Two Boys in Love

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Don parked his car in the parking lot at the rear of the building, just as the signs instructed. After we parked, I got out of the passenger seat and closed the door behind me. Don got out and locked the driver side door and we walked together to the front entrance. It was Wednesday, three days after the fire, and it was my first visit to Mom since she had been brought here. We entered the cozily decorated front reception area and stood in line at the receptionists desk to sign in. When it got to be my turn, I approached the desk and signed my name in the large sign- in book and looked up to face the receptionist.

"What is the name of the patient?" The receptionist asked.

"Grace Simmons." I replied. The receptionist looked Mom up on the computer.

"Your name, please?" "Byron Welleham." I said.

"Your age?"

"Twelve."

"May I please see your walkers ID?" She said.

I took my Florida walkers ID out of my pocket and showed it to her. She looked at it and then handed it back to me. "What is your relationship to the patient?"

"I'm her son." The receptionist then handed me a visitor badge.

"Visitation begins in ten minutes, an orderly will come down and take you up to the patient area. You will have 15 minutes to visit the patient. You and only you have been authorized by the patient to visit her upstairs. Once the visit is completed, you'll be escorted back to the desk and you will return your visitors badge. Do you have any questions?"

"No, Ma'am." I said.

"Very good. Please have a seat." She said.

Don and I went over to the one of the couches and sat down. There were three other people also waiting to visit patients. There was an older looking black man and a young, Hispanic looking couple, and they all looked as miserable as I felt.

"How are you holding up, Byron?" Don leaned over and asked me. "If this is too much for you we can always come back tomorrow."

"No." I said without looking at him. "She said on the phone that she really wants me to see her today." Don didn't want to be there and was trying to leave. What a selfish prick, I thought.

Don turned and faced forward with a pained look on his face. I was still mad at him about everything that had happened. When Mom and I found our house burning down last Sunday, Don told us that he had left a lit cigarette in the ashtray on the shelf next to Mom's bed. He had passed out on the couch, and the cigarette had burned away and dropped down onto one of the pillows. The smoke detector woke him up and he discovered the bed in flames and fire spreading up the wall. He was able to get his guitar and a couple of Mom's things out in time, but everything else went up in a blaze. Mom had a complete nervous breakdown right there on the lawn when he told her all of this, and she had to be taken away in an ambulance to this awful place where we now were. Don said we could move into his house, but I was still not in any mood to forgive him. I was so mad at him that I wound up staying back over at Adam's house on Sunday night.

Adam had his own problems. Steve Krauter had told his mom about the porno that he saw Chris watching at Adam's house. He also apparently had told her that Adam and I were "holding hands and kissing". She then called up Sherry in a rage, yelling and screaming and making various threats. Sherry confronted Adam about it, searched his room, and found the DVD. She responded by grounding Adam for two weeks, by limiting his computer access, and told him that his backpack would be searched every time he came back from his dad's from then on. Sherry then called Don and gave him an earful about it as well. Steve stopped talking to both me and Adam at school, and now sat at the completely opposite side of the cafeteria from where we sat, as though we had some kind of infectious disease.