Allyson In Between ✔︎

Noah | Deleted Scene 2

[photo by Annie Spratt from Unsplash]

My grandfather lives in an assisted living facility. Dad says it's one of the nicer ones but I don't like going there. More than that, I don't like that Gramps can't get in his car and leave anytime he wants. So I try to break him out at least once a week.

I park way away from the entrance and fill my lungs with fresh air before I pass though the sliding glass doors. I could puke all over again just thinking about the stink I encountered the first time I came here. And I guess that was just a really bad day because most days the place smells okay. But today, I hold my breath all the way to the stairwell. Today, I'm not taking any chances.

I walk through his door and Gramps smiles. "The Hero has returned," he says, lifting both arms up over his shiny bald head. I don't get annoyed when he calls me that. I'm usually too busy celebrating the fact that he recognizes me at all. Some days it takes him a while to figure out that I'm not Dad or Dad's younger brother, Patrick, who died when I was eight.

"Do you want to go out for ice cream?" I ask. I hold up the Dr. Pepper as option B.

"We went out for ice cream yesterday," he says but it's more like a question. Gramps started having problems with his short-term memory right after Grandma died.

"We can go twice in one week, can't we?" 

He shakes his head and points to the soda. "When I was seventeen, I had better things to do on a Friday night than take an old man out for ice cream."

It's not Friday. Wouldn't matter if it were. I haven't much wanted to go out since the accident. "Why aren't you out there capitalizing on your fifteen minutes of fame?" he asks.

"Fall conditioning started this week."

Gramps nods his approval. He's thinking about how close I came to winning state last year—and I was only a junior. This year Coach says I've got a good shot at a college scholarship. If I want it bad enough.

"Do you remember Ally—the girl who almost drowned?" I ask.

"The girl you saved," he corrects.

I breathe in through my nose to ward off that sick feeling. Gramps' room always smells like peppermint and that's probably a good thing. Grandma used to swear it would get rid of nausea. "We used to be best friends," I say when the urge subsides.

"You used to bring her over to my house to swim in the pool," he says. "You always looked at her the way an astronaut looks at the moon."

Nothing wrong with his long-term memory.

"Now would be a good time to ask her on a date," he says.

"She doesn't remember me. She barely remembers her own family."

His eyebrows shift and I feel like a douche. That statement could just as easily describe Gramps on a bad day. "I'm sorry," I say. "I shouldn't have—"

"Don't worry about it," he says, swiping an unsteady hand through the air. "You don't have to walk on eggshells around me. I know what's happening. I'm not afraid. Trust me, son. There are some things I won't mind forgetting: the look on Sarah's face when our youngest son died. Watching the love of my life waste away..."

I don't remember it that way. Grandma was old Virginia high society. To me, she was always regal—even when she was thin and pale and bald from the chemo.

"But don't get me wrong," he says. "I'm grateful she went first. I'd have hated for her to watch me lose my mind. That's what I worry about, Dodger. I don't want to put that burden on you and your father. I don't want you to remember me as some demented old fool."