Every Love, page 1
Copyright © 2015 by LK Collins
Every Love
A novel by LK Collins
Cover Design by RE Creatives
Edited by Lisa Christman, Adept Edits
Formatting by Paul Salvette, BB eBooks
Photography by Aleksandr Petrunovskyi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.
To my editor, Lisa, you are simply remarkable.
Oh fuck! The bathroom is covered in blood. It’s smeared down the wall and pooled around my mom’s head, where she’s lifelessly lying flat on her face. Fear freezes me. What in the world happened? The shower curtain is ripped down, her bloody hand print is smeared along the side of the tub where she struggled to get herself up.
“Ma,” I yell, finally willing myself to move to her side. I touch her back to wake her and suddenly I’m back in Afghanistan. I push away the images assaulting me that I have worked so hard to suppress. But still, before my eyes is a wounded soldier, shot, bloody, and hanging on to life. God dammit, stop! This is my mom, not that place. I’m scared to move her and know better than to even try. My worst fear in this world is something happening to her. Moving my trembling hands to shake her a little more, I’m about to lose it. I don’t want to hurt her, but I also want to wake her any way possible. My heart is thudding against the walls of my chest as I grab her wrist to see if she has a pulse. I sit in silence, fighting to hear her heart. How did this happen? Did someone hurt her? Where is all this blood coming from? My mind races, all the while I’m listening. I’m not sure if what I feel is her heart or mine, but I go with my gut and hop up the best that I can, my prosthetic making it hard to move around.
Quickly I swipe the phone off of her nightstand and grab a towel as I drop back to my knees, dialing 911. Tears stream down my face looking at her this way. The blood is coming from a gash on her head, and I try to click into numb soldier mode as I press the towel onto the wound to stem the bleeding. Someone had to have done this to her. There’s simply too much blood for her to have slipped and fallen on her own. I feel the panic overtaking me, worming through the numbness.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“It’s—” I choke, staring at her weak body.
“Hello? Sir, what’s your emergency?”
“My…My mom…I…I don’t know what….” My voice is shaky and I’m struggling through each word. “She’s…she’s unconscious and—”
“Is she breathing, sir?”
Fuck, there’s a lot of blood. My mind flashes back to the battlefield, my chest tightens, I’m frozen.
“Sir, I need to know if she’s breathing?”
“I…”
“I’m routing an ambulance to you. Are you at 211 Riverdale?”
“Uh huh.”
“Sir, now please tell me, is your mom breathing?”
“She’s facedown, so… I don’t know.”
“Is her airway clear?”
Leaning over her, I look at my mom’s face and gently brush her hair out of the way. I can see that nothing is blocking her mouth or nose. Her eyes are closed and her poor glasses are smashed to hell, barely over her eyes.
“There’s…” Fuck!
“Sir? Her airway?”
“It’s clear.”
“Good, does she have a pulse?”
“I think so.”
I hear the dispatcher in the background speak to someone, then she comes back on the line. “The ambulance should be there in less than a minute, just leave her ’til the medics arrive. Are you okay to get off the phone and open your front door?”
“Yeah,” I say and hang up.
I take a deep breath and try to push the panic down, unlocking the door in a haze. I need to get my shit together. Running back to my mom, I rest my head softly against hers, I cry and just pray that she’ll be okay. She has to be. I’ve already lost one woman in my life, so I sure as hell can’t lose another. Lying this close to her, I can feel her breathing.
Thank God. Pulling the towel away, I check and see that her head is no longer bleeding. That’s good. But again my damn mind gets the best of me and morbid thoughts take over. I envision her in a casket, my dad and I crushed with grief standing over her, and the pain of it is as real as if I was standing right there, right now.
All of a sudden the room is flooded with EMTs. “Sir, I need you to get up,” one of them says, his voice so faint as I struggle to come out of the grief brought on by my vision. Where did it even come from? He gently helps me up as I’m still having a hard time processing things.
“What happened?” one of them asks me as the others begin to work on her.
I replay the story the best that I can, fighting to stay calm and in the moment. Then out of the blue – a flashback to the day Arion collapsed in the hallway outside of her condo, when I showed up like an asshole and scared the shit out of her. She had no idea that I was alive, and the pure shock alone caused her to faint.
Watching my mom just as helpless makes my world spin. Everything inside of me aches as my vision bounces between her, Arion, and war.
The walls are white, and it smells like Germany. It’s the same stench I dealt with when I was recovering there after being held hostage for close to a year. Images of my mom flood my mind, her blood sprayed everywhere, her lifeless body lying in a pool of it. The images flash from her to my fellow soldiers, and back again.
I’ve worked my ass off not to go back to that place and now…here I am. My body is numb and every single ounce of energy is drained from me. I put my sleeve under my nose to try and block out the scent and attempt to focus on the TV. Unfortunately, my cell phone is dead so that’s out as a distraction. I’m not one to watch anything unless it’s sports, but I try. My dad is just as quiet as I am. I’m not really sure what to say to him in a time like this. We both just sit here, stunned.
