Chapter 38
Tristan
Imake it to my car, collapse in the front seat, and wheeze out an unsteady exhale.
Breathe, Tristan, breathe.
I remember the trick Nick taught me, our first ambulance ride together.
Tentatively, I place a hand on my heart and another on my diaphragm, feeling the frantic pace of my breaths.
In… hold… out…
In… hold… out…
Slowly, breathing calms. My heart stops sprinting towards an invisible finish line.
My mind isn’t less cluttered, but I can at least see through the mess.
I text Bobbie, find out what hospital she’s at with Dad, and map a route there. It’ll take me fifteen minutes.
Those fifteen minutes are spent white-knuckling the steering wheel and trying not to lose my mind over 1) Dad’s fall, 2) my guilt over not being there, and 3) the shame I feel for how I just acted with Nick.
I’m terrified that Dad’s fall is just the start of things really taking a turn, and I feel horribly guilty for not being there.
And my behavior with Nick? That was something adolescent. I was taking my fear out on him as anger, and he didn’t deserve that.
Cinematically, rain has started to fall by the time I screech into the hospital’s parking lot, nearly gaining air on one of the speed bumps.
I’m out of my car before I remember I need to take the keys out of the ignition, and I very nearly trip as I run to the emergency room doors.
Thanks to my years as a nurse, I know how to navigate a chaotic emergency room, how to handle myself amid the competence and the ruthlessness, and I am quickly pointed in the direction of Dad’s room.
He’s propped up on pillows when I get there; Bobbie stands next to him, a concerned look twisting on her face. I do a quick assessment of the situation—Dad’s breathing on his own, there’s an IV in his hand, but no other concerning tubes or wires. His monitors look good.
For the first time, I let myself think that maybe everything will be okay.
“Tristan!” Bobbie says, her eyes immediately filling with tears.
We embrace, and I squeeze her extra tight.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” I say, and all of a sudden, I’m sobbing into her shoulder.
“Oh, honey,” Bobbie says, her voice both loving and firm, “It was not your fault.”
It takes several more minutes of her hugging me and gently telling me I’m not to blame before I’m able to stop crying.
“I got snot on your shirt,” I say, almost breaking into tears again.
Bobbie waves a hand. “It’s fine.”
She fetches me a box of tissues and goes to sit by Dad’s side while I honk into a Kleenex, my dignity having gone the way of my tear ducts.
When I’ve composed myself enough, I ask, “How’s he doing? Any updates from the doctors or his scans?”
“We’re really lucky he didn’t hit his head,” Bobbie says, wiping her eyes. “It looks like he’s coming out of this with only a sprained wrist. Cognitive tests were fine, and the scans didn’t reveal any other physical injuries.”
I let out a breath and sit beside her. “We got really lucky this time.”
She nods, and I know she understands what I didn’t say: We might not get as lucky next time.
“I just wish I could’ve been there,” I whisper hoarsely.
My throat is raw from crying—and from what Nick and I were doing early.
I didn’t even have time to shower before coming here. I wonder if I still smell of him, of sex.
Bobbie turns to me and fixes me with a firm, almost stern, look.
“Tristan,” she says gently. “I know that you take a lot of responsibility for your father’s health. You want to take care of him, and I think it is rooted in a really admirable place. He took care of you when you were a boy, and you want to return the favor—is that right?”
I shrug. “More or less. I think I have a responsibility to him—he’s my dad, and I love him.”
She takes my hand. “I know you do, honey.”
She sighs. “I’m a parent, too, you know. I would do anything for my kids. And I hope you know I include you on that list.”
“I know,” I say softly.
Bobbie has two biological children of her own: Stephanie and Orlando, who are both several years older than I am.
Stephanie lives in Palo Alto, but Orlando moved to New York a while ago. Bobbie loves them both fiercely and has never made me doubt how much she cares for me.
“Every good parent realizes something eventually,” Bobbie continues. “We spend our kids’ early years loving them so much, and that love makes us want to shield them from anything that will hurt them. That love comes from a good and genuine place, but sometimes it twists something in us.
“That willingness to do anything sometimes turns into a need for control—we want to protect our children so much that we try to control them. That never works, and sometimes it can only push our children further away.
“What we have to realize, as hard as it is, is that our children must learn to be independent. They must be able to make their own mistakes. Sometimes, all we can do—all we should do—is walk alongside them so that when, or if, they ask for help, we’re there.
If we try to do any more than that, we’ll just hurt our children and ourselves.
We hurt them because we’re trying to control them, and they think we don’t trust them.
And we hurt ourselves by blaming ourselves for things that should not be our fault. We have to learn to let go.”
I hand her a tissue—we both need them right now.
She dabs her eyes.
“Honey, you need to learn the same lesson with your dad. I know how much you want to protect him, and that it comes from a place of pure love. But you have to learn to let go of that need for control. Your dad is an adult, and he’s lived a lot of life before you even got to it.
Yes, he’s changing, and some of those changes break my heart, but he’s still him.
You have to trust him a little bit more to know when he needs help.
He’s proud, but he’s also realistic. And he loves you.
He doesn’t want to become a burden, but you’ve tried so hard to show him he isn’t a burden that you’ve gone ahead and created a burden for yourself.
Let go. You are carrying enough as it is. You need to exhale.”
The water I had after the hookup was not nearly enough to combat the amount of crying I’m doing now.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I gasp.
She squeezes my hand again. “Focus on what you can control. You can control your actions, not your dad’s. And Tristan—it’s okay to be sad.”
I know she doesn’t just mean about Dad.
She means about Warren.
About leaving my career in nursing.
Leaving my life in Los Angeles.
That whole person I was.
Whoever I was, that’s gone now. I don’t know if that version of me died in the car crash along with Warren, or if it died sometime after that, or even long before, but I am a new man now.
I don’t think I’ve grieved the man I used to be.
My tears are unstoppable now. I lean into Bobbie’s embrace, and she holds me, letting me cry, and cry, and cry.
“Jesus Christ! You’re not mourning my death, are you?”
Bobbie and I jump in our seats, and then our tears become laughter. Dad is glaring at us from the pillows, but then he starts chuckling, too.
“How bad was it?” he asks, finally, when we’ve all collected ourselves a bit.
Bobbie kisses him. “We can talk about it later, honey. We’re just glad you’re okay.”
I blink at my remaining tears and pat Dad on the shoulder.
“You had me worried for a second, there,” I say gamely, resisting the impulse to apologize for not being there.
He grins. “Can’t keep an old man down, can ya?”
No, I think. No, you can’t.