Broken

  I lifted my head and listened to hear if Heather was still awake. I sat outside the door of our bedroom listening to her weep for a little over an hour, wanting to go in and put my arms around her and tell her that we could get through this together and that I would be there for her no matter what. But she locked the door and refused to open it. She wanted nothing to do with me, she said. She didn't care what we did or what I told anybody. I could tell them she was dead for all she cared. It was going to be true soon after all. I knew she was emptying the bottle and I let her. This was what she needed right now. This was her way of dealing with this, or maybe not dealing with it, but it was all she could do right now. I knew it and accepted it. She had been quiet for a while and I figured she had probably passed out.

  "Far? Where are you?" William's small voice called from the stairs. Small feet climbing the stairs followed and soon I saw his wonderful blue eyes staring at me. He tilted his head slightly.

  "What are you doing here, Far?"

  I wiped my face dry with my hands and hoped my eyes weren't as red and swollen as they felt.

  "Why are you sitting there?" he asked as he came closer while wrinkling his nose at me.

  It made me chuckle lightly. I forced a smile and swallowed my pain. A knot of sadness grew in my throat as I looked into William's eyes and realized how much sorrow they were about to be filled with, how many tears they were about to shed. I knew how it was going to feel for him. I had been there. My mother had been sick for years with cancer before she died. Every day coming home from school I had feared opening the door and finding her dead in her bed. Every single day for two and a half years my stomach would cramp when I put the keys in the lock and opened the front door. I would call her name, petrified that there would be no response. As her answer came I remember vividly the relief I felt while running upstairs and going into her room to kiss her and feel her love as if it was the very last time. Because I knew it might be. I knew it would be one day.

  A tear slipped from the corner of my eye as I grabbed my son and pulled him close. I hugged him a long time, just held him tight while crying deep inside because I knew that he would have to go through the exact same thing. So much pain, too much pain for such a young age.

  It was unbearable.

  "What's wrong, Far?" he said seriously, already too old for his age.

  I bit my tongue to not burst into tears. I took a deep breath and stroked his cheek gently. I saw the fear grow in his eyes and recognized it all too well.

  "Is everything okay with Mom? Is Mom sick again? I want to see her!" he said with a slight trembling voice. He was trying so hard not to panic.

  What I did next wasn't really well thought through, I admit. But I did it with the best of intentions. I did it to save him some tears, to spare him months or even maybe years of torture. I decided I wasn't going to tell him that his mother was terminally ill. Not yet. I just couldn't do it yet. I decided that my son wasn't going to live with the same fear that I had. Yes he was probably going to lose his mother but I didn't want him to be afraid every moment he had left with her as I had been. I didn't want him to sit next to her bed while she was asleep just to make sure she was still breathing. I didn't want him to throw up in the schoolyard from fear of coming home and finding her dead. I didn't want him to have the same sleepless nights and constantly say no to play dates with friends because this might be the last day with her. I didn't want William's life to stop. I wanted him to remember his time with his mother as something wonderful and special, not filled with the same anger I had shamefully felt towards my own mother because I knew she was going to leave me. Anger and pain was all I remembered from those years. So much that it had actually been a kind of relief when she had finally died. Only then I could let go of my fear and begin to live again. That was when I started living my own life.

  I swallowed hard and pulled him closer again. "You know what, buddy?" I said with a cheerful voice. "She can't see you right now because Mom is sleeping. Remember how I told you that Mommy is a true princess?"

  William nodded.

  "And everybody knows that real princesses need lots of sleep."

  His face brightened for a second. "Like Snow White?"

  I nodded with a deep sigh. "Just like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and the Princess and the Pea. Remember I read you that story?"

  "Yeah. That story written by that guy from Denmark, right?"

  "His name was Hans Christian Andersen. But the point is that since all princesses need a lot of sleep, so does Mommy. She will probably be sleeping a lot from now on and will be in her bed a lot. What we need to do is make sure that she has everything she needs and make sure to not disturb her too much. Can you do that for me?"

  "Sure. But will she ever wake up?"

  "If you kiss her she might. But not right now. Right now we have more important matters to attend to."

  William looked at me.

  "Can't you hear it?" I said.

  He shook his head, causing the blond curls to shake.

  "Well maybe it is because it is coming from inside of me. I hear my stomach needs something. It craves something nice. Now what could that be? Something nice for the stomach ... Aha! I've got it. Ice cream. How about yours? Does your stomach also scream for ice cream?"

  "It sure does," William laughed. "Mine wants chocolate."

  I took William in my arms and started walking towards the stairs while whispering in his ear: "But we might have to fight the evil witch for it. She controls the kitchen you know. I think she might be down there right now. Listen!"

  William laughed again. "That's just Sarah!"

  "She might be just Sarah to you, but how do you know that she is not an evil sorceress to someone else?"

  "Then I wanna be Spiderman!"

  "You read too many comic books. Spiderman is not real!"

  "He is to me!"

