Stitches
Been a while since we talked.
Jeremy woke up in his father’s home, in his old bedroom. He knew he hadn’t been there in years yet a part of him was also sure, in the haze of waking from a deep sleep, that he never left. Pale sunlight shone through the windows. The air was still. The light irritated him. His head ached with a dullness that washed over his entire skull. His throat was dry and mouth parched.
I just…I just wanted to see if you were free to catch up soon.
His vision on his left side was obscured by something. The top half of his sight was black, darkness, while the bottom half was a muffled blur as if he were squinting at something far away.
He did his best to rouse himself out of bed, the only thing that drove him to do so being the sudden wave of lucidity that brought him to question why he wasn’t in his bed in his apartment. Yet with each movement, or even in anticipation of moving, his muscles radiated searing aches that reached from his toes to the tips of his fingers. But, after gathering the energy to do so from deep inside of him, he rose with a grunt to a seated position, his back slumped forward.
Well, I’m sure you’re busy, so if you can’t then that’s fine.
He looked down and found he was wearing dull green hospital scrubs. Instead of questioning this, he only pushed this discovery aside, soberly adding it to the pile of mysteries.
The silence was nearly tangible. The room soaked in the dull light, its chilled air caused him to shiver. He looked around him. The large pieces of furniture were still where they had been when he left for college the next town over. But that was years ago. The white walls were bare and desolate. The wooden desk had no lamp or open textbook on top of it, only a visible layer of dust. The bookcase that reached the ceiling was empty. Seeing his old room in such a state made him feel as if he were in some sort of liminal memory that sat at a point in time he couldn’t quite grasp or comprehend. It left Jeremy unsettled and apprehensive.
Anyways, hopefully I’ll hear back from you soon.
The longer he sat there, the more he felt his senses come back to him. Even so, half his sight was still shrouded for some reason. He felt the area around it and touched a soft cushioned pad. He tugged at it, yet it resisted and pulled at his skin. He fought the sudden urge to pull harder until he was at least in front of a mirror.
Love you, brother.
The clinking of dishes, footsteps, and other sounds of life came outside the room. Anxiety began to creep into him. He contemplated staying in bed for the rest of the day. Yet, once he accepted the impracticality of this, he flipped the covers and crawled out of bed.
He peeked out into the rest of the house, his head jutting out of the doorway cautiously. He looked down the hallway and could see, through other open doorways, a part of the kitchen, particularly the sink.
Light poured through the single window above the sink, setting the figure standing there rummaging through the dishes as a deep silhouette. It was a heavyset, imposing shadow, round at the waist with only wisps of what might be thinning hair on top of its head. Jeremy steeled his nerves and walked out.
The shadow shifted as if it were turning its head. “Morning,” it said with a robust, yet deliberately neutral voice. “You slept okay?”
“More or less,” Jeremy replied, sliding his feet across the carpet.
The figure walked away from the kitchen sink, stepping closer, out of the harsh light that rendered him a featureless shape only loosely resembling his father, drying his hands with a kitchen towel. The gentler light of the dining room revealed features familiar to Jeremy, although ones he had not seen for some time. A bulbous nose. Thinning dark hair that grew thicker as it crawled down the side of his face and into a scruffy, unkempt beard.
“Well, glad to hear it, considering how you were last night. Had to pick you up from the hospital. That’s where you got that…and those.” He pointed with his eyes to the bandage and scrubs, respectively.
He nodded to the dining table. On the tabletop sat a stack of folded clothes. They looked somewhat familiar to Jeremy.
“Go ahead and shower, wash up. By the time you finish, breakfast should be ready.”
The water hissed as it spewed from the shower head. Jeremy stood in front of the large mirror, staring at the naked one-eyed failure he saw in the reflection. He noticed a corner of the bandage was starting to peel. He began to pull it off with his thumb and index finger.
Above his left eye, which already began to swell shut, was a mess of dried black blood. Some had flaked off when he removed the pad. The blood matted down his eyebrow and was almost dark enough to conceal a row of black stitches woven into his skin. The sight was a visceral one. He had never once in his life gotten stitches for any reason. And now he took a moment to count the ones he found he now had, coming to eleven of them in his forehead. He was not shocked or surprised whatsoever. Not much surprised him anymore. He only soberly gazed at the wound, a dull emptiness creeping its way through him.
