“Richard. Richard!” my mother screams, flailing in her hospital bed, not awake.
“I’m here. I’m here, mom,” I whisper. bolting from my chair in the corner of my mother’s
room to her bedside. My own exhaustion and throbbing from the cut at the corner of my eye pulses. I take her soft 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.”
My chest tightens as I look at my mom laying in that sterile bed and alcohol smelling room, with her shallow breaths, the heart monitor green line jumping from each beat, leads snaking out of her grown, calling out for my father. I should feel grateful–she is alive, her physical injures would heal. Her psychological wounds, though… My hands tighten around my mother’s involuntarily as the fact hammers at me with each beat of the monitor: she is the only parent I have left.
I push a lock of my mother’s wavy blonde hair, that has always reminded me
of Meg Ryan’s soft curls behind one ear. They frame her big blue eyes, pronounced cheeks, defined jaw and pouty lips. I stare at her swollen left eye, and cut lip, bruises forming and growing darker on her pristine white skin. My mother 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,” I whisper in the back of her hand as I kiss it.
I only hope I’m right, as the pain of never hearing my father’s voice again stabs my heart.
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 and stop just inside the room. 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’s rays have barely peaked through the windows half-closed blinds and no one from the hospital has come in to check on us yet.
The shorter woman begins, “Mr. MacFadyen?” she says more of a question than statement. “Mr. Cameron MacFadyen?”
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 and your mother, 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, and pushing my emotions deep inside, “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 emphasizes.
I look down at mom who is beginning to stir, no doubt from the conversation that is anything but quiet. My body tenses, my face turns hot, and I release my mother’s hand as not to crush it, 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 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!”
The words explode out of me, vibrating off the pristine white walls. Mom jerks, her eyelids flutters. The door bangs open and the nurse from last night–Sarah–storms in, her hospital approved shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor, her presence filling the room like a protective child.
“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, 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.
With no apologies, the taller detective announces, “Ma’am. We must question Mrs. Grace MacFadyen and her son, and we don’t need permission to do that.”
“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.
“Grace.” My father’s voice impales the night.
Before I can get to the sound of his voice, scrabbling and muffling noises stop as 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, the smell of gun powder filling the room and my mom’s voice pleading through her sobs in the darkness. I switch on their bedroom light.
“No. Don’t. Please.” She cries.
Not comprehending what I’m looking at, my father’s body lay on the floor just inside the room, not moving, blood splattered all over his body. His mouth trembling as his eyes painfully blink up at me struggling to raise his hand towards me.
““Save your mother,” my father whispers as I watch him take his final breath, his hand falling to the floor then closing his eyes forever.
“Dad. Dad.”
Staring frozen at my dad 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.
“Son, I think your calling is to be a speaker of some kind. You bring those people to life in those books.” His southern drawl warm and gentle.
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, “Stop. 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 presence 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 as my foot collides against something solid–the gun. Cold metal against my palm, my finger finds the trigger by instinct. He turns, his face sweaty, his breaths fast and shallow. The recoil jolts through my arm as thunder and smoke fills the room. The man’s curses dissolve into a wet, choking sound, crimson spreading across his sweat soaked shirt like spilled wine. His body lunges forward and he 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.
"Time freezes. The gun weighs a thousand pounds in my hand, still warm, the acrid scent of gunpowder burning my nostrils. My pulse thunders in my ears as I stare at the motionless figure on the floor, unable to connect the stillness before me with my own actions. My mother's movement breaks the spell—the rustle of fabric as she pushes herself up from the bed, her bare feet padding across the carpet toward me..." 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. We stay there huddled together not speaking the pound, pound, pounding of my heart in my ears echoing in my head. Neither her nor I go to my father. I don’t think nether one of us want to believe he is really gone. I feel her trembling as it finds pace with my own. I’m numb. Tears elude my eyes and the gravity of what has just happened to my family twists and squeezes out any form of happiness we once had.
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 in the chair and me still holding the gun. As if everything goes in slow motion, I look over at my father again and the metallic smell of blood fills my senses. Mom’s sobs quietly now, 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. I never gave him much thought; he never spoke when we passed on the street when I went out for a run. He kept his head down and would intentionally step out of my way. That didn’t seem odd to me, others would do the same, I thought in politeness.
“Son. Son. You alright?” the older police office says to me.
I look up as heat from anger boils my blood and my breathing deepens 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 composure, 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. The pain from the gash on my right eye begins to throb as I now realize blood trickling down my face. I reach up to touch my face and realize I’m still holding the gun.
“Son. Hand me the gun,” the same older officer says.
I do as he asks and extend my shaking 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, clicks the safety on, 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.”
Mother draws a shaky breath that rattles in her chest. Her fingers twist the edge of the blanket. “I was… was sleeping,” her gaze fixed on something we could not see, “when I heard a noise, I thought Richard was coming to bed, but then… a voice I recognized–not my husband’s–whispered my name in the darkness. 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. My traitorous stomach gurgles in revolt. “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?
Why can’t this wait. I think to myself. We need to get out of here.
“I’m… I’m sorry, for your loss. Try to remain calm… s…,” the Sargent apologizes and catches himself.
I nod to the other dead man “That man, came into our house, tried to rape, and possibly kill my mother and succeeded in killing my father which has changed our lives 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.
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.
My mother tightens her arms around my legs and in her soft loving voice that got me through any difficult situation, says, “Cameron. We will take one day at a time.”
I nod my head in agreement, “I’ll quick college and stay with you, mom. You won’t be alone.”
“No, you won’t, my boy. Your father won’t want that.”
Not wanting to cause anymore anxiety for either of us, “We’ll talk about it later.”
We weren’t in any state of mind to deal with anything other than what was in front of us. I lifted my eyes to the Sargent as his expression goes from soft to stunned.
He jerks back and pins his lips.