  "Okay then you'll be Spiderman," I said and put him down as we reached the end of the stairs. I watched him run towards the kitchen and hug Sarah's leg. She put her hand on his head while stirring in a pot on the stove. William turned and looked at me.

  "Does Spiderman save princesses?" he yelled.

  "He could if he wanted to." I yelled back and walked towards the freezer.

  Sarah shook her head with a tsk-sound. "Just before dinner ..." she mumbled as I pulled out the chocolate ice cream.

  "Told you she was evil," I whispered to William with a wink and poured us a couple of scoops in a bowl that we shared. I watched her cook as we ate in silence. Once William was in bed I was going to tell her about Heather and the next day I had to tell Heather's parents as well. Telling her parents that their daughter had a deadly illness was going to be the most difficult conversation of my life and I was petrified. But that wasn't until the morning. This night - after the transformation had come over me - I would roam the swamps with Aiyana by my side. This night I would forget about everything and even if it was only for a few hours, I desperately longed for it.

  Chapter 17

  A week or so later I was called back into Dr. Harris' office once again. My test results were in and he wanted to discuss them with me. I immediately left my office and cancelled several patients to go see him. Julie had gotten pretty used to having to cancel appointments lately so she hardly blinked.

  A lot went through my mind driving through the old town of St. Augustine that I had come to love so dearly. But mostly I was afraid for William. I was terrified that I was also infected with the HIV virus, scared that was the reason why the doctor called me in to his office instead of telling me the result over the phone. I was anxious at the prospect that William might be an orphan within a few years. We needed good news. I was already on the verge of a breakdown. The last week had been tough on me. Heather's parents hadn't taken it well when I told them about her illness. At first her mother refused to believe it and implied I was lying to them before the reality finally sunk in. Dr. Kirk didn’t utter a word but his eyes said it all. While Mrs.
Kirk mentioned possible treatments and hospitals and how they would be there with anything we needed and they would pay the best doctor in the country to take care of her, Dr. Kirk stared with empty eyes until he finally got up from his chair with much trouble and left us leaning heavily on his cane as he walked. It was hard to watch this once strong and fierce man, walking away completely broken.

  "Where is she now?" Mrs. Kirk asked as soon as he was gone. I stared in his direction long after he had left their living room. Three cups of coffee on the table in front of us remained untouched.

  "Is she taking her medicine? I know they have better medicine now. She needs to have that," Mrs. Kirk continued with anxious eyes.

  "She won't even come out of the bedroom or let anyone come in," I answered with a thick voice. The desperation and pain in my in-laws' eyes was excruciating.

  Mrs. Kirk inhaled deeply. "Is she drinking again?" she asked with a low voice as if she didn't want her husband to hear it, or maybe she didn't want to say it out loud since it made it all so real.

  "She never stopped," I said. "It’s like she has given up on everything. She doesn't want to see anyone let alone talk to anyone. Not even William."

  "But she has to fight this," Mrs. Kirk said. "We have to fight this. All of us together." Her voice was panicky.

  "I know. I keep telling her that. But she says she feels like she is already dead. Like she has been dead for years. I’m afraid that she'll drink herself to death."

  After that Mrs. Kirk fell silent and after a few minutes more I came up with a poor excuse to leave in a hurry and then practically ran out of their house. I cried like a baby in the car and after that had a hard time looking into the eyes of my mother-in law again. Every day she came to the house and knocked on our bedroom door but had the same result. Her daughter telling her mother to leave her alone, she never wanted to see her again.

  "She'll come out eventually," I told Mrs. Kirk while thinking it wouldn't happen until she ran out of liquor to drink. I knew it was going to take a while. Sarah brought her food and on the first night after the doctor's visit while I was hunting in the swamps Heather sneaked down and emptied the entire bar. I had noticed it was all gone the next morning and suspected that she had brought it all to our bedroom where she intended to stay drunk. I knew there was nothing much I could do and I figured that she probably needed this time of grieving or denial, so I left her alone and kept William busy hoping he wouldn't miss her too much.

  "It appears that you have not received HIV from your wife," Dr. Harris said as I sat down on a chair in front of his desk. "The lab didn't find HIV in your blood."

  I exhaled deeply and leaned back in the chair with a relieved moan. I had been so scared driving to his office since I knew that normally doctors only called you in if the test was positive.

  "So why did you call me in?" I asked.

  The doctor flipped a couple of pages in my file and pulled out a piece of paper. He put it on the table in front of me to look at.

  "It's your blood work," he said and took off his glasses. "I don't know if they have screwed it up at the lab or what but according to this your numbers are very remarkable and something we need to take a closer look at. If I should believe these numbers you should be very, very sick. Look at the blood count."

  I stared at the paper and found the number. Then I looked back at him with surprise.

  "Unbelievable, right?" he said. "According to this you have hardly any leukocytes, hardly any white blood cells left. Normally that would be a strong indicator that you actually have HIV but according to the test you don't. So now we have to run more tests to see if something else could be wrong with you."