He slipped into the shower, letting the water envelop him. A stream of redness ran down the rusted drain.
Coming out of the bathroom, wearing his old track outfit, Jeremy was affronted by the thick aroma of bacon fat and freshly brewed coffee. The sensory overload unearthed a spell of nausea that caused Jeremy’s mouth to salivate in preparation for the off chance he might vomit.
“Food’s almost ready.” His father didn’t look up from the skillet sizzling on the stove top. “Go ahead, take a seat.”
Jeremy took a seat at the dining table, a circular hardwood piece covered by a cloth that was made to look like several interwoven snowflakes. Even though he remembered setting his plates on the same tablecloth when he was a child, the color was still a pristine, brilliant white.
Jeremy looked out the window as he waited. It seemed to be late in the morning, perhaps even noon. Maybe this was why he was feeling fatigued, he thought. But, he had been feeling so for as long as he could remember. Not once in recent memory had he felt well rested and the bags under his eyes never faded away. He already wanted to go back to bed and be done with whatever was happening.
Well, I’m sure you’re busy…
Jeremy cleared his throat and shook his head, catching himself before he could start to think too much.
“How are you making the coffee?” Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.
“How I always make it for myself. Black.”
“You have any creamer you can add to mine?” Jeremy felt he knew the answer but just needed to talk about something. Anything.
“No, I do not. I wasn’t exactly expecting company, so unfortunately I can’t oblige.”
“You got any milk, then?”
“Just ran out yesterday.”
“Oh.”
“Mhm.”
A silence that seemed to almost overtake the sound of Jeremy’s father cooking fell upon both of them. Jeremy’s leg began to bounce.
Soon enough the clatter of ceramic and silverware signaled that breakfast was ready. Not even a moment later, a plate of food and a mug of black coffee were placed in front of Jeremy. He stared dumbfounded at the pair of eggs, bacon slices, and slice of toast, poking at them with his fork. He looked to his father who was already seated and chewing away. The thought of placing any of what was on the plate inside of his mouth, chewing, then swallowing was just so absurd and repulsive that he couldn’t even force himself to do so.
“It’d be best if you got something inside of you. You know, instead of playing with your food.” His father didn’t look up from the plate when he said this.
Jeremy swallowed a gulp and cleared his throat, getting nervous now. “It look’s really good.” He plastered the best smile he could muster for that brief second, which he was sure looked as fake as it felt. His brain didn’t see what was in front of him as food. It saw it as it would any other inanimate object, like a bar of soap or a pencil. The sense of obligation to eat at least some of it wound him tight.
“Look,” his father let out between bites with a voice of subdued patience, “that was just a suggestion. You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to.” He resumed chewing. “Just figured it would have been best, considering your condition.”
Jeremy pushed the plate away from him and sank into his chair. “I just blacked out, dad. Didn’t catch Ebola.” He watched his father gorge himself. He breathed loudly through his nose, not bothering to come up for air. Jeremy wondered how the act of eating breakfast could be that taxing on a person.
“You used to force us to eat when we were kids.”
The round face looked above his plate, still chewing, as if in reflection. His eyes were half closed.
“Did I?” A veneer of disinterest in his voice caused Jeremy’s eyelid to twitch. He remembered why he hadn’t been the one to initiate any contact with his father.
“So, you gonna tell me how I ended up here?” He asked with emphatic impatience.
His father let off a grunt of mirth and smirked. “Figured you didn’t remember.”
“Well, I blacked out at some point. Why am I here and why is there a huge gash on my forehead?”
Thick arms came up to wipe his father’s face with a paper towel. “You’re here because the hospital called me at three in the morning. They needed someone to claim you. So I rushed there in my pajamas, and there you were passed out on the bed in those scrubs. Said your old clothes were covered in vomit and blood. You were already stitched up.”
The casual fashion in which his father was describing everything struck a nerve in Jeremy.
“So,” he continued “, why didn’t you want Rose there?”
“W-what do you mean?” Jeremy’s voice stifled, to his annoyance.
“Well, when I was sitting on your bedside, dabbing at that cut with some gauze the nurse gave me, I mentioned that I was gonna call her, Rose, since I didn’t see her there. You must have been conscious enough to hear this since you started making a commotion about how I can’t do that and that she shouldn’t be there. I had to get help to calm you down, you were so rowdy. They said that your wound could have reopened.”
