What Lies Beneath the Skin

Chapter Six:

The Game of Life

Hayden

Bright flashes of color lit up the living room, which was darkened by blackout curtains that were consistently kept closed during the day. It was extremely rare for the sun to shine through the nailed shut windows, so rare that I had nearly forgotten what it looked like. Mom sat on the floor in front of the obnoxiously large television, her legs completely straight as they stuck out in front of her. Her orange hair was frizzy from the humid air, and her eyes were so dilated that the green we shared was barely visible. I noticed sweat was slipping down her cheeks rapidly, so I stood to crank the air conditioning up so she would cool down.

She’d been like this for two hours. At first, I tried to get her to at least sit on the couch, but figured out pretty quickly that today was going to be one of those days, and instead watched her from afar in case she suddenly dropped. I made sure to continuously play recordings of the late-night comedies she liked to watch, as hopefully it was stimulating her brain in the slightest bit to keep her alive. Once in a while, she would let a puff of a laugh escape her cracked lips, and the sound would make me sigh in relief and replay the episode she was fixed on.

Liam’s truck pulled up the drive as I ghosted back into the living room, and within moments, he was wrenching the door open with a grumble under his breath. He kicked his boots off and threw them so hard into the wall that they left a dent, then slammed the front door shut behind him. “Why the fuck is it so hot in here…!?” He barked as he set his toolbox down and came around the corner. His nail gun and hammer were still inside the belt around his waist, and his shirt was covered in wood stainer that matched his dark hair and the bags under his eyes.

“Mom wanted it that way… sorry…” I mumbled lifelessly, staring at Mom from behind for any signs of life. She was completely frozen, catatonic to a concerning degree, enough that Liam was worried as well for the first time in a while.

“Claire…? Claire…?! For fucks sake…” He crossed the room and grabbed her shoulder so he could shake her violently, “Hello, Earth to Claire!? How much did you fucking take this time? God, every day it’s something new with you…!”

“I’ll make dinner.” I stood and slid past the two; Liam was now on his knees so he could feel for her pulse, and once he found it, he went back to shaking her and calling her name.

The kitchen sink was in no mood to cooperate when I cranked the handle so I could fill a pot for some pasta. It squealed in agony from the force I used to wrench it into a working position, and I knew I’d have to mess with it at some point to try and get it working again. I had made sauce two nights ago that was thawing on the counter, and since Liam and I were probably the only ones that were going to eat, I figured this would be something easy to throw together. I made sure to finely chop onions and French green beans as a side, as green beans were his favorite, and would hopefully put him in a better mood.

Liam abruptly stormed into the kitchen and ripped the fridge open so he could wrench out a bottle of beer. I wordlessly set his opener on the counter beside me, and concentrated on chopping the onion without raising my head to look at him. “She is a fucking wreck. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with her. God, Matt, when did she get this bad? What are we supposed to do with her?” His attempts to hold a conversation didn’t last long, as I did nothing but nod in return. He watched me chop the onion for a few moments before smacking a hand down on the cutting board, which made me flinch violently. “Would it kill you to ask me about my day? To acknowledge me at all?”

“Sorry. I was trying to focus on getting this done, since I know you’re hungry.” I lied smoothly, still facing the onion, as I knew where this was going.

He snorted and took a long sip of his beer, “You’re a better wife than that stupid bitch half the time, but it’s probably because you’re a fag.” I scowled when he said this, but he didn’t necessarily mean it as an insult at the moment. “When was the last time she cooked, cleaned, did anything but take up space?”

“She’s struggling right now. I’ll snap her out of it later...” Was all I could offer.

Liam set his bottle down and pinched the bridge of his nose, massaging between his eyes with his thumbs, “You two just love to stress me out. Why can’t I ever just come home and not be bothered by some stupid bullshit? Do you ever think about anyone but yourselves?”

I paused mid chop, the knife slightly suspended above the remaining chunk of onion. In the reflection of the steel I always sharpened before I cooked, my bruised eye from his drunken outburst the night prior glared back at me, beckoning me to snap and slam the knife into his chest. My eyebrow twitched as I tried to fight my instinct to follow through, and after a moment, I went back to sliding the blade through the vegetables. “I have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Is there anything in particular you want this week?” I continued lifelessly.

Liam abruptly grabbed the back of my head and ripped me backwards from the counter, slamming me into the stove with all of his might. The action knocked the wind out of me; he slid the pot of boiling water back on the burner before wrenching my face as close as he could to the bright red electric coil. The heat coming from it was utterly unbearable, but my skin wasn’t touching it thankfully. “You two are two peas in a fucking pod; emotionless zombies with no purpose. Not a single fucking reaction no matter what!” He kept pushing down on the back of my neck to inch me closer to the burner, but I refused to do anything but let it happen.

“Liam…?” Mom’s voice echoed from the doorway behind us, and made him pause. He loosened his grip and allowed me to stand again; I stepped to the side and turned so my back was against the fridge, and secretly, I popped it open so the cold air would cool my scolding face.

Liam turned to Mom with wide eyes, shocked she had snapped back to life so quickly, and rolled his lips, “Nice of you to join the living.”

