Meadowlarks (38 page)

             
“I knew it.” I look at the cold floor. “I can't believe this happened.”

             
“He's admitted to everything and has been formally charged with attempted murder.”

             
It doesn't bring me any comfort, but I force a smile anyway.               “Thanks. So, what now?”

             
“Well, he'll be in court on Monday.”

             
“I'll be there.” I look into the window at Jeremiah and dig my nails into my palms as hard as I can.

             
The next three days are exactly the same as the first day when I found out. There's no change in Jeremiah, and I don't leave the hospital. Alex and Riley visit and cry while sitting beside his bed. Addison goes to work and goes home to get me clothes, then stays at the hospital with me while I stand at his bedside.

             
“I can't leave him, Addy. He's laying where I should be.” I feel the tears coming. When they start rolling down my cheeks, I angrily wipe them and lean back in the chair. “Ugh! I just don't know what to do.”

             
“Blaine, you need to sleep. I will stay with Jeremiah.”

             
“I can't. I just can't. I'm sorry.”

             
On Sunday night, I'm alone in the room with him when the machines he’s hooked up to start beeping. A nurse quickly comes in the room.

             
“What's going on?” I stand and look at her expectantly.

             
She checks the machine, and then she runs out of the door. In seconds, she is back with the doctor. I stand back and give them room. Like a movie scene, the doctor and nurse are joined by three others, and they all try furiously to bring Jeremiah back.

             
“Blood pressure is falling to fifty over 33!” one of them shouts. A deafening blur fills the room, and just as fast as the beeping started, it stops. One long, hair-raising tone echoes around the room. As if the hands on the clock above the doorway stop moving, time slows to a standstill. I watch them, hovered over Jeremiah's body; the expressions on their faces are of worry and sadness. I'm expecting at any moment to snap out of it, and a calm to come; they'll tell me he's okay. But it doesn't happen, and the moment slowly starts up again.

             
“Well? What's going on?” I ask quickly.

             
They look at me, and the doctor puts his hands on his hips. “I'm very sorry, Blaine. He's gone.”

             
“What? No, he's not.” I rush over to his bed, wanting to shake him awake. “Jer! Jer? Please, Jeremiah. Wake up.”

             
“Blaine...” The doctor starts to speak but doesn't finish.

             
“He was breathing a second ago. Try something else!” I am frenzied with disbelief.

             
“His heart couldn't hold on anymore, Blaine.”

             
I fall to the ground and put my hands over my face.               “No. Jer, no!”

             
The best man I've ever known, my friend and brother, just died in front of me. Died in the bed that I should have been in, and I'm on the floor where he would have been if things had gone like they were supposed to.

             
I feel sick, and I reach for a garbage can in the corner of the room, throwing up my grief and whatever little vending machine food I had forced into me.

             
Addison is on overnights, and someone must have called her down to the ICU.

             
“Babe!” She rushes to my side and kneels on the floor, holding my head in her arms. “Baby, I'm so sorry!”

             
She rocks me, and I cry, completely and utterly fatigued, full of sorrow and anger—no, rage. I feel like a little child, limp, and I need help to stand.

             
His hand is still warm when I touch it again, but this time, there's no other movement. No rising and falling of his chest—nothing. I can't bear to see him, and I need to get out of this fucking room.

             
Addison drives me home, and when we pass Jer's house, I yell at her to pull over so I can throw up again. She doesn't say much the rest of the way home, just holds my hand.               When she parks beside his truck, I almost lose it again. His tire is still flat, and I just want to scream up into the sky. I will never forgive myself, for so many things I could have done differently.

             
“Blaine, come inside. Please.” She stands in front of me and hugs me tightly. Her arms and warmth soothe me, and I hold her.

             
“I'm sorry,” I mumble.

             
“Don't be sorry. You're supposed to be sad, baby.” She tries to comfort me. “I'm going to stay home with you, okay?”

             
“Someone needs to tell Alex.” I clear my throat, swallowing down grief and bile.

             
“I'll go over. Will you be okay if I leave?”

             
I nod and let her go. When she leaves, I go into the garage and get my tools to change the tire on his truck. Through glazed eyes and constant sniffling, I finally gather enough strength to push it down. I scream as loud as I can when I pick up the flat tire and heave it across the driveway before I fall to my knees.

             
“Jeremiah!”

*
              *              *

             
His funeral is on a Thursday. Four days after he died and three days after I sat in the court room, listening to a prosecutor give a judge detailed notes about what happened to him. I watch Reid as he sits and listens to his charge escalate from attempted murder to first-degree murder. The only thing he's ever done right was admit his guilt. Another date is set for a few months from now, and when I watch him leave the room, I can finally breathe again.               Though he didn't once look at anyone but the judge, it took every part of me not to jump over the rows of benches and choke the life out of him.

             
The church is packed with all the people Jer loved and all the people that loved him. Martina, his aunt, sits beside me; she’s the only blood relative he had left after his parents died. Even Gwen shows up.

             
I manage to give a eulogy, telling everyone what they already knew. I talk about how great of a man he was, how much fun life was growing up with him, and how very much I was going to miss him with each and every day to come.

             
“I wish each person could be as lucky as I am to have a best friend like him. Twenty-five years wasn't enough, but I'm thankful for every second I got to spend with him. I love you, Jer.”

