As You Wish

The boy smiled wanly. "She can stay."

I kept my shit together as I sat near him and reached into my purse.

"Today we have, drum roll please, The Count of Monte Cristo. He's sort of like a pirate and the comic looked cool."

I took it out and put it on the bed next to him.

Leaning to his left, he looked at the cover. "Can you do the voices?"

"I..." Closing my eyes for a moment, I took a breath through my nose and looked at Ethan. "Absolutely. If your dad says it's okay, there might even be a hot chocolate in it for you."

So, I put a lock on my heart and did silly voices as I read the comic book.

"Are they Spanish?"

"It's, um, mostly set in France. Pretty close to Spain."

From time to time I looked over at Jeremy, who watched us from a chair in the corner, his broken heart clear and obvious. I stayed until Jeremy told me his parents were coming by. I didn't want to intrude on their time, so I told Ethan I'd see him soon and headed home, crying the entire drive.

I must have spent ninety minutes just staring at the wall. Finally, I picked up the phone.

"Mom, I need some help."

"I'm on my way."

"No, I can... We can just talk."

"Noreen, I'm your mother. I can hear it in your voice. I'm on my way."

She was knocking on the door within half an hour. It was dark out and there were no cars driving by.

"What time is it?"

"Nevermind. What's the matter?"

"I... I shouldn't have called. I'll be fine. I'll--"

Finger under my chin, she lifted gently while making eye contact. "Noreen, look at me. What's going on?"

Inhaling deeply, I made an ugly, wet sound. "Mom, he... I just left Jeremy and Ethan. They... The doctors said he's not going to get better. That he... That he... He's not going to..."

She placed a hand on each of my temples and kept gazing into one of my eyes and then the other. Mom began tearing up and pulled me into a hug.

I started crying again and she held me as if I was a little girl again.

"Shhh, shhh. We'll do what we can. I'm going to call Phillip."

Phillip had been my therapist for years. With Mom holding me, it felt like I had permission to fall apart. Pieces of my soul fell with the tears and all I could do was cling to her. I couldn't go through it again. I couldn't lose another child.

Mom called Dad and told him she was staying overnight. Going into full mother-bear mode, she made some soup and after we ate she insisted I get some sleep. I didn't respond, again lost in mindless staring.

"Noreen, you need to get some sleep. C'mon, baby. Let's go to your room."

I hugged her, kissed her cheek, and trudged to my room.

There were five of us at the arcade killing time before the movie started. We were the best of friends and had a connection that would never be broken.

Jill and I were on Dance Dance Revolution when she turned her head slightly in my direction. "I'm going to ask him out. Bobby McCray."

I nearly spit out the gummy I was chewing. "No, you're so totally not."

"I am."

Bobby had just transferred in and was from Ireland. He had soft black hair, black eyes and the longest eyelashes I'd ever seen on a boy. And that accent...

"Well, if you don't, I will."

Jill turned and gave me a goofy smile just as the game ended. She'd beaten me again. We headed down the endless hallway towards our theatre and I could hear my aunt in the background. Her voice was distant and angry.

"Noreen! Get over here. Where are you, Noreen! You need to be here!"

The guy took my ticket, ripped it and handed me my half. He looked up and it was Bobby.

"Hey, you think you could introduce me to Kennedy?"

"Don't be stupid, you're a kid."

"So are you." That stopped me. He was right. "Sorry. I'll talk to her."

My friends were gone and I sat alone in the dark theatre, my heart pounding. Finally, the screen lit up and my father stood there looking down at me. He was dressed in a bright yellow suit with a derby hat and carried a cane. His voice was stern and demanding.

"Let's go out to the lobby, let's go out to the lobby, let's go out to the lobby and get ourselves a snack!"

Too afraid to move, I sat in my chair, still staring at the screen. Dad faded away and I saw myself standing at a gate. Beyond the bars of the gate was sand that seemed endless. In the distance, I saw her blonde ponytail bob and wave as she moved away from me.

I ran, but the gate turned into a fence that moved with me. My cousin was so far ahead of me. I ran and ran and ran but couldn't catch up. Screaming, I watched her enter the water.

The lights went up in the theatre and my friends were there, but they all had my aunt's face.

"Why'd you do it, Noreen? She wanted to be just like you. She loved you."

Turning, I saw the audience was full and everyone was my aunt, pointing at me. "Why? Why, Noreen? Why!"

