Page 51 of The Choices I've Made
Instantly, I was taken aback.
In all my years of growing up with Dean Sutherland, I’d never heard him utter a single hateful thing.
To anyone.
“Pardon?” I asked.
Molly and I looked at each other with confusion.
“Get on the ferry, Dean,” he mocked. “Nothing bad will happen.”
I took a step back, my expression as blank and clueless as it’d ever been. “I couldn’t have known this would happen, Dean. I didn’t want this,” I said, pointing to his broken body. “No one wanted this.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it all seemed to work out well for you in the end, didn’t it? It always does, I guess.”
“Dean, what are you talking about?” Molly asked, placing her hand on his thigh.
He looked down at her perfect hand, a pained expression moving across his familiar face. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It was inevitable—you two, I mean. Just a matter of time.”
“Buddy,” I said, trying to lighten the conversation, “there’s nothing going on between us. That’s water under the bridge. Mols just sprained her foot, and I offered to drive her. Nothing more.”
He went on talking, entirely ignoring me, “I guess it’s better this way. Clean. Easy. God knows I’m going to be a handful from now on and no one needs to deal with all that. At least we can just skip to the end and move on.”
“Dean!” Molly cried, tears starting to fall from her cheeks. “Stop this. Please. I’m here. You and I are all that matter. Don’t you see that?”
His eyes darted between Molly and me. “I see a lot right now. I see the way you look at each other. Nothing’s changed. Maybe you don’t see it yet, but, frankly, I just don’t care anymore.”
“You can’t mean that, Dean. This is a setback, I agree—”
“A setback, Jake? A fucking setback? Look at my arm. Look at it!” he demanded, forcing me to turn my attention to his right side.
I’d been avoiding it since we walked in. I had known it’d happened. I’d spoken to the surgeon who’d made the choice. There was nothing that could have been done. My quick thinking on the ferry had saved his life, but it hadn’t been enough to keep him whole.
Part of him would always belong to that sunken ship.
“You should have just let me die on that boat,” he said, his eyes rising to the ceiling as his head rested against the stark white pillow.
“You don’t mean that,” Molly said, the anguish clear in her voice.
“I mean every word of it,” he seethed. “This isn’t the life I wanted. This isn’t the life I chose, and now, they’re telling me they can give me a new arm, like a goddamn robot! Like that will fix everything…”
“You have so much more to live for, Dean,” she sobbed. “I know it’s different, but we’ll adapt. We’ll adjust. But please don’t give up. Please don’t give up on us.”
He didn’t say another word. He returned to the stoic man we’d found when we entered. No amount of pleading from Molly or rationale would bring him out of it. He’d dismissed us.
From the room and his life.
The only question was, where would we go from here?
I didn’t know how long we’d stood there, waiting for Dean to say something.
Anything.
Eventually, Molly’s tears dried up, and determination spread across her face. She marched outside, and I followed behind.
“I need to speak to his doctor,” she said.
“I’m not sure you can,” I replied, hating to be the bearer of bad news. “You’re not family.”
