“Wait,” I say, interrupting him, “you didn’t go to the hospital?”
He looks at me.
“No, I knew if I went that…,” he turns his eyes away again, “…I wouldn’t be enough in my right mind to pay attention to the bad feeling I was having if I was staring down at my dying father.”
I understand and I don’t say anything else.
“So, I went to my dad’s house and got his car, drove around for a while and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I came back here. I parked across the street and waited for a while and sure enough, a cab pulled in and dropped the guy back off.”
“Why didn’t you come inside instead of waiting in the car?”
He looks down in thought.
“I just didn’t want to freak you out.”
“How would that freak me out?” I realize I’m smiling a little.
Andrew looks right at me and I see that playful, smartass look start to crawl back into his features again.
He holds his hands open, palms up. “Ummm, strange guy you met on the bus coming back hours later to sit next to you?” His eyebrows crinkle in his forehead. “That’s almost as creepy as suck-my-dick-for-$500-guy, don’t you think?”
I laugh. “No, I don’t think it’s anything like that.”
He tries to bury his smile, but relents.
“What are you going to do, Camryn?” His face is serious again and my smile fades.
I shake my head. “I don’t know; I guess I’m going to wait here until the next bus to Texas comes and then I’m on my way to Texas.”
“Why Texas?”
“Why not?”
“Seriously?”
I slap my hands down against my thighs. “Because I’m not going home yet!”
He’s unfazed by my shouting at him.
“Why don’t you want to go home yet?” he asks calm and intently. “Might as well spill your fucking guts because I’m not leaving you alone in this bus station, especially not after what happened.”
I cross my arms tight over my chest and stare out in front of me. “Well then I guess you’ll be sitting here for a long time until I get on the bus.”
“No. That includes not letting you get on another bus alone to go anywhere. Texas. Idafuckingho. Wherever. It’s dangerous and I can tell you’re an intelligent girl—so here’s what we’re going to do…,”
I blink a few times, stunned by his sudden authoritarian arrogance.
He goes on:
“I’ll wait here with you until morning. That’ll give you enough time to decide whether you’re going to let me pay for your plane ticket back home, or if you want to call someone to fly here to get you. It’s your choice.”
I look at him like he’s crazy.
His eyes say back at me: Yeah, I’m dead serious.
“I’m not going back to North Carolina.”
Andrew shoots up from the chair and stands in front of me. “OK, then I’m going with you.”
I blink, looking up at his intense eyes; his perfectly sculpted cheekbones seem more pronounced from this angle making his gaze even fiercer. A shiver moves through my stomach.
“That’s insane,” I laugh it off, but I know he’s serious and then I say with more severity, “What about your dad?”
His teeth grind together and the intensity in his eyes becomes more forlorn.
He starts to look away but a thought pulls him back. “Then come with me.”
What? No way….
He looks hopeful rather than determined now. He sits back down next to me on the plastic blue seat.
“We’ll stay right here until morning,” he goes on, “because surely you wouldn’t leave with some strange guy from a bus station after dark? Right?”
He turns his chin away from me, looking at me in a questioning sidelong glance.
“No, I wouldn’t,” I say, even though I really do feel like I can trust him—he saved me from being raped, for God’s sake! And nothing about him is giving me the same fears I had when Damon practically did the same thing. No, Damon had something darker in his eyes when he looked at me that night on the roof. All I see in Andrew’s eyes is concern.
But I still won’t leave with him like this.
“Good answer,” he says, apparently glad I’m as ‘intelligent’ as he hoped I was.
“We’ll wait until daylight and just to give you more peace of mind I’ll have a cab drive up straight to the hospital instead of expecting you to get in my car.”
I nod, glad he thought of that. I won’t say that I hadn’t exactly sorted that part out yet. I mean, I already trust him enough, but it’s like he wants to be sure that I don’t, like he’s teaching me a lesson in a quiet, roundabout way.
I’m ashamed to admit that he has to ‘teach me’ any of this at all.
“And then from the hospital, we’ll catch a cab back here and wherever you want to go, I’ll go with you.”
He holds out his hand to shake on it. “Deal?”
I think about it a moment, confused, yet at the same time utterly fascinated by him. I nod reluctantly at first and then again with more assurance.
“It’s a deal,” I say and place my hand into his.
Honestly, I’m not sure I agree with it entirely. Why would he even do that? Doesn’t he have a life elsewhere? Surely he’s not as miserable with home as I am.
This is crazy! Who is this guy?
We sit together for several hours right here in the station and talk about nothing important, yet I love every second of our conversations. About how I gave in and drank a soda and it was the soda’s fault I ended up in the restroom with the man—he laughs it off and tells me I just have a weak bladder. We quietly gossip about the passengers that come and go; the weird-looking ones and those who look dead, as if they’ve been riding a bus for the past week and haven’t been able to sleep. And we talk about classic rock some more, but the argument remains as much a stalemate as it was when we first discussed it on the bus.
