Bleeding Hearts - 7. Chapter 7

“Asher,” Dad said in that horribly controlled voice of his, “I think it would be best if you went on home now. Your dad’s waiting for you. We just got off the phone.”

Asher shot me a look that was easier to read than a children’s picture book. He was terrified. “Yes, sir,” he replied softly, then turned and let himself out.

I was left standing all alone facing my father. I still hadn’t moved beyond the entryway.

“What were you thinking?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t play games with me, boy. What were you doing at that faggot’s funeral?”

Suddenly, something shifted inside me. I was tired of being intimidated and bullied by my father. I knew I had done the right thing, and I wasn’t going to back down. I lifted my chin and stared him straight in the eye. “I felt I should go,” I said firmly.

“You felt you should go,” he mocked. “Well, isn’t that nice, Meg?” He addressed this to my mother. “You waited till your mother was gone, and then you and Asher couldn’t get out of here quick enough.”

“It wasn’t like that at all. We didn’t plan it. Mom was gone when I woke up. Asher mentioned that Seth’s memorial service was today, and I wanted to go.”

“Don’t talk back to me! I left you alone after the whole stabbing incident at your mother’s insistence—” He growled this as if the ‘whole stabbing incident’ were somehow my fault. “—but this is too much. I want answers and I want them now. How could you publicly humiliate me like that? There must have been reporters from three different newspapers in attendance and you sit in the front row. Then, if that wasn’t enough, you stand up and make your little tear-jerking speech. That’s going to be all over the place in the morning.”

His concern for the family of the deceased warmed me. He was making me angrier by the second, but I struggled to remain silent. There was no point adding fuel to his rage.

“Start explaining, and let’s begin with the park. What were you doing there that night? You were meeting the faggot, weren’t you? After I explicitly told you to stay away from him.”

“I’m not a little kid. You can’t tell me who I can and can’t be friends with.” I did my best to match him in the control department. I had learned well.

“Yes. I. Can.” He was starting to lose his veneer of control, and I loved it. “I’m your father, and you’ll do as I say. You were going to meet him that night, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Then you deserve what you got,” he snarled, his control finally snapping. He took three large steps toward me, covering the entire length of the hallway in those few strides, and struck me across the face open-handed. I reeled backwards into the door. I vaguely heard Mom screaming for him to stop, but the ringing in my ears almost deafened me.

“It’s bad enough you run around with that nigger boy. I won’t have my son associating with faggots too!”

I’d never felt so much hate and contempt for anyone in my entire life. My hands were shaking with rage. I balled them into fists, and he actually took an involuntary step back. “I will associate with whoever I want,” I spat out.

He moved so fast I didn’t even have time to flinch. His fist shot out and connected squarely with my face. I felt my glasses snap as my head bounced off the door, and the world exploded. I slid to the floor with the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. Mom shrieked again and tried to get to me, but Dad shoved her back roughly. She fell to the floor where she huddled against the wall and cried.

“You listen to me and you listen well, boy,” he rasped. “Stay away from that Connelly man. You stay away from Asher Davis from now on, too. I don’t know why he helped you, or what you did to get him to take you to the park, but you are not to see him anymore. If I find out you’ve been sneaking around again, this beating will look like fun. This is my house, and you will respect what I say.”

“Fuck you!” I screamed at him. “You think you can just hit me, and I’ll respect you? You lost my respect a long time ago.”

He reached down and snatched me up by my shirt, suspending me in the air. Once again, time slowed down in the eerie way it has of doing at important moments, as if to underline their importance. The pain in my face and side was intense, but somehow it only served to sharpen my senses. I could hear Mom moaning softly behind him, a low keening sound that would have made the hair on my arms stand on end under other circumstances.

I struggled to focus on the face in front of me. Even without my glasses, I could see the fury in his eyes. My vision may have been blurry, but I was seeing my father with a clarity I’d never known before.

As I hung in midair, watching him draw back his fist to strike me again, I made a decision.

“Guess what?” I gasped. “I’m gay, too.”

Everything froze in place. Before, time had seemed to slow down. Now, it stopped completely. Mom fell silent and Dad’s fist stopped in mid-swing. I stared at him defiantly as I dangled there. We all held our positions, a bizarre tableau of a dysfunctional family.

