2. Colson
TWO
COLSON
I break out of the family room and hook a left. When I initially got up from that cushy, sorrow-ridden chair, my plan was to stop by the front desk so the nurse could call whoever the fuck was available to guide me back to Mom’s room.
I don’t know if she has one of those, if her body is hidden behind a flimsy curtain on hooks, or if they’ve already taken her down to the morgue or somewhere else entirely.
I’ve been trying not to think about it ever since Dr. Elsher dropped the bomb a few minutes ago, but it’s difficult when I keep repeating the same seven words in my head.
There was nothing more we could do.
On the drive over, I thought it’d only be a matter of time until I’d see Mom’s face, alive and well.
People overdose all the time and come back to life. Get a second chance. Some people get more than two. Down to the marrow of my bones, I hoped the doctors knew what they were doing enough to help her through whatever shitstorm she got herself in.
But her heart wasn’t in it. Dr. Elsher said so himself.
After years of continuous drug use, her heart was shot and wanted out. The opioid antagonist medication that has existed for years wasn’t enough to bring it— her —back.
I swallow the scratchiness at the back of my throat. It’s as dry as sand and just as rough. I find the men’s bathroom down the hall and push into it. I slam the door and twist the lock, not giving a damn if anyone needs to take a piss. I need a fucking minute. Time to wrap my head around what’s happening. A moment to acknowledge what will come next.
My dress shoes squeak against the tile floors, and I duck to check for feet in the two stalls. When I find both empty, I let out a staggering breath and press my fingers to my eyes before my fists fall to the sink. My head reels, and the doctor’s words chisel into my memory, never to be forgotten. I brace the walls of my mind, trying like hell to fight against them. Against my heart breaking more than it already has.
No one knows the hell I’ve been through with Mom. They don’t know what I’ve endured, what I’ve given up for her. How I’ve tried so goddamn hard to take care of her and get people off her back so she could get back to a better place.
“It isn’t supposed to be like this.” I glance up at the ceiling as if there aren’t endless floors of patients above me. I speak to Mom, wherever she is now. “You were supposed to get clean in there. What the fuck happened?”
I want to know how she got that syringe.
My head spins trying to figure it out, but it’s hard when I’m being torn in multiple directions. I try to recount everything I know as if it’ll help me get through the days ahead.
Aunt Bess said she got picked up for possession and intent to deliver. While I was paying off Finn, she was making deals with someone. So, who, then? Did she run to Clyde behind Finn’s back? Was it that guy that Violet said she saw at the house on Thanksgiving? Or was it someone none of us knows?
I know things are murky in the corrections system, but there’s no way in hell she should’ve gotten ahold of what she did. The guards should’ve kept a closer eye on her, knowing that she was a flight risk when it came to drugs.
Why didn’t they give more of a damn?
The only explanation I come up with is that someone snuck shit in, and that’s how she got it. That thought doesn’t sit well. Unless she was getting her hands on the stuff the minute she got there, she’d have gone through withdrawal symptoms by now. She would have been on the other side of it already.
And yet, she wasn’t.
I press back into my foot and stretch my leg out. I tap my shoe off the floor before slamming my fist down on the acrylic countertop surrounding the sink.
Pain icicles its way through my hand. I barely feel it. “Fuck!”
I twist around and look down at my hands. They’re shaking and lack the calmness I’ve spent so many years perfecting. Mom pulled up the worst feelings imaginable in me over the years. I learned how to move through them, but now, as I’m minutes away from claiming her body, my control is spiraling, my resolve weakening.
My chest is heavy.
My head runs rampant with questions.
My lungs beg to expand so I can let it all out, but the restlessness in my legs begs me to run like I did when I was a teenager who didn’t know what the hell to do.
I can’t bring myself to do it. To leave. Even though Aunt Bess, Uncle Thad, Sebastian, and— Jesus Christ —Violet are here, I’m really the only one Mom had in her last days before ending up in jail. I have no choice but to lift my head, square my shoulders, and walk out there to face one of my biggest fears since I was a child.
No matter how much I don’t want to do it, I can’t let anyone else verify she’s Janie Moore.
The only person who should do it is me, and as I stare back at myself in the bathroom mirror, I can’t shake how that fact grips my stomach in its fist, squeezing until all of its contents come barreling up the back of my throat.
When I make it out of the bathroom, I find the others waiting for me outside of the family room. They’re grouped in the hall, looking as hopeless and devastated as I am inside. Even Violet, who stands arm-to-arm with Sebastian looks as though she’s been through a great loss.
If he weren’t my cousin and we were in any other scenario, I’d walk down this hall and pull her to my side. Remind the fucking world that she’s mine. That I don’t intend on giving her up so goddamn easily.
But this is Sebastian she’s tapping strength from, the boy who scoffed at my delinquent ideas of stealing whiskey out of his parents’ stash, and the same person who told me not to fuck it up when I decided to jump all in with the girl beside him.
There’s no one better in the world to be by her side right now.
He looks down at Violet like a big protective brother would. Like he’d never say no to offering his shoulder. And I’m fucking grateful for it, because ever since Aunt Bess stumbled to our table with bad news written in her features, I haven’t known what to say to the girl I’m absolutely crazy about.
The reluctance that nearly had me pushing her away before clamps down on me, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. Not when there are more important things to do. I decide to ignore it until I have no choice but to face it.
