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“Call 911, and I’ll meet you at the hospital.” I’d never heard him sound so authoritative. “And, Scooter, don’t you dare cry. Do you hear me? You’ll scare your mother.”
“Okay.” I nodded and felt my chin buckle as I glanced back at my favorite person on earth, paralyzed and struggling to speak on the kitchen floor. “I won’t.”
The paramedics arrived so fast; I was still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher when they knocked on the door.
I don’t remember them loading her into the ambulance. I don’t remember following it to the hospital. I don’t remember how long it had taken my dad to get there.
All I remember is that the only word my mother could say as she lay, waiting for the doctors, was Brooke.
And shit. She could also say shit.
Thanks to my neuropsychology coursework, I knew that my mother was exhibiting Broca’s aphasia. It’s when a person has a blood clot—a stroke—in the part of the brain that’s responsible for turning thoughts and feelings into words and sentences. The reason people with Broca’s aphasia are still able to curse is because those words are stored in a different, more primitive part of the brain.
I found it fitting that my mom had stored my name in the same place as the words cunt and asshole.
The doctors told us that my mother was extremely lucky that I’d gotten her to the hospital as quickly as I had. From what they could tell, it had only been an hour or two since the stroke occurred, which meant that she could possibly make a full recovery with treatment. I should have been happy, but the revelation made me feel like the world’s shittiest daughter. If it hadn’t been for my dad’s random lunch-break phone call, my mom would have been lying on the floor for hours, suffering irreversible brain damage, while I sat, self-absorbed, up in my room, smoking and drawing and obsessing over a boy.
My mother believed in guardian angels, so I begged hers to help her get better.
Please, I pleaded as the doctors wheeled her away to administer the treatment that would hopefully bring her back to us. If she recovers, I’ll do better. I’ll spend more time with her, I promise. We’ll go to the museum, we’ll take yoga classes, we’ll finally learn how to play beer pong—whatever she wants. Please. Just give me another chance.
After the treatment, there was nothing left to do but wait. My dad said I should take the first shift because he had to go home and let the dog out. I knew what that was code for. My dad had to go home and get wasted because he had no coping skills, he hated hospitals, and his anxiety was through the roof.
I stayed by her side all night, semi-reclined in that godforsaken chair, watching one of the four channels on the hospital TV and staring at my mom for signs of life during every commercial break. Nurses came, and nurses went. Things were written on the whiteboard and then erased. Trays of food were brought and taken away, untouched. And, all the while, my mother slept.
When my dad showed up, long after sunrise, he was wearing dark sunglasses and nursing a black coffee.
Good, I thought. You look the way I feel.
I left him with his unconscious wife, unsure if she would ever be able to say his name again, and took off. There was only one place I wanted to be, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.
I’d called Ken the night before from the hospital waiting room and told him what had happened. He was at work at the time, so he couldn’t really talk, but he did say that he was sorry and offered to help if I needed anything.
Well, I did need something. I needed him to fucking hold me while I fell apart.
I parked in Ken’s driveway and took my foot off the clutch without thinking, causing my car to shudder violently and stall out with a hiss. That was when I knew I was in bad shape. I hadn’t stalled out since I was sixteen. I needed sleep. I needed food. I needed alcohol. I needed to cry. I needed Ken. And I needed them all at once.
It took my exhausted, emotional, brain-dead ass at least three tries to get the right key in the lock before I was finally able to open Ken’s red front door. When I did, I stopped in my tracks, horrified to see him sitting to the left of the couch, watching the morning news, in a brand-new motherfucking recliner.
Bile rose in my throat.
Armchairs.
Armchairs.
A room full of armchairs.
This is how it begins.
Ken doesn’t want me to touch him anymore.
Look at the couch. That’s my spot.
Ken has a new spot. By himself in his MOTHERFUCKING ARMCHAIR.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” I threw a hand toward his newest acquisition.
“Uh…” Ken tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at me. “La-Z-Boy was having a Fourth of July sale, so—”
