Words 2184
EMERY.
What I see when I enter my house is my mother pressed up against the wall, her eyes squinted and her face covered in terror. Her arms are flying towards the culprit holding her against the wall and her bare feet are hardly touching the ground. All I can see is the back of the man holding her in place, but I know for certain it isn't my father. Of course it isn't dad. Mom looks terrified and the culprit's hands look too aggressive to be dad's.
I know for a fact that it's Chris holding her. His hands are holding her from her cloudy pajama top, one hand wrapped around her neck. "Where is she?" He screeches into her face, making mom wince and turn her head away from him. All she does is whimper in fear, smacking his shoulders. I've never seen her this way...
"What the fuck Chris! Get off of her!" I scream once I finally take control of my frightened body. Honestly, yelling at him probably isn't the smartest move but I can hardly think straight right now. My legs move quickly, so quickly that I feel like everything else around me is slow. My mind is racing a thousand miles a minute with scared possibilities as I grab Chris's shoulder, pulling him backwards as hard as I can.
He stumbles backwards, his hands losing contact with my mother's skin. He's quick when he turns around and slaps me across the face, sending me to the ground. "There you are, you dumb fuck." He spits like a poisonous snake, slithering closer to me as if my mother has disappeared from the room.
He seems to have forgotten about mom, who is now continuously coughing, holding her hand over her red bruised neck. I push myself away, my jeans dragging onto the wooden floor to the other side of the room.
I need to get up. I can't defend myself if I'm on the ground. Get up Emery. Get the fuck up.
I quickly flip myself around so it's easier for me to stand, but I feel a kick to my gut and I'm on the floor again. "You thought you could send me to jail? I have connections in there, you know. There's no getting rid of me, Emery. You can't— fuck!" Chris screeches, turning around and lifting his arm in front of his face. Mom had hit him with an umbrella, the closest thing she could get to. She seemed to have hit him good because it takes a moment for him to recover. But when he does his eyes are red with rage and his hand is reaching into his pocket, pulling out a small knife and pushing mom against the wall again. Her head bangs against the wall and I'm surprised it didn't dent the wall with the force.
I scramble up as quick as possible and jump onto Chris's back, pulling his head up, making him lose his balance. We might be girls, girls who don't work out as often as we should, but we are two against one. I hear Chris groan, I hear mom gasp, and then I feel Chris and I moving backwards. His feet scramble to gain his balance. We soon collide against the wall, my back hitting the light green drywall beside the window and I push him away from me. His foot gets stuck in the rug and he falls onto the coffee table, breaking the middle glass. Blood quickly spreads from under him, creating a pool of red liquid. He fell on his knife. He's gasping for breath, but doesn't move from his place on the broken glass and I begin to silently thank that damned carpet for being there.
My breath and heartbeat is loud in my ears, muffling out any of the other sounds. My nerves are going crazy, my hands shaking uncontrollably.
I slowly look over at my mom. She is now slouched down against the wall, a red circle forming onto her stupid cloudy pajama shirt.
A red circle?
I'm spaced out, squeezing my eyes shut and opening them up again to see clearer. The red circle has doubled in size, quickly spreading across her stomach. Her hands frantically go to the circle, pressing down on it. She lets out a whimper and removes her hand, her fingers now covered in blood.
It's not just a red circle like I'd hope it would be. It's a wound.
Fuck.
I feel my heart stop beating and the world around my mom become pitch black. My stomach feels heavy, like my heart fell into it, weighing me down to the ground making it hard to move.
But I have to move. I have to get over to her.
I practically climb over Chris's limp body, b-lining straight for mom. The tears are instant down my cheeks as my hands press against the wound. "Fuck... fuck..." I squeak, looking everywhere but my mother's eyes that are drearily staring at mine. They are no longer blue-gray. They are dark and emotionless. She's panting like a dog that just ran a thousand miles to get home and her lips are open with trickles of blood on the side of her mouth.
"Fuck... god, what do I do?" I sob, not asking anyone in particular. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Take it back, please." I'm making no sense, but I couldn't care less right now. My tears fall from my face, landing on her red shirt. I wish this was Repunzel. She's be healed right now.
"C..." mom takes a breath, "call 911." She manages, her hands holding my wrists, making them bloody. She still manages to sound comforting, her hands gentle around my shaking wrists.
I hesitate, not wanting to let go of her wound. I can hardly think straight. I scramble across the room, crawling to the kitchen counter and pulling myself up. I pick up the phone that's on the counter and shakily dial the number, immediately going back to mom on the floor. "H-hell... hello? P- please my mom—"
"What's the address, ma'am?" He cuts me off.
I tell him the address, using all of my brain power to pull the information from my brain. All I can think right now is:
She's going to die
She's going to die
It's all going to end and she's never know how I feel
She'll never know how much I truly need her.
God, I need her.
I need her.
I need to tell her before it ends.
