67. James & Chenda
James & Chenda
Kiri
The phone starts ringing. At first, I think it belongs to a dream. Natalia is warm against my side, her face tucked into my shoulder. The room is dark.
The ringing stops.
Then starts again.
I reach blindly across the nightstand until my hand closes around the phone. Unknown number. Seattle area code.
I almost silence it but something makes me answer.
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking with Jacob Drysdale?”
It takes me a second to recognize the name. The one my father gave me. The one I stopped using as soon as I left home, shedding it along with his surname and every other piece of him I could scrape off.
The woman’s voice is calm in the careful way people sound when something is very wrong.
I sit up and Natalia stirs beside me.
“Yes.”
“This is Harborview Medical Center. Your mother has been brought into our emergency department in critical condition.”
Everything inside me drops.
“She’s receiving treatment now. We need you to come to the hospital as soon as possible.”
I throw the blankets aside and stand so quickly the room almost goes sideways.
“What happened?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t discuss the circumstances over the phone. The medical team will speak with you when you arrive. Please bring identification.”
Natalia is upright now, watching me.
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s unable to speak right now.”
The floor seems to disappear beneath me.
“Mr. Drysdale, is someone with you?”
“Yes.”
“Please have them drive if possible.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
I end the call before she can say anything else.
Natalia climbs out of bed. “What happened?”
“It’s Ma. She’s at Harborview. Critical condition.”
The words barely come out. Her face changes instantly.
“Oh my God.”
I’m already dragging on my pants. My hands don’t work properly. The button slips twice before I force it through.
“What happened?”
“They wouldn’t tell me.”
Natalia grabs her clothes from the floor. “I’ll drive.”
“No, I need to.”
She pauses with her shirt halfway over her head.
“I need something to do,” I say. “I need to stay focused.”
Her face softens, but she doesn’t argue. I find my keys, then my wallet. My phone almost slips out of my hand as I unlock it.
“Call Rithy.”
I hold it out to her and she takes it quickly.
“Tell him Harborview. Tell him to come now.”
Natalia finishes pulling on her clothes while I shove my feet into shoes without bothering with socks.
Neither of us speaks again until we’re in the car.
The rest of the drive becomes fragments.
Natalia telling Rithy to slow down over speaker phone.
My turn signal clicking. Red lights that last too long.
The pressure of my teeth grinding together until my jaw aches.
Every possible version of what happened forces itself into my head.
A fall.
A stroke.
A car accident.
Dad.
I don’t let myself land on the last one too long, even though it's the most obvious one. At Harborview, I leave the car in the first space I find and barely remember locking it. The only thing I make sure of is that I’m holding Natalia’s hand as I head toward the emergency entrance.
Inside, everything is glaringly bright. A security guard directs us toward the front desk.
I give Ma’s name, mine, my identification.
The woman behind the counter makes one call, then asks us to wait.
“I’m her son.”
“I understand.”
“I’m her emergency contact.”
“Someone will be with you shortly.”
“How shortly?”
Natalia’s hand closes around my arm. I look at her.
She doesn’t tell me to calm down. Just stays there, touching me.
A nurse appears a minute later and leads us away from the main waiting room into a smaller room.
There are four chairs, a table, and a box of tissues positioned so strategically for grief, right in the center, that I can’t look at it.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“The trauma team is still working with her. The physician will explain everything as soon as they can.”
The nurse leaves and I start pacing. Natalia sits, then stands again when I don’t. She comes closer and presses both hands against my chest.
“She’s alive.”
“For now.”
“She’s alive.”
I look away. The door opens before I can answer. A doctor steps inside wearing dark blue scrubs. There’s blood on one sleeve that I try not to look at.
“Mr. Drysdale?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Reynolds. I’m one of the trauma surgeons caring for your mother. She arrived unconscious with significant injuries to her head and neck. There are signs of strangulation, blunt-force trauma, several fractured ribs, and a small bleed around the brain.”
Natalia’s fingers find mine.
“Is she gonna make it?”
The doctor doesn’t lie quickly enough, I see the doubt there.
“She's critical. We’ve secured her airway because of swelling in her throat, and she’s on a ventilator. The brain bleed is small enough that we’re monitoring it closely rather than operating immediately, but the loss of oxygen is our biggest concern.”
