time.”
Yes! When can I fucking go home?
“I’m going to let his wife know he made it through.”
“Sure thing, Mary.”
Mary. Second voice’s name is Mary.
I’m going to give Mary a huge bonus when I wake up.
When I wake up!
My possibilities might be endless again soon.
“Okay, let’s get him to recovery. His heart is still pretty weak, but that will change hopefully as his organs start to heal.”
The people transporting me chatter about the surgery and what was going on the entire time. Little do they know I’m aware of everything that happened.
“No one can explain it, man. It was like his body just said, ‘Wake the fuck up,’ and then he just…woke the fuck up.” A man chuckles. “Poor bastard…I hope he wasn’t in too much pain, though. That shit can’t be just a bee sting, ya know? He’s lucky he didn’t code and die in there.”
Another man laughs and I shiver inside. I know that laugh from somewhere.
“Yeah, this little shit’s lucky, all right.”
Mac.
Holy shit, that’s Mac.
I pass out as the other guy says something about me having magical powers because I didn’t die. I’m more focused on why that asshole is helping transport me into a damn recovery room. This can’t fucking be good.
I wake back up in a quiet room; I still can’t see a damn thing because my eyes won’t function, but I don’t hear any shuffling or talking around me.
I really need to wake up now.