Always: Broken Series Book Four (11 page)

A
fter all of
us left the hospital, Ryan and Iris and Scotty and me ended up at a restaurant. That was one of my favorite things to do in New York, and I really needed something to cheer me up. Scotty was giving me dirty looks, and I knew that she was still very upset with me, and, frankly, I needed a buffer between us for at least a little bit. I was looking forward to spending time with my oldest, and best, friend anyhow.

“I need a scotch as big as my head,” I said, feeling cognizant that I was a bit of a hypocrite, considering how much I got on Scotty for drinking too much. But I didn’t care at that moment. I just needed a drink.

We all took a seat at the bar as we waited for our table. Iris and Scotty went to the other end of the bar, and Ryan and I sat next to each other, both of us nursing a neat scotch.

“So, how are you holding up? And why didn’t you call me earlier?” Ryan asked me.

“Buddy, you wouldn’t believe how fast this all turned around. I mean, it was like lightning fast. It wasn’t even a couple of weeks ago that Addy told me that she had a pain in her knee, and that was after she saw a doctor about it. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me earlier.”

Ryan nodded his head. “I see. Well, I’ve been busy, that’s for sure, but when your daughter has cancer, I should know about it. But I understand where you’re coming from. I’d imagine this time has been pretty stressful.”

“Yeah. You might say that.” I looked over at Scotty, who was busy talking to Iris while they each appeared to nurse a glass of wine. “Scotty isn’t happy with me, I’ll tell you that much.”

Ryan furled his eyebrows. “Why not? What did you do?”

“I left. I left when we got to the hospital because I was feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I went to the beach to try to calm down, and all I could think about was Michelle. So, I missed the doctor telling Scotty that the leg was going to be amputated. She had to make that call on her own.” I shook my head and took a swig of scotch. “I hope that she can forgive me for that. That was really stupid of me, to say the very least.”

Ryan looked sad as he contemplated his own scotch. “Michelle. Did I ever tell you that I had a crush on her?”

I laughed. “Yes, you mentioned that once or twice.”

Ryan laughed too. “Well, she certainly was a looker. And so sweet.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I know that you still miss her. But it seems like Addison is going to recover, so don’t let Michelle’s memory scare you too much.”

“Addison’s going to recover. Yes, she is, but how is she going to be? Will she ever really recover? She’s my little girl, and…” I shook my head. “I don’t know, buddy. I don’t really know how to help her.”

“You know how to help her. Be her dad. Be her sounding board. Be there for all of her doctor’s appointments and rehab sessions, as many as you can, anyhow. And try to be normal. You’ve always been good at that - being normal under rather extraordinary circumstances. Look at how much you helped me when I was down and out.”

“How did I help you? I mean, aside from chaining you to that bed to try to keep you from doing drugs that one weekend. That was the stupidest thing that I ever could have done, but I was at the end of my rope.”

I was referring to the weekend in college when I had had enough of Ryan’s drug binging and took it upon myself to keep him away from it for the weekend. I thought, naively, that if Ryan couldn’t have his stuff for a couple of days, he would go through detox and not want it anymore. I was wrong, of course, and, looking back, I knew that I was totally stupid for going about it in that way. I could have killed him, making him go cold turkey from heroin like that.

“Well, that wasn’t the greatest thing to do,” Ryan said, “but that was a long time ago. You were what, 20 when you did that? You’ve learned a lot about how to treat people who are in pain since then. You’ll do fine with Addison, I promise.”

“I hope you’re right.” I took a sip of my drink and motioned the bartender for another one. “So, how are things with you and Iris and Dalilah and everyone?”

“Everyone’s doing amazing. There’s really not much to report. Dalilah is happier than I’ve ever seen her. She got a good one with Luke, and young Olivia is so gorgeous.”

Delilah’s child was also named Olivia, as the little girl was named after Luke’s mother, who was killed many years earlier by a mass shooter at McDonald’s.

“So, back to Scotty and what I did, leaving like that. How can I make that right?”

