Benjamin
My house is dark when I walk in. I should do a better job of leaving lights on at night for safety reasons, but it’s just not high on my priority list of worries.
I flip on the foyer light, which provides illumination over the spacious living room that leads into the kitchen, then place my cane into an umbrella rack by the door. At one point in my life, it used to just hold umbrellas.
I don’t usually bother with my cane in the house. It’s not for balance but rather to help take some weight off my recovering leg. I’m able to traverse my house by holding onto walls or counters to help accommodate if necessary.
Moving through the living room, I ignore how ghostly it looks with the furniture shrouded and the built-in shelves empty of knickknacks, mementos, and pictures. When I came home from my lengthy hospital stay following the accident, I had every intention of selling this house. It wasn’t my home anymore.
Not without April and Cassidy.
I hired someone to come in and pack away everything. I couldn’t bear to look at their smiling faces in the photos April had liberally placed all around our house. Couldn’t bring myself to sit on the couch where she would curl up with Cassidy to read her books before bedtime while I would sit in my recliner, perusing some medical journal. I couldn’t stand any of it, so I covered it all up and tried to ignore it every time I walked in the door.
My leg is hurting tonight but with no one to see me, I don’t try to hide my limp. I hobble into the kitchen, not hungry, but knowing I should eat just for the sake of nutrition. Food tastes bland and lackluster, and I never crave it for enjoyment.
Opening the fridge, I peruse the contents. Mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup in the door along with some pickles. Leftover containers of Chinese food that are probably over a week old. A few protein drinks and some moldy bacon.
Closing the refrigerator, I pull open the freezer drawer underneath. A handful of frozen dinners that don’t entice.
Back into the fridge I go, snagging two protein shakes. I uncap them both and as I stand with one hand resting on the granite countertop of the kitchen island, I drink them one right after another. Guzzling without tasting because I couldn’t even if I tried. I toss the empty containers in the trash, then move through the shadowed house.
I don’t bother looking into Cassidy’s room. The door has remained closed since I returned home from the hospital, and I don’t have the guts to even peek inside. I ignore the double doors at the end of the hall that provide entrance into the master suite.
If I were to go in there, like everywhere else, drop cloths would cover the furniture. I even had them remove the mattress because it smelled like April, and I didn’t want the reminder should I have to go in there for some reason.
Instead, I head into the guest room I’d taken over. The furniture and decor in here had not meant anything to me. There wasn’t even one family photo in here to be dealt with. Just a comfy bed with a neutral-colored comforter. It’s where my parents stayed when they came to visit from Michigan or where April’s twin sister, Angela, slept when she passed through Vegas on occasion. I’d added a small desk near the window that overlooks the front yard, then equipped it with a laptop I can do work on late at night. I don’t sleep as much as I used to so my paperwork has never looked better.
Flipping on the bedside lamp, I let myself sink into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. The immediate relief to my leg causes an involuntary sigh to escape, and I rub my hand across my beard.
This is my home life existence. A ten-by-twelve guest bedroom and an empty fridge.
And yet, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. Living has become quite simple for me. I keep my attachments to people and luxuries to a minimum, concentrate on my job, and put all my energies into saving lives. I don’t worry about anything else. By not giving anything value, nothing can hurt me if taken away.
Self-preservation at its finest.
And yet, I’m in a conundrum because I’ve just recently found something that has proven valuable to me.
At least on one occasion.
The woman from The Wicked Horse Vegas last weekend. If I were being honest in the brutal, flagellating way I’ve developed over the last year, I’d call her a plague because she’s occupied way too many of my thoughts since our encounter. It’s disconcerting because the only thing I’ve allowed to penetrate any of my brain matter, is well… brains.
Those I operate on, evaluate, and fix. I only have room for work, or so I thought.
But this past week, I repeatedly replayed every single moment of that evening over in my mind. I wasn’t with her more than thirty minutes tops, yet I’ve spent hours analyzing every minute of it. Why this woman fascinates me is vexing, because on the surface, she’s no different than any other beautiful, hot, fuckable woman at the club.
I’m not sure how many times I went into the fantasy app since our hookup, intent on setting another meeting.
Another chance for me to feel something.
And while she might be labeled a frustrating annoyance to me in so many ways, I must admit she has proven to have value to me.
Because my body reacted differently to her than any other of my conquests in The Wicked Horse. For the few months I’ve been a member, I’ve fucked my fair share of the women there and I’ve gotten off each time. But I’m not sure it’s been worth the exorbitant fee I pay to be a member.
At least not until last Friday night with the mysterious @elencosti89 and what was the most mind-blowing sexual experience of my life. It all boiled down to the fucking orgasm that made me almost believe in God again.
Yes, she has value. She made me feel again, and isn’t that the reason I went to The Wicked Horse in the first place? Because I’d gotten so far removed from life itself that I wasn’t feeling much of anything. Even I know it’s not a good thing, and it is only a thin line separating what I had and the peace that might come with death if I thought about things too hard.
So why in the hell had I passed up the opportunity to be with her again? My entire body pulsed with energy when I saw her standing in that ballroom. A blindfold hid most of her face, but I’d seen her picture before. She was easy to recognize because she’s such a beautiful woman.
It was a simple proposition. I could have brought her to the club after they’d served the cake at the party tonight, but I shut that down. Having another divine sexual experience was within my grasp, but I turned my back on it.
