“Richard. Richard!” Grace screams.
Grace MacFadyen tosses, flailing in her hospital bed, not awake.
“I’m here. I’m here, mom,” Cameron whispers, bolting from the chair in the corner of his mother’s hospital room to her bedside, taking her hand hoping to give her some comfort and to stop her from dislodging the tubes attached to her arms and oxygen tube in her nose.
She whimpers as tears slide down her cheeks. “Richard.”
Cameron ‘s heart breaks looking at his mom laying in that bed, heart monitor
leads extending out of her grown. He should be grateful that she is alive and not seriously injured, physically. Mentally is a completely different matter. But he wasn’t. Anger welds up inside him again with the fact that she is the only parent he has left.
Cameron pushes a lock of his mother’s wavy blonde hair, that has always reminded him
of Meg Ryan’s soft curls. They frame her big blue eyes, pronounced cheeks, defined jaw and pouty lips. He stares at her swollen left eye, and cut lip, bruises forming and growing darker on her pristine white skin. Grace always took pride in taking care of herself and taking great pains in applying sunscreen to her skin even if her day was spent mostly inside.
“Don’t worry mom, I’ll take care of you. We’ll get through this… I love you,” Cameron whispers in the back of her hand as he kisses it.
A light knock sounds on the door and a medium height woman, long black hair tied in a braid, pretty face wearing a dark pant suit and a police badge clipped to her belt opens the door wider. She is followed by another woman a little taller, lighter wavy hair, also pretty, wearing a tan pant suit, also a badge attached to her belt. I knew the cops were going to question us further, but I didn’t think it would be so soon after last night and this early in the morning. The sun had barely come up and no one from the hospital had come in to check on us yet.
The shorter woman begins, “Mr. MacFadyen?” she says more of a question than statement.
I nod in affirmation.
“I’m Detective Brown and this is my partner, Detective Blake. First, we want to say we are sorry for your loss.”
I nod again not saying anything, nor did I want too. Their rehearsed sympathy statement makes me want to throw up.
They must be used to the non-acknowledgement because the Detective continues, “I know this is a difficult time, but we need to ask you some questions on what exactly happened last night.”
I shot her a murderous glare that had to have stunned her, but if it did, she didn’t show it. Both her and her partner stand motionless, except to cross their arms almost simultaneously in determination to get their answers and their eyes trained on me and faces expressionless.
I say, just as determined as they are, “Detective. I appreciate that you have a job to do and that there are a lot of holes in what happened to my family, but can I ask that you at least come back at a more appropriate time…”
I look at my watch and note the time is seven-thirty in the morning.
“And let my mother at least wake up and have her breakfast so we can come to grips that her husband and my father is dead, and she was assaulted.”
I didn’t see any point in not being perfectly blunt. They didn’t seem to care about the trauma my mom and I are coming to terms with.
The two women look at each other, take deep breaths, again like they are Siamese twins in total sync with one another and click their tongues.
“Our apologies for the early hour, but we are committed to getting all the information concerning this case so you and your mother can put this behind you and heal,” Detective Brown emphasized.
I look down at mom who is beginning to stir, no doubt from the conversation that is anything but quiet. My body tenses, my anger rises all because these two detectives can’t give her and me time to process that a neighbor had broken into our home, shot my father, killing him, and attacked my mother attempting to rape and kidnap her.
My face turns hot from my blood boiling inside me, and my patience has come to an end.
It takes everything I have not to scream, when I say, “I want you to get out.”
“Mr. MacFadyen…” Detective Brown tries to insist.
“Get out!”
This time I can’t control my anger and mom jerks from my shout as the door to her hospital room swings open and the nurse from last night comes charging in.
“Who let you in here?” she says, looking down at the two women from what I would guess is her almost six-foot height frame.
I remember her, Sarah, she had met us when the paramedics brought us into the hospital. She had to be around my age, probably younger. It was her round chocolate brown eyes that I recall, so warm and caring. Now I get a better look at her tall thin frame and dark brunette hair pulled back in a neat bun as she places herself between us and the Detective’s. She is the perfect example of not messing with the nurses in a hospital.
“Ma’am. We must question Mrs. MacFadyen and her son, and we don’t need permission to do that,” the taller Detective says.
“I guess the sign on the door that says, no visitors don’t pertain to you,” the nurse quips.
I really like her. She was so calm and comforting last night. But today she is a Pit Bull.