  "Like cancer?" I asked.

  "Well let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It could be anything causing it. Like Hodgkin's lymphoma, tuberculosis, cancer. You name it."

  "A low white cell count may also be due to a recent infection such as a cold or influenza," I replied. "I think I had something like that recently. Maybe it’s just that?"

  Dr. Harris looked at me and leaned over his desk. "Chris. The flu or the cold can cause a low count of white blood cells, but yours aren't low. They're practically gone. I can't say I have ever seen a number this low in a living person. Not even one sick with AIDS. You have no immune system. You should be getting infections from everything and everywhere. You are the one who should have PCP. It’s a miracle that Heather didn't pass it on to you yet. I mean look at that number! It's less than ten! It should be around 7,000 per micro liter blood. Less than one hundred is life-threatening. Less than ten, well I have never even heard about that. It's ... It's impossible. You sitting here not even feeling tired is impossible."

  I stared at the piece of paper with all the numbers and then at my doctor. I knew I wasn't sick but how was I going to explain that to him? He was a man of science and if numbers were wrong then you were sick. Even if you didn't look like it or feel it.

  "Do you feel sick at all?" he asked. "I mean you look better than ever. You look healthy. You even look much younger than your age. Do you have any symptoms? Have you lost weight? It doesn't look like it. Do you have skin rashes? Anything?"

  "I have trouble sleeping at night, I feel restless and I do have nightly sweats. But other than that I feel strong and healthy. I am never tired even though I don't sleep much."

  Dr. Harris leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. "I don't know what to say to you. I’ll have my nurse take some more samples and run more tests. Maybe they made a mistake; maybe they wrote the wrong number, I don't know. But I'll have you checked for everything I can think of. Okay?"

  I nodded reluctantly. I knew my body had changed drastically and the fact that my blood was also different now didn't surprise me. I just wasn't sure that I wanted anyone else to find out. But I decided I did want to examine it a little closer myself so after my visit at the doctor's I went to see an old friend of mine, Jamie Allen, who work at a blood testing lab close to downtown. I had known her in med-school just before she dropped out because her mother became sick and her parents could no longer afford to pay for her school. It had been hard to see her give up on her dream especially since she had been the best in our class.

  "Fancy seeing you here," she said as I opened the door to her lab. "It's been a while."

  "It sure has. Almost ten years."

  "What can I do for you?"

  I closed the door to the lab and walked closer to her. "I need you to do me a favor," I said with a low voice. "I want you to analyze my blood. But I also want the results to stay between you and me. It’s urgent. It can't be in any journal or files or be seen anywhere.”

  She scrutinized me before giving an answer. "Okay," she said.

  "Okay? Just like that?"

  "Yeah. But only because you didn't come here waving your money around and offering to bribe me. I appreciate that. I will make you pay for my hours, though."

  "Of course."

  She smiled. She was still as pretty as she had been ten years ago. She still had a sparkle in her brown eyes and I liked her natural looks a lot better than the fake women I was surrounded by in our social circles. Why people, especially women, were desperate to stay young forever was a huge mystery to me. But that was probably easy to say since I had hardly aged since I was in my mid-twenties.

  "I normally wouldn't say yes to such a request from you rich spoiled kind, but lucky for you I know you’re not like that. You're different. You were the only one who was sincerely sad to see me go back then. I remember you told me that med school wasn't everything. That becoming a doctor wasn't all it was cracked up to be." Jamie laughed. "It was really sweet."

  I shrugged. "I meant every word of it. Still do." I picked up a picture frame next to her. Jamie and three beautiful daughters looked back at me. So was a rather handsome man holding them all in his arms. "Your family?" I asked.

  "Sure. My pride."

  "You're lucky," I said. "I hope you're as happy as you look." I put th
e picture back on the table.

  "We are," she said. "Struggling financially right now since Tim lost his job, but love will carry us through, right?"

  "That's what I've heard," I said with heavy heart. "That's what I've heard."

  She looked at me examining for a few seconds like she was trying to figure me out. Then she asked me to sit down in a chair.

  "I will just take a few samples of your blood and then I will start analyzing it. Anything specific you want me to look for?"

  "I had it tested recently and the results showed that I had barely any white blood cells left."

  "But that would make you very sick. You don't look ... You look great. I mean of course you could have ... It hardly shows it if you ..."

  "I don't think I have cancer. I just think that something is happening to me that science might not be able to explain or maybe I partly hope it will and partly hope it won't. I'm babbling, I know. I just need you to take a closer look at my blood and tell me what you think."

  "Sure. No problem. I'll take a look at it and let you know when I’m done."

  Chapter 18

  I was devastated and ferocious as I ran towards the swamps that night. I was looking for a good hunt. I preferred prey that fought for its life. I had a fierce anger growing inside of me and I needed to get some of it out. I had spotted a pack of six coyotes the night before on my way back. They were hunting in the drier areas of the Twelve Mile Swamps for wild rabbits and mice. I was determined to find them and hunt them down.