Chapter 17 #2
I heard the heart monitor beeping erratically, saw the paddles on a tray.
Recognizing the cardiology surgeon and four others all dressed for business and adjusting the tubes, holding her wrist, taking her pulse.
I saw them trying to stabilize her, saw the pain on her face, but her eyes were open and she saw me.
And she smiled, weak yet loving. I rushed to her and, before they could stop me, I took her hand. My father was right behind me.
“Sir, you need to leave.” An orderly or some dude who thought he could, grabbed me to move me away. He was surprised that I was a strong SOB, though he shouldn’t have been, and I shoved him to the floor. Someone shrieked. Then I bent down, desperate to talk to my mother.
“Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t take your call earlier. Hang in there so we can talk.” Her breathing was labored. A woman held her wrist, adjusted a drip tube, and glared at me.
“Son.” My father put a hand on my shoulder and I turned to him, surprised to find I had tears rolling down my cheeks and my own sadness reflected in his eyes.
I stood and backed away. Two security types met us at the door.
One look at me, at my game face stare, the one that said I was not going to lose this fucking fight, and they backed away.
One of them murmured something about there being a mistake and sorry for the intrusion.
We went back into the hall, the security dudes left us alone, and my father took me aside.
He wasn’t quite as big as I was, but he wasn’t small and he was tough, so when he slammed me against the wall, I felt it, past the shock of the assault, and saw into his eyes.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Gabriel Alexander Wyatt?”
He never used my full name and I knew a rhetorical question when I heard one, so in spite of the stabbing pain and the fact that I’d just cried at my mother’s bedside as a team of physicians and nurses were treating—or trying to treat her failing heart, I was appropriately intimidated and kept my mouth shut.
“Your mother just had another fucking heart attack. They are saving her life. She doesn’t need your intrusion now. She needs your support.”
He was right. I’d need to stand on my own feet without her support because she needed me more than I needed her.
I needed to support my father too. Fuck asking him for advice about fucking football.
Who the hell cared about that now? My world was on a ledge and I had to maintain my balance, claim my head back.
Deal with my heartaches another time. Or never.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” That was all could say. Anything else was extraneous. Another moment of influence by Hunter Quintanna, man of few words, I thought randomly. Dad nodded and backed away.
“I know you are. I’m sorry too. I know you wanted to see her, talk to her. I’m afraid—” He turned and swiped a hand across his face, didn’t bother finishing his sentence, didn’t need to.
Without turning him around, I put my arms around him and hugged him, leaning down, squeezing my eyes tight, gritting my teeth and calling up the football demons to cement my resolve, to strengthen me to deal with whatever happened no matter what.
To hold onto my life, my dad, my soul long enough for the pain to stop.
He put his hand over mine where it gripped his chest, arms crossed and clutching his shirt, holding him together and praying I could hold myself together. I thought of Denise, a fleeting wish that she was here, that I could call her. But I’d foregone my right to lean on her ever again.
“Dad, what about Annalee and Joe?”
He shook his head. “Call them for me.” His voice sounded distant, needy, unlike I’d ever heard before. I gave him a squeeze and let go, took a deep breath and slipped out my phone.
I was on the phone with my brother Joe when her cardiologist, Dr. Aoki, came out of her room and told my father that Mom had been stabilized. She’d had another heart attack and they were transferring her back to ICU. I updated Joe as I eavesdropped on Dr. Aoki’s conversation with Dad.
But when the doc said Dad could go in and see her for a minute before they moved her, I ended my call with Joe. As I joined Dad and the doc, relief seeped in, displacing some of the tension holding me taut. Dr. Aoki must have seen it in my face.
“She’s not out of the woods yet. Stay calm, no drama.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry for my earlier behavior. No excuse.”
He nodded and gave me a forgiving smile, but I wanted to knock his teeth out.
Anger had come to roost and I recognized it for what it was.
An emotional crutch. This was the Derek and Laura incident, the loss, the betrayal and all the consequences playing themselves out all over again.
The depression, the meltdown, the anger.
And then the redemption by way of football.
Damn. Only I was no longer a kid. I was a full-grown man and I needed to grow up, to deal with . . . whatever happened. My mother’s mortality, football, and Mia. In whatever order made sense.
It all sounded so simple in my head as I walked back into my mother’s hospital room. One attendant stood bedside as she lay there, intubated for oxygen, hoses in her mouth and nose, needle in her hand for fluids and meds.
She opened her eyes and she and Dad talked quietly while I held the hand that didn’t have a needle attached to it.
A lot more than a few minutes went by as we sat with her, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I’d take the extra time with her. Annalee arrived and then Joe and though we all practically whispered, especially by our family’s standards since we weren’t known for being soft-spoken, we got loud enough to get noticed.
They finally got around to throwing us out and wheeled her bed from the room to bring her back into ICU.
We all followed and got herded to the small lounge area down the hall from her new room where they needed to hook her up to the array of monitors.
I paced, stopping every so often to stare out the window, not seeing a thing.
I could have been staring at a blank wall.
I could have been pacing around inside a prison cell, the way I felt. Restless, pent up, mixed up. Angry.
“I’m going to take off,” Joe said. “Let me give you a ride back to Gabe’s house, Annalee. You can make me some food.”
She said goodbye, giving Dad, then me, a hug. She was a good kid, though not much of a kid anymore. On their way out, I listened to their argument about who would cook and what they would cook. It almost made me smile. Should have made me smile. But my face was too tense, like the rest of me.
“Why don’t you go home?” my father said. “Before you wear a trough in the floor with your pacing.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t you have to get up for practice in the morning?”
I stopped and looked at him. Good question.
“I’ll wait here with Mom,” he continued. “I’ll call if anything happens.”
“Coming to my house?”
He nodded. I gave him a hug. “Tell Mom I love her.”
I left even though everything in me screamed to stay, because I could tell Dad wanted to be alone with her, with his thoughts, to come to grips with her mortality on his own, in his own way.
The lucidity of my thinking, my ability to understand him, someone else, the fact that I was no longer stuck in my own head, struck me. I took a long deep breath. Thank holy Jesus.
I let myself into my dark apartment, not wanting to talk to my siblings, knowing they were downstairs., leaned against the kitchen sink, and slipped out my phone.
It was time to talk to Mia. To finish the conversation, clear the confusion in my head. But I tossed the phone on the counter. In person.