"Cat got your tongue, pumpkin?" Turning again, I saw my father looming over me, standing at least ten feet tall. "Answer your aunt. Why'd you kill my niece?"

"I didn't. No, I... No, that's not..."

"NO!" Sitting bolt upright in bed, I stared into the darkness as my heart beat fiercely.

My job was forgotten. After a phone call to Misha, I ignored what I was supposed to be doing there and spent my time at the hospital. Jeremy and Ethan. They were everything. I tried to do everything I could for both of them, being there for Jeremy whenever he needed me, however he needed me.

I was determined to push through and to be strong. Sitting in front of my laptop, I was making a list of what I could do for the two of them when I shook out my arms. My fingers felt tingly and a little numb. I tried to take a deep breath, but couldn't get it all in. My heart started racing and I tried again to breathe deep. Again I failed. Now sweating, I gripped the edge of the table as my chest thudded and I panted, desperate to get air.

It took me twenty minutes before my heart rate slowed and I could breathe normally.

I had two similar nightmares and grew afraid of falling asleep. On the third day, I was sitting at a light when I heard honking. Looking up, I saw people whizzing past me and everyone behind me laying on their horns. The light was green.

I tried to let go of the steering wheel and couldn't. My fingers refused to work. When I eventually pulled my right hand free, it wouldn't stop shaking. I slowly pulled into a nearby parking lot and sat there for an hour before I could move again.

When I got to their apartment, I waited for my stomach to settle before getting out of the car. I couldn't function. Thinking was sysiphysian, and that boulder kept rolling back down, dragging my soul with it. It wasn't sustainable. I couldn't be all things. I'd fallen too deeply, too quickly. My heart was breaking for Jeremy and I simply had nothing left to give.

Walking up the stairs, I held the bag with teas and another hot chocolate in one hand. Jeremy answered almost immediately when I knocked. He had a plastic grocery bag in hand and it was full of Ethan's clothes and had a plastic frog on the top.

There were bags under his eyes as he looked at me for a moment before speaking. "Just got home. He's with my folks. I'm packing up some stuff. We're going to stay there for the night." He looked at my hand with the bag. "Come in. Let's sit for a minute."

We sat down and he brought out some donuts from a half-empty box. I took one reflexively, not wanting to inadvertently insult him. Following his line of sight, I saw him watching my shaking hand. Putting the donut down, I put my hands on my lap, below the table.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded. Not able to breathe or speak.

"Noreen, what's going on?"

Managing a shuddering breath, I tried to pull some moisture into my suddenly dry mouth. My voice was soft and I couldn't make eye contact.

"I... I think we should take a break. While all this is going on, I mean. We never talked about my past. When I was a kid," I paused. How was I going to put what happened into words? "When I was young, I lost someone that... I don't know. It destroyed me for a long time. And then I've lost so many children at the Mission. It just kept piling up and up and I couldn't handle it anymore. That's why I was quitting."

I took another sip to bide time to find the right words.

"I'm having panic attacks and I'm not sleeping because of the nightmares. I haven't been able to keep any food down in two days. Sometimes I think I'm having a heart attack or I'll never breathe again. I... I..."

I was rambling. Jeremy looked at me silently before nodding. "Okay."

Okay?

That was his response? Okay?

He must have seen the look on my face.

"What are you looking for, Noreen? Forgiveness? It's not needed. A confrontation? My son is dying. I don't have the energy to deal with anything else. I understand. It's not fair to you to deal with all of this and I need to concentrate on Ethan."

He stood up and walked to the sink while I sat there staring at my styrofoam cup.

Jeremy spoke over his shoulder. "Maybe we can get together and talk in a while. I need... I just need to put Ethan at the centre of my life now. I hope you get help. I really do. But I need to get over to my parents'."

Standing, I walked out the door and from a man I was starting to love.

16 - Jeremy

"Are you going to tell him?"

I stared at my hands, wrapped around a half-empty cup of tea. I was just going through the motions, really; the only thing colder than the tea was my hands, but I held it all the same. As though it could provide warmth. Or comfort. Or... or something.

As if I could feel anything.

I didn't know where this anesthetized sensation sat on the five stages of grief. Maybe it was depression, but I thought I'd passed that a few days earlier when I'd looked in the bathroom mirror and saw not myself, but the father of a dying child.

I thought that had been moving into acceptance.

