Chapter 2
Alright?
“Mama, don’t worry. I’m fine.” I told her as she stood looking at me over her sunglasses in a way that clearly said she wasn’t so sure. “I’ll just hang out in the music store a bit and meet you at Starbucks in an hour.”
She smiled crookedly, which must have been where I got it from. We were a lot alike, especially in looks. That used to drive my dad insane. The fact that I had inherited my mom’s dark hair, high cheekbones, and full lips, instead of his strong, wide features. He used to tell my mom I looked more like a girl then a boy. She would just laugh and tell him to grow up. “Alright, sweetheart,” She said kissing me on the forehead in a completely embarrassing way.
And then she turned to cross the street. The light said it was safe to walk. But it wasn’t. As her heals clapped against the hot pavement, the tires of a U-Haul were barreling toward her. Panic froze me in place, like my feet were cemented into the ground. “MAMA!!!”
But that quickly, it was already too late. The truck’s screeching breaks, the horrid smell of burning rubber, and my beautiful mother’s blood staining the road, would always be seared into my mind. Every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep I saw it. I saw her lifeless eyes, her bleeding corpse.
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“Shhh… Everything’s fine now. Its alright.” That newly familiar voice with its Irish—or was it Scottish?—accent hushed me as she brushed the hair out of my face. I was shivering with cold and the thin hospital bed clothes were stuck to me all over. And my head… My head was so full of painful pressure I thought I would keel over right then.
“No. No, its not alright,” I said through chattering teeth as the kind nurse pulled another blanket up over me and wiped my brow with a rag.
“What is not alright?”
I tried to control my shivering but I could stop, and it was just making the pain worse. “My head,” I whimpered. But that wasn’t the trust. The truth is that I had watched my mom be killed, or close enough thanks to a stupid street light. The truth is that I had watched my mom take her last breath when they unplugged the machines from her in a room just like this. And more than that, the truth is this; me in this damned hospital, without a single family member, a home and with a bullet hole in my head.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you some medication. Are you all right now?” Dympna asked as she handed me a wad of tissues.
“Yes.” I blew my nose and wiped my eyes, completely horrified that I had been blubbering like an idiot in front of a near total stranger.
Dympna returned with a little paper cup containing a couple of pills and a bottle of orange juice. I sipped the juice enough to get the pills down and set it aside. “Thank you,” I said laying back, hoping the ache in the back of my head would ease off soon.
“You’re most welcome. Would you like me to leave you now so you can get some rest?”
I shrugged one shoulder not wanting to admit that I liked it better when she was here. “What time is it?”
“Oh, about two in the morning.”
“I slept all that time?”
“That’s generally what happens to people with head trauma.” She said with what seemed to be a silent laugh.
“And what are you doing still here?” I asked, my voice quiet so as not to disturb my own head. “Don’t you work the morning shift?”
She smiled and sat down in the chair near my bed. The reclining one that’s reserved for family. Not that I have any to sit in it. “They let me stay wherever I please.”
“What does Dympna mean?”
“That’s enough questions for now, darling. Why don’t you try and get some more sleep.”
And with that I soon dosed back off.
“My lands, what is goin’ on here?” I started awake to see my grandmother, Eloise, burst through the door. Her fuzzy red hair making her look more and more like Bobo the Clown. “Daniel,” She said, putting spotted hands on thick hips as she stood at the end of my bed. “I’ve tried to call that damned father of yours at the house a dozen times or more. He won’t pick up that blame cell phone neither.”
I noticed Dympna looking at me anxiously from the other side of the room and nodded that it was okay for her to go. This flustered Eloise all the more. “Now, do you mind telling me why my grandson was on the late night news for a suicide attempt? And why didn’t anyone tell me?”
I shrugged and wondering absently what they said about me on the news. “Where have you been?”
Eloise narrowed her eyes. “Didn’t your daddy tell you? I moved to Florida after-” She paused to take a deep breath here. “-After Anise passed.”
Maybe it was the pain medicine messing with my head, making me less sympathetic, or maybe it was the fact that there was no way in hell Eloise had suffered more than me. Even if it had been her daughter who’d died. “Soaking in the sun, huh?”
She scowled. “Why’d you do it, Daniel?”
I cocked my head and stared at her for a long time. “Why didn’t you take me with you?” I finally countered.
Eloise rolled her eyes. “Ed wouldn’t hear of it, and besides, I’m too old to be taking care of a teenager. I had a hard enough time with your mother.”
I scoffed. We all knew that Eloise had been a no show in Mom’s life, but I didn’t need supervision, I needed peace. “Well, then why don’t you just go back home to Ed?”
Her blue eyes flashed. “Don’t you talk to your grandmother like that! I drove all night to see if you were alright.”
I jiggled the handcuff, “Safe and sound.”
She sighed and came around to stand beside me. “I told you mother she shouldn’t have married that man. But there’s nothing I can do about it now.” Her voice was bitter and almost, almost tender. I knew she was trying but I just couldn’t handle it.
“I’m on my own, I get it. But I don’t want to talk right now.”
She patted my right hand. “Just keep me informed, okay? Call and let me know what happens. I’ll come right on back up if you need me.”
“Okay.”
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