Page 77 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
Clocking the obvious disbelief rippling off her, I look around for something to show her just how truthful I’m being, and that’s when I catch sight of a purple, felt-tip marker sitting on her nightstand.
I grab the marker and uncap it with my teeth, then rest her hand against my belly. She squeaks in surprise, but she doesn’t dare say anything when I begin to trace over her scars with lavender ink. I connect the fractured puncture wounds with one continuous line, adding angles and miniature stars to make a constellation.
She watches raptly as I elongate each line, and when I finish my masterpiece, her lesions have transformed into a breathtaking work of art. Her fingers twitch while she admires the hastily scribbled stars and inaccurately portrayed constellations, but she smiles all the same, and a barrage of moisture hinders her eyesight.
“See?” I say. “Beautiful.”
She titters. “That’s because you covered up the ugliness.”
For someone who’s a self-proclaimed baby when it comes to blood and gore, I don’t see any of that when I look at Cali’s hands.
“No, Cali. You’re a survivor, and I see the beauty in that. All I’ve done is accentuate it.”
“Gage—”
“I don’t want to see you hurt yourself anymore. But I know that’s easier said than done, so I’ll be here to help you heal. I’ll be here to hold your hand when you feel like you want to harm yourself. I’ll be here to love you and your scars on the days that you can’t.”
Cali, surprisingly, doesn’t fight me. She doesn’t tell me how wrong I am. Instead, with gratitude woven in her eyes, she leans in to kiss me, wrapping me up in the heat of her lips. Our hands connect, palms flat against each other, and the still-wet ink from the hand-drawn constellations smear onto my own skin.
A transference of pain.
26
THE DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN
CALISTA
Hospitals never used to bother me when I was younger, seeing as I was in and out of them a lot with my mother. I got desensitized to the aching groans of dying patients and the sobs of families now harboring terrible news. I got desensitized to the miasma of death and the stench of hydrogen peroxide. I got desensitized to the blinding fluorescents and the shitty food and the uncomfortable waiting chairs. There was even a point when I accepted that my mother’s life was tethered to a countdown clock, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
But now, sitting in this dark and cold doctor’s office, with the outside cavalry of heart monitor beeps and the hushed exchange of doctor jargon closing in on me, I hate hospitals. I hate them with everything I have.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry. Not because I was afraid to embarrass myself in front of whoever was saddled with giving me the bad news, but because I didn’t think I’d be able to stop once I started. Unremitting anxiety kick-starts inside me, baking my skin in a suffocating heat that didn’t exist before I stepped through those stainless steel doors. And that anxiousfeeling only trickles down to my gut, where it churns the ham sandwich I had earlier, threatening to trigger that delicate reflex at the back of my throat.
It feels like I’m back in my mother’s old room—one hundred forty-four square feet of death camouflaged in peeling wallpaper and fossilized possessions. There’s a darkness here that weighs heavy on my chest, sharpening the jagged edges of my nerves.
The doctor’s face is trimmed to smooth perfection, a cruel kind of cold that only exists within sociopaths or serial killers. There’s no hair out of place, no speck of dust on his pristine jacket, no wrinkles on his skin that could allude to how old he is. Everything is carefully constructed, a façade, an inhuman mask that he mistakenly believes makes him human. I could look past everything else, but it’s his eyes that haunt me. Soulless, unfathomably deep, the color of obsidian, yet even with no life to be found within them, they still follow my every movement.
“Ms. Cadwell, thank you for joining me on such short notice,” he says, and even in his tone lies an aloofness, as if getting too close to someone like me repulses him.
Doctor Grandfield—according to his name tag—folds his hands into a steeple on his desk, lowering his eyes disdainfully at the unprofessional appearance of my stained jacket and sweatpants.
“Uh, thank you for seeing me,” I stammer.
“I’m sure you’re aware that your mother has end-stage multiple sclerosis, correct?” There’s no soft landing for his unsympathetic words. It’s a harsh shove against the hard ground, one that scrapes the skin off my bloodstained face and imbues my tongue with the taste of rust.
I swallow back bile. “I’m aware.”
“I’ve consulted with other doctors, and we believe it’s in her best interest to move her into a nursing facility while her body continues to deteriorate.”
Nursing facility. Deteriorate.
A peaceful place for her to gradually die, is what he’s saying.
I nearly vomit on the spot, chunks of half-digested bread and lunch meat all over his desk and his classified papers, all over that stupid suit of his.
We won’t be living under the same roof anymore. I’ll have to drive to see her; I’ll have to sign in and get a visitor’s pass just toseeher. I don’t want my mom to go. I want her to hold me in her arms again and tell me that everything’s going to be okay.
“I see” is all I have the energy to say. Stagnant. Void of emotion. A hollow acceptance. I’m so numb right now that the tears don’t even exist. They’re not banging on the backs of my eyes begging to be freed.
