“Like how?” Cline asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows his knees.
“She looks so much like her mother. The best parts of her. The only thing I have left to remember her by. I’ll be damned if I let her take that away by her own hand over something we can fix, starting today.” He slips the pen into the clipboard and stands. “It was nice to meet you, Elliot. Good to see you, Cline. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go see my daughter.”
As he’s allowed entry to visit her, I know then and there that it will be a long time before I see Audrey again.
I want to write a letter to my father, telling him that I believe in God. I believe in heaven. And now I believe that hell exists in more than one place. It’s not just the one we read about in the Bible, or the one under base camp in a foreign country. Hell can exist in your own mind.
I’ve seen it firsthand.
What kind of man raises another man’s child as his own?
I have asked myself this question more times than I can allow myself to count anymore. Each time, the reason behind it was self-serving or because of some twisted guilt he must have felt. But while Patrick Byrd sits at my bedside, reading The Giving Tree, his voice, a touch louder than the steady beeping of my heartrate monitor, I now know all of those thoughts to be lies.
A baby made from violence, born in despair but raised with hope, I am not the child I always imagined I had been. My biological father may have given me DNA, but my dad kept me alive all those years. Pushing him out and turning my back on him to distance myself from whatever I thought was going on only served to make me weaker, embittered, as the years wore on. I thought he didn’t love me, but I was wrong. He loves me more than I could fathom loving myself right now.
Had I believed my own worth and spoken up earlier, Miranda wouldn’t have been allowed to treat me the way she had. But my own self-hatred and the belief that I deserved it or that she was right, kept me from saying anything. These things inside my head are a constant battle, and the majority of the time I lose; though it’s usually in the silence of my own mind, behind closed doors.
I know I keep people at a distance because I don’t want them getting too close. Most of my relationships since high school have been superficial, just for a fun night or two, and then the insecurities creep in and I remember how hard it is to be friends with someone like me, and it would be better in the end to let them go before they have to take on my burden. It’s easier to keep it that way so I don’t get hurt. So I don’t feel the pain of losing someone. There is no greater anxiety than wondering exactly why you’re not good enough to be in someone’s life. What you’ve done or said wrong. Exactly what happened—trying desperately to pinpoint the minute that you crossed the line and made someone turn against you. And there is no greater sadness than having your depression listen to your anxiety’s thoughts about why you’re not good enough and then agreeing with all of it, because deep down, you truly believe you’re not worth it in the end.
My dad believes I’m worth it. He sits in this chair while they check my fluids and nurses come in and out to change their names on the whiteboard, hanging by the generic flower painting that’s been glued to the wall.
He reads to me or just watches TV. But mostly, he talks. We finally discuss everything that I’ve ever wanted to know, and hearing him say that I’m not a mistake and that I was wanted, regardless of the circumstances, causes all of those memories in my mind to shift and take on a different hue.
He says he’s sorry, and I say it, too, wondering which of us means it the most. There are no tears in his eyes when he tells me that Miranda won’t be at the house when he takes me back home once they release me. He’s already spoken with Dr. Stark, and we’ll begin therapy together once I’m settled back in. My father and I have a lot of work to do.
“What about school?” I ask, my mind wandering to the two boys I’ve ridden across so many states with in such a short amount of time.
My dad’s glasses slip down his nose while he closes the book and places it on the stand by the bed. “I’ll go get your things from the apartment. We’ll bring you home for the rest of the summer, and once you’re feeling better, we’ll get you back in classes. But let’s take it step by step. We have a little time.”
A young nurse appears in the doorway, opening the curtains and checking the clipboard before writing her name and the time on the whiteboard. ANGELA is scattered across the board before she begins speaking to the both of us about the next steps. The seventy-two hour hold and psychiatric evaluation. I know this part; though this time I’m frightened, because I’ve now come to realize how much my dad means to me and how alone I will be for the next three days while he waits for me in some hotel while he tries to get some work done. While he tries to make some plans for me after I’m released.