Entangled

chapter 10

Jayden returned home to his mother, Jordan, three days after being admitted to the hospital, and so far, he was out of the woods. Jordan and Ivan were living together now because he and Nicole had agreed to give themselves some time apart to see how they felt and if they could really be apart from each other for a little while, and maybe start dating other people. It was clear that Nicole still didn't have romantic, sexual feelings for Ivan, that she only saw him as her idol, so Jordan took her only opportunity to at least enjoy his company for a while, before it would slip away forever because once that Ivan was in Nicole's arms, Jordan would never be able to get him because she'd never take another woman's man, much less the man of one of her very best friends. Everyone in his family threw a party at Ivan's house to celebrate his return. His adopted parents were there along with all the family members of his adopted parents, and his immediate family, the Ainsworth family, of course. Bella, the adorable dog, was there to receive him. This time, Ivan didn't allow her to jump on him the way she would always do because just by doing that, she would be sending him right back to the hospital, and this time, he could die, if her big paws and legs end on his chest. The entire Thornhart family and everyone directly related to them, they were also there to support Jayden. Jayden would need one more operation to ensure that he would live a normal life because it turns out that his lungs were not the problem, like everyone thought in the beginning. The problem was his heart. He was working himself up too hard and playing too much sports, playing too much, period, too much rigorous activity that a child his age couldn't handle, living too fast, wanting to do everything at once. From now on, little Jayden would have to take medication to keep his heart functioning correctly, and of course take it easy, live one day at a time, and do one thing at a time, and not too much of it, either. He could still enjoy doing the things he loved to do, but he needed to cut back on the work and on the time. He didn't mind, really. Right now, though he was very young, Jayden had the heart of a sixty-year-old man, and if he didn't get a heart transplant soon, he would die by age twenty. It was a very sad situation, but Jayden wasn't willing to let this get him down. No way. He was going to keep living and enjoying his life, and if he only lived to age twenty, then so it was going to be. It will have been twenty years well lived instead of twenty sad, miserable years.

The main living room, where it was now the place to celebrate a big event instead of a normal living room, was like a stage where everyone, good singer or not would put on a show for the honored one. Jayden loved music, and he was allowed to listen to all kinds of music now, except for albums that had parental-advisory labels on them or songs that had cuss words or were way too sexually-explicit, like underground music. It was peculiar because Jayden loved listening to artists like Alice Cooper and those who would sing lyrics like his. Jayden felt that this music had a message to deliver, a moral. He loved protest music, in which the artists would complain about something they thought was unfair or just wrong. He was intrigued by feminist music. He wanted to listen to those lyrics, write them down and analyze them, what it was that bothered feminists about men so much, why they had become feminists in the first place. Listening to them talking trash about men didn't bother him at all, unless they would talk trash all throughout the song and not explain why they felt this way, what the heck men were doing wrong to drive them to this. He hated listening to chauvinistic music, though, that music in which artists objectified and devalued women, like saying that we were only good for sex or stuff like that, and the things they wanted to do to us. He classified that as underground music, just nasty, although we had the right to freedom of speech, religion and the press, but to Jayden, that music should remain underground. Unbeknown to them, these men were disrespecting their mothers and their sisters, according to everyone in these families that were enjoying this party. Whoever would disrespect one woman for any reason was disrespecting all of them. Everyone in these families thought that women were sacred, that they were created to be the man's companion, not the man's sex slave or slave in any other form. All these men that were in this house, they would treat their women with respect and give them their place, and even though Langston used to beat on Diana when he was under the influence of that trash called methamphetamine, or crank, he would never rape her or enslave her. He would only hit her because in reality he didn't know what the hell he was doing, and when he wasn't under the effect of any drug, he would never lay a hand on her. Most of the time, he would hit her for no reason. There would be no argument or provocation prior to that. Most of the time, he would see her in front of them and strike her, seeing her as some wrestler or some gang member or thug who was threatening him. He only realized he was hitting his wife that day that the ambulance took her away. All the time, he would hit her and then forget about it a few hours later. Then, when she would throw it in his face, he would ask her what the hell she was talking about, and when the argument started, he would leave her there, with her words in her mind, not able to escape her mouth. Back then, not too long ago, Langston Ainsworth was the most terrible husband in the world. The only thing that would make him the very worst of all was the one thing he'd never done, rape her or humiliate her. Diana didn't know that he was abusing methamphetamine until one day, while slapping her, he told her that she was a Nazi that deserved to die, and unwillingly explained to her all of the things he was hallucinating about. This drug made him behave like an untreated schizophrenic. Then, one day, Diana talked this over with her doctor and her doctor told her that there was something seriously wrong with her husband, that he was either schizophrenic or under the effect of a dangerous drug.