Page 90 of The Sculptor

The moment she mentions him, I tense. I can put my anger aside for the information I need. “He was so what, Mother? Tell me what you know. It’s not too late to fix this.”

I sit back down in the chair next to her bed and take her hand. “Tell me about my son.” I grab the sketchpad and open to a clean page, pleading when I beg, “Help me find him, Mama. Tell me what you know.”

I sketch the image from memory. A dusting of fine dark hair, deep brown eyes, and the perfect bow mouth. She had said he was beautiful—more perfect than any baby she’d seen.

But it’s still an image I can never get just right. Nothing feels right when I sketch him. He’s a muse I can never perfect. But yet, every night, I pull out my pad, and I try. I give him his father’s sharp jaw and amused grin—sometimes, I even give him freckles like me. I’ve tried so many variations of the boy Duke and I created that I have thousands of sketches of him over the years.

If we’d only had time to take one picture.

One memento.

Even his footprints would have been a cherished keepsake.

Anything that I could have held on to would have been better than the one fleeting ambulance ride where it would be the last time I saw him. But instead of a picture, all I have is my imagination and my mother’s spotty memory. It’s absolute torture not knowing what he’s like. All I can do is dream and sketch until, one day, I meet him.

And we have to meet.

Fate can’t possibly be that cruel to us.

“Breathe!” Duke’s loud voice startles the charcoal out of my hand and onto the bed.

“Duke?” I turn the small book light I was using and flash it toward where Duke is lying next to me, curled in on himself, pulling in laborious breaths.

“Hey,” I lightly shake him. “Duke, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

His body is shaking violently, and the image of this man enduring the horror he tries to forget sends a sharp pain through my chest.

“Duke.”

I shake him once more, but it’s no use. He’s not waking up.

“Breathe,” he cries out again. “Breathe, dammit.”

Oh, my heart.

The screams—they were mine as I cried and screamed for the ambulance to hurry. The 911 operator kept assuring me help was on the way, but it didn’t feel fast enough—nor was it reassuring when all I heard was silence.

“Duke.” I shake him harder, but he’s still locked in the nightmare. Running to the bathroom, I grab the hand towel and run it under the cold water and sprint back to the bedroom, where Duke is still curled in on himself, his body shaking as he whimpers. “Please. Breathe.”

I place the cold towel on his chest, and immediately, he jerks awake. “Hey,” I soothe when he springs up, his eyes wild with panic. “Hey, you’re okay. Jude’s okay.”

Because ultimately, that’s all I’m sure he can think about is seeing Jude take that first breath in his arms.

“Jude is okay,” I say again as Duke just looks around the room, confused. “You’re okay. It’s just a dream.” I reach out for him, and he hesitantly takes my hand, still trembling.

I don’t know what to say—I don’t know if there is anything I can say to make it better. We were both there that night; it’s not an image you can shake off with a smile. It guts you—splits you in half as you try to come to terms with the guilt. We made a bad call in thinking we could deliver a baby on our own, but we thought our parents would be looking for us, and checking hospitals would have been at the top of their list. So, we thought we could keep the delivery a secret until we were ready to face them.

People delivered at home, or on the way to hospitals, all the time.

Duke was smart enough to handle it.

But then, Jude didn’t breathe.

And we were to blame when we were told he didn’t make it.

Living with that kind of guilt comes with jagged scars.

For me, it was living a life of solitude, unable to love anything or anyone but the two boys I would always remember, but for Duke—breathing air into his son as he performed CPR, only to know it didn’t matter, that his son would still die? I’m no doctor, but Duke’s “screams” are really PTSD that he’s likely never dealt with.

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