Page 7

Alex

M y skin itches as I sit in the waiting room for somebody to come get me.

I absentmindedly stare at the TV hanging in the corner that’s playing some daytime drama.

It’s a soap opera that I recognize from my childhood.

Mom would tune into it every afternoon with a cup of tea and a TV dinner that I heated up for her in the microwave.

But as soon as I cram myself in the abnormally narrow chair, one of the receptionists changes it to ESPN with a wink in my direction.

Secretly, I’m grateful. Those afternoons in the living room brought back memories I really don’t want to remember.

I can practically smell the salty meatloaf that she would fling off her lap whenever one of her moods would strike.

I’m pretty sure I still have a little white scar in the middle of my palm for dumbly trying to catch the steak knife that had been thrown too.

I’d caught it, all right.

And instead of going to the emergency room for stitches, I cleaned myself up using the first aid kit in the bathroom and superglued the skin back together using glue I’d found in the garage from when Dad lived at home.

I never thought twice about the germs that could have been on the applicator when I dragged it across the deep slice. But hindsight and all that.

Peeling my gaze away from the mindless discussion that the anchors are having about some pro football player’s relationship with a pop star, I pull my phone out to see if Olive decided to finally text me back.

Her number is one of the few I memorized over the years, so it was the first I programmed into my new phone after my last one suffered an unfortunate accident that involved me possibly throwing it a little harder than I meant.

My eye twitches when I see my last message left on delivered. I know she had to have seen it because she was quick to assume I was Sebastian.

It’s been over an hour.

Not wanting to sulk over a girl ghosting me, I look out the window at the clear blue sky.

Barely any clouds are in sight. There’s no breeze moving the tree limbs.

When I walked into the hospital, it’d been a tolerable temperature that I knew was going to become unbearable thanks to the blazing late-spring sun.

“Alexander,” someone calls, snapping my attention to a middle-aged woman wearing colorful scrubs. I slide my phone back into my pocket and head toward her warm smile.

She looks like she could be my mother’s age.

Maybe a little younger. Pamela, according to the nametag that’s clipped to the pocket of her shirt, sticks her hand out.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m the new head nurse here at Logan’s and was assigned to your mother.

We’ve spoken on the phone about her care and the goals you have for her here. Your mother talks fondly of you.”

I feel the prickle of embarrassment against the back of my neck as I shake her hand once and drop it. “How is she?”

This is the third time I’ve been to Logan’s Psychiatric Hospital; a new establishment on the outskirts of Philadelphia that already has a positive reputation based on the extensive research I did before gathering the nerve to call them.

Her smile grows. “Colleen has been adjusting well. Better than some people I’ve worked with. She’s been telling everybody who will listen that you’re coming to see her today. She was sad we wouldn’t allow visitors last week, so today has been one she’s looked forward to.”

While I understand they need to stay true to the consequences of the patients who don’t follow the rules here, I’m still angry I couldn’t come see her last week when I’d moved my schedule around specifically to make the trip. No amount of sweet talking I did changed their minds.

She scans her badge and pulls the door open once it buzzes and unlocks. “You remember the rules from last time we spoke, right?”

Pressing my lips together, I nod again.

We make our way down a long hallway, but my eyes don’t focus on anything because my brain is too wrapped around the woman who acted like I betrayed her the day I pulled up to the front entrance of the building.

She threw a fit even though we’d talked about this extensively on our way here.

I should have known she was going to fight me when I put the car into park.

The conversation about her admission here had been too easy when we’d had it back in Lindon, as if she hadn’t believed me when I told her there was a spot for her to get treatment.

It triggered another episode that left her swinging her arms and shouting at the top of her lungs until two beefed up guys came jogging out of the building looking ready to intervene. I hadn’t let them, despite somebody calling for security to get her under control.

Mom wasn’t a criminal. She was sick.

Is sick.

Physical force and violence are never the answer, so I made them butt out until I could handle it. Handle her . I’d gotten down to eye level with the five-foot-one woman who birthed me and talked her into going inside after fifteen minutes of her begging me to take her home.

To her, home is in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York where there are few options for somebody like her getting real help.

Part of my deal with Pittsburgh Penguins was getting connected with the top hospital system, so I could bring her with me to get the help she needs while being close by.

Thanks to the advance I got after signing with the rising NHL team, I was able to pay for Logan’s high-end care.

They didn’t have a spot open for her until my first year was over, so I hired the best nurses to check on her as much as they could back home before I got her here.

Logan’s is still four and a half hours away from my apartment, but it was better than the seven and a half hours it would be if I left her behind for an at-home caretaker to deal with.

From the daily reports I got, she fought the aids tooth and nail before.

Two of them quit, one of them I had to fire, and the last one made it through the brutal manic episode my mother had suffered with for months.

She’d just broken out of it and started sounding like herself again when Logan’s called, and I came to get her.

One thing is certain; Mom needs me, and I’m not going to let her down.

Not like Dad did. Not like her parents did when they cut her off after she got divorced.

If they are as catholic as they said, they would have been there for their daughter; helped her through the hard times like families do.

But they didn’t, and neither did my father’s side when shit got real.

So, like always, it’s up to me to be the person who fights for my mother.

And, dammit, that’s what I’m doing.

As soon as we stop outside the visitor’s lounge, I spot the woman I’m here to see through the narrow glass window in the door.

She’s where I get my brown hair and blue eyes, tan skin, and stubborn attitude from.

Everything else is my father’s genetics.

The shape of my nose, the squareness to my jaw, the distinct cheekbones, and my height.

I suppose you could argue I also get my determination from him since he was hell-bent on making a better life for himself by divorcing Mom when I was twelve.

Their separation was fairly anticlimactic.

No drama. Minimal fighting. They had split custody, and I was given the choice over who to live with.

Had I wanted to go with Dad? Fuck yeah. He’s the person I got my love of hockey from.

We used to sit together and watch the Bruins kick ass every season.

He’s the one who bought me my first Bruin’s jersey that started the collection of paraphernalia that hung on my bedroom wall growing up.

I told him I was going to play for Boston’s team one day, and he said he believed in me.

Deep down, though, I knew somebody needed to be around to take care of Mom. And if he was leaving, that meant I had to stay in case she had one of her many episodes that Dad decided he was too tired of dealing with.

I get it. Everybody has their breaking point, and he found his after fifteen years of marriage.

I stopped being angry at him a long time ago for the responsibility placed on my shoulders.

It’s not like Mom or Dad ever expected me to be the man of the house, it was just what I knew needed to be done.

And because I’d let go of the resentment I had toward him, I got to spend a lot of time with him during my visits at his house enjoying everything we did.

Hiking. Going to the batting cages. Hockey practices with him cheering me on in the crowds.

Watching sports games and rooting for our favorite teams.

If I stayed mad, I would’ve felt guilty for the rest of my life when we got the call about the car accident that took his and his wife’s life.

It was accidental and quick, but that didn’t make the loss hurt any less.

The only thing Mom and I can be grateful for is that he probably didn’t feel a thing.

So, here I am. Twenty-four, playing for a hockey team that I never rooted for in my life. All so I could get my mother into the best care facility for her condition.

I didn’t know anything about why she was the way she was growing up.

I thought it was me who triggered her. She had her ups and downs that sometimes were hard to deal with, but she was rarely violent, and she always supported me through whatever I wanted to do even though I could tell she struggled.

Her being diagnosed as bipolar didn’t change how much I wanted to help her.

If anything, it made me work that much harder to gain her the resources we couldn’t afford before.