Dead Beginnings | Vol. 3, page 3
part #3 of Dead Beginnings Series
In seconds Axel was by her side, his hands roaming her. “Are you OK? Are you all right? Are you hurt?” he asked in a panic, his eyes so wide she thought they were going to bug right out of his head.
She wanted to answer him, but her head hurt and her vision was still spinning from all the somersaults. She opened her mouth, but all that came out was another string of coughs. She spat a wad of sad on the ground and finally she was able to talk again. “I’m fine, I think,” she said. Axel grabbed her under her good arm and hoisted her up with ease. “My wrist, though,” she started to say but she was cut off.
They all heard the unmistakable sound of tires rolling across the sand-covered asphalt as blue and red lights swirled the night sky.
“Cops, man!” Samuel said, grabbing Brant by the arm and trying to drag him to his feet. “Come on! I’m not getting arrested for your drunk ass!” He yanked and yanked until his lugging friend could stand and he dragged him off to the Jeep. They peeled out without another thought for the others and what they were going to do.
“Get out of here,” Olivia ordered Maddie and Jennifer. “Go!”
“Call me later,” Maddie pleaded as she turned and ran, looking over her shoulder at her injured friend.
Olivia nodded as she waved her off with her good hand. Axel put his arm around Olivia’s shoulder and guided her away from the swirling lights and back to their vehicle parked in the absent strangers’ driveway. Once they were in the car they felt safe. But Olivia winced when she tried to buckle her seatbelt.
“Dammit!” she yelled, slamming her other fist on the dashboard. “I have a game tomorrow! The game. My last game!”
Axel put a hand on her shoulder as he started the car. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”
IV
The emergency room was silent, the waiting room void of patients save for one older gentleman and his wife who were sitting closely, each clutching a wad of tissue paper in their hands. When Olivia gave her information at the check-in desk they made it very clear they were going to have to call her parents. She didn’t have an insurance card on her and there was no way she was going to take an even worse verbal thrashing when the full bill came in the mail weeks from now. Reluctantly, she gave them the phone number to her mother’s work. She figured that would be the better parent to get the call and break the news to the other one, plus her dad was most likely passed out in his chair in front of the TV still. He wouldn’t hear the phone if it was attached to a dump truck driving through the living room wall. There was nothing left to do but have a seat and wait.
“You know, you really don’t have to stay,” Olivia said, offering Axel a way out.
“Of course I do. I want to make sure you’re OK, especially since it’s my own stupid fault you’re here at all.” The way he said it made Axel sound defeated, but his face contradicted it. He sat up straight and tall with his chin tilted slightly upward, as if it were his duty to watch over his girlfriend diligently.
“It’s not exactly the best first meeting of the parents, though.”
Axel shrugged as if those things meant little to him. “They are either willing to give me a chance or not. How and where I meet them has little to do with the matter. At least that’s what I’ve found with parents over the years.”
Olivia couldn’t help laughing to herself at the way he spoke, as if he were a fifty-year-old man and not a twenty-year-old kid. “Wise beyond your years, you are,” she said in her best Yoda voice.
This caused him to break face and snort a small chuckle under his breath. “I just want to take care of you,” he said in all seriousness.
Olivia looked up into his striking blue eyes and softened. “I know you do. That’s why I love you.” The words slipped out without her meaning them to. Her cheeks rushed with blood when she realized she couldn’t call them back. Was it true? Did she love Axel? She thought she was beginning to, if what she felt was love. She’d never been in love before, so she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she felt very differently about him than she had about anyone else.
Axel’s face froze mid-laugh. He turned to look at her, his lips parted in shock. “You love me?” There was hope in his voice. At least she thought that’s what she heard. It definitely didn’t sound like disgust or revulsion.
Olivia’s eyes fell to her hands that wrung together in her lap, her wrist stinging with each twist and turn. She gave a small wince and placed each hand purposefully on each knee to keep still. With a small shrug of her shoulders she said, “Yeah, I guess I do.”