*****
Mom’s scream for my dad startles me awake. I’ve never heard her voice sound like that, a sharp, piercing cry. I fumble to get out of bed and reach the door to my room when I hear her wail my father’s name again. Then before I can get to them, a shot rings through the house and I hear my father groan and a thud.
“Dad,” I yell, stumbling and fumbling trying to get to my parents’ bedroom. The darkness seems to surround me as if a blanket has been thrown over me, swaddling me to where moving is a struggle like wading through quicksand. I manage to reach their room and find the door open, and my mom’s voice pleading through her sobs as I turn on their bedroom light.
“No. Don’t. Please.” She cries.
Not comprehending what I’m looking at, my father’s body lays on the floor just inside the room, not moving, blood splattered all over his body. His mouth trembling as his eyes painfully blinks up at me and he struggles to raise his hand towards me.
““Save your mother,” my father whispers as I watch him take his final breath, closing his eyes forever.
Staring frozen at my dad lying on the floor memories play through my mind like the trailer of a movie. The kisses he placed on my cheeks every night till I was thirteen, when I told him I wasn’t a kid any longer. His strong hands as he held the back of my first bike while I learned to ride. Baseball games and football games, he proudly praised at every play I was in.
Our nights and weekends that we would sit and talk, or I would read to him playing all the characters in different voices in the book he picked that day, after he came back from his last tour as a Navy Seal and was diagnosed with PTSD. The first day he cut the ribbon on his new office building for the IT company he built from scratch to become a multimillion-dollar company in less than five years. Together our family regained our connections and dad returned to his loving, intelligent self that we had missed.
As if someone has slapped the moments with my dad out of my mind, my head snaps to the man straddling my mom his pants down around his butt as he forces himself between her legs. She kicks and hits him with close fists fighting him.
She pleads again for him to stop, but he strikes her hard twice across her face. Mom catches sight of me and tries to scream, but the man slaps her again and she groans my name.
“Cameron.”
“Stop!” I yell.
The man doesn’t seem to notice or care that it is no longer dark or my shout and forces his hand over mom’s mouth. Rage fills my soul as it hits me that this man killed my father and is attacking my mother.
“Get the fuck off her,” I scream.
I lunge for him and notice the gun laying on the floor and instead of going for him, I pick up the gun and fire. The man’s curse words gurgle with blood flowing from his mouth and body. He turns and catches me with a closed fist punch in the right eye. He wobbles to swing at me again but can’t make his legs move before he falls to the ground, and spits blood one last time.
Everything happened so fast that I don’t comprehend what I have done.
I stand there holding the gun, stunned, trembling, staring at the dead man before my mother gathers herself from the bed, straightens her night gown that has the intruders blood splattered all over it and picks up her cell phone from the nightstand. Her movements register in my brain that she is alive, and I grab the phone from her hand and dial nine-one-one.
Taking the phone from my hand and tossing it on the bed, my mother guides me to the chair that sits in the corner of their bedroom and makes me sit. Tears streaming down her face, she wipes the wetness from my eyes and then sits down beside me on the floor, her arms wrapping around my legs as she places her head on my lap. Neither her nor I go to my father. I don’t think nether one of us want to believe he is really gone so we stay huddled together waiting for the police.
Time and space seem to disappear for me until I hear an unfamiliar voice call out.
“Anybody here? Dallas Police Department. We’re coming in.” A deep male voice yells.
Multiple footsteps pound through the house, as different voices signal, clear… clear… clear… until officers’ storm my parents’ bedroom and find mom and I in the same position and me still holding the gun. As if everything goes in slow motion, I look over at my father again with blood everywhere. Mom’s sobs quietly, calling my father’s name repeatedly, “Richard. Richard. Richard.” Then I notice the body of our neighbor. I didn’t know his name, but I recognize him because I would see him walking in the neighborhood.
“Son. Son. You alright?” the older police office says to me.
I look up through tear filled eyes at the sight of the now dead man laying by the bed and the memory of the sound as he hit my mother while he straddled her ripping her nightgown. Shock. I thinking I’m going into shock.
“Ma’am. How about you? Are you hurt?” A female officer asks as she wraps mom in a blanket that she grabs off the floor.
“I’m… I’m… okay. But my son.”
Mom’s words slur, as her lower lip swells and bleeds from the split in it. Somehow, I regain comprehension and I reach over and brush her sweat soaked hair from her face and cringe at the sight of the bloody gash over her left eye and red bruise swelling on her cheek as well. The pain from the gash on my right eye begins to throb as I now realize blood trickling down my face.
“Son. Hand me the gun,” the same older officer says.
