Instead of Me

∆34∆

"You know you don't have to stay here, right?" A male nurse filled out some paperwork in a chair across from me. I read his patient's name upside down from the chart. It was Mrs. Valentine. He noticed me squinting my eyes, trying to understand all the medical slang written across the papers, and closed the chart. "You should really get home and rest."

I shrugged my shoulders at him. "I feel like I should wait. He's my dad, you know?"

The nurse snorted. "That's not what it sounded like earlier. No offense." He rapped his pen on the cover of the chart in his lap and sighed. "I heard a nurse say that they got into contact with your mom. She said she would be here in about twenty minutes."

I cocked my head to the side. "Sorry, did you say twenty minutes?" I felt immediately rejuvenated.

"Yup," he said, popping the 'p.'

My head started spinning. "Oh my gosh," I muttered under my breath, clasping my fingers behind my head.

The nurse pushed his eyebrows together. "Listen, man, are you okay?" He leaned forward, ready to move in a split second.

My mom was only twenty minutes away. The doctors just called her. Has she been living twenty minutes away from us for the past five- almost six- years? How could that have been possible? Surely, somebody would know. Somebody would have told us? Wouldn't I have seen her at a grocery store? Or maybe randomly while driving somewhere? Wouldn't I be able to notice my mom living so close? Did she keep tabs on me since she was so close? Did she wonder how I turned out? She probably didn't since she never intervened if she knew how my dad ended up? What if they saw each other- at a bar or store? Would that have pushed him over the edge? Knowing she left us to live so close by would have destroyed him and enhanced his alcoholism.

I couldn't see her pull the plug on my dad, especially not after knowing how close she was, knowing she was close enough to help him.

"Excuse me," I said. "I have to go." My entire body was covered in a layer of sweat. I searched the waiting rooms in the hospital for Annie, starting with the one I last saw her in, asleep. "Annie?" I yelled. "Annie?" A nurse told me to quiet down. A patient complained. I ignored them and kept looking for my best friend. "Annie?"

She came out of a restroom, shaking her hands. When she saw me, she laughed and said, "They ran out of paper towels." She continued flicking her fingers to dry them off.

"Annie," I breathed, finding it hard to be able to say anything.

"What's wrong, Finny?" She noticed the look on my face and wiped her palms on her shirt. "What happened?"

I licked my lips, allowing myself to fall into the chair behind me, exasperated. "She's close."

Annie cleared her throat and squatted down in front of me, setting her hands on my knees. "Finn, I don't know what you're talking about," she said softly. "I know that after today, your mind is racing, and you probably don't know what is up and what way is down, but I need you to explain what you're talking about." Through her eyes, I could tell she wanted to help.

I blurted out what the nurse told me, followed by my assumptions of my mother's whereabouts for the past five years. "She's a coward," I said. "How could she do that to us?" As my masculinity had already left earlier in the day, I just cried again. I didn't want to, but everything in my life came crashing down. The load of baggage and burdens I kept in my backpack that had weighed me down for so long fell out of the backpack. I could finally straighten my posture, but I couldn't figure out if standing straight was better than knowing how everything turned out.

"Oh, Finn. . ." Annie sat herself in the chair next to me and touched my thigh. "I'm so sorry." My head fell into her side, underneath her arm. My shoulders shook, but I made no noise. Annie rubbed my back and held her other hand on my cheek to wipe the tears as they spilled over. She leaned down and kissed the top of my head. "I'm so so sorry," she whispered repeatedly.