Axel released a cross between a huff of relief and laughter through his nostrils as an uncontrollable smile took over his face. He leaned over and reached for her face, cupping it in his hands gently. “Come here, you,” he said as he pulled her lips to his.
It was a perfect moment, one that Olivia hoped she would remember for the rest of her life, one that she could tell to her kids someday as living proof that love really does exist in the world and she’d found it.
“Olivia Ann Darling!” her mother’s voice called sternly from across the room.
The entirety of Olivia’s body tensed up as she sprung away from her boyfriend. “Mom,” she said meekly.
Her mother walked quickly over as they both rose from their seats to stand awkwardly. Well, Olivia stood awkwardly. She would have rather been anywhere else in the world than in that hospital at that moment. Axel stood firmly, his hand resting at his sides confidently, as if there was no one else he could possibly pretend to be other than himself.
Miriam’s tired yet frazzled eyes popped over to look Axel up and down in a blink before turning back to her daughter. “What the hell happened?” was the only question she could think to ask. “I get a call from the hospital saying you’ve checked into the emergency room with a possible broken wrist and my heart just about stopped. I thought you were at home tonight! I didn’t know if you were alone or what was going on.”
“I wasn’t alone, mom,” Olivia said, irritation underlying the softness in her tone. “I went out with Maddie and some friends.”
Miriam motioned to Axel with wide eyes and a snort. “Yeah, I can see that. Who are you?”
Her tone was sharp enough to cut holes in the poor boy, but Axel didn’t falter or hesitate. He stuck his hand out and smiled. Olivia saw the little dimple in his cheek and couldn’t help smiling herself, hoping beyond hope that her mother liked him despite the circumstances of their meeting. “I’m Axel, Mrs. Darling. Axel Legend.”
“Ah,” Miriam said with recognition that he was used to by now. All the parents knew his story, knew of his cancer when he was younger and the hell his parents went through to make sure he survived. It was a small town and people talked. “My daughter’s mentioned you, but I didn’t know you two were…” She left the end of her sentence hanging for one of them to pick up.
“Dating?” Axel offered, taking his hand back after a quick, forced shake. “It hasn’t been long. Only a few months, but yeah we are.”
Olivia wanted to crawl under a rock and stay there until she graduated. Her mother wasn’t overly grilling Axel, but the way her eyes narrowed when he spoke and the shortness of her answers mortified Olivia to no end. Why couldn’t her mother just be nice on the simple fact that she knew Axel was someone important to her? Why couldn’t she give him a chance before she disliked him? She could tell Miriam’s mind was already made up though, and there was little hope of changing it. Her mother’s eyes kept crawling up the spikes of Axel’s blue mohawk as if it were a repulsive creature ready to attack them.
“Olivia Darling!” someone called from beside the desk. “You can follow me.”
Just then, Olivia’s father came strolling up. He had his hand shoved deep into the pockets of his old, rumpled sweatpants. His eyes were still half-closed as if he still hadn’t been able to pull himself out of the wonderful nap he’d been enjoying.
“What did I miss?” he asked and then cleared his throat with a raspy cough.
“We’re about to find out,” Miriam answered, irritation dripping from her tongue.
Olivia turned to Axel. She attempted a smile, though tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
He smiled back. “Anytime. Call me later and let me know how it goes.”
She nodded hoping her upturned lips conveyed the silent apology she felt inside.
It must have because he shook his head slightly as if to say it was no big deal. “It was nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Darling.”
“Uh huh,” Miriam said absently as she herded her family toward the doors to their examination room.
Olivia thought the waiting room meeting of Axel would have been the worst of it, but she had another thing coming once they were behind closed doors. It was just Olivia and Miriam. Her dad was there, but as usual he wasn’t really there. He plopped down in his chair, gave a roaring yawn as he stretched his wide arms over his head, and then hunkered down and closed his eyes. Olivia turned to her mom but didn’t dare to speak first.