I broke the spell. “That’s right. Your very own son is a faggot. How does that make you feel, Pop? Proud? And guess what. You can’t beat that out of me.”

For a brief second, I could read utter hatred in his glare. Then his eyes went dead, as if someone had flipped a switch. Suddenly, he released his grip on me, and I collapsed to the floor, gasping in pain. His fist dropped to his side, although it remained clenched. For a moment, all was silent.

“Get out of my house.” He couldn’t even bring himself to look at me. “Take your shit and get the hell out. I never want to see you again. You’re no longer my son.” He kicked me in the side so hard my vision exploded in white light and pure pain. Then the world went black. I heard his footsteps retreating, then the back door slammed shut.

I tried to sit up and focus, but the pain was excruciating. Everything was blurry. Suddenly, I felt someone over me, and, in a flash, I was no longer in the hallway. I was lying on the ground by the pond once again with a murderer bending over me, knife raised, ready to plunge. I screamed and struck out at the figure.

“No! Please! Please don’t kill me! Oh, God, please, no!”

“Killian!” Mom’s frightened voice brought me back. “Stop! It’s me. It’s Mom.”

I managed to focus on Mom’s face. I wasn’t in the park. I was in the hallway of our house, and I was in a lot of pain.

“How badly are you hurt?”

“Bad,” I managed to gasp.

“Can you stand up? I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“I don’t think so,” I groaned.

She tried to lift me, but she was too small, and I was in no condition to help.

“Should I call an ambulance?”

I didn’t know why I had to make all the decisions, but I was glad she asked me that one. “Call Adam Connelly.”

She gave me a blank look.

“Seth’s dad.”

“I don’t know his number.”

“It’s in my phone. In my pocket.”

She fished out my phone and she frantically searched through my contacts.

For the first time ever, I was glad that one of the conditions of Dad allowing me to have a cell phone was that I wasn’t allowed to lock it—so that he could have access to it whenever he wanted.

I heard her talking frantically to someone—Adam?—but the pain was coming in waves now, each one stronger than the last. I began to lose consciousness.

I faded in and out after that. I remember Adam arriving and cursing a great deal. “I shouldn’t have let him come home alone. I could tell he was afraid.”

“You couldn’t know,” Mom argued. “It’s not your fault. It’s Gary’s.”

“We can play the blame game later,” another voice joined in. I think it was Steve’s, but I was in too much pain to open my eyes to see.

At the point, someone lifted me like a doll, and I blacked out again.

When I came to, I was back in the hospital, and a doctor was talking to Mom. It wasn’t the same doctor I’d seen before. This was a younger woman wearing green scrubs. “He’s a lucky boy,” she was saying.

Funny, I didn’t feel so lucky.

“Considering the beating he took, he’s in pretty good shape. He didn’t need any stitches and no ribs were broken. He’s going to have some nasty bruises, though.”

“What about his stab wound?” Mom asked.

“Again, he was lucky. Somehow, it didn’t reopen. He’s probably going to experience quite a bit of pain in his ribs, though. There’s a lot of bruising.”

“Can you give him anything for the pain?”

“We already have. He’ll probably be very drowsy for a while.”

“Are you going to move him to a room?”

“We’d like to observe him for a few hours. We’re a little concerned he may have a concussion, but if there are no signs of anything more serious, he can probably go home tonight. Any other questions?”

“I...yes. When I went to help him, he started screaming ‘don’t kill me’ and he struck out at me. I think he believed I was the person who stabbed him.”

“That’s possible. He was probably having a psychosomatic episode.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“They’re often called flashbacks. We see it most often with war veterans, but it can happen to anyone who’s been through a traumatic experience. In his mind, he probably reverted to the night of the stabbing and experienced it all over again, even to the point of believing he was there, and you were his attacker.”

“Will he have them again?”

“It’s possible, maybe even probable.”

If she said anything more, I missed it, because I faded out on that bright note.

The next time I came to, Mom was having a whispered argument with Adam. I didn’t have the energy to open my eyes, so I just listened.

“Meg, you have to press charges,” Adam insisted.

“I can’t do that. You don’t understand.” Mom sounded defeated and weary, as if it wasn’t the first time they’d had this particular conversation.

“You’re right, I don’t understand. How can you let him get away with this? He could have killed Killian.”