“Time. That’s all that really makes something like that right. Scotty’s going to be going through a lot. As a woman, she’s going to be more sensitive to the possible teasing that Addison’s going to go through. Not to sound sexist or anything. So, I guess what I’m saying is, things might be rough at first. They might be. But Scotty will come around. you just have to give her time and space.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows and took another sip of his own scotch. “You know all the crap that Iris and I went through. The only thing that really healed any of it was time.”

I shook my head. “Patience has never been my strong suit, but I know what you’re saying. Scotty might actually hate me at first. She might. I’m going to do all I can, though, to show that I’m on her side.”

Our name was finally called and all of us sat down to eat. Scotty was frosty, to say the very least. She apparently had had some time to think about everything, and she decided that she was pissed at me again. That much was clear. Iris kept shooting me dirty looks, so I could imagine what Scotty told her.

Scotty announced that she was going to the restroom and told Iris to order for her. When she got up, I immediately decided to grill Iris.

“What did she tell you down there at the other end of the bar?”

“Just that you left her when she needed you the most. How could you do that, Nick? I mean, seriously?”

Ryan put his arm around Iris and put his hand on her chin. “Beautiful, don’t go there. There’s two sides to every story, and unless you’re in Nick’s shoes, you wouldn’t understand.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you do understand?”

“Yes. I was there when Nick lost his sister. Literally. I saw how much his family went through. How much they almost fell apart. Nick was going through a flashback when he was in the hospital and he needed some time to think. Maybe it wasn’t the best judgment in the world, but he’s human. So I suggest you lay off of things that you don’t know anything about.”

She sighed. “I guess.” Then she looked at me. “I don’t want to be in the middle of all this, so I’m sorry for taking sides. Anyhow, let’s just have a good meal and not think about all of this for once. When are you and Scotty going back to the hospital?”

“Tomorrow, of course. Scotty’s taking off work for a little while so that she can be with Addison more. But I’m going to be cutting my own work hours short so that I can help with the rehab too. It’s going to take a village to get Addison back to where she needs to be in order to live a normal life.”

“Good for you, cutting work short. I know how tough that is for you. Don’t you have a lot of important projects coming up?”

“Yes, but I cancelled my trip to Rome. I was supposed to leave next month, and be there for a month or more. I’m sending one of the other partners in my place.”

Iris nodded her head. “And that’s what you should do. That’s smart, Nick.”

“I guess.” I looked around, trying to find Scotty. “She’s taking a long time. Maybe you should go and track her down.”

“Good idea.” At that, Iris got up and went to the restroom.

In five minutes, Scotty and Iris were back, and the waiter was around, wanting to take our orders. We all ordered and I put my arm around Scotty. She stiffened and didn’t look my way, so I got the hint and took my arm off of her.

It was going to be a long recovery for Addison.

It might be an even longer recovery for Scotty and me.

I
n the car after dinner
, I tried to talk to Scotty. “Scotty, I know that you’re pissed at me. I know that you are. But we have to come together in this. Addison needs us as a united front. She doesn’t need us to be fractured.”

Scotty said nothing, but just twirled her blonde hair around her finger while she looked out the window of the car. She eventually turned to face me, and she had tears in her eyes.

I sighed. “You aren’t going to talk to me, are you? Don’t do this to me, Scotty. Don’t be shitty like this. We’ve gone through too much in our lives together for you to shut me out. I made a mistake. A big mistake. But don’t ever think that what happened to Addison is your fault. It’s not. It’s nobody’s fault. It is what it is. If you want to blame somebody, blame fate. Blame genetics. I don’t know, but don’t blame yourself.”

She sighed and still continued to look out the window. I knew what she was doing. Scotty was the master at being passive-aggressive. I had been given the silent treatment more than once during our long marriage, and I generally knew that it was going to blow over. As this was.

Wasn’t it?

I decided that I needed to continue to talk to her, even if she wasn’t talking to me. “Listen, Scotty, I know that you sometimes think that I’m not on your side. Why you still think that, I don’t know. But I’m on your side, and I always will be. I love you, and I love our family. I love the life that we made together. You might be angry with me, and you might shut me out, but you can never get rid of me. You’re a part of me, and I’m a part of you, and that’s just how it is and how it always will be. So, yeah, go ahead and give me the old silent treatment. I can take it. I’ll still be here whenever you decide that you want to come back to me.”

