CHINA
Before Dad’s death, I never understood loss. Not real loss.
Not this.
This is epic shit.
Weeks have passed—fucking years if you asked me—and the last thing I want to be doing is sitting here, waiting in the chapel of the hospital. I’m the first to arrive before Whiskey, the chaplain, and our parents’ lawyers. They said they’d control all the needs that had to do with Mom, Wyatt, Circe’s care, the ‘razzi’ and all the bullshit that a young woman shouldn’t have to handle. If I really wanted to deal with these things, I’d rail at them to stop treating me like a fucking ten-year-old. As it is, I want to be left alone to deal on my own, to handle the grief. To wait for Wyatt.
My emotions are jacked and I’m holding my shit together by a thin wire as best I can. My heart can’t take much more, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to put myself back together if Wyatt...I can’t even find myself saying it internally.
I won’t.
I can’t imagine my brother gone from my life. He’s my confidante, my shoulder to punch, my race partner, the guy who keeps the bad blood at bay when I’m treated as a nuisance in my own home, and the one who’s kept me laughing through it all, even when all he wanted to do was cry and curl up in a ball himself. Honestly, I think part of the reason he’s taking so long to wake from the coma is that his head knows it needs time to process everything that’s happened. Over the years, he’s dealt with being a bipolar manic depressive. It’s had an iron grip on his soul. It was the one thing bringing him down, hardening him to human connection. I knew that. I knew that it was always hard for him to deal with others. And how he hid it so well, for so long? I knew the track was his main release, outside of women. Only his closest friends are privileged enough to know what he contends with. They’d seen how Mother could send him into a rage, into a depressive state, and how she created it all. For sure, I’m glad that I don’t deal with the same demons they do, or did. My only demon is my bike and how I ride it.
“Doll?”
Turning, I see Whiskey standing in the half-lit entrance. Looking at him, his stature, his frame, his mannerisms and poise, all I see is Dad. He knows how much he looks like him, and even though we haven’t lived together since I was little, I can see the heartache as it creeps across his stern features.
Fuck, I miss Dad.
“Hey,” I say, rising from the pew, waiting for him to come to me.
We’ve never had a relationship. With too many years between us, and a country that’s divided us, it’s never been feasible. He left when he was sixteen to live out west with Auntie Janie. I was only six. The little brat that would chase him around the house pestering him, cramping his teenage lifestyle. That was me.
It’s funny, really, in the past two months with Dad, this with Mom, Wyatt, and Circe, I’ve seen him more now than I ever did back then. It hasn’t made our relationship better, just more current.
“Hey. Any news?” he asks. His raspy voice is deep, scratchy, and not unlike Wyatt’s. It makes me wistful. Shaking the feeling of sadness, grounding myself in the knowledge that he’s still here, he’s still with me, but sleeping like a lazy fucker, I smile weakly.
“No, not yet.” Whiskey had a championship to attend just before coming here. He was in the middle of his races and not expected until the next day originally, but when he heard about the crash, a few flights later, he was here. That was over a month ago.
“What were you doing? I thought you were just heading to the house for a bit?”
“Crown Industries booked a meeting with the press. I was commanded to be there by Merconda,” he states, sauntering up the aisle toward me. “Have you been waiting long?”
“No.” I motion to the wooden bench. As he sits, I take another seat.
It’s hard when you have nothing to talk about, except for morbid conversation. What do you talk about? We’re not engaging each other for the sake of talking. We don’t want to break the silence with a stupid comment. Instead, we’re taking in each other’s melancholic presence. We haven’t really talked talked either. Yeah, I called him, gave him the rundown about the crash, and he’s been here off and on. But we’re disconnected. He’s ran around for me, grabbing things and dealing with shit. It hasn’t been easy on either of us. We’ve argued a few times, but nothing important was talked about. Both of us are avoiding the elephant in the room. Honestly, it all sucks fucking balls.
“Sorry,” he says with sincerity. Taking my hand in his, I look into his face. I see the same care and love reflected back. He’s a mirror image of Dad. It’s crushing.
“James, this is great, really. Thank you for being here.” I’ve done everything I can to hold it in. Keeping my shit together in public and around the staff, but the weight of it is crushing me. I just can’t hold it back anymore.
As the floodgates open, I fall apart. Tears stream down my face in a torrent of rain. Everything around me falls into despair as I lay my head in the crook of his arm. Gasping between coughing breaths, I feel his hand on my head, stroking me, making the feeling of loneliness even more apparent. He’s been gone for so long that we’re like cousins. We aren’t sister, brother, mother and father to him, and they made this happen, creating less family along the way.
“Let it go, China. It’ll be okay...somehow.” I hear him choking back a tear or two of his own, but the sound is drowned out by my total heartbreak. It annihilates me, taking over. I’ve held it in for so long that I’m not sure how I’ll put myself back together after letting it go. He may be here to take part of the burden away, but it still feels so shattering.
In my despair, I don’t notice the door of the chapel as it opens, nor do I hear the chaplain as I collapse into hopelessness.
“It’s okay. Hang on, China. I’ve got you.” Hearing Jamieson’s voice so closely resembling Dad’s and Wyatt’s, I feel a renewed wave of tears tumble down. I’m sobbing uncontrollably.
Vaguely, I adjust as the lights of the chapel brighten. Hearing the scratching of shoes across the floor and the words of Whiskey as he tries to calm me down, I try not to pass out.