Seeking Tate

FFFI’d learned plenty of lessons in the course of my life. The traveling I’d done, the people I met who mattered and those that didn’t, the situations and the exploring I’d done in the world with my own eyes and mind and body brought new knowledge – an assortment of lessons that I could use in daily life.

Most came as the result of painful experiences, but some – just a few and perhaps my fondest – came from odd situations and in moments in which I could reflect on some of the decisions I’d made, and the people I’d chosen to love.

The most prominent lesson learned was that waiting was the cruelest form of punishment.

And it truly was.

Staring down at the busy Phoenix streets, my hands pressed against the window, I could feel the hint of my past life starting to resurface after years of being in remission. The restlessness, the yearning to do something but not having a clue as to what action to take, that stirring sensation of being lost but knowing exactly where you are came rushing back and I could not find myself welcoming any of it.

It was funny really, that I’d ended up in the very place I’d first started my great journey – in all senses of the word.

I’d been born in St. Joseph’s hospital, wandered the hallways as a child and wound up in an actual bed a few times on the account of my own stupidity in my teenaged years. I’d bounced my baseball off of the ceiling between my parent’s shifts, napped in their offices when I couldn’t find the motivation to explore the winding hallways any longer. St. Joseph’s had been a place of healing in my past, but it was a place of suffering in my present.

“John?”

The word sounded fragile, as if Ross – the very brother who’d once been a professional at all things verbally assaulting – was treading on some thin ice around me.

I didn’t pull my eyes away from the line of traffic piling up. I stared out, feeling the cool glass against my palms and watching everything from the car models passing by to the brake lights glaring to ambulances racing by to the tiny clouds of condensation my breath made against the window. Anything to escape the reality for a moment – just one second.

“John, I’ve brought you some coffee,” Ross offered, stepping beside me to stare out at the streets of Phoenix with me. Two cups of coffee, black, were in his hands.

Pushing myself off the wall – as if it took all the effort in my muscles, I tugged at the wrinkled shirt covering my torso before accepting the Styrofoam cup he held out.

He looked aged. He looked tired. Everything about him had changed within a matter of days, and the sight alone made me want to avoid mirrors at all costs.

Ross, despite being the middle child of the family, always had been the responsible, well-put-together one. I was the fuck up; I was the rule breaker and the risk taker. I was the emotionally unstable one – or had been for a long time. When I’d felt something, I let it be known: never calm under pressure, never stable in the time of a crisis. I either shut down or exploded, so I could only imagine how I actually looked.

But Ross stared at me, dead in the eye, and didn’t flinch away.

We settled into a moment of silence as I sipped at the coffee he’d given me, not tasting it, but drinking regardless.

“You should go home, John. Try to sleep, shower... anything…”

Running my fingers through my hair, feeling the build-up of oil collecting, I knew he was right, but I couldn’t. There was no way I was leaving the hospital unless somebody was going to drag me out kicking and screaming.

I let a sigh escape my chapped lips, the simple motion sending them burning. “I’m fine.”

As I stared back out at the neighboring buildings, I saw Ross shake his head at my stubbornness in my peripheral vision. “No. No, you’re not, and it’s okay to not be okay right now,” he said, always the brutally honest brother. “You’re going to kill yourself if you keep this up, you know that right?”

If no progress was made, I could honestly say that death wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. In fact, it would probably be more of a sort of salvation than it would be anything else.

But I couldn’t think like that – not yet, not with all circumstances involved.

Pinching my eyes shut, I felt the first wave of exhaustion starting to catch up with me. The days of waiting, the sleepless hours, the dragging minutes all were starting to wear. And then the anger kicked in – the anger from having to be in this situation, the anger of not knowing anything, the anger, regretfully enough, reserved for Tate.

“I’m not leaving,” I stated firmly, pushing everything aside as my temper alit.

“I didn’t think you would,” Ross admitted, taking a gulp of his coffee. “Mom wanted me to try convincing you though… I brought you some things: a couple changes of clothes and some personal items so you can shower here.” Snapping my gaze to him, I almost couldn’t believe the words he was saying. “They’re all in the room.”

For the first time in a long time, I saw Ross in an entirely different light. No longer was he just my pesky younger brother, or the boy that had once managed to super-glue his own hands together. He was a savior, just for the wrong person.

“Thanks.”

The gratefulness didn’t sound all that convincing, but I meant it. I meant it more than he would probably ever understand.

Forcing myself to take one last sip, I felt that tug in my stomach returning – that little nudge that said I’d been away for too long.

“I should…” I choked on the words and only pointed in the general direction I’d come from minutes before to convey what exactly I was trying to say.

Ross only nodded in understanding, stepping aside and patting my back in a supportive manner before I left him standing alone, to have to deal with my mother when she had her next opportunity to stop by.

Wandering back to room 341, I ditched what was left of my coffee in a trashcan and prepared myself to sit under bad florescent lighting to continue my watch.

The rhythmic sound of the heart monitor lured me inside, and the woman lying motionless in the hospital bed made my own heart clench within my chest.

Tate – my life, my reason for being, my wife – didn’t even react at my presence, the result of a coma that no one could be certain she would wake from.

Slinking down in the plastic chair I’d claimed as my own, I started my bedside vigil all over again, counting the seconds into minutes and the minutes into hours.

And time, it seemed to tick infinitely on.