Rewrite Redemption (23 page)

All I wanted to do was shower and crash…maybe listen to some tunes. After the day I had, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with more madness. It was almost eight when I made it home. Surprisingly, it was quiet when I reached the front steps—no gaming. Maybe Devon was eating. I was contemplating sneaking in the backdoor when I saw that the front door wasn’t shut all the way. I pushed it open, slowly, scanning the foyer.

Silence.

Not expecting that. Silence only happened during mausoleum mode. By day, the house was at war. If he wasn’t playing games, he’d have the TV blaring—something loud and angry. What was up?

The living room, family room, my dad’s office, and the dining room were empty. I headed to the kitchen to check for a note. I was attacked by a disgusting smell—burnt broccoli. Gagging, I yanked the offending pot off the stove and whirled the mess down the disposal. The room still reeked.

A roast chicken sat on the table intact. I touched it—stone cold. Dishes covered the counter. The table was set for four and wine had been poured for my parents. One glass was on its side, flooding the table, dripping blood red splotches on the white tile floor.

Not good.

I ran for Devon’s room, calling his name—no answer. His room was dark and I flipped the light switch—no Devon—just an empty wheelchair, turned on its side. A cold wave of fear snaked down my spine.

Bam! The front door slammed and I almost jumped out of my skin.

“Mom? Dad?” I yelled.

“Constantine? Thank God! We need to leave immediately,” my dad called from his office.

 I let out a breath and ran down the hall. “Leave for where? Where is everyone?” I blurted out, confused.

“The hospital,” he answered, shuffling through a file drawer in his desk. His hair was sticking out, his shirt was buttoned wrong, and he hadn’t shaved. He grabbed a file, slammed the drawer shut, and headed for the door.

I followed him at a run, jumping into the Audi as it lurched away from the curb. My father clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. Before I could get my act together to question him, his phone rang.

“Rebecca?” my dad rasped. “My God, no. But what…yeah, I got the insurance stuff. Yes, I found Constantine. No. My God, Rebecca. Wait…hold on….yeah, just hold on for a minute.”

He pulled to the side of the road and jerked the car to a stop. “The hospital on Broadway—you drive,” he said as he jumped out of the car.

I slid over the gearshift and grabbed the wheel.

He got in the passenger side, still talking into the phone, one hand frantically pushing back his messy hair. “Go, go!” he yelled at me, waving his arm ahead. He turned back to the phone. “Well, what do they…no, no, no. How could this…my God, Rebecca. No, this is
not
your fault. No, it’s not! I was the one…I know, I know. We’re almost there. I know…just hold on.” He shoved his phone in his shirt pocket, leaned his head against the back of the seat, and let out a ragged breath.

“Dad,” I said.

He stared at me as if he was confused I was even there.

“Dad,” I said again, “what’s going on?”

“Don’t you…didn’t…” he stammered, trying to make sense of my confusion.

“Dad, I have no clue what’s happening.”

“It’s Devon,” he blurted out, looking at me with bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “He…he tried to kill himself.”

“What? How? When?” My words were ice now, clear, sparse, precise.          

“This evening,” he choked out. “Your mom found him when she went to get him for dinner.”

A knife slashed through my gut and I had to grab my stomach. “How?”

“Pills. He took a bottle of your mother’s pills and some of his own and drank them down with a pint of vodka.”

The world morphed into slow motion. I drove with hyper-focused precision. This
couldn’t
be real. I glanced over at my dad. He was drumming his hands on his knees like that would speed up the car. Suddenly, I realized my dad wasn’t in a suit.

“You were home?” I asked.

He nodded.

“You didn’t go to work today?’

“No.”

“How come?”

“We had a late night. You can’t tell me you didn’t hear it.”

“I was…I went for a run,” I answered. Guilt made my words defensive. “I ran a good part of the night. It helps me sleep. I didn’t—”

“He was screaming at your mother and he just wouldn’t stop. Yelling…screaming…he said the most hateful things. She was crying, hysterically. He just went on and on and on. Finally, I just lost it,” he choked out. Tears were streaming down his face. “I…I slapped him. I just couldn’t take it anymore…the way he was hurting your mother.” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose.

“This morning…this morning, he wouldn’t come out of his room,” he continued, staring straight ahead. “I stayed home to help your mother. We tried to reason with him. We…but he wouldn’t even get out of bed. He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t do anything. The only thing he’d do was yell at us to get the hell out of his room. Finally, we did.”

“Well, what else could you do?” I muttered lamely.

“We thought he’d get over it if we gave him some space. Then your mom went to see if she could get him to come to dinner…” His voice trailed off.