Violet deserves affection, communication, and explanations. Not this bullshit life of mine. Not the secrets I’ve kept from her about Mom’s addiction. Shame fills me just thinking about her finding out how much I’ve lied to my family.
Lied about Finn.
Lied about Mom relapsing.
Lied about the money and drugs.
Aunt Bess is the first to break away from the rest of them. In the time I was gone, she’s managed to pull herself together. Tears don’t stain her cheeks, and her lips are set back in the firm line they were in earlier this evening at the fundraiser. She walks up to me and lifts her hands to the lapels of my jacket.
“Oh, Colson. We’ll get through this,” she promises. Just like that, the strength that resides in the woman who I grew up secretly wishing at times was my mom is back. She tugs on my suit jacket, and it’s so damn hard looking down into her soft eyes that I almost don’t. They look too much like Mom’s.
I flick my gaze over her head, ignoring the glimmer of Violet’s dress in the corner of my eye. God, she looks so fucking good. Pretty in a way I can’t possibly describe, but now her dress is tainted with the news of my mother’s passing. I fix my sight on a vending machine nearby. Far enough away from my girl that her dress doesn’t push into my line of sight and cause a revolving door of guilt to trip me up.
I clear my throat and tell my aunt, “Mom’s been alone long enough.”
“I know.” She looks down and shakes her head. “I don’t want to do this anymore than you, but we’ll get through this together. We’ll figure out funeral details after.”
It’s so fucking hard to look at her, especially when all I see are the features she shares with the woman we’re here for. “She wouldn’t want that.”
“She needs to be laid to rest properly, but we’ll worry about that later. The triage nurse called the doctor again. We’re just waiting for someone to come out and show us the way.”
A minute later, a woman in scrubs greets us. She leads us back through the emergency department and stops when we reach the far back corner where there’s an enclosed room.
The lullaby-like beeping coming from the nurse’s station behind us fades. The woman points to a few chairs outside of the room. Sebastian moves to sit in one, and I hate that Violet follows. Hate it even more that I don’t speak up and tell her how much I fucking appreciate her being here despite not being able to show it in this moment.
On the outside, I’m a rock-hard shell of the man she’s gotten to know. On the inside, I’m liquid goo and slipping between my own fingertips with each step I take.
I try my damnedest to reach for any words I can find. Something to make me feel like my world isn’t caving in around me as my vision narrows and a buzzing takes over my senses. I squeeze my hands into fists, hoping it’ll relieve me of the tingling sensation that spreads through them. My heart hammers in my chest, thumping like the beat of a drum. Over and over and over until it covers the buzzing, and it’s all there is.
My eyes lock on the door, the barrier between having a mom who’s alive and one who has fallen victim to her addiction. I’ve imagined this moment more times than I care to admit; walking into a room and finding Mom lifeless.
I don’t want to step through that door. I don’t want to see her frail body void of life. I’d rather spear a knife into my gut than drag my feet inside. There’s so much I’d rather do. So many other places I’d rather be. In some weird way, I’m still the little boy who watched his mother’s greedy habit enslave her.
It makes me want to retch, but I swallow down the foul taste that creeps up the back of my throat and spreads over my tongue. My heartbeat creeps up the back of my throat and into my head. It’s what I focus on so the nausea swimming deep in my stomach doesn’t overpower my senses and take over.
“Colson?” Aunt Bess’s voice seeps in, and I snap my gaze in her direction. She looks at me as if she didn’t mean to startle me. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Sorry, what?”
“We think it’s best if you go in first. You can find your peace without anyone being in your space.”
Yeah, something tells me I won’t be finding that for a while. Still, I nod and look toward the door. It’s the most daunting thing I’ve ever stared down.
“Unless you’d like me to go in with you?” Aunt Bess suggests.
“No.”
“Okay. Take all the time you need.”
I take one step in front of the other, my eyes settling on Violet’s golden-brown orbs. Sadness, so much of it, fills in the edges of them that it floods my chest with an insurmountable pressure.
I stop directly in front of her and kneel to my haunches. I don’t miss the surprise in her expression. I’ve been aloof with her since the fundraiser, barely offering much in return. I’ve been too in my head to give her what she needs in such an awkward situation as this one, but I can’t go in there without giving her one last piece of the person she knew before.
Before the overdose.
Before that car ride.
Before claiming Mom’s body.
The Colson she knew before his mother sailed into the horizon without so much as a goodbye.
I’m also doing it for myself. There’s so much integrity within Violet, so much strength she doesn’t even realize she has, that I want a sliver of it before I face Mom’s lifeless body.
My palms stretch over the material of her dress atop her thighs. I grip softly, getting the response I’m hoping for. She reaches out, holds my face, and looks down at me. Her bottom lip trembles, just barely, and like all the times we’ve done in the past, I look into her eyes and tell her without words just how much I fucking need her to be here when I come out.
She leans forward, and when her lips brush mine, this intense urge consumes me. The kind that always seems to push in unannounced when I’m with her. Always at the perfect moment. Always breathing life into my lungs when I can’t gasp damn near deep enough.
I reach up and grip the back of her neck as I lick the seam of her lips and ask—no, beg —for all the strength she’s willing to pour into me. When she pulls away on a strained breath, I roll my forehead against hers twice. Her eyes, lighter than they were a second ago, bore into mine. And while she silently tells me I’m going to be okay, I don’t quite believe I will be.