Depression had been what brought me to my parents' place. It was just supposed to be for the night, but then Noreen... well.

She stood in front of me, broken as I was about my son, and struggled to explain why she just couldn't. And I tried to tell her. I tried to let her know it was okay. That I wasn't mad. That I wasn't giving her even a fraction of me because all my attention was focused on a time bomb ticking away.

That I loved her and she deserved so, so much more.

Because I did. I was in love with her. It didn't matter if it was circumstantial or temporary or the real, forever kind of thing. It didn't matter if nothing ever came from it after... well. After.

True love is as selfless as it is selfish. It's more than soul mates or a perfect kiss or white horses and sunsets. It simply is love that is truly love, and for whatever it was worth, I truly loved Noreen.

But I also loved my son, and my son's time was limited.

Maybe that had been acceptance.

Maybe the stages weren't linear. Maybe it wasn't a path: denial followed by anger followed by bargaining. Somehow, I'd accepted what was happening and in my acceptance, had gone numb and cold and blank.

"Jere?" she asked, pulling me out of my thoughts. "Did you hear me?"

I looked up from the cup of tea. Shayla was sitting across from me at the table, worry in her dark brown eyes. My sister had flown back home the same day I'd called her, even though I'd told her there was still time, that he wasn't... there, not yet. He had time, he had at least a few months and he was still gonna be here when she came home for Christmas and--

"I don't care, Jeremy!" she'd practically screamed. "I'm, I... I n-need to be there."

Unreasonable guilt had wracked me. I couldn't get her here, so she was spending money she didn't have on flights. She was missing classes she needed to go to in order to follow her dream. But after Dad picked her up from the airport and she walked into their house, I got it.

She'd been wearing a baggy university hoodie and had a backpack over her shoulder. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she still managed a huge smile the moment she saw Ethan.

"Auntie Shay!" Ethan--the only person in the world allowed to call her just "Shay"--had shouted, so excited he nearly fell off the couch.

"Bubba!" Shayla rushed forward, scooping him up in an enormous hug.

And that hug explained everything.

She was a trooper, that was for sure. As exhausted as she must have been, she chatted and played with Ethan until it was time for his bedtime meds, which were thankfully the only ones that made him really sleepy. He, of course, threw a fit about having to take them because he was "having fun with Auntie Shayla, Dad, why do you always make me stop having fun?"

But even mean old Dad couldn't stop Auntie Shayla from having fun.

"Bubba, we're still having fun," she said. "C'mon, let me help you take your pills and then you can tell me a bedtime story."

"But I don't--" He stopped and frowned. "No, you would tell me a bedtime story."

"But what if I want a bedtime story?" she asked.

"You're not going to bed!"

She stretched her arms and let out a huge, gaping fake yawn. "Maybe I am. But I bet you can't tell me a whole bedtime story before you fall asleep."

"I can too!" he declared. "I'm gonna tell you about Vizzini!"

"Who's Vizzini?" Shayla asked.

It had been a while since Ethan had grinned like the way he did just then: a knowing smirk hidden behind the gleam of excitement a kid gets when he's about to tell a--in his opinion--hell of a good joke.

"Let me put it this way," he said slowly. "You've heard of Play-Doh?"

She looked at me and I nodded, mouthing at her to just go with it.

"Uh-huh," Shayla said slowly.

"Harry Stoddle? Soccer-tease?"

"Soccer... oh! Socrates!" she said. "Yes, of course."

"Morons!" Ethan yelled, then dissolved into a fit of laughter.

Through the laughter, she got him to take his meds, then distracted him while I got him ready for bed. Once he was tucked in, she sat with him while I ducked away to make a cup of tea, listening to the tale of Vizzini and the Dread Pirate Spike until it was nothing but soft mumbles followed by gentle snores.

Then, she came downstairs and sat in her spot at the table, looking at me holding my cold cup of tea and asking questions I didn't have the answer to.

"Jeremy, I asked if you--"

"--are gonna tell him, I know," I whispered. "I heard you."

She pressed her lips together sympathetically, looking far more like Mom than she would have liked. "Sorry."

"It's okay." I glanced back down at my tea. "I just don't know. I mean... you're gonna be a nurse. You'd know better than me if I should or not."

When she didn't respond right away, I looked up. As soon as I did, she put her head in her hands.