The table was slightly vibrating due to the intensity at which Jeremy was bouncing his leg. He stopped it as soon as he noticed.
“Rose is staying with her mom for a couple of days.”
His father was silent at this, nodding his head while he processed.
“She doesn’t know about your little night on the town, does she?”
Jeremy slowly shook his head. He felt like a child, being chided by his parent.
“She doesn’t like that I’ve been drinking more lately. Says that I do it too often and that I needed to slow down.” Jeremy’s head shook abruptly as if rejecting something he had asked himself. “It’s just that, things have been getting stressful with school and work and everything just feels like it’s been piling on for so long now. I needed to decompress or I was gonna go fucking…” He then let out something akin to a grunting exclamation soaked in frustration. “Ahhhhh!!”
His father stared with a raised eyebrow.
“Sorry.”
“So,” scraping the last bits of food from his plate, “how did you end up there in that state? How much do you remember, exactly?”
“Not much.”
“Not much?”
Jeremy held his tongue.
“Look, I’m not trying to get on to you or anything. I’m just trying to help you.”
“How would that help?”
“I dunno. Maybe getting a better idea of what happened would give you something to explain to Rose.”
Letting this soak in for a moment and suppressing his impulse to be reserved and sulk, Jeremy began to recollect.
“Well, the last thing I remember was buying someone I met there a drink.” A shudder of dread came over Jeremy as this remark brought on glimpses of the night before, as if they were shaken free from being caught on something that kept them just out of his grasp.
“Lemme guess. This ‘someone’ was a girl.”
“Yeah, she was,” Jeremy admitted. “I was just trying to be nice, that’s all. Her boyfriend stormed out after yelling at her in front of the entire bar. She was telling me about how they’ve been having a rough go lately.”
“What a gentleman.”
“Whatever.”
“Anyways, you were there by yourself? Initially?”
“Yeah. Everyone I knew was busy.”
“You didn’t have to study?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t you have finals coming up?”
“I know, I know. I just needed a night to myself. Where I didn’t have to worry about all this stuff that’s been piling on lately.”
“You been keeping your grades up, at least?”
Jeremy felt like he was being interrogated. His father’s stare felt excruciatingly scrutinizing.
“I’ve been doing my best. Like I said, I’ve had a lot on my plate.”
“Mhmm.”
Jeremy’s jaw clenched tight.
“So, this all started by you being at your apartment, not studying, alone. And out of nowhere, you just got the urge to get a drink? Doesn’t that seem a little…I dunno, unhealthy?”
Been a while since we talked.
Jeremy sat up. “I just couldn’t stay in that place anymore. I needed to be somewhere where it wasn’t so goddamn quiet all the time. And so what if I wanted to have a couple of drinks too? It’s not like I don’t have a handle on it.”
“So you were expecting to get that there?” His father pointed at the stitches with his fork.
Jeremy’s mind ran through any and all possible retorts, yet he was at a loss for words. Instead, he sat there in his messy jumble of regret, annoyance, and shame, while his father sat next to him looking contemplative as if he were trying to figure out his own son. Maybe asking himself why such a disappointment had to have him wake up in the dead of night to pick him up from the hospital and ruin his sleep.
“Do you remember at all what you were saying while you were in the hospital?” His father asked.
“No. Not even a little.”
“Well, at first you were just mumbling something. But you seemed kind of urgent about it, so I told you to speak up. Even then, I could just barely make out that you were telling me you were sorry. I tried telling you that it was okay, that I didn’t mind being there at all, making sure you were being taken care of. But you weren’t talking to me.”
…hopefully I’ll hear back from you soon.
Jeremy’s throat tightened. It began to feel as though he were breathing through a coffee straw. With every expiration of air, his body trembled.
His father continued.
“You were asking for your younger brother. You were asking where he was and that you wanted to say you were sorry for being a bad big brother. How you ignored a voice message he sent you that night. That you were sorry you weren’t there for him before he…” His voice faltered briefly, yet he recovered just as quickly, as if what he was saying had been weighing on him for some time. “…before he did what he did.”