             
He's buried in the cemetery, next to his parents. Addison and I chose his headstone and the inscription we thought suited him perfectly.

The first thing I'm going to do

Is spread my wings and fly.

Jeremiah Paul Sanford

November 30, 1981 – June 9, 2012

             
Three meadowlarks are carved into the dark granite, just like the ones Addison had made on my belt buckle. They are Wyoming's birds, flying fast and free, just like him, a Wyoming boy.

             
Days turn into weeks, and weeks quickly become the month of August. It’s the time of year when Jer and I would usually be well into the rodeo circuit, working hard and hardly working all at the same time. After he died, a lawyer contacted me to tell me that he left everything he owned to me. His house, his farm, truck, everything. I manage to give his truck to Alex. As painful as it was seeing it leave my driveway and not watching Jeremiah drive away, I knew he would want it this way.

             
I remember the conversation I had with him months ago about Alex asking to move Riley into the house. “It needs life it in again,” he’d said, and he was right. Alex, Riley and their little family grow in Jeremiah's house now. They bring it back to life, and the two times I’ve gone there since, I feel him in the home. He’s at the fire pit, on the porch, in each room, and even in those shadowboxes on the bathroom wall with the dried flowers that his mother made.

             
Reid is found guilty and is sentenced to sixty-seven years in prison with no chance of parole. Coincidentally, the car he crushed Jeremiah against was also a sixty-seven, and it only brings a tiny amount of peace knowing that he'll be confined until he's either too old to function or dead. I'd prefer the latter.

***

On November thirtieth, I crack open a beer and toast the sky, I tip the bottle to the heavens and to Jer on what would be his 31st birthday.

             
“Miss you, buddy. Happy birthday.”

             
“Hey, handsome.” Addison stands behind me and pulls me into a hug. “How are you?”

             
“I'm good, my love. How was work?”

             
“Oh, same old.” She shrugs and smiles. “Jeremiah's birthday?”

             
“Yep.” I sip the beer and smile.

             
She puts her bag on the picnic table and roots through it, pulling out a white stick.               “Well, there's an old saying—with death, comes life.” She holds up the stick. It has a small pink plus sign on it, and my eyes fly to hers.

             
“Are you? We are!” My heart is thumping from my chest, and I grab the stick, examining it closer.

             
“We are, my love.”

             
She smiles, and I pull her into me, kissing and hugging her intensely.               “I love you so much. Thank you.”

*
              *              *

             
On July 17
th
, 2013, my son is born. He comes a few days early, surprising everyone. I hold Addison's hand when she pushes and breathes through his delivery, watching his tiny head and body come into the world. He cries, and we sob. The first time I hold him, I just dissolve away, like the first time I saw his mommy. My heart seems to stop, and I'm breathless.

             
“He's perfect, Addy. I love you so very much.”

             
She smiles, her eyes tired but happy. Once we're alone in her room, she falls asleep, and I rock our son in the chair, studying every inch of his beautiful face. Touching his tiny fingers with my big rough ones, I gently kiss his head of golden hair.

             
“Hi, my little man.” I smell his brand new scent. “You see that beautiful lady over there? That's your mommy. Aren't we so lucky to have her?”               He sleeps in my arms for hours. I whisper to him and tell him over and over how much I already love him.

Alex, Riley, and the kids come to see him. Scarlett is walking now, and she teeters up to me, curious about the little blue bundle in my arms.

              “Scarlett, that's your little cousin, Seth!” Riley bends to hold her daughter up to see the baby.

             
Seth Jeremiah Blackstock is seven pounds and 14 ounces of pure wonder. When he opens his eyes to look at me, I feel like I can see the entire world in those baby blues. How can my heart take anymore? My love for him is earth-shattering.

             
My brothers, their wives and my dad all visit us in the hospital, too. When dad holds his grandson, he looks at Addison and gets choked up.               “He looks just like you did, Blaine. I can't get over it.”

             
I picture him thirty-one years ago, in a room just like this, holding me. But when he looked at the bed, it was empty. There was no one to share his joy, just two other boys without their mother. The thought sends a dark feeling through me, and I sit beside Addison on the bed, grabbing her hand to make sure she's actually still there.

             
The next morning I take my wife and our son home. The dogs bounce anxiously to see exactly what it is I'm carrying in the seat. Addison pets them, letting each of them smell her hands.

             
Each and every day with Seth is a gift, watching him grow and make milestones is truly remarkable. Addison was showering when he crawled for the first time.

I jumped off of
the floor and shouted for her. “Baby, he's crawling!”

             
Seth giggled and takes a few more brave movements toward me. His chubby fingers spread on the wooden floor, he reaches for me when I sit down in front of him and extend my hands.

             
“C'mon, my boy.” I smile and wiggle my fingers.

             
“What was all that about?” Addison says melodically when she gets to the bottom of the stairs, wrapped in a towel. Then she sees him. “Seth! My little man; what a good boy!”               She kneels beside me and clasps her hands together under her chin, as excited as I am.

When he reaches my hands, I pull him up and right into my arms. I breathe in his scent and close my eyes; his little warm body feels so small in my arms.
              “Good boy.”

             
He giggles again, and I lift him up in the air above my head like an air plane. His eyes widen, and a long string of drool flows from his mouth and lands on my lap.