Miriam refused to sit, pacing the room like a caged tiger. She walked with her hands tucked into the pocket of her diner apron, looking at the floor and shaking her head as she muttered to herself. Occasionally, she stopped to look at Olivia, shake her head, and start all over again. It was the slow build up to the inevitable outburst. It was more than Olivia could take. She had to know what kind of trouble she was in. The waiting was excruciating.
“OK, I get it!” she all but yelled as she stood up from the examination table, the tissue paper crinkling under the fury of her movement. “I shouldn’t have gone out without telling you. I’m sorry, but I’m sixteen, almost seventeen, and I should be able to live my life and go out with my friends once in a while too.” As soon as she closed her mouth she knew she’d only made things worse. Nothing like the old I was wrong but really I wasn’t wrong to get a parent going.
Miriam turned to her daughter, one eyebrow raised high on her forehead as she placed her hands firmly on her hips. “Tell me? You should have told me you were going out?! How about asking! You’re right, Olivia Ann, you are sixteen. You’re only sixteen. I have to know where you are and who you’re with at all times!”
Olivia’s defenses bristled. “Oh, here we go!” she spoke wildly with her hands. “I knew it’d come to this. You’re not mad I went out, you’re mad about who I was with. You don’t like Axel!”
“Like Axel? I don’t even know the first thing about this Axel!”
Olivia laughed as she looked at the ceiling, letting her hands slap against her thighs. “This Axel? Why do you have to refer to him like that, like he’s trash or something?”
Miriam took offense to this and her pinched face showed it. “I didn’t. I just meant I don’t know him and it doesn’t seem like you know him all that well either. But if he’s the kind of boy that encourages you to sneak out in the middle of the night to break the law and trespass on state property then I don’t think he’s the type of person I want you hanging around with.”
Olivia couldn’t help letting out a howling laugh that echoed off the walls and down the hall despite the door being closed. “Axel influence me? Jennifer is the one who orchestrated the entire night! We just went along because she invited us and it sounded fun. You know, fun? Like what teenagers are supposed to do?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. I don’t like you hanging around with him and that’s final.” Miriam was unsure of the stance she was taking on the situation, which was clear in the way she shifted her weight and pushed at the side of her mouth with her tongue. But it was too late to turn back. She had to stick to her guns.
Olivia let out a groan of agony that only a teenager could conjure up. “You’re so ridiculous! You didn’t even give him a chance!”
Just then there was a soft knock at the door and it opened just a crack. “Hello, dere,” a giant man with shoulder-length wavy dark hair tied back in a ponytail said as he stuck his head in.
He was even larger once he allowed his entire body to fill the doorway. Olivia looked up at him, craning her neck with wide eyes. Was this supposed to be the nurse who was going to take her vitals? He looked more like a prison break out dressed up in costume to avoid capture.
“I just need ta check yer vitals and take a quick look at yer wrist dere and then I’ll be outta yer hair.”
Olivia couldn’t hide the confused surprise on her face as she examined his accent. The nurse let out a laugh, his face brightening with his smile.
“My name is Lee,” he said as she held out his hand for her to shake.
She placed her hand in his, feeling its warm and gentle grasp though it was twice the size of her own.
“Where are you from?” Miriam blurted out harshly.
“Mom!” Olivia snapped.
“It’s OK. I get dat a lot. I’m from Ireland, Ma’am.”
“And you’re licensed in the United States?” she fired off without regret or shame.
Olivia was mortified for the second time that night. Her breathing actually stopped as she waited for the rightful outburst from her nurse. Instead, he looked down at his white tennis shoes with a wide grin and laughed under his breath. “Ya, I’m licensed and a professional. I assure ya I will take excellent care of yer daughter, ma’am.”
