Our Bruised Bodies | Bradley Bradshaw

ACT FOUR - PART SEVEN

Here we go. Cheers to that!

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Bradley never liked hospitals, both his parents have died in one, even though it was so much worse with his mother. Every visit had left him in agony. Of course he wanted to see her, he had loved her so much, but he didn't want to see her like that. He didn't want to be forced to remember her beautiful face so sickish and pale, constantly hulled in a thin layer of cold sweat. He didn't want to listen to her confused words, due to the chemotherapy. Bradley had decided that he never wanted to visit a hospital ever again on the day Maverick took him to visit him mother and she couldn't remember who he was. From then on, Bradley had stayed home with Ice and Grace when Maverick went to visit his mother.

Years later he felt guilty about that, refusing so bluntly his duty as her son, his duty to spend time at her sick bed just as she had spent so much time at his sickbed over the years, but seeing her like that, he couldn't take it. He couldn't go visit his dying mother every afternoon and then go back home, the new home he had with Ice and Mav and Gracie to do his homework, eat dinner and pretend he was alright.

He had needed the distance to keep on living, to be the little boy his mother wanted him to be. It would be unfair to say that he was happy in this time because he really wasn't. How could he? His mother was dying, but he tried to be okay, and it was simply easier to try to be okay when playing games with Ice and Gracie on the living room floor. It was easier to pretend he was doing alright, snuggled into Ice's side when they were sitting on the couch in the evening, watching some kid's movie in which Ice was always strangely invested, while Gracie never quite managed to sit still for a few moments, when Ice didn't force her to sit in his lap and cuddle her against his chest, with Bradley right beside her. Then, when surrounded by her family Gracie felt peace and so did Bradley. He felt human again, with his face buried in Ice's side, who simply let him, not commenting on it. All the older aviator did was throw an arm around his shoulder and hold him close, just as he held his own daughter close.

Now Bradley thought that he might have died with her if he would have kept visiting her. Maverick never corrected Bradley when he told the man he won't come to the hospital with him, because she can't even remember who he was. It was no mercy, but neither of them knew it any better back then. Bradley thought his mother was long gone before caner won in the end and it hurt so much. He couldn't imagine how Mav must have felt, visiting her every day, forcing him to go and see her over and over again. Bradley wondered how Maverick had felt back then, all the people he loved were dying. His inner circle growing smaller and smaller each and every time. Now there were three members and two of them were children and the other one, the only adult, was to be an Admiral soon. An Admiral, who would leave for deployment soon.

Back then, the eight-year-old Bradley never considered how anyone else was feeling about his mother's death, yet again, why would he, but now, now that he was an adult he thought of Maverick as so unbendingly strong. Losing everyone he loved over and over again. Bradley didn't know if he would have been able to bear it and still go on. But Maverick never gives up, he always keeps going. That's what made him, him.

But now, he kept waking up in hospital beds way more often than he was comfortable with, but this time it wasn't the military hospital in Tokyo anymore, it was the military hospital in SanDiego and Grace was sleeping in a more comfortable looking chair than the ones in Japan. Her legs thrown over the backrest of the chair, while her hip must be hanging in the air, between the seating surface and his hospital bed, on which most of her upper body was resting. He wondered how she managed to sleep like that. She must be so exhausted.

Maverick was there too, he was the one that had stirred Bradley out of his sleep, a gentle hand on his upper arm, which had Bradley blinking at him for a few moments confused and tired, before he was able to focus on the man before him.