For one second, it seemed like she was almost ready to tear down her walls and give me what I needed, which was her attention. I thought that she was actually going to offer me her hand, but she didn’t.

I sighed. Ryan was right. I was going to have to give her time. As much as I hated to just hang back and have patience, I knew that patience was the only thing that was needed here.

So patience was exactly what I was going to have.

I
couldn’t get
past my guilty feelings about Addison. Did I do the right thing? The doctor said that it was necessary, but was it? Nick wasn’t around to help me with it, and I resented him for this. That was a decision that should have been made by both of us. I understood, in a way, his need to get away from the hospital. He had explained to me that he was freaking out because he was experiencing flashbacks about his sister and he just couldn’t hang around the hospital because he was feeling like he was suffocating.

I understood, yet I still felt that was a selfish decision.

So things were cool between us at home. I had a tendency to shut him out, anyhow, and run away whenever I felt that I couldn’t handle things. And I found myself, more and more, doing that with him. I didn’t want to. I needed him and loved him, more than I ever thought that I could. But that one decision that he made – to go to the beach instead of waiting with me – was something that I couldn’t quite forgive. Addison had no idea that went down. I never told her. I probably never would. I didn’t want her to hate her dad.

Or maybe I didn’t want her to hate me. After all, the call to take her leg was mine and mine alone. She assumed that both Nick and I were in on this decision, but that wasn’t the case.

For Nick’s part, he was doing all he could to try to make up for that fateful decision. He was on his absolute best behavior. Roses, making dinner, slowing down his work schedule to make sure that he made some quality time for me – he did everything.

Yet I couldn’t quite forgive him. My mind went back to the time, so many years ago, when I felt abandoned my him when I was in the hospital for a suicide attempt and he wasn’t there. Of course, I found out why, and it was a good reason. I forgave him then, as I should have.

But this time…I couldn’t quite come to terms with it. With him doing that to me. Making me make that awful decision on my own.

I went to every rehab session with Addison, of course, as did Nick. Both of us made sure that we took time to do that. It pained me greatly to see Addy struggle as much as she was. She would collapse while she tried to walk on the parallel bars and would burst into tears. I felt like bursting into tears along with her, but I always held it in.

At night, she would cry out in pain, and I would hear her. Nick and I had installed an intercom in her room, like a baby monitor, so that we would always knew when she needed us. Every night she would cry out, and every night I would go to her bedroom and hold her while she cried. I knew that she was in pain, physically and mentally, and I felt so helpless. There was just nothing that I could do. As much as I wanted to do something, anything, I couldn’t. How could I take away her pain? I would have taken her pain as my own if only I could. But I couldn’t.

And I was holding in my resentment for my husband. We weren’t fighting, necessarily, but we weren’t close anymore either. Something had shifted, and, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t do anything about it. We weren’t “Nick and Scotty” anymore so much as we were just…strangers.

Addison noticed the tension, of course. She was a very perceptive and smart girl, and she would ask me why Nick and I seemed to be at odds. I always just told her that nothing was wrong. She was imagining that there was tension when there really wasn’t.

I knew better, though.

“Scotty,” he said one day. “I love you. I love you more than anything in this world. I don’t think that I would be the same without you. Yet I’m losing you. I know that you’re grieving over our daughter. I am too. I don’t know how to reach you though. I feel like I’m losing.”

I sighed. I hadn’t noticed that things had gotten that bad. Was I sleepwalking through life?

“Things are just weird right now. Our daughter’s entire life has been turned upside down.” I was putting dishes away while I spoke with him. That was another thing that I noticed – I was always doing something instead of concentrating strictly on him and what he was saying to me. Nick noticed it, of course, but never said a thing about it.

“Scotty, look at me.”

I reluctantly turned my head.

