What Happens Next

I. Pain

"Spencer, I'm so sorry," she paused, unsure of whether or not she wanted to say what she was going to say.

"Max, no, please," he protested into the phone. Reid's eyes teared up, and his voice cracked as he said the next sentence, "where am I supposed to go?" 

"I- I don't know Spencer, but you can't come back here," a tear rolled down her cheek, trapping itself between her pale skin and her phone screen. She brought her hand up to her face and roughly wiped away its trail with the sleeve of her green sweatshirt. 

Never would she have ever thought it would come to this, but after his third trip to rehab for an addiction he was supposed to have kicked over a decade ago, Max needed to protect their kids. 

"Please," he pleaded, his bony fingers running through his newly healthy brown curls. He could hear the pain in her voice, and although he knew he was only going to hurt her more by begging, Spencer had no place else but home. 

"I loved you, and maybe I still do, I don't know, but the kids cannot see you like this again. You cannot come at them with another round of empty promises-- Maeve," she inhaled deeply, "Maeve cannot find you on the floor like that. Ever again." 

Max looked down at her daughter, Addison, playing quietly on the living room floor, entirely unaware of the phone call her mommy was having. She thought about how Addie's father would not be in her life and how sad the other kids would be to find out daddy would not be returning home, and her stomach fell. She reminisced on the love and affection Spencer had shown for his children, and she smiled a broken smile at the memory of how excited her kids were to see him when he returned last time, and then she remembered why he had left in the first place: Maeve.

"Mom! Help! Help Mom please! Please I think dad is having a seizure, mom please what do I do? Mom wake up! Please mom come in here. Help!"

My daughters screams pierced my ears, and I woke up with a surge of adrenaline. I ran out of our bedroom and looked down the hall to see the  bathroom light on, and the shaking body of my husband on the floor. My daughter, Maeve, named after the woman the man beneath her terrified hands had loved almost as much as her, was crouched over her father supporting his head in her hands. 

Maeve was wearing nothing but an oversized gray t-shirt and a pair of underwear-- something she would not appreciate being seen by her parents wearing if it weren't under these circumstances, but now she was screaming for her dad to open his eyes.

"Okay, okay, Maeve, it's okay, I'm going to get my phone, I'll be right back," I yelled, as I ran back into my room to grab my cell phone. 

I returned to the scene already on the phone with the paramedics. I too was not wearing anything my daughter wanted to see me in. Under normal circumstances, I would have covered my chest with my arms as to avoid subjecting my child to the image of my swollen-from-breast-feeding breasts sagging prominently beneath my tank top. My pants were not my own, but rather the pants that my husband had discarded the night before, that I had shoved on my body after the first round of screaming. 

Spencer had stopped seizing, but he had not regained consciousness. I sat on the cold, white tile, across from Maeve, to block her view of the small vile of dilauded and used syringe abandoned on the floor behind me. 

Maeve's dark brown hair fell around her face, and her cheeks were bright red. Her brown eyes bloodshot, and wide with fear. She gripped Spencers hand and begged for him to wake up.

"Honey, help is on the way, okay? It's okay. He's going to be okay," I feebly assured my terrified child, "Do you want to put some clothes on? I'm going to stay right here, he's going to be okay."

Only just now remembering her bare legs, Maeve tugged the hem of her shirt as low as it would stretch, and nodded, sprinting down the hall to her bedroom. 

I informed the operator that my husband had overdosed on dilaided and the paramedics arrived quickly, sweeping him off to the hospital.

"My child did not recover from that night. My child has not smiled, or laughed, or joked around the same way she did before she found her father nearly dead on the floor of her bathroom! You are not coming home so that you can do that to her again. To any of our children," Max yelled, before breaking down into the phone. 

"Momma? Why you crying?" Addison asked, standing up and running clumsily over to her. She had attracted the attention of the toddler with the yelling. 

"Listen, Spencer, I've gotta go, okay? Addie needs me, and I have to start dinner."

"Wait wait wait, can you put her on?" He begged, "please?"

"Not today, okay. I've gotta go," Max hung up, and reached down to pick her daughter up. She wiped the tears off her wet phone screen and stashed it in her pocket before doing the same to her face. 

She took a deep breath and smiled at her child, "Oh Addie, I'm okay."