"Shit," I said, my stomach dropping. "That came out... Shayla, I'm sorry--"

"No," she choked. "Don't apologize."

I still felt like shit about it. "I didn't mean to sound rude or put it on you or anything. I just... I don't know what the right thing to do is. Do I tell him and, I dunno, make him scared or sad or... I don't know. Or do I just not say anything and he'll just..." The words wouldn't come. "What's gonna fuck him up less, do you think?"

She took a sniffling breath, then let it out slowly before lifting her head.

"There's no right answer," she said. "He's old enough that he understands what... what it means, at least on some level. And he'll know something is happening when he doesn't have treatments and starts feeling, you know. Worse."

I nodded slowly, then shook my head. "I can't."

"Jere--"

"What am I supposed to do?" My voice cracked. "J-Just sit down with him a-and say 'By the way, bud, you're--'" I coughed as the words caught in my throat. "For fuck's sake, I can't even say it out loud."

"I don't know," she said. "But you could... um." She took a deep breath. "Okay, look. Have you... you know. Been talking to someone?"

I stared at her blankly. "Like, his doctor?"

"No, like a... you know. A support... person."

"A shrink?" I said flatly.

Shayla looked annoyed. "Do not even tell me you think therapy wouldn't help. This is the exact kind of--"

"Cut me some fucking slack," I said, glaring at her. "I have no problem with therapy."

"Then why--"

"Because it's like one-fifty or two-hundred an hour and I don't work, Shayla."

Patches of red appeared on her cheeks. "Oh."

"There's, like, support groups," I said. "I'll go. Maybe. They'd probably know what to do."

"Okay," she said. "I hope you do."

"I'll try. If I have time."

She drummed her nails on the table. "And what about, like... you know. Friends?"

"What about them?"

"D'you have them?"

"Yeah, of course," I said lightly. "I joined a beer league hockey team and we play Thursdays and every other Saturday. Gotta miss some games, though, 'cause my book club meets on the third Thursday of every month. Luckily, flag football is on Mondays, otherwise I'd miss Trivia Tuesdays with all my old school chums."

"So you're still a loser with no friends."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, Shayla. I've been a little busy being a dad to a sick kid."

"You still need to have--"

"You're not here." It came out harsh, blunt words that were still perfectly capable of cutting. "You don't know, okay? Don't lecture me. I have Mom and Dad and Nor--" I cut myself off. "Mom and Dad. But hey, if you're volunteering to let me vent once in a while, I can add you to the group chat or something. If you show me how to set up a group chat."

She caught my slip up, but it didn't matter, because apparently that wasn't news to her.

"Mom said you were seeing someone. Maybe."

"Mom was wrong," I replied as evenly as I could.

Shayla raised an eyebrow. "Is she only wrong because you've been living here for a few days and can't sneak out to meet whoever your mystery lover is?"

"No. Drop it."

"Jere, come on." She tilted her head to the side. "Don't tell me you feel guilty. You're being strong for Ethan, but you need someone to lean on, too. Maybe it would help if you went to see her, whoever she is. I can watch Ethan and--"

"There is no 'her,'" I said. "There isn't anyone."

"Really? 'Cause Mom's pretty certain there's a 'her' and Ethan's Princess Bride knock-off story included a character named Princess Butter-Noreen--"

"Stop it," I said.

"--and an aside about how Noreen took him horseback riding and sometimes comes over for dinner and brings him comic books and--"

"Fuck off, Shayla."

It took the sloshing of cold tea over my hands and the table for me to realize I'd jerked back, like the cup had suddenly gotten hot or spikes had shot up through the wood of the table. Shayla froze and I could feel her eyes on me, but blood was pounding in my ears and I couldn't bring myself to look at her.

Tension slowed the world for a moment, then she stood up and went to the counter. Wordlessly, she brought the roll of dollar-store paper towels back, tore a few stiff sheets off, and laid them on top of the puddle of tea. As they absorbed the brown liquid, she ripped a few more off, handing one to me before mopping up what the first few couldn't absorb.

She probably intended for me to wipe my hands, but I ended up using it as a tissue when the tears started. Quietly, she finished cleaning the spill, then came back to the table and sat in Mom's chair and waited for me to take a shaky breath. Then a hesitant hand touched my arm.

"When did we switch roles here?" I asked, trying to laugh. "I'm older than you. I'm supposed to be the one giving you hell and looking after you at the same time."