You always fear that something of this caliber will happen, but you never actually think it will. My insides are knotted up, my stomach roiling. Vomit burns in the back of my throat.
“Nate?” I hear my name called and look to see who it is. “What are you doing here?” Amanda asks, walking up to me on a pair of crutches with her ankle all wrapped up.
Seeing her lifts my fog and brings a small smile to my face. “My mom was just brought in.”
“Why, what happened? It’s not her MS is it?” she asks coming towards us. I stand and hug her, unable to answer her question. The truth is we don’t know what it was yet. Tears burn my eyes, and when I pull away, I shake my head. “They are running tests now to try and figure out what happened.”
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Thanks. How’s your ankle?” I ask her.
“I’ll give you two a minute,” my dad says. “Nate, I’m going to grab a coffee, do you want one?”
“Sure, thanks, Dad.”
“Please don’t leave because of me, Mr. Wilcox.”
“That’s nonsense, dear. I need some fresh air anyway,” he says and waves as he walks away.
“So how’s your ankle?” I ask her again.
“It’s fine. It’ll heal. How are you holding up?”
I shrug my shoulders and look her in the eyes. I’m not sure how to honestly answer that question. Right now, everything seems to be such a mess. Sitting next to me on the bench, Amanda wraps her arms around my waist and holds on to me. I hold her back, resting my chin atop her hair and try to calm my crazy thoughts.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks me. I shake my head, holding her a little tighter. With Amanda in my arms, everything feels better. She has a way of calming me. Maybe it’s because she’s become my best friend in recent months.
“Wilcox,” a doctor calls from the other side of the waiting room. My head flies up and I catch sight of my dad making a U-turn to head towards the doctor who holds the answers to our fate. I look down at Amanda as she smiles at me. “Go,” she says and I kiss her cheek.
“I’m Doctor Rosette. I assume you are Mrs. Wilcox’s family?”
“We are. How is she?” my dad asks.
“She’s resting. Her body has had a setback, if you may. There are many stages of Multiple Sclerosis and a lot of patients regress and bounce back over and over. Right now, we are dealing with her first serious regression. It’s going to take some time and some intense rehab to get her back to where she was. Her anemia is also really complicating the situation.”
My dad and I look at each other, neither one of us knowing what to ask next. “I realize this is a lot to take in. She is very lucky that the medics got to her when they did,” the doctor says.
“What does rehab mean?” I ask, wondering if there is anything that I can do to help with her rehabilitation. After all, I own a gym! And I can’t just stand by helpless doing nothing.
“MS is a tricky disease which attacks the central nervous system. Consideri ng your mom’s fall and the current state of her reflexes, I think walking again is going to be quite the feat. But we have some great facilities that work with MS patients, and I’m hoping we can get her into one nearby.”
“Would she have to live there?” my dad asks.
He nods his head and rests his hand on my dad’s shoulder. Then his pager beeps and he looks down at it. “Here’s my card, if either of you have any more questions, day or night. I’m sorry I have to run, but it’s an emergency.”
The doctor jogs off and I can’t help but feel like my heart is being ripped from my chest. My mom is the rock our family. She means the world to me, and after losing Arion, I couldn’t bear to lose her too. A nurse approaches us and asks, “Would you like me to take you to see her?”
“Please.”
Both my dad and I follow the nurse through the maze of the hospital. Finally she stops and I take a moment to prepare myself. I can see her through the thin glass of the door, she is sleeping so peacefully. My dad clears his throat, obviously holding back the tears as the nurse opens the door for us. We head inside and the second that we enter, she turns her head, looking over at us with tired eyes, but still her same happy smile.
“How are my two guys?” she asks in a hoarse tone.
“We’re fine. You have to stop worrying about us, Barb. Let us worry about you, honey,” my dad says to her.
She nods her head, tears welling in her eyes. We both pull up chairs sitting on opposite sides of her. Seeing her upset absolutely kills me, and the helplessness I feel brings a surge of panic. To try to squash it, I search for the strength to speak some words of comfort, to stay focused on what she needs to hear, while all three of us are clearly shaken and silent. But I keep getting flashes of her on that goddamn bathroom floor. I shake my head to clear the shit out of it – I have to be strong for her.
“Ma, you know everything is going to be okay, don’t you?”
She shakes her head and looks at me, then my dad. “You don’t know that, dear. It might not be. I fell in the bathroom and knocked myself out, in pretty spectacular fashion too,” she jokes trying to bring levity to the situation. “Judging from this knot on my head. So who knows what’s going to happen next.”
Pain resonates on my dad’s face. He just wants to make everything better and since he can’t…that’s a struggle for him. And for me, too. “I could have slipped getting out of the shower and had the same thing happen,” my dad says. “These things just happen. I know it’s hard right now to be positive, but please try. For me, for us?” he pleads, looking at me too with grief-stricken worry on his face.