He practically died when I said that I’d listen to Pink over The Rolling Stones, any day. I mean, I literally think I wounded him. He put his big hand over his heart and threw back his head in devastation and everything. It was very dramatic. And funny. I tried not to laugh, but it was hard not to when his hardened, over exaggerated face was practically smiling, too.
And just as we went to leave after the sun rose, I stopped to look at him for a moment. A slight breeze brushed through his stylish brown hair. He cocked his head to the side, smiling at me and waving me into the cab. “You’re still coming, right?”
I smiled warmly back at him and nodded. “Of course.” And I took his hand and slid into the backseat with him.
What I had been thinking about when I looked at him was that I realized I haven’t smiled or laughed this much since before Ian died. Not even Natalie could get a genuine elated emotion out of me and she tried really hard. She went out of her way to help snap me out of my depression, but nothing she ever did came close to what Andrew has managed to do in such a short time and without even trying.
ANDREW
12
MY THROAT CLOSES UP when we step foot inside the hospital, like a wall of blackness came out of nowhere and engulfed me. I stop for a second at the entrance and just stand here with my arms heavy at my sides. And then I feel Camryn’s hand touch my wrist.
I look over at her. She’s smiling so warmly that it melts me a little. Her blonde hair is pulled into a messy braid around to one side, lying freely over her right shoulder. A few strands that escaped the rubber band rest freely down the side of her face. I have this urge to reach up and brush them softly with my finger, but I don’t. I can’t be doing shit like that. I need to get rid of this attraction. But she’s different from other girls and I think that’s exactly why I’m having such a hard time with it. I don’t need this right now.
“You’ll be fine,” she says.
Her hand falls away from my wrist when she sees that she has my attention. I smile faint
ly back at her.
We follow the hall to the elevator and ride up to the third floor. Every step of the way I feel like I should just turn around and leave this place. My father doesn’t want me to show emotion when I go in there and right about now I’m about to explode with it.
Maybe I should go outside and punch a few trees and get it all out of my system before I go in there.
We stop at the waiting area where a few other people are all sitting around reading magazines.
“I’ll wait here for you,” Camryn says and I look right at her.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
I really do want her to. I don’t know why.
Camryn starts to shake her head no. “I-I can’t go in there,” she says, looking uncomfortable now. “Really, I…I just don’t think it’s appropriate.”
I reach out and gently take her sling bag from her shoulder and put it on mine. It’s light, but she’s starting to look discomforted by it.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I want you to go with me.”
Why am I saying this?
She looks down at the floor and then carefully gazes around at the rest of the room before her blue eyes fall on me again. “OK,” she says with a subtle nod.
I feel my face break into a small smile and I instinctively take her by the hand. She doesn’t pull away.
I’m comforted by her, needless to say, and I get the feeling she’s happy to oblige. Surely she knows how hard something like this would be for anyone.
We walk hand in hand toward my father’s room.
She squeezes once, looking over at me as if to give me more encouragement. And then I push open the hospital room door. A nurse looks up when we walk in.
“I’m Mr. Parrish’s son.”
She nods solemnly and goes back to adjusting the machines and tubes hooked up to my father. The room is a typical bland and sterile space with bright white walls and a tile floor so shiny the lights running along the ceiling panels blaze off of it. I hear a constant and steady beep coming from the heart rate monitor next to my father’s bed.
I still haven’t actually looked at my father. I realize I’m looking at everything in the room but him.
Camryn’s fingers squeeze around mine.
“How is he doing?” I ask, but I know it’s a stupid question. He’s dying; that’s how he’s doing. I just can’t get anything else out.
The nurse looks at me expressionless.
“He’s in and out of consciousness, as you probably already know.”
No, I didn’t know, actually.
“And there hasn’t been any change, good or bad.” She adjusts an I.V. running from the top of his rugged hand.
Then she walks around the bed and picks up a clipboard from the side table and tucks it underneath her arm.
“Has anyone else been here?” I ask.
The nurse nods. “Family has been in and out for the past several days. Some left about an hour ago, but I expect they’ll be back.”
Probably Aidan, my older brother and his wife, Michelle. And my younger brother, Asher.
The nurse slips out of the room.
Camryn looks up at me, tightening her hand around mine. Her eyes smile carefully. “I’m going to sit over there and let you visit with your father, OK?”
I nod, though everything she said just kind of slipped through my head like a wispy memory. Her fingers slowly fall away from mine and she takes a seat against the wall on the empty vinyl chair. I suck in a deep breath and lick the dryness from my lips.
His face is swollen. Tubes are running from his nostrils, feeding him oxygen. I’m surprised he’s not on life support yet, but this gives me a small sense of hope. Really small. I know he won’t get better; that’s pretty much already been established. What’s left of his hair has been shaved off. They had talked about trying to perform surgery, but after my dad found out that it wasn’t going to save him he, of course, complained:
“You’re not cuttin’ into my fuckin’ head,” he had said. “You want me to shell out thousands of dollars so you boys can have these cereal box doctors crack my damn skull open? Dammit, boy! (He had been talking to Aidan specifically), you are one nut shy of a man!”
