Cheating Gods of Death (Sequel to L: Find A GirLfriend)

Feeling

I still didn't want him to see Dad. Then again, I couldn't disobey my coach.

"I'll see you soon, Lawliet."

He always said it as Law-let.

"Coach- Dad is getting surgery for aneurisms... He won't be able to talk to you about... until the season starts."

"Alright, hollar at me when he can. Tell 'em I hope he gets to feelin' better."

"Okay. See you."

Then I remembered that today was the third. Dad had his surgery today. They all decided on a flow director, which is really a synthetic tube they place in the vessel to keep blood traveling where it's meant to be. The aneurism itself will clot without new blood flow, and will become part of the vessel wall itself. It was a minimally invasive surgery, he wouldn't come out bald. I've read horror stories, but these happen in less than 5% of patients, and an email from my father's bed said that he was fine with 5% over 10% and 15% with other therapies. He said he'd rest on the odds, especially given that without surgery, his aneurism would likely kill him when it burst. He was probably under anesthesia still.

Ms. Bigham was going to drop us off at our house, all four of us clambered into the minivan. Isabella was eleven, Drew was seven; Isabella and Erica had a lot to talk about, but Drew and I? Not so much.

Mom was tip tapping a few things up on her keyboard, but rushed us all out the door after I changed and Erica collected a few things to do on the drive.

"I aim to get there when he gets out. We can sit around until he comes to. He won't talk to us then, but we have to be there. I think they might intubate him... Wouldn't make much sense to us, but they might. It IS major surgery..."

We sat around in the car, pulled in to the parking lot, everything else we had done half a dozen times before. The waiting room had a crying couple. Truthfully, they looked picture perfect, minus the setting and the brown-black mascara running down the woman's face. Her Texas A&F sweatshirt fit like the ones designers make to make models look smaller and the population look stupid as they buy a shapeless sweatshirt for $50.

Mom slowly scooted towards them and introduced herself in her expert, but never unwelcome way. The way they prayed, and how the man accepted her help... it was disgusting and surreal. Why did it just work out? She told them about Dad, how they'd take good care of their loved one, until the man began to want Mom to leave them be, saying thank yous, the woman clinging to Mom. We were called back into the recovery room, where he was as described, still and sleeping.

The first time we visited him was a week after the stroke. He was asleep, perfectly asleep. What little color he had was drained away, his hair was dirty and stuck to everything... and Mom began to cry almost instantly. She told us to set the letters and pictures we had drawn there on the nightstand, but I was nearly terrified. I couldn't explain it, but I was deathly afraid of him- oh, for Christ's sake, he was dead. Damn near dead! Erica did and solemnly wrapped the arms of her pink sweater around him and his breathing tubes, the nurse went to get her off of him, but mother beat her to it. She just moved the tube over so it wouldn't be in the way for either of them. With Mother, I hugged him, laying my head on his chest. His breathing was full, almost too full, and perfect. It wasn't like him. She let go of his hand, wiped her tears away, and took each of our hands, giving mine her right hand. When the automatic doors closed behind us, she gave mine a gentle squeeze and ran over the backside with her thumb before shuddering. I remember she took us to McDonalds for happy meals and her diabetes-causing frappuchino. She typed away on her blackberry, and asked to play with our toys to see what they did, smiling weakly.

This time, it felt like he was waiting. Eyes shut, but he was fine. Quiet, but he always was. It was significantly more comfortable, but the suspense burned like a rash. After about fifteen minutes, his eyes opened with a jolt, and a nurse kept him from sitting up.

"Hi honey, how are you?"

She never called him "honey".

He began to point frantically to a notepad in Erica's hand, and when she gave it to him, he scrawled something about a notebook that Near had. He wanted Mom to ask for it. When she agreed, he relaxed, and wrote that he felt fine. His penmanship was that of a preschooler, but I guess general anesthetics make you woozy... or his very fine motor skills were still lacking from the initial stroke. With a kiss goodbye, we left, a pep in her step that Erica then followed. High heels and pretty merlot toms pit pattering on the asphalt.

That night she called Near, and arranged to meet him at Charlotte Airport the next day. She said that us kids would spend the day with our grandparents after school.

It wasn't a problem in the slightest. Granddad picked me up, we talked about soccer, played a little soccer after dinner, while Erica and Grandma made the dinner and watched a movie in the living room.

It was peaceful. Granddad was a touch crotchety at dinner, but Mother always said he was a poop. A poop. The one thing she spared "shit" for was her father; love at it's purest.

I like to look at the pictures up on the stair of her as a little girl- the oldest one, she was nine. I remember particularly a photograph blown up into a larger frame of her as a two year old, wild dark blonde curls atop her head, a spot of drool on her green dress's skirt, and a cardboard box. She was in the midst of stepping out of the box with a mad grin dictating her entire face... and you could see the crazed fantasy in her imagination through her eyes. Beautiful, beautiful psychotropic-level fantasy... I used to think that I could hear her giggling- until I realized that would be neurotic and maybe even so far as to be described as pseudo-schizophrenic.

Mom drove to pick us up later in the evening, about nine, and there was a silver plastic envelope on the dashboard when I got in, as well as my jumpy Mother, who swatted my hand from it.

"What's in it?"

"A case... Something for a case, George."

"Governmental?"

"No... but very- sensitive; George, I wish I could tell you. Too sensitive..."

I didn't ask her any more questions, she was about to snap, her pieces lashing out unto everything. Like a girl; Mothers are girls.

Father came home again after a week or so, more personalized and intense therapy making his speech and movement clearer every time he went. Truthfully, he'd been working harder at the exercises he'd been given than his cases. That's the only reason why so much progress was made so quickly, he suffered at his own compulsion to heal- but what was healing? He was only going to resume the numbing patterns he had before...

He took the envelope into his office room the day he got home. I found the envelope burning in the seldom-used burning barrel in the yard, the plastic sizzling and melting, breathing its suffocation into my throat. Mom was roasting a marshmallow on it, such was her way.

That evening, she was doing the dishes and looking upward at a forty-five degree angle to her. I saw her toss an apple upward, and it vanished before I could trace it's descent.

[Auther's Note: GAAH! We're rollin' now!]