Chapter 9

I woke up, disoriented and stiff, in the passenger seat of a strange car. For a few brief moments, I was suspended in that nothingness that lingers after a deep sleep, when you have no idea where you are, or even who you are. But, just as quickly as it had come, the moment passed, and I remembered the events of the last several hours – the phone call, Alex leading me to his car, a few turns and then mile after mile of highway.

Based on the road signs, we seemed to be somewhere in Georgia, every moment getting closer to the hospital, and to my father. I looked over at Alex, who glanced back at me.

“You’re awake.”

“Mmmhmm,” I responded, too drained to make conversation. He opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it and directed his eyes back to the road. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window, staring out into the night. Driving at night always soothed me, but that night, all I could think about was my father.

My stupid father. At that moment, he was probably in some emergency room somewhere, prepping for surgery. Or maybe he was already in surgery. I couldn’t be sure – who knew what really happened in hospitals anyway? All that stuff on TV was fake, I knew that much, but I’d never been in a hospital myself. As a child, I behaved perfectly - never broke a bone, never got sick – or at least, I never told anyone when I was sick. Still, my father never seemed to notice how easy it was to take care of me. He didn’t realize that normal children got sick, skinned their knees, fell out of trees. But I didn’t do anything right, at least not in his eyes.

This coming from a man who went to work drunk, fell into a meat grinder and got his legs chopped off today. It was like something out of a ridiculous story, too unbelievable to be real. Yet there I was, sitting next to Alex, making the long drive from Cape Canaveral to a hospital in the middle of nowhere. How the hell do you fall into a meat grinder?

But that was just like my father. Even on a good day, when he hadn’t been drinking, he was careless and lazy. It was easy to avoid him on those days – at least, it had been during high school. I’d lock myself in my room, pouring over my math and science textbooks, and he’d lay around watching hour after hour of television. We might as well have lived on two separate planets, our paths never colliding as we orbited around some far-off star.

Then there were the bad days. I’d come home from school to find him looking through the photo albums, beer bottles strewn around the room, and no matter how quietly I passed, he’d always notice me before I made it to the door of my room.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he’d snarl.

“I’ve got homework.”

“You see this picture?” Yes, Dad. It was the same one every time, a candid shot of him with my mother on their wedding day, his arm around her waist and her head tilted back as she laughed. She and I had the same hair, brown and unruly, and the toothy grin. He must’ve been saying something funny…

Then my father’s voice would bring me back. “You’re lucky she died when she did. She’d be so disappointed in you.”

I realized I was crying and angrily brushed away the tears. What the hell was I doing? It was a mistake to let Alex drive me, a mistake to go see my father in the first place. Two minutes with the two of them in a hospital room and Alex would catch me in my lies about my happy family. It would be hard enough for me to face my father after five, almost six years of ignoring his sporadic phone calls and greeting cards, let alone introduce Alex – perfect Alex – to the man who singlehandedly ruined my childhood.

“Alex, you don’t need to come in. You can drop me off when we get to the hospital. Go find a hotel room, get some sleep – you must be exhausted from driving all night.” I prayed he’d agree, prayed he’d leave well enough alone and let me handle things myself. I’d talk to some doctors, find my father a private nurse, and be back in Cape Canaveral within a day or two to continue work on my project. I couldn’t lose sight of the project, couldn’t let my father ruin everything again. Those days were behind me.

Alex took one hand off the steering wheel and slipped it into mine. “Of course I’m coming in. I’m not leaving you alone. Besides,” he smiled, “I want to meet your father, and the rest of your family that you were going on and on about.”

Damn. The rest of my family. “I don’t think anyone else will have made it yet…” I trailed off, realizing how futile it would be to start making up a new pack of lies when Alex was about to find out everything.

“Luna,” he said, squeezing my hand, “your father is going to be fine.”

“Trust me,” I replied, “I’m not worried about that…”

“Well good, because we’re here.” He was right. We’d finally pulled into the hospital parking lot. It was much too late to turn back, so I gathered up my bag and let Alex take my hand again as we walked towards the hospital doors.