Then Stolen Trauma
THEN: STOLEN TRAUMA
I can’t stop shaking.
It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I woke up in a New Orleans hotel room next to two dead bodies on a blood-soaked mattress. Each minute since has been worse than the last. From the moment I checked into a bed & breakfast six blocks away, my head has been nothing short of hell.
Hazy memories from the missing night haunt the darkness with trauma I can feel but not touch.
The constant shivering is making it hard to breathe.
The sting of suspicious injuries I don’t want to consider is making it hard to think.
I tuck the blanket tighter around my shoulders, but the warm quilt does nothing to counter the chill in my bloodstream. I can’t tell if the cold is coming from the air or my dying soul.
Merrick has kept his word about giving me time to piece myself back together. I haven’t seen or heard from anyone, which means he’s covered for me. I still don’t understand why he showed mercy, but I’m grateful, because I’ve stopped functioning.
The panic attacks are stealing every fucking breath.
I reach a trembling hand toward the phone on my nightstand. It’s a mistake. I know it, even as I unlock the screen and scroll to the text stream. But I’ve lost control. I’ve lost everything and I just…
God, I just can’t.
I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t think.
I just need something to hold onto.
One fucking splinter of light.
The last message from Gramps waits where I left it two days ago. It’s a selfie that’s supposed to show him riding a horse, but he only managed to get his right shoulder and the horse’s ass in the frame.
A choked laugh erupts from my throat at the familiar image. I loved it the day it came in. It’s my fucking oxygen right now.
I press call.
After two rings, the call connects.
“Hey, kid! That you?”
His voice.
Tears pound the backs of my eyelids. God, I miss him. How it feels to confront kindness.
Love. Connection.
Anything good .
“You there, son?”
My chest is so tight. I can’t get the words out.
I force a stream of frigid air into my lungs.
“It’s… me. Hi, Gramps. How, um…”
I clench my eyes shut.
Stop it! You can’t cry. He can’t know the truth.
Fucking function or hang up!
“Son? You still there?”
I grip the phone in my hand, but it doesn’t ease the avalanche crushing my chest.
Breathe, Shaw. Fucking breathe.
“Yeah. Sorry. How are you, Gramps?”
“Honestly, kid? Not great. They didn’t have pudding again at dinner, can you believe that? Second day in a row. What kind of establishment is this, anyway? Bernie and I submitted a complaint. Signed it and put it in an envelope and everything.”
More tears slam against my eyelids.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.
“Everything alright with you? You sound off.”
The concern in Gramps’ voice makes the tears pound harder.
I press the heel of my palm against my eye, fighting for air.
“Son? What is it? What’s going on?”
I shake my head. Traitorous liquid spills down my cheeks, burning my skin.
Stop it!
I suck in a ragged breath. “I-I’m fine. Everything’s great.”
My stab wound pulses with fresh agony at the lie. Other mystery pains throb in reply, screaming truths I don’t want to hear.
A deep ache shudders through my entire body with every fractured breath.
“You don’t sound fine. What happened? Those professors giving you a hard time? Do I need to call to remind them you’re the smartest, strongest, sweetest kid they’ll ever have the privilege of teaching?”
A weak smile pokes through the crushing pain, and I manage to shove the ache back behind my ribs.
“No, school is great. Just aced my term paper for Nineteenth Century Lit.”
“Yeah? No shit! That’s wonderful. Can I read it? You haven’t let me read your work in years. Not since you went off to that fancy university. I tell everyone at the community center, you know. How my boy got a full ride to some hoity toity college and one day we’ll have your books in our library. When that happens, I’ll be looking Spence Watkins in the eye and telling him to eat dirt because his grandson isn’t half the artist you are.”
I rub away more tears as I try to catch my breath.
Get it together.
He can’t know I’m shattering.
“One day you will,” I lie. My voice is raspy with each labored breath. “Sorry. The flu.”
I need to hang up. This was a mistake. I knew it the second I picked up the phone, but I couldn’t stop myself this time. I’m too weak. Too fucking broken.
Falling. Plummeting.
Disintegrating.
“Oh no! The flu? No wonder you sound so bad. I’m sorry, son. I wish I was there. I’d make you my famous lemon chicken casserole.”
“Your awful lemon chicken is the last thing anyone should eat when they’re sick… or ever,” I force out.
He chuckles. “You always were a picky eater.”
The silent tears are streaming now, soaking the pillow like my blood did last night.
Murky memories seep in.
Raucous laughter. A dizzying clamor of voices and words I can’t decipher. Hands on me, guiding me… somewhere. I don’t know where.
But you do know where. You fucking know .
The sobs are clogging my throat now. Choking out every last gasp of air as they claw their way toward the one person who would care. The only person who’s ever cared.
The one who can never know any of this.
I hang up.
Sorry, roommate just got home. Call you later, I text instead.
The phone rings in reply.
And rings.
And rings.
But the sound is lost in the violent sobs wrenching from my chest.
I yank the blanket over my head and let the darkness take me home.
There is no pretty way to say that my faith is decaying and the moss is consuming my lungs. I have watched myself change from promise to soil and bury my heart back beneath the surface.
My breath has been silenced under the weight of the wind and my words have long left and been swept into clouds that bring rainy days to other worlds of pain. Mobile only at the will of the hands on the clock as time grinds at my body with heartbreak and rock turning sentiment to sediment washed away by rain drops, no life left in me to even ask you to stop.
I need sunshine and singing and nurture and time,
I need the hands of my God to assemble my spine.
-JD December 14