Aeternum Fidelis

A Startling Birthday Surprise

Life is centered towards reverence for the forces of nature; many people wonder what the meaning of life is. I've wondered that my whole life.

My life has been tough; I was in and out of Foster care for many years until finally my grandmother decided to adopt me.  I lost my mother to a car accident and my father to a heart attack.

My mom used to beat me and my father was arrested for most of my childhood.

I loved my father, especially for him having taken the blame for something my mother did. I remember it so clearly. It was the day of my seventh birthday on July 16, 2001, it was a Monday and I had just arrived home after a long and exhausting day of hanging around with my friends from school at the park. 

I was expecting to come home to a surprise party but when I arrived the house was dark and quiet. As soon as I entered the door to my room there she was, my mum, drunk.

Apparently I made too much noise and she came running up to me with a strength that wasn't expected from someone drunk. She launched at me, hitting me in the head with the bottle of Alize Bleu she had in her hand. I fell to the ground from the impact; the bottle had broken sending shards of glass all over the wooden floor.

She got even more furious because her liquor bottle was smashed that she started punching and kicking me, meanwhile my father had just arrived to the house from a long day of work.

He came in through the door and heard the yelling. Aside from the bloody yelling I heard my father's work boots going up the spiral staircase. When he finally arrived he found me on the floor a bloody mess. My mum was still kicking me.

He pulled her away and threw her to the other side of the room. My vision was blurry but I saw and felt him pick me up and take me to the hospital.

The hospital was a white building that looked more like a jail rather than a hospital. When we arrived to the emergency room the nurses took me away.  The rest of my birthday I spent it in the hospital recovering from a concussion, a few broken ribs, and in total 100 stitches.

I heard doctors say it was a miracle I had survived, when I awoke my father was there, holding my puny hand in his huge warm ones.

An officer appeared through the door. We both looked towards him and when the man took a look at me he winced slightly. He moved towards my father and I could only make out the words, "you are under arrest for the assault of your son Nathan Adams."

That's all I heard and I saw another police officer arrive, they held my father down and put the shiny cuffs on him telling him his rights.

I wanted to yell my father's name, I wanted to scream that it wasn't him, that is was my mum who had hurt me. But the words wouldn't come out; they were stuck in my throat. When they took him away I saw a lonely tear escape his eyes as he looked at me one last time.

A strange woman appeared through the door. She had blonde hair in a high ponytail. She touched my hand with her freezing cold ones, I shivered and looked away. I drifted off to sleep and awoke the next day with most of the machines gone; a single IV and heart monitor was left, beeping to the rhythm of my 7 year old heart.

A few weeks when most of my cuts and stitches were a little better I was told by the strange blonde lady that I was going to be taken to a foster home. She walked away after that but I heard her tell one of the nurses my mother had refused to have me live with her.