Page 4 of Poison Aches

There’s not a single explanation good enough to cover what I did.

The police know it. The doctors know. And so does Grammy and Samuel.

I glance at the two of them now and my heart starts pounding furiously again.

Even though it looked like my brother was defending me just now, the truth is they both hate me.

They can’t even look at me.

And why should they when I’m the one who took away the one person we all relied on?

Gramps was everything.

When I was always in a constant state of tears, lonely and sad, he was there, comforting me.

“No, sweetie, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just growing up. This stage of life doesn’t last forever,” Gramps said softly once, as he soothed me to sleep one night after he found me crying.

A few girls at school had said I can’t be related to Samuel because I was measly and pathetic.

I didn’t particularly care about that part.

I did, however, feel like someone struck my chest cavity with a boulder when one of the girls whispered that my mother likely abandoned me because I was a curse.

“You can’t give people the power to hurt you, sweetheart,” Gramps said.

“But…but what if what they said is true?” I cried.

“Well, I can tell you now. There’s no such thing as a cursed child. All children are a blessing, and whether their parents are enlightened enough to know that or not is irrelevant and you are no exception.”

Gramps was that kind of person. Supportive, kind, and gentle.

He was a doctor, met Grammy when he was an intern and she had just gotten her nursing degree and started working at the same hospital.

Apparently, they got into a huge fight the very first time they met.

After the disciplinary hearing, they didn’t speak to each other at all for an entire year until one day the nurses of the surgical floor invited all the interns about to take their boards to agood luckparty.

It was there that they discovered the tension they both felt when around each other was actually denied attraction.

They discovered that their views, hopes, aspirations, and expectations on life aligned almost perfectly.

“Kids, let me tell you a little secret. They say opposites attract but later, as you grow, you’re going to find out for yourself that like attracts like.”

“That can’t be true, it breaks the laws of physics,” Samuel said, rolling his eyes.

“Oh but my dear boy, love doesn’t make any sense. It defies all the laws of men and responds to the will of Heaven. One day you’re going to see that true love actually grows strong regardless of time or distance. Your Grammy never gave me the time of day back then and I pretended like I didn’t care but even in that stilted silence, I was falling deeper for her.”

“Why is that?” Samuel asked. “It’s stupid to fall for someone who doesn’t even talk to you.”

“Hmm, from one angle that’s true, so my advice to you is make every effort to at least not be a coward. Talk to them,” Gramps replied, fully aware that Samuel had a crush on some girl at school that time. “But to be sure, when someone is for you, they willalwaysbe for you.”

“How do you know?” I had asked him.

Gramps looked at me with a steady gaze. “You’ll know it when everything in you aches deeply for that person and those aches can only be soothed and healed by that very person that makes you ache.”

He said that’s how he felt for Grammy. She was everything to him.

And he was Grammy’s entire world.

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