I went cold inside.

“I’d just sat down at the table when I heard this scream. At first I thought it was a stupid video game. You know how they scream. Suddenly, I realized it was your
mother
screaming. I ran into the room and there he was, just lying there, barely breathing. Oh my God, what kind of father slaps his kid?” He let out a heart-wrenching sob.

It sucks to see your father cry. It sucks big-time.

“It’s my fault,” he said, quietly to the windshield as if I wasn’t even there.

I stared silently at the road.

I knew whose fault it was.

I had no appetite. When I tried to study, I couldn’t concentrate. I watched a movie with Lex and Ipod, but I kept losing track of the plot. It was as if my brain had only one channel—all Constantine, all the time. I couldn’t turn it off. What was up with that?  

Lex was having a field day, laughing at me being such a space case. I thought about what she said about me knowing him in a past life. He did seem familiar. But I didn’t know if I believed in past lives. I just knew I couldn’t get him out of my head. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake him.

And strangely…I didn’t want to.

Hospitals have a pulse. If you listen closely, you hear it swoosh under the drone of desperation. It throbs, guiding the flow of staff and machines as they scramble to keep it going. Periodically it skips a beat, and alarms sound, and workers in white rush to the damage site. I knew its beat well. I knew the music. I’d heard it non-stop when we practically lived in the hospital for the first two weeks of Devon’s stay in intensive care.

Then there’s the smell of death. Like toxic rain, it burns when it touches you. It can soak clear through to your soul and drag it down into the abyss along with the dying, leaving your startled body behind to stumble through life as an empty shell. My mother was already sucked dry, having offered up her soul in a desperate attempt to exchange it for Devon’s life. My father waited in line to offer his. Me, I was holding onto mine with every fiber of my being, but I felt guilty as hell about it.

I spent two hours slumped in a waiting room chair—full blown deja vu from the accident. Florescent lights made everything stark and washed out. The unwatched TV droned in the background. In intensive care, it’s the white noise of despair.

My parents huddled together, stroking each other, like terrified monkeys in a cage. I felt so bad for them; I could hardly stand it. They clutched Styrofoam cups of stale, hospital coffee and looked up frantically each time someone came through the door. They were waiting for any sliver of hope that Devon was going to make it. It was hard to believe they were the same parents I knew from
before
. These withered and dried out husks had no power, no juice. I kept waiting for them to crumble into dust like on some
Simpson’s
intro.

The intermittent twang of the intercom made it impossible to sleep—not that I could sleep anyway. Devon was still in a coma. They didn’t know when or if he would come out of it. They didn’t know what he’d be like if he did. They didn’t seem to know much of anything.

The only thing I knew was that it was all my fault.

My mother wasn’t even crying at that point. She just sat there, pale as a ghost, lips pressed together tight, as though if she opened her mouth, she might start screaming or something. She wore the last six months of her pathetic, soul-crushing life like a train wreck. The damage was just too horrifying to watch anymore.

I ripped my eyes away. I needed to get out of there. I launched abruptly out of my chair. If I didn’t escape that minute, I’d suffocate. I told my parents I needed air. My dad nodded and quickly turned back to my mother. They barely noticed me. I had become a bystander, outside the circle of awareness.

Okay by me—I felt like hiding anyway.

The night was crystal clear and about twenty degrees cooler than it had been that afternoon. The brisk air jolted me out of my waiting-room coma. I breathed it in, exchanging bad air for good. I just stood there for about an hour; trying hard to shut my mind off. I swore to myself one more time that I would fix my family if it was the last thing I ever did.

An ambulance screamed in the distance…someone else’s life falling to pieces. Worried-looking people hurried in and out of the hospital doors. Periodically, someone erupted from the side exit to make a phone call or grab a smoke. The outside lights faded their harried faces, making them look like the walking dead…which is what I felt like.

I kicked at some peeling paint on a pole, finding perverse satisfaction in flaking it to the ground. A woman walked by and frowned accusingly. A bleary-eyed orderly, leaning against the building sucking down a cigarette, saw her and smirked at me.
Ha! If you only knew.
Like peeling paint was the worst of my sins. I glared at him and walked back in the building.

I made it as far as intensive care. But the moment I got there, all hell broke loose. Suddenly, buzzers sounded, and a woman screamed out for a nurse. Panicked family members streamed out of a room, yelling for help. Bells dinged, the intercom squawked for a doctor, and a crew raced down the hall with the crash cart. I turned abruptly and bolted back through the exit, down the halls and out of the hospital.