My brothers and I were prepared to do whatever it took to save him, but he had gone behind our backs and signed some kind of ‘stipulation’ that when things got worse that no one would have the right to make these decisions for him.
My mom was who alerted the hospital of his wishes days before the surgery was to be performed and provided them with the legal papers. We were upset by it, but my mother is a smart and caring woman and none of us could ever be pissed at her for what she did.
I move closer and look the rest of him over. My hand sort of has a mind of its own and the next thing I know it’s slithering up beside his and taking a hold of it. Even this feels odd. Like I shouldn’t be doing it. If it were anyone else, I’d have no issue holding their hand. But this my dad and I feel like I’m doing something I shouldn’t. I can just hear his voice inside my head: “You don’t hold another man’s hand, boy. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Suddenly, my dad’s eyes crack open and instinctively I pull my hand away from his.
“That you, Andrew?”
I nod, gazing down at him.
“Where’s Linda?”
“Who?”
“Linda,” he says and his eyes can’t decide if they want to stay open. “My wife, Linda. Where is she?”
I swallow hard and glance over at Camryn who is sitting so quietly, watching.
I turn back to my dad. “Dad, you and Linda divorced last year, remember?”
His pale green eyes are glazed over by moisture. Not tears. Just moisture. He looks dazed for a moment and smacks his lips together, moving his dry tongue around in his mouth.
“Do you want some water?” I ask and go to reach for the long lap table on wheels that had been moved away from the bed. A pale pink pitcher of water sits on it next to a thick plastic mug with a pop-on top with a straw poking up through the center.
My dad shakes his head no.
“Did’ja’ fix Ms. Nina?” he asks.
I nod again. “Yeah, she looks great. New paint job and rims.”
“Good, good,” he says, nodding a little, too.
This feels awkward and I know it’s written all over my face and my posture. I just don’t know what to say or if I should try to force him to drink some water or if I should just sit down and wait for Aidan and Asher to get back. I’d rather them do this than me. I’m not good with this kind of thing.
“Who’s that pretty thing?” he asks, looking toward the wall.
I wonder how he can even see Camryn all the way over there and then I notice he’s looking at her through the tall mirror on the other side of him which reflects that portion of the room. Camryn freezes up a little, but that pretty smile of hers brightens her face. She raises her hand and waves at him through the mirror with her fingers.
Even through his swollen skin, I see a grin on my dad’s lips. “Is that your Eurydice’s?” he asks and my eyes freeze wide open. I hope Camryn didn’t catch that, but I don’t see how she couldn’t. My dad weakly raises one hand and gestures toward Camryn.
She gets up and walks over to stand next to me. She smiles so warmly at him it even impresses me. She’s a natural. I know she’s nervous and probably feels more uncomfortable than she ever has standing in this room with this dying man who she doesn’t even know, yet she doesn’t break.
“Hi, Mr. Parrish,” she says. “I’m Camryn Bennett, a friend of Andrew’s.”
His eyes move to me. I know that look; he’s comparing her answer with the look on my face, trying to decipher her meaning of ‘friend’.
And then suddenly my father does something I have never seen him do: he reaches out his hand…to me.
The gesture stuns me numb.
Only when I notice Camryn covertly glaring at me to acknowledge him, do I break free from the numbness
and nervously take his hand. I hold it for a long, awkward moment and my father closes his eyes and drifts back to sleep. I move my hand from his when I feel his weak grip go completely slack.
The door opens and my brothers walk in, along with Aidan’s wife, Michelle.
I step away from my father right on cue, taking Camryn with me and not realizing that I’m holding her hand again until Aidan’s eyes move down to see our interlocked fingers.
“Glad you could make it,” Aidan says, though with a bit of contempt in his voice, no doubt.
He’s still pissed at me for not taking a plane and getting here sooner. He’ll have to fucking get over it; we grieve in our own ways.
Regardless, he pulls me into a hug, gripping one hand between us and patting my back with the other.
“This is Camryn,” I say, looking back at her.
She smiles up at them, having already found her way back to the empty chair against the wall.
“This is my older brother, Aidan and his wife, Michelle.” I point gently at them. “And that’s the runt, Asher.”
“Dickhead,” Asher says.
“I know,” I say.
Aidan and Michelle take the other two seats next to a table and start distributing the burger and fries they just bought.
“The ol’ man still hasn’t come to,” Aidan says, stuffing a few fries in his mouth. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think he’s going to.”
Camryn looks right at me. We both spoke to my father just moments ago and I know she’s waiting for me to give them the news.
“Probably not,” I say and see Camryn’s eyes wrinkle in confusion.
“How long are you staying?” Aidan asks.
“Not long.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He takes a bite of his burger.
“Don’t start your shit with me, Aidan, I’m not in the mood for it and this isn’t the fucking time or the place.”