“It’s been weeks since Addison’s surgery. We haven’t made love. You’re barely there. You said that you would be strong for Addison, and you have been. You’ve been remarkable. Whatever she’s needed, you’ve given her. But…”

“I have to be strong for you too.” I knew he was right. Addison had my time, attention and energy. I told myself that was the only reason why I was shutting out Nick – I could only focus on Addy right now.

Yet I knew that wasn’t the only reason. That was only the excuse I made for shutting Nick out.

I had been talking to Adele again. Nick encouraged me to go and see her, and I had been. Yet, even she didn’t have much effect on me or my emotions. She couldn’t seem to reach me, either. I was sleepwalking through life, except when I was with my daughter. I went to work, but couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t there for Nick when he needed me.

I just wasn’t there. Period.

Adele was trying, though, to get me to open up. Our sessions were productive, for the most part. I told her how I felt about Addison. How I felt like I was helpless, yet I also felt incredibly guilty for telling that doctor to take her leg.

“Okay,” Adele said. “Now, Scotty, you came a long way with our therapy before. We got you through your feelings of helplessness and abandonment from your mother and your situation with Mr. Lucas. You felt helpless both times - you felt helpless to do anything to get your mother to stop drinking, and you felt helpless to do anything to stop Mr. Lucas from raping you. Now it seems like this same sense of helplessness is bubbling up again with this situation with your daughter.”

“Yes, I guess that’s it. But I don’t know how to get past how I’m feeling about being the only one to make that call for her. Losing her limb changed her life. She’s never going to be the same. I don’t know how to get past that. And I wish that Nick was in on that decision, too. I can’t stop punishing him for not being there.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Not really. I don’t know what to say. He knows that he screwed up, and he knows that I’m angry with him about it. What good would talking about this situation do?”

“Communication is always the most valuable thing that you have with your husband. I know that you think that he knows how you feel, but does he really know? Have you really expressed yourself?”

I knew that I really hadn’t, but I didn’t necessarily know how I could. I was going to put into words how much I felt that he had abandoned me, but that was silly, wasn’t it? Nick had been there for me, every minute of every day, since we have gotten together. Then he had one lapse of judgment, and my feelings for him had shifted.

Was that a permanent shift, or would I get over it? I didn’t know, and that scared the living crap out of me. If I couldn’t get past it, then what? Would we divorce? How would that help Addison, seeing her parents split up because of what happened to her?

That wouldn’t help her, of course. That would just make things worse for her, and that was the very last thing that I wanted.

“I guess I really haven’t. But I need to. I need to at least try to open up to him.”

“Yes, you do.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “Does Addison know the story of what happened with the doctor amputating her leg? Does she know that her father wasn’t around for that decision?”

I sighed. “No. And I’ll never tell her, either. I don’t want her to resent her dad.”

“Are you so sure that she will?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “No. But I would resent Nick if I were her and I knew that. So, I don’t want to tell her.”

“Maybe it’s best that she knows. She might surprise you.”

“She might, but I doubt it.” I was well aware that I was already putting thoughts and deeds into Addison’s mouth and head, thoughts and deeds that she probably wouldn’t be thinking or speaking herself. I didn’t know how to stop that, either.

“So, what do you want to get out of these sessions?” Adele asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how you can help Nick and me. I guess I just need to have you as a sounding board. I’m going through a lot, trying to help my beautiful daughter have a normal life. I guess I need you to help me with that, in general. Help me figure out how to give her a normal life. Maybe then I’ll find a way to forgive Nick and we can be a family again.”

“I can certainly do that,” Adele said. “Now, let’s go through the mental exercises that we used to, when you first started seeing me.”

For the rest of the session, we went through the exercises. She asked me to tell her a negative thought, and then asked me to give her a positive thought to replace that negative thought. We did that for several hours, and, by the end of it, I was feeling a bit better.

I might have been feeling better, but I still wasn’t entirely feeling that everything was going to be okay. I was going to continue to appear to be strong for Addison, of course. That was the least that I could do for her. But I was acting, of course. Internally, I was a total mess.

I might have been a total mess inside, but my goal was for Addison not to see that. If I could do that, and at least make her think that I was okay, then maybe I really would be.

That was the goal, anyhow.