“What does that mean?”
“We don’t yet know whether there has been permanent neurological injury.”
My hand crushes Natalia’s. She doesn’t pull away. The doctor continues carefully.
“The fact that emergency services reached her when they did gave her a chance. Right now, she is stable enough to transfer to the intensive care unit, but the next twenty-four hours will be important.”
Stable enough which is another way of saying not stable at all.
“Can I see her?”
“Once she’s settled in the ICU, yes. Briefly.”
I nod even though I don’t understand what I’m agreeing with. The door opens again. Rithy stands there in black sweatpants and a coat thrown over a T-shirt, his hair completely wild. His eyes go from me to the doctor.
“How bad?”
I can’t answer. Natalia does.
“She’s alive, stable. She’s going to the ICU.”
Rithy closes his eyes. At first, he stays in the doorway.
Then he comes to me. We stand shoulder to shoulder while the doctor repeats the injuries, and Rithy stares at the wall with his arms folded so tightly across himself it looks painful.
When the doctor opens the door to leave, a man in plain clothes is waiting in the hallway, a badge clipped to his belt.
A woman stands beside him with a hospital identification badge and a folder held against her chest.
“Are you both the sons of James and Chenda Drysdale?”
Rithy’s mouth twists at the surname, but he says nothing. I nod. The detective closes the door behind him.
“I’m Detective Alvarez with Seattle Police. This is Dana Brooks, a victim advocate. We need to speak with you about what happened at your mother’s residence.”
My skin goes cold.
“Your father was found deceased inside the home.”
Rithy goes rigid beside me.
I hear myself ask, “How?”
“His death appears to have been self-inflicted.”
Natalia’s grip tightens around my hand.
“A neighbor reported hearing a gunshot and called 911. Officers arrived and received no response at the door, so they entered under emergency circumstances. Your father was found in the living room with a gunshot wound. Your mother was located nearby, unconscious but still breathing.”
Rithy sits down hard. I don’t move. The words refuse to arrange themselves into anything real.
“He thought he'd killed her, or that she'd be dead soon enough,” I say.
“We don’t know what he believed,” Detective Alvarez says.
“This is still a preliminary investigation. The scene indicates that your mother was assaulted before your father’s death.
We also found partially burned photographs in the bathtub, but we’re still determining how that fits into what happened. ”
The photographs. That’s what I think about. Ma on her knees gathering them from beneath the table. Her hands smoothing the corners. The way she held every page like it contained something so special. He waited until we were gone, then carried them to the bathtub and tried to burn them.
Not because they mattered to him.
Because they mattered to her.
The image comes whether I want it or not. Ma reaching into the smoke. Trying to pull them free. Dad dragging her back. Her fighting him for the only proof she had that there had ever been sweetness in our lives.
Something vicious twists through me. He didn’t just try to kill her.
He tried to erase us first.
The neighbor heard the shot. The shot that ended him is the reason Ma might live. A laugh tries to rise out of me, but there’s nothing human in it. Natalia turns toward me. My voice sounds detached, like it belongs to someone on the other side of the room.
“He beat her until she stopped moving, then put a gun to his own head. Huh. At least his last decision was a good one.”
The detective doesn’t correct me. Rithy covers his face with both hands. I stand there waiting for grief to come.
It never appears, not for him. Only rage.
Relief. Horror. Some ugly mix of all three twisted too tightly to separate.
The victim advocate says something about the house being secured as a crime scene.
About not going there tonight. That someone can help us retrieve essential belongings later. I barely hear her.
All I can think is that James Drysdale is dead.
Really dead.
He can’t touch Ma again, or make Rithy feel like something shameful, or drown the whole house beneath the television until no one else is allowed to exist. He’ll never spit another insult at Natalia or look at me like I’m nothing but a disappointment.
The relief arrives so fast it makes me sick.
Natalia reads something in my face. She steps between me and everyone else and holds my face in her hands.
“You don’t have to figure it out right now. There's no right way to feel in this situation.” she whispers.
Ma is alive.
Dad is dead.
I don’t know which truth is harder to hold onto.
Detective Alvarez clears his throat.
"I'll need to ask you a few questions."