Same old Benjamin. Shielding himself. Taking the easy way out. Being a coward.
I could have fucking had her tonight, and I passed.
Because despite how desperately I’ve been seeking to feel something the last few months, it scared the shit out of me once it happened.
It means I’m not totally dead inside.
And that means I can hurt again.
“Goddamn it,” I mutter as I scrub my hands through my hair. No good choices.
April would be shaking me right about now if she were corporeal. I imagine her as a spirit somewhere but not in Heaven. I can’t believe in such a place because I can’t believe in a God who would do such an awful thing to our family.
I can almost understand April. She had not lived a complete life, but a full one. But what the fuck had Cassidy ever done to ever deserve to die that way? Why would God do that to a five-year-old?
Again, I can almost envision April shaking her head sadly at me for thinking these thoughts. She’d wonder where her eternal optimist had gone.
It’s easy for me to ignore these thoughts as April’s face dulls and fades more each day. Without the pictures out to remind me of how beautiful and sunny she was, I sometimes struggle to remember what she looked like. The memory of Cassidy’s face faded a bit faster, since I’d had less time with that precious angel.
And then something uniquely horrific hits me straight in the middle of my chest. A pain so intense that nausea sweeps through me. Groaning as I rub my breastbone, I try to put meaning onto what I’m feeling.
Guilt.
Pure, exquisitely sharp and brutally unforgiving.
Tears prick at my eyes for the first time in months. Not since my mom told me April and Cassidy had died in the accident.
They had put me in a medically induced coma so I could cope with my multiple injuries. They’d brought me out of it eight days later and my mom’s face was the first thing I saw as my eyes fluttered open. My mouth was dry, and I tried to talk but couldn’t.
“You have a trach,” were the first words out of her mouth as she leaned over the bed to hover in my field of vision. I could tell by the expression on her face she was holding onto some horrible, awful secret. “Don’t try to talk.”
My gaze moved left and right and there were two nurses checking me out. I hurt all over, but that’s not what caused me to want to slip back into unconsciousness.
It was the sickening expression on my mom’s face.
She grabbed my hand, gently of course, and leaned in even closer. “You’re going to be all right. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for eight days to help you cope with your injuries.”
It was impossible to talk, but I spoke with my eyes. I stared at my mom, imploring silently for her to tell me everything. Because I remembered April in the front passenger seat and Cassidy in her child safety seat in the rear when a pair of headlights crossed over into our lane of travel and came barreling at us.
My mom’s eyes filled with tears, and she gave a sad shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Benjamin. I’m so sorry. But April and Cassidy didn’t make it.”
I’m not sure if I’d been crying or not. I’d felt such painful emotion deep in my lower throat, but it couldn’t rise any higher than the trach. My eyes blurred, and warmth hit my cheeks. Pain spread through my chest, so severe I thought perhaps the stress of this news was killing me. It moved down into my stomach, and it seemed to curdle there.
My mouth opened and I gasped like a dying fish, but no sound came out.
I’d cried in the only way my broken body would let me, and it hurt so fucking much to do it so quietly. All the pain and grief stayed pushed down deep. By the time my trach was removed and I was released from the hospital almost three weeks later, I’d learned to keep it pushed down.
I haven’t shed a tear since.
The guilt within me continues to pulse, and I breathe through the pain.
This is a good thing, I remind myself.
It means I’m feeling something.
And the only thing I can give credence to for this breakthrough is @elencosti89.
I don’t even know her name, but I know she’s broken something open.
I lean on my hip, pulling my cell out of my pocket. Within moments, I have the fantasy app open and I’m sending her a message before I can talk myself out of it.
I’m disappointed not to spend time with you tonight. Let’s meet again, at your convenience. I’ll gladly pay your entrance fee into the club for the pleasure of your company.
Setting the phone on the bedside table, I wonder if she’s still at her friend’s birthday party or if she’s made her way home yet. I wonder where she lives and what she does for a living. I never even thought to ask, even though the polite thing would have been to engage in conversation after she’d asked what I did.
Pushing up from the bed, I suppress the groan that wants to bubble out from the pain in my leg. It would be so easy to succumb to narcotic pain meds to help ease the burden. Instead, I’m using old-fashioned perseverance in my therapy and workout regimens, the dull support of a cane, and a gratefulness the ache in my leg takes my mind off other things.
I limp over to the guest bathroom, then strip out of my clothes. It takes me no more than five minutes to take a hot shower and brush my teeth.
When I make my way back into the guest room where I sleep, the phone draws my gaze. I can see there’s a notification on the icon of the fantasy app.
I plop down on the edge of the bed, the damp towel I’d wrapped around my waist gaping and exposing the fourteen-inch scar running along my outer left thigh. The scar itself looks like someone gouged out a chunk of muscle in the shape of a thin triangle about three inches in width at the widest point. My hand rubs at the scar, feeling the hardware underneath the reddened, puckered skin where I have plates and screws holding my femur together.
My other hand shakes slightly as I pick up my phone, then use my thumb to tap on the app. I maneuver to the messaging system, and my heart lurches when I see the response is from @elencosti89.
Tomorrow night? 11pm?
The weird sensation of my lips curving upward startles me a moment, but then I’m typing back.
Perfect. Meet you in the lobby.