Before it all fucking ends!
Once he says they will be there in 10 minutes or so, I drop the phone from my shaky hands, attaching them to her wounded stomach again. "I need you, mom. Don't do this. Fucking Stop." I demand as if it'll fucking make everything better. It brings me the ever-so-slight bit of comfort to beg her to be okay, as if she can fix everything that had just happened in the matter of ten minutes. "I need you." I repeat, leaning my head down onto my hands. "I need you." My words I barely audible and I honestly don't care if she can't hear me, or understand me. I'm saying the words. I can see the wet substance growing by the second and it's smudging off onto my forehead. My hands are sticky with dried and wet blood. All my mother's blood.
"I fucking need you, mom, don't do this."
"Please don't do this."
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I sit, dull eyed and bloody on a waiting chair. I don't know where I'm sitting exactly, because I haven't looked up since they told me to wait in the waiting room. Once mom was out of sight, all I've seen was the terrazzo flooring, white with little specks of pale green, blue, black, and purple.
After they took my mom away in a hurry that's when I looked down and saw my hands. Red. Nothing but red sticky dried blood.
My mother's blood.
I don't think I've ever freaked out as much as I did right there, in the middle of the hospital hall. It was like a big wave of realization when I started to manically rub my hands onto my shirt, letting out tormented whines as I did so. I don't want this blood on my hands. I'm sorry I made this happen, but don't put the blood on my hands.
I even temporarily thought of cutting my hands off, but that's when I realized how insane I was being. So, I decided to only look at the floor. What harm could I do staring at a floor?
"Tessa Scott!" I hear a frantic, broken, worried, scared, and terrified voice. I flinch and look up instinctively at the name and who I see surprisingly shocks me.
My father. That voice does not belong to him. My father has a calm voice, never unsteady like it is now. I've never heard him so upset.
"I'm sorry sir you can't see her yet, she's in surgery." The nurse explains and I contemplate standing up and calling his name. I hardly have the strength.
He slams his hand down onto the counter, "fucking look at me!" Dad screams, "don't act like this isn't a big deal. Don't make me have to do something I don't want—"
"Dad." I call, standing from my seat. My voice is emotionless and I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't hear me. The seat squeaks as I stand. My dad pauses, his bones as stiff as a board. I can practically see him gulp as he slowly turns, his eyes meeting mine.
His jaw clenches as he charges towards me, pulling me into a hug. "I thought you were at your friends house. I prayed to God you were at your friends house." He explains distraught, pulling me away from him so he can get a good look at me. His eyes dart to different parts of my body and he tilts my head with his hand, his eyes landing onto the left side of my face, which doesn't only have one shiner anymore. My left eye is swelled almost completely closed and my jaw also has a few bruises.
I have a couple bruises on my stomach and on my back from getting kicked and hitting the wall, but he doesn't need to know that. I can see the pain in his eyes, the regret, and the guilt. I feel like he's screaming his emotions at me, that's how strong his eyes are. His eyes leave mine and looks down at my stomach, where I've wiped all of the blood on. His hands swiftly attach themselves to my torso, "Why the fuck aren't you in a room?" He quickly twists around to the desk, "can't you fucking do your job?!" He screams and I quickly turn him back to me.
"Dad, stop. It's not my blood." I monotone, for once feeling it isn't worth it to scream. I'm used to hiding behind my anger, but I don't have the energy to even attempt it. He turns back to me, his face draining from all of the anger and worry returns to his eyes stronger than it was before.
I expect him to say something. Whether it's a long speech or three comforting words, I expect him to hold my face and tell them to me, but he doesn't say anything. He just sits there.
If anything, he looks just as lost as I do, maybe even more. He doesn't look around like lost people do though, he shifts his gaze between both of my eyes. I can tell he's trying to read me, find my emotions that I no longer have. I have nothing to give him but pained furrowed eyebrows and he sighs looking down at the floor. "Sit there while I try to find out what the fuck is going on." He murmurs more broken than he was just moments ago.
"The knife was small..." I trail off and he looks up at me with lifted eyebrows, but I'm back at looking at the floor. "They said that we shouldn't worry but..." I trail off again, sucking in some of the hallow air. It takes everything in me to speak. "I think all doctor's say that. Don't they?"
It's silent and the silence seems to hurt me more than pushing to say something. He stares at me for a minute at the most, before sighing, looking away from my eyes, and vigorously nodding, "I'm sure it's fine. She's fine."
I've never heard him so uncertain.
◉‿◉
𝙰𝚞𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚛'𝚜 𝙽𝚘𝚝𝚎
What a roller coaster! The sadness isn't over...
Also, just a heads up, (I will mention this later too) I am going on vacation on the first week in February. I won't be posting then. I also might change up the schedule a bit when I return from vacation. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays. Those are the easier posting days for me. We'll see.
Chapter forty two: Jan. 20, 2021