I ran from the kitchen to grab my phone, but when I got to the bedroom, it was already ringing. Audrey was sitting up in bed, bewildered as I burst into the room and snatched my phone from the nightstand to find my dad calling.
“Blake?” she asked, her voice trembling. She was scared.
So was I.
I didn’t respond to her as I quickly answered the phone. “Dad?”
I waited for his voice to say something to me, anything, but it didn’t come right away. First, I heard someone else. Someone I didn’t recognize.
“Ma’am, I understand. I need you—”
Then, my mother’s voice, shouting, “Don’t you tell me to calm down! I can’t … I can’t …” She was crying, sobbing, and unable to control herself.
My heart couldn’t possibly beat any harder, or any faster, without exploding. “Dad?” I repeated, once again going ignored.
“Diana,” Dad spoke, forcing a calm that wasn’t coming naturally. “Go with them. I’ll meet you there. Okay?”
Then, he acknowledged me. “Blake, listen to me—”
“What the fuck is going on?” I blurted, my voice strained and choked. “Dad, I want you to tell me right now what—"
“Listen to me!” he barked without the intent to be cruel, but to shock me into shutting the fuck up. “I don’t have time right now, Blake. I just need you to get to the hospital. Okay? Are you listening to me?”
My legs felt weak, so tired and fragile, and I dropped to sit at the edge of the bed. Audrey hurried to kneel beside me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and wiping her hand against my face, and it was then that I realized I was crying.
“Dad, what the fuck happened?”
“Blake, please just do what I’m telling you,” he begged exhaustedly, his voice cracking.
“What happened?” I pleaded with him.
Dad sighed, clearing his throat and coughing before saying, “Jake …” The name came out fragmented, splintered with pain, and I laid a hand over my eyes to catch the dripping pieces of my broken heart.
***
The world was a blur of white snow and bright lights, a palette of blinding beauty, muddied by the chilled, ugly black eating away at my heart. Audrey drove to the hospital, careful to remain calm and not speed, but I still caught her stepping on the gas a few times as she struggled to keep her composure.
We didn’t know what was going on. My father hadn’t confirmed, when I demanded to know, if Jake was okay. He had simply told me to get to the hospital as quickly as I could, and so that’s what we did. We were barely dressed when we ran from the house and into the car, with Audrey in her flimsy pajamas and me in a pair of sweatpants and my leather jacket. She had at least thought to grab her flip-flops, while I was only in socks but did I care? Did I feel the cold seeping through the cotton to freeze my heels and toes? No.
Because all I could think about was, I should’ve been there. I should’ve never let him go back to my parents’ house. I should’ve been more attentive, more aware, more proactive in keeping him separated from them. Why hadn’t I gone to the cops the moment I knew my mother had been a manipulative bitch for so long? What could the cops have even done? I didn’t know, but it seemed like an appropriate response to finding out I’d suffered emotional and mental abuse for over twenty years. Why couldn’t I have been a better brother, a better protector, a better … a better … better…
Why couldn’t I have just been better?
“Blake,” Audrey cut through the deafening silence with urgent concern and reached out to grip my thigh.
I was shaking all over. My teeth clacked together, my hands clenched and trembled, and my legs jounced relentlessly. I willed my limbs, my jaw, my lungs to find calm and resume control but they wouldn’t stop, they couldn’t stop. They would never stop until I knew what the fuck had happened to my brother.
“Blake, talk to me.”
I shook my head. I was scared to speak, or even to open my mouth, scared to know what might come out. Would I puke all over the dashboard? Would I scream like a broken animal? Would I speak with an unsettling amount of control?
“We’re almost there, okay?”
I nodded and a fresh batch of tears welled in my eyes. Fuck. I wanted to be there, wanted to know what had happened, wanted to know what was happening now. And yet … I didn’t. I didn’t want to face whatever the fuck was going on. I didn’t want to be at the hospital. I didn’t want to see my parents, didn’t want to find Jake hurt or—
“W-w-what if he’s d-dead?” I spoke aloud for the first time since hanging up on my father. I turned to face her, eyes wide and wild, without any attempt to stop the tears from spilling and soaking my face. “What i-if he’s fucking dead?”
“Blake,” she whispered, then swallowed. Her eyes glassed over and she blinked rapidly. “Don’t say that.”
“What if he is? What the fuck do I do?”
“Don’t think about it right now,” she commanded, hardening her tone.
“I-I’ll fucking kill them. I will fucking crush them, Audrey. I’ll fucking b-b-break their goddamn necks and—”
“Blake!” Her hands smacked against the steering wheel. “Blake. Let’s just try to calm down and find out what happened, okay? Please, just … just try to calm down. Just breathe.”
“Breathe,” I repeated, snickering and shaking my head. And why the fuck could I not stop crying? How the fuck did I have so many tears in me? How the fuck had they not dried out yet? “I can’t fucking breathe.”
But somehow, I managed, sucking in the air and puffing it out, and by the time we pulled into the hospital parking lot, I had calmed my lungs to something manageable. Audrey parked the car and held my hand as we hurried through the sliding doors into the emergency room on legs that moved too slow.
We found my father meandering aimlessly in a corner of the large room, full of people waiting and complaining. Their voices all blended together into an annoying cacophony as I released Audrey’s hand, ignoring her insistence to hold on, and moved quickly with my sights set on my dad’s straight face.
“Blake!” Audrey shouted, alerting a few people to our presence. “Stop!”
“Where the fuck is he?” I demanded, grabbing my father by the arm and forcing him to look me in the eye with a jerk.
“Mom’s with him,” he replied, emotionless.
My grip tightened on his arm, yanking him closer to me. “Answer my fucking question! Where the fuck—”
“Blake,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “It’s not good.”
I continued to hold his arm but my fingers loosened. “Don’t say that. Don’t you dare—”
“Mom got into a fight with him,” Dad explained, looking right through me, his stare was so blank. He was in shock, barely blinking and barely breathing. “He wanted to go home, he said. He wanted to be with you, he only ever wanted to be with you. He said he hated us, and Mom sent him to bed. We didn’t know he was gone. We didn’t know he left. He took the damn dog. That fucking, fucking dog … Jesus, Mickey …”