“Do you have any idea how powerful my husband is in this county? You aren’t in Baltimore anymore. Gary is the law. He has everyone in any position of power in his pocket. If I pressed charges, the only thing to come of it would be more trouble for Killian and me. And now that you’re involved, for you, too.”

“This is child abuse. He put Killian in the hospital. It’s not like he could just shrug that off.”

“You don’t know Gary. He could get away with murder.”

There was a long pause, then Mom murmured, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” He sighed. “At the very least you should file a police report.”

“The hospital has to report it. Nothing will come of it.”

“I just don’t understand how you can let him get away with this.”

“You think I want to? I want to make him pay. I want him to suffer. But I have to protect Killian first.”

“He can’t go back there.”

“Of course not. Gary kicked him out.”

“That’s not what I meant. Even if your sorry excuse for a husband hadn’t kicked him out, Killian wouldn’t be safe there.”

“No. I just... I never thought... He’s never once raised a hand to either of us.”

“Well, he has now.”

“Where will he go?”

“What if...”

“What?”

“This might sound crazy, but he could stay with me.”

“I couldn’t ask—”

“You didn’t. I offered.”

“I don’t know...”

“Look, I realize I’m practically a stranger to you, but I want to help. Killian meant a lot to Seth, and God knows I have plenty of room. He can even stay in Seth’s room. The house feels so empty now. Honestly, it would be nice to have someone around. Besides, it might be good for him to have someone around who understands what he’s going through.”

“What do you mean?”

“Meg, I’m gay. The man waiting outside? That’s Steve, my partner.”

There was another long pause, and I wondered what Mom was thinking. “Of course,” she said at least, sounding even more rattled. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Adam said.

“You don’t think it will...look inappropriate?”

“Where else would he go? Do you have other options?”

She sighed. “No. I don’t. At least not immediately. Maybe it would be okay just until I figure out something more permanent. And...I don’t know. Maybe it would be good for him to be with you for now. This is all so new to me. God knows I’m completely ignorant when it comes to...homosexuality. But I don’t want to impose. Are you sure it’s okay?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re welcome to stay with me, too.”

“Thank you, but I have to go back.”

“Are you sure you’ll be safe?”

“He’s...he’s never hit me before.”

“You said he’d never hit Killian before either.”

“Yes, but he didn’t tell me to leave. I’m afraid if I don’t go back, he’ll come looking for me. Killian will be safer this way.”

“I don’t like it, Meg.”

“I don’t like it either, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t press charges, and I have to go back.”

“Do I get a say in this?” I croaked.

“Killian!” Mom gasped. “You’re awake.”

I forced my eyes open and tried to focus but everything was blurry. I had a moment of panic before I remembered that my glasses had broken. Adam and Mom were standing over my bed with matching expressions of concern.

“How long have you been listening?”

“Long enough. I’m staying with Adam?”

“If you want to,” Adam qualified.

“I want to. But Mom, I don’t want you to go back.”

Mom slipped her hand into mine. “Baby, you know I have to. At least for now. This is all just temporary until I figure something out.”

“You promise?”

“Promise. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ve been dealing with your father for a long time.” She leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Get some rest, sweetie. We’ll figure it out.”

I nodded and allowed myself to drift off.

The next time I woke up, a doctor was in the room talking to Mom.

“There’s no sign of a concussion,” he was saying, “but we’d like to keep him overnight for observation, just to be safe.”

“No,” I said.

The doctor and Mom both turned to me in surprise.

“I don’t want to spend the night here. I’ve had enough of hospitals.”

“Well, we can’t make you, but I would recommend—”

“No,” I said again.

She turned to Mom, but Mom just shrugged.

There was a bit more discussion, but I eventually prevailed, and Mom called Adam to come pick me up. He’d run home to get things ready while I slept, just in case I was released.

Somehow, I stayed awake while they wheeled me out to Adam’s car. An orderly helped Adam ease me gingerly into the back seat.

Mom knelt down beside me. “I’ll bring over your clothes, laptop and anything else you need tomorrow.” She sounded very tired. I knew how she felt. “We’ll sort everything out then.”

I nodded and struggled to hold my eyelids open.

She leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I managed to mumble.

The painkillers were really strong. My last conscious thought was that I sincerely hoped Asher had made out better than I had.