This seemed to satisfy Miriam. She let herself sit down in the seat next to her husband who was softly snoring with his chin touching his chest. She nudged him with her bony elbow and he jostled awake with an irritated grunt.
Lee went through the familiar motions of taking Olivia’s temperature and blood pressure, writing it all down on her chart. He then took her wrist gently in his large hands and looked at it, turning this way and that slowly.
“So, why are you just a nurse and not a doctor then? Couldn’t finish medical school?” Miriam was irritated with her husband for falling asleep, pissed that she was called out of a double shift, worried about how that made her look to her boss and work friends. It all built up and there was no other target left in the room to take out her anger on than the poor nurse attending Olivia.
“Oh,” he said casually, not taking his eyes off his work, “I suppose for tha same reasons you’re just a waitress and not a doctor.”
Olivia let out a single burst of shocked laughter, her gaze bouncing between Lee and her mother. Did he really just say that? He called her out like it was the easiest thing in the world. Why couldn’t she do that?
“If yeh don’t mind stepping out for just a moment, ma’am and sir. I’m going ta examine the arm and ask your daughter some questions about what happened,” Lee asked with a voice as polite and innocent as a lamb that had not just verbally checked anyone in the room.
“Step out? We are her parents. You can’t ask us to step out,” Miriam said, not quite yelling but almost there.
The shrill in her voice perked up her husband. He roused himself, rubbing his face with a deep sigh. “Come on, Miriam,” he said as if this were common practice. He put his hands on her shoulders and walked her out the door. “I could use a coffee, how about we get one and settle down a bit?”
Once the door was closed Olivia exhaled a deep sigh of relief. “Thanks for that,” she said with a smile. “I’m sorry. She’s just…” She didn’t quite know how to finish that sentence but luckily she didn’t have to.
Lee shook his head and waved it off. “Ah, tis nothin’. I’m used ta it.” He wheeled his chair in front of her and took her exposed arm in his large hands.
She was surprised at how gentle his touch was for being such a hulking man, like a mother assessing her newborn baby. “Get a lot of crazy parents in here, huh?”
“Actually,” Lee said, not taking his eyes off Olivia’s arm but raising his eyebrows in hidden amusement. “From my in-laws. They don’t like me all tha much. Think I married their daughter for a green card or somethin' like that.” He laughed to himself at the ridiculousness of it all.
“That’s awful. I’m sorry,” was all Olivia could think to say. It was rare that an adult ever opened up to her about something personal in their lives, like they thought if they dared to show that they too had feelings and were real human beings that their control over the kids would crumble and fall apart, when in reality it was the opposite. Having Lee open up to her, even in that little bit, made her see him in a different light than just the hulking nurse man. She had respect for him and could relate to him.
Lee shrugged his shoulders. “Nah, in the grand scheme of things it does no matter all too much. I love my wife and she loves me. Dat is what really matters.”
Olivia was taken aback by his honesty. She stared into his dark eyes even though he was again consumed in examining her wrist, turning it this way and that.
“Welp,” he said as he pushed back, the clatter of the chair’s wheels snapping Olivia out of her head. “Yeh look ta be in good workin' order. I don’t think it’s broken. How about we give dat mother of yours da good news?”
Olivia laughed and nodded her head. As soon as he popped his head out of the door Miriam and her husband were back in the room standing on each side of Olivia like sentinels, Miriam’s arms folded across her chest while her more lax partner sipped on his steaming cup of coffee.
“The bone does no feel broken, just badly bruised. We could take her back for some X-rays if dat’ll make yeh feel better, ma’am.” He was composed and professional despite having put her in her place moments ago and this threw Miriam off. Olivia could tell by the wrinkle in her brow that she was still ticked off about it.
“Uh, well, yeah. I mean no. That’ll be fine. She’s fine. We would just like to take her home.”
Olivia tried to hide the smile that strained to creep across her lips by lowering her head and staring at her flip flops.