She nods her head and moves her arm to wipe the tears away. Jesus, she is slow, so extremely slow. It worries me. I’ve never seen her like this. I grab a tissue and stand up, wiping the tears away for her. She smiles at me and says, “Thank you, baby.”
“Do you want to rest?” I ask. “You look tired, Ma.”
“No, I want to know what the doctor said.”
I look at my dad and let him take the lead on this. I can’t be the one to break the news to her.
“It might be better if he tells you,” my dad offers.
She glares at him and shakes her head, “No, Jeff, I want you to tell me.” She’s clearly agitated, and scared. I wish I could make this all better. Just make it go away.
“Okay.” He exhales and looks at me before speaking, giving her the doctor’s assessment. He tenses up before he gets to the part about her having to move into a rehab facility, and as I look at my mom, tears gloss over her eyes.
I can see how hard this is for him, and I notice he purposefully left out the part about her possibly never walking again. She’s so down and vulnerable, and I can only assume he just doesn’t want to take her hope away. I know I couldn’t tell her that right now.
She begins to cry and shakes her head, “No, I want to go home, Jeff,” she demands.
It kills me to see my mom so upset. I watch my dad unravel, both of us feeling out of control in this situation. “And you will, but for now, this is what we have to do to get you back home.”
She closes her eyes, crying. “And what if I never go home?”
“No!” he yells, “Please, honey, don’t say things like that.”
None of us say another word. The room is haunted by silence and the fear that this might be the end of the normalcy that we’ve always known. Watching my mom and dad cry, I feel overwhelmed. After all that they have been through, this is not the end they deserve. I wish there was something I could do to help. But there isn’t. Fury brews inside of me and pushes me toward my breaking point. To at least spare them this, I do the only thing I can. I leave.
Driving home, my insides are a twisted mess of worry and pain. My mom means so much to me, to see her so weak and suffering, it’s…well, it is indescribable. My mind starts to swirl just like when I found her, and I do my best to stop the images. I can’t go back to that place. The darkness starts to creep into my thoughts, and I just want to hold it off, but it’s almost impossible. I focus on what my therapist has taught me. Coping with the aftermath of trauma is hard, especially learning to trust that I won’t be totally overwhelmed by my feelings, that I can, in fact, handle it. I try to remind myself of this and take another deep breath.
Glancing down at my phone, it’s still dead, so I plug it in to charge on my drive home. It’s the first moment I’ve had away from my mom and it’s hard to leave her. But I had to get out of there before I exploded.
My phone turns on and a text from Amanda comes in. I hope your mom is okay. Call me. Dammit, I feel terrible for not saying goodbye to her. I have to call her back; she’ll be worried if I don’t.
Watching the cars on the road veering around me, I realize how slow I’m going and how zoned out I am. My phone rings and I answer it without even looking at the screen.
“Please tell me you can come over,” a familiar sultry voice says on the other end of the line. Pulling the phone away from my ear, I look at the screen, and sure enough, Andrea. Fuck. Now she calls. Why not last night when I was horny as fuck and only had my hand and some online porn to get me off? Before all this chaos.
Ever since I fucked her at Nash’s birthday party last year, she’s been riding my dick non-stop. She knows all I want is sex, so it’s a perfect arrangement for me. I take a minute before responding to her, thinking if there is any way that I can make it work. But there isn’t, and I know what my answer has to be.
“Nate, are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. It’s…I can’t tonight.”
Telling her no kills me since she never turns me down.
“Please don’t say that, I am so fucking horny for you. Can I come to you or we can meet at the gym?”
“I can’t, my mom’s in the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m such an ass.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know. Let me get through this and I’ll be in touch.”
We hang up and it pisses me off that I can’t just go to her. She’s become my own personal Arion in a fucked up way. She gives me a small dose of what I used to have with Arion and I fucking love it. Andrea looks so much like Arion and that’s got me hooked. Watching her blonde head as she blows me or when I fuck her from behind puts me back in Arion’s control for a few minutes at a time. So, sex with her I can’t ever seem to get enough of. She’s so sexy and a bit damaged like I am, which turns me on. Besides the obviously fucked up headspace of using her as my Arion replacement – I get it…it’s twisted – there’s the problem of her boyfriend. I don’t love being the other guy, but it does help that he’s a real douchebag, treating her shitty, talking down to her, and having his nose stuffed into fucking video games all the time. I don’t get why she stays with him, but it works for me, since I’m not looking for anything serious. We just don’t get time together whenever we want which sucks.
Putting my car in park, I head inside my parents’. Knowing what I have to do first, even though I don’t want to…I have to. I grab a trash bag, paper towels, some cleaning shit and head upstairs, then I take an old towel out of the linen closet. Before walking into the bathroom, I take a deep breath, letting all the pent up air out of my lungs. I will my brain to take me anywhere else, to ignore the task at hand. My mind keeps playing tricks on me as it’s pushing me back to that nasty room where I was held captive. I block it away, like I have so many times and just start to clean. But my mind gets the best of me and takes me back…
