Donny’s alarm went off at six in the morning. He brought himself up to near sitting with one arm and rubbed his nose, clearing out his passageways. He turned off his alarm clock, which sat next to his mattress, both lying on the floor of his messy room. Throwing the covers off to the wall side, Donny got up and went to the shower. Minutes later he returned, climbed into his worn, black work pants and pulled a red Sub Stop shirt over his head. He made his way through the maze of furniture and boxes in the overcrowded apartment that he shared with his two brothers. Grabbing carrot juice from the fridge on the way out the door, Donny began the five-minute walk he took in the mornings to get to work.
As he walked toward the shopping center, just up the road and past a mobile home park, his mind wandered as his feet were set on autopilot. He looked around the town that he grew up in, not quite come to life on a typical Wednesday morning. In the opposite direction, not far down the highway, Donny could almost see the hospital where Chris’s dad lay. He had gone there yesterday to visit; the experience still left him feeling awkward and sad. Chris was at work, but told him it would be fine to go anyway.
He had never been in the ICU of the hospital before. It seemed so easy to find and close to the main entrance, not tucked back in some depths like he imagined. The room threw him off as well. Instead of being a large open room with lots of glass doors, John McCourtney was in a small room with a wooden door propped open. Entering he found Mae sitting at John’s side, reading. He didn’t look at John, not at first.
Donny’s relationship with Chris’s parents had always been interesting. He had been Chris’s playmate since kindergarten, and he felt that he knew them well, even though they didn’t really know him at all. He had always been a good kid, respectful and put on a good face, but as he got older and did little innocuous evil things that boys do, all the worst parts seemed to get back to his friends parents. To them he was a “bad seed”, “burnout”, “looser”, but never to his face. Just “silly Donny”, and he knew they never trusted him. He remembered staying the night a couple years back, a Saturday night, and the whole family got up for church the next day. They were leaving and Donny had to as well, he couldn’t keep sleeping, alone in their house while everyone was away. He would hear their conversations when they thought he was not around, “Why doesn’t he get a real job? Is he still working at the sandwich shop?” Smiles on the outside, judgments when he turned.
But he still loved them. They were like a second family, and finally bringing himself to look at big John McCourtney, lying in that bed with a tube helping him breath, made him infinitely sad.
In the cool morning air, he couldn’t shake the feeling that life was so fragile. One minute you are walking around, and the next in a hospital bed, unsure if you will ever get out. Life felt thin. Looking down at his hands holding his juice, they felt like appendages, not really part of who he was. His head swam and his eyes were all that felt real. The rest was a puppet or machine acting sloppily on his thoughts. Reaching the backdoor of the shop pulled him from his brief slip down that whirlpool of thought.
Donny entered and turned off the alarm. He grabbed a clipboard off the wall and headed into the walk-in refrigerator to pull out prepped dough and tubs of vegetables. It was half past six, and the manager would be in soon to help open the shop and finish baking the bread. Letting his mind go back to its wandering, he went about his morning tasks.