I do as he asks and extend my hand with the gun holding only the butt so he can take it. He uses a gloved hand and writing pen that he slides through the trigger to retrieve the weapon and places it in a plastic bag.
The officer continues as a much younger cop ready’s a pen and pad to take our statements.
“My name is Sargent Mallory. Could you tell me your names?”
Mom’s body trembles taking all her strength to tell the officer both our names.
“Okay?” He continues. “Thank you. Now, we need both of you to tell us what happened
here. Ma’am, I know this is hard, but start from the beginning if you would please.”
Taking a shaky breath, mom says, “I was… was sleeping when I heard a noise. I thought it was my husband coming to bed when a familiar voice, but not Richard’s, says my name. It startled me and I reached for the lamp on my nightstand, but the man grabbed my wrist and told me to shut up.”
A soft sob escapes mom’s mouth before she pauses and swallows.
“Mom.” I plead. “We can’t do this right now,” I say looking up at the officer. “My mother needs to go to the hospital. Where are the damn paramedics anyway?”
“They’ve arrived, son, and will be in here in a minute. But we do need to get your statements.”
“Will you stop calling me, son. I’m not your son. I was his son,” I blurt out, pointing at my father still laying on the floor. “Can’t you see what happened here?
“I’m… I’m sorry, for your loss. Try to remain calm… s…,” the Sargent Mallory apologizes and catches himself.
“That man.” I nod to the other dead man, “came into our house, tried to rape, and possibly kill my mother and succeeded in killing my father which has changed our life forever. What do you want from us?
Sargent Mallory’s face softens, and he kneels in front of us so that we are eye to eye. I think he wants to make us feel more like the police are here to help then standing over us spouting out questions.
“I want to know who shot the intruder and if you or your mother would know of any reason to suspect he targeted your family.” His voice easy.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” I scream at him. And I didn’t know.
My mind has decided to shut down and block out everything from the moment I walked into my parents’ bedroom, seeing my father on the floor and witnessed the man ripping my mother’s clothes and hitting her in the face until I was sitting in the chair holding a gun in my hand.
The Sargent’s expression goes from soft to stunned. He jerks back and pins his lips.
“Hold up. You’re telling me you don’t remember how the gun got into your hand or how the intruder was shot,” he asks.
A commotion occurs as officers make room for two paramedics to enter. They come in rolling a stretcher with all kinds of machines with monitors on it and lean down to check my father’s pulse. They shake their heads saying that he is gone. Mom and I squeeze each other tighter muffling our cries, even though we knew what they would say. They look around the room and do the same to the other man, shaking their heads again.
“Mrs. MacFadyen. Can you tell me what happened?” Sargent Mallory asks.
The paramedics step towards us almost pushing the Sargent out of the way.
“Sorry,” one of the paramedics says. We need to check their vitals.
“No problem. Sure,” the Sargent stands walking to stand by the other officer that has been writing on the pad since they came in.
After taking our blood pressures, temperatures and placing heart monitors on both of us, they tell the Sargent that we need to go to the hospital to be examined and it looks like we both will need stitches.
“I just need Mrs. MacFadyen to answer my question and then you are free to take them to the hospital,” Sargent Mallory insists.
I grab mom under her arms, and we help each other to our feet as she looks the Sargent in the eyes and says,
“That man broke into my home killed my husband and tried to rape me. I’ll be happy to talk to any detective assigned this case with my lawyer after my son and I have had time to process the death of his father and my husband.”
Mom’s determination and don’t fuck with me attitude stuns me and causes the Sargent to nod his head, purse his lips and step away from us as the paramedics assist mom on the stretcher. I follow them to the ambulance and after they secure the stretcher in the back and I’m sitting next to it, I take mom’s hand.
She looks up at me and says, “I’m so sorry Cameron. I didn’t have any idea that Jim could do something like this.”
“Jim?” I question.
“Jim Spence. He was our neighbor up the street. This is my fault.”
Tears form in her eyes again spilling onto her cheeks.
“Mom. Please don’t. Let’s get you to the hospital and get you taken care of,” I rub her hand.
She swings her head to the paramedic that is securing an intravenous line into her arm and monitoring her vitals asks, “What will happen to my husband’s body.”
“Mom. Don’t,” I huff.
“I want to know what is going to happen,” she scowls.
The paramedic, who hadn’t said much to us besides, “does that hurt, I’m sorry for hurting you as he cleansed our wounds and asked if we were allergic to any medications sympathy oozing from his words, now says, “The medical examiner will take him to the
