Blood Ink

Chapter Three

I came too again. The medical tape on my wrist was burning and part of the reason I had awoken to this new fractured reality. My vision was blurry, I couldn't breathe through my nose correctly, the cotton ball feeling still hadn't resided. My father sat in a chair at my bedside. His black grey hair making him appear having aged so much more, even though I'd seen him last night at dinner. His hand was holding mine loosely. He was asleep his head resting next to my leg. My wrist itched again, I looked around the room silently not moving. I didn't want to wake him to this nightmare reality one I'd still hoped was just a dream. My mom wasn't here, that made me feel relieved for some reason. Maybe it was because she had been the one to break the news to me, so her absence meant that maybe just maybe, what she said wasn't true.

After what felt like hours of staring into white plastered walls, I squeezed my hand slightly and my father stirred. He yawned a little and sat up, I could smell the after shave and I wondered how long Id been asleep. I remembered bits and pieces of waking up here and there. Of my dad arriving, my mom crying quietly when she thought I was asleep. My fathers soft soothing words.

   The numbing pain, the hole that had been punched into the center of my chest, was the only reminder of the truth when I woke up. I wouldn't wake up to Cole's groggy complaints ever again. I wouldn't see him grow up, or get his first girlfriend, or his first kiss.
   I wouldn't have the luxury to humiliate him after his first date, or embarrass him with photos when he went out to get his prom date. I wouldn't be able to nurse him out if his first hangover, or tease him with that cow lick he always had on the left side of his head every morning.
   I wouldn't walk into the kitchen to find his company were he would just slide me a pop tart and hand me a glass of orange juice. While he ate his pop tart with milk, he wouldn't stare out the window of my car in silence anymore.

   We wouldn't be able to go to marble slab creamery late at night anymore, or sneak out to get McDonald's. I wouldn't get to watch late night movies with him or bother him to do his homework and have him ask me all sorts of questions about how to do it.
No more math tutoring sessions, or procrastinating together. No more fighting with him about which Netflix show was the best. The dinner table would always have an empty chair now until someone decided to get rid of the extra. He wouldn't be coming home late from a friend's house. His room will always be empty and untouched the idea of moving on with life without him seemed to wreck my thoughts further and further the more I thought about it.

I couldn't help but make a mental list of the very real absence he would be making in my life now. I stared at my father hollowly, he gave a dry smile, his eyes appeared to have aged. He looked  exhausted, we both did. His expression was one of mixed emotions and he greeted me gently. He was supposed to be away on a business trip of sorts in Chicago, yet he was here sitting next to me.

   "Hey sweetheart, you're awake." He slowly sat up straightening his posture and seeing him grimace the way I did when I slept crooked in the exact same way.

   I didn't answer him I just stared at the wall behind him. Hoping to hear Cole's voice as he would run into the room with some wild idea and my mother being right behind him with a fresh cup of coffee. She would have her cellphone in her hand and tell Cole to quite down, that we were in the hospital not a street fair. The echo of his voice lingered in my mind, yet it never came. That door never opened to reveal him standing there holding a book or rushing to hug me.

   My body ached to hug him again, to hear him again. To see him laughing at some stupid cat video again. To see his eyes brighten afterward and beg me to get him one.
If I could see him again one more time I would get him ten kittens, maybe even fifteen I would take him wherever he wanted and I would hug him until he complained that I was choking him.

   That empty hole in my chest just grew heavier, as I saw my mother walk in she had a styrofoam cup in her hand and the aroma of burnt coffee filled my nostrils. Her hair was a mess and she looked exhausted from everything just like my dad. Tired of life, tired of crying. Breathing seemed to be a working effort they weren't sure how to complete. I felt it right alongside them.

   I wished that truck would have crushed me and spared Cole. It should have been me, my parents would have found a way to survive without me.

   It should have been me.

Cole was still dead. I was still stuck here in this bleak meaningless reality without him. My mom and dad were in the slow process of digesting the reality that they would never see their son again. I could already feel the way home would be, lifeless and empty mornings. No more pick ups and drop offs, just store runs. The funeral and how everyone would wear black. The small short words of condolences and the small mumbled chats of memories about him. I could already see my mother sitting on the edge of his bed having folded this weeks laundry and sobbing into one of his shirts uncontrollably. I could see my dad's blank stare and my mothers dead eyes as we all sat down to eat dinner and she would serve four plates stupidly forgetting that there were only three of us now. I could see how my mom would react as she picked up his plate of food. How she would slowly scrape the food off his plate and put it in the sink.

The unending silence, and the slow feeling of a ruined appetite.

   This is what I would be facing once I got out of the hospital once life began again without Cole and his vibrant lively attitude, and I hated it more than anything. The worst part of it all was knowing that there was nothing I could do to change it.