He then straightened his posture and softened his disposition, pieces of his snide, demeaning veneer falling away with each word that followed.
“Now, son, I know school hasn’t been going well for you. That if it keeps up, you won’t qualify for the financial aid you need to keep attending. Rose had been talking to me, asking me for advice, since this started around the time of your brother’s passing.”
A flash of anger. A glare shot up from Jeremy’s eyes to his father’s face. Who was he to talk to him about any of this, he asked himself.
“I know we were never close when you were growing up. Your mother left me with you two while you guys were already so dependent on her. So, I did my best to provide for you boys, to make sure you had a roof over your heads and food on your plates. I hoped that was all I needed to do. But I wasn’t a real father to either of you. I wasn’t what you needed. And I regret that. Not making an effort to try and do more and be there for you two. I don’t remember one time when I had a conversation with you or your brother that wasn’t completely one-sided. And now that Francis is gone, I never will with him.”
His lip quivered and his eyes grew wet, the sheen of moisture catching glints of the sunlight coming through the windows.
“I realized that while I was sitting next to you asleep with your head split open. Weirdly enough, it felt like you were a kid again, needing me to help you clean a skinned elbow or something. But you were also so still. Every now and then I felt like I had to check and see if you were still breathing. It made me think about the funeral. How Francis was just as still in his casket, his wrists still wrapped in bandages. I couldn’t bear to face you back then. I had let you and your brother down. I wasn’t there for him, so what right did I have to try and be a father to you now.”
There was a burning desire in the young man sitting next to his father to tell him that he was right. That he had no right to try and build a new road to redemption after the death of his brother. That he hadn’t been available like he should have been, and that, if he had been, Francis would still be alive.
Love you, brother.
But he couldn’t do it. The words wouldn’t make it past the bottom of his throat. Instead they stayed there, festering inside of him at that moment like an infected wound.
So many things needed to surface all at once. His anger and frustration. His pain and horror. His deep, profound sadness and sense of loss. Jeremy was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emotions he had been holding back since that day in the funeral parlor. He had hated his father so much by that point. But, after a while, he started to hate Rose as well, always asking him how he was handling things and telling him that it was alright to cry. Then he hated his classes. He hated the idea of having a future or a life worth living. Then he realized that the one he hated the most was himself.
His hands were trembling. A drop landed on the tight fists they formed. At first, Jeremy thought his cut had opened up somehow, but the liquid was clear, not a deep red. He wiped his face with his forearms, but the tears came unceasing. He worried about the integrity of the stitches, yet at the same time he didn’t care. He was letting go.
His entire body convulsed as he began to sob. He hadn’t realized how alone he’d felt. Not until he felt a hand rest itself gently on his knee. It was large and leathery, light brown age spots bespeckling it. The nails were yellow and jagged.
“I didn’t help him dad,” Jeremy muttered through his sobs.
His father pulled his son’s head close so that Jeremy’s cheek was resting on his shoulder. He ran his old hands through his hair.
“It’s okay.” He whispered.
Jeremy felt so small and vulnerable. He didn’t realize how long he had lived with his guard up, walking around with his heart behind walls he himself put up. He missed being a child, when emotions came so easily. When he wasn’t afraid to be carefree or honest, to shout and laugh. When he and his brother would go outside and make up their own worlds to be whoever, whatever, or wherever they wanted. When they were free to run and play well into the summer afternoons with the sun beaming down on them and they would drink from a spigot in the yard that spewed its warm water on the turn of its valve. They had dirt under their bare feet and bug bites all over their little bodies. They’d stay out there, in the gentle grass that rose to their ankles, until dusk and dinner was ready. Their father would call to them from the back door with his booming voice that echoed into the sky.
In the darkness, as Jeremy cried into his father’s thin, polyester button-up shirt, he felt, for a fleeting moment, at peace. A certain relief. It scared him at first. He was not used to feeling this way. He didn’t know what it meant or whether it would it last long or not. Yet, before he even knew it, it was gone, replaced by a deep, yet not debilitating, sadness. Not the acidic hate that filled him before, but an oddly comforting, warm sadness. It weighed on him as a heavy blanket would. The pain was still there, the loss. He doubted that would ever go away. But that was something he could make peace with, in time.
Then, in a whisper.
“Everything’s going to be alright, son.”
