Chasing Daylight

Dylan, December 25, 2014

  So Skai is spending Christmas day in the hospital. Again. I remember the one time she fell down four flights of stairs and spent four days in the hospital before she was let out after much discussion on whether it was purpose that she fell or simply a matter of unbalance.

  The hospital, technically, has come to her house. Felix wanted to take her to the actual hospital building but clearly has not heard of mental disability. He would have told them that the wounds were self-inflicted since that is the only lie that goes and they would have moved her into a mental asylum as soon as they could. I know her past. Better than anyone else (barring my brother). I would know, not her newest boyfriend.

  Unfortunately, she is busy having her broken leg reset in the other room. Felix and Tyler had easily moved a bed from upstairs downstairs, into the living room for her. We are standing in the kitchen, just a wall away from her in the presence of her brother, Jared who simply does not want to believe that I am here, and her father whom I presume is going to flee again next chance he gets after this. We explained to him that it was all self-infliction but he never reacted to any of this. Especially not me.

  The screams of pain are crawling through my head with such persistency that I wish none of anything else had happened so that I could sit there with her, hold her hand tight in mine.

  The screams come to an abrupt stop and everything is quiet. Quiet footsteps come closer to the door, but fade away again, and loud whimpers come from a certain someone.

  “Where’s Danielle?” the father whispers, and Jared stares at me but I don’t acknowledge them. I don’t want to hear about this at all.

  “In the hospital, keeping Draven company.” Jared explains, also in a soft voice.

  “She’s there alone?”

  “With. Draven.”

  “But alone in a hospital?” he keeps asking all these questions and it’s really irritating for me to hear.

  “We trust Draven more with Danielle than we care to trust you right now.”

  I storm out the room. Out the house when I hear her name again. I hate this! I slam the door behind me and just stand outside, against the house, my face in my hands.

  I want to see her. I want to see my daughter, but they ever let me? The odds are unlikely that they will.

  My brother sees my daughter more than I had spent time with her before I ‘died’.

  I sit on the ground beside the front door, listening closely to Skailar’s shallow breaths.

  If Cassidy hadn’t changed me, I’d be dead. But if she’d left me, I would never have been involved in all the murderous killing and what Skailar has gone through for twenty hours straight.

  I know I shouldn’t even be here. I don’t belong in Skailar’s life anymore. I left and never came back for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is yet but I will find out. If I can. Why would Skai want me here anymore? I lied to her. Let her doppelgänger torture her to the near point of death.

  I wish they would say that they don’t trust anyone with Danielle but me. But why would they? Danielle doesn’t even know me. She’s only six for god’s sake.

  The long and short of it…I wish I’d stayed and become a good father.