Mom brought her wide stare from him to me, and watched me tremble violently against the fridge door. Instead of coming to console me, she laid a hand on his arm and tugged him once, “Come watch something with me while Matt cooks. I don’t feel good.” Liam crumbled instantly, and nodded before moving to grab his beer. Mom pushed him out of the kitchen with further instruction to find a comedy, and once he was out of ear shot, she turned carefully on her heel. “Eat dinner in your room tonight. I’ll go to the store with you tomorrow.”

I clenched my fist to keep from raising my voice, “I wish you two would drop dead already.”

Mom crossed the room and laid a tepid kiss to my temple, then pulled the pot back over the burner carefully so the water would resume boiling. “Love you too, Matt.” She breathed before ghosting back into the living room.

╪

A horrific gasp forced its way up my throat, and following that, my body jolted in a violent rush of terror. It wanted to wrench me upright, but the anesthetics I had been sedated with this morning weighed me down too much for it to respond properly. Somewhere in my initial reaction, I let out a pain-filled, “Mom…!” from deep within me, but I wasn’t aware of the outburst at the moment. My gasp made everyone in the room jump wildly as well, but as soon as they realized I was awake, bodies began to move into the line of my blurred sight.

I hadn’t realized that my blurred vision was from tears until Emily used her sleeve to comb my eyes clear, allowing me to focus on her forced smile. “Hey, hey, it’s ok… Take a deep breath…” she cooed, gently laying a hand on my shoulder so she could lay me back against the pillows. She turned to Jesse, who was frowning on the opposite side of me, “Hand me that cloth, Jess?”

“Of course…” Jesse wrung out a white wash cloth that had been submerged in the salmon pink hospital bucket, and watched as Emily laid it over my forehead carefully. “Bad dream, kiddo?” He wearily mumbled as he took my vitals, and gave me a chance to catch my bearings.

“To say the least…” I croaked, swallowing loudly in discomfort, “My throat really hurts? Is that normal?” I continued, bringing a shaking hand up to clasp it tightly.

“That’s from the intubation tube; it’ll only last a day or so, nothing at all to worry about. I’ll up your pain reliever…” Jesse played with the I.V. dial, then moved to sit in one of the chairs next to me, “How do you feel? Anything hurt, or feel weird?” I shook my head, unable to fully answer him. “Good, that’s good. Your surgery went really well, by the by. We had you out much faster that I thought. The fracture was relatively manageable compared to what the x-rays showed.”

Jesse and Emily shared a worried frown at my zombified stare at the fluorescent lights above me. Emily leaned over the bed rail and gently smoothed locks of my hair back to try and soothe my frazzled nerves, “Anesthesia does crazy things to people sometimes, especially in the dream department. You’re in such a deep sleep that your mind kind of betrays you.”

“To say the least…” tears welled in my eyes and spilled in an even line down my cheeks, soaking the collar of my shirt, “For a moment, a single moment… all I wanted was my mom. If you guys weren’t here… I might have called her?” I choked out, biting my bottom lip so hard that I swore I tasted blood.

Emily hesitantly cleared her throat, “Well, um… you did call out for her?”

My eyes widened in astonishment. I clenched my fist as tightly as I could underneath the blanket, and gripped the sheets so hard they began to peel up from the bed beside my hand. “How could I want someone who wouldn’t have cared whatsoever?” I hissed in disgust towards myself.

Emily tsked and continued to comb my hair back gingerly, “Honey, it’s perfectly ok to be scared, to want your mother’s comfort still. You’ve barely been gone a week, and you’ve been through so much in such a short period of time. Don’t beat yourself up for being scared …?”

“I’m really sorry about all of this, Hayden. This is the last thing I wanted you to go through when you woke up,” Jesse morosely sighed.

His unnecessary apology made me scoff slightly, “Don’t apologize for something you can’t help. I just… the dream was so vivid, that for a second, I thought I was really back there. I could feel everything, even smell what I was cooking. It disoriented me, to say the least.”

Jesse shrugged with a softened smile, “I’ve had dreams like that, too, and man are they scary. At least now, you don’t ever have to experience that again. I know it’s not close to a perfect answer, but I hope it provides some kind of relief?”

“It’ll take a while for me to accept that idea, but I appreciate the gesture,” I answered before I gently brought my gaze up to Emily’s smile. Her round face looked beautiful under the light washing over her from the rising sun, enough that it shimmered like actual gold. Her hair was a vibrant strawberry when illuminated like this, and she glowed as if she were my own personal angel. I hesitantly reached up and laid a hand on the one she had on my bed rail, “Hey, Emily…?”

“What’s cooking, good looking?” She teased to lighten the mood.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and squeezed the hand she was allowing me to hold, “When I get out of here… Can you help me set up a new phone? I don’t want her number anywhere near me; I’ll end up right back at square one if I don’t deal with this now.”

╪

I had been confined to my room for around a week per Jesse and Emily’s orders, which meant I had a lot of time to catch up on sleep. The Cromwells took turns spending time with me throughout the two days I was in the hospital, never leaving without someone else taking over post. Emily was able to reassure me immensely with her medical knowledge, and once we were back at the hotel, my confinement began.

Paige spent as much time as she could with me during the day, making sure to bring every meal she ate up to my room so we could gossip about music and shows. Most evenings Rachel found her lying beside me with her legs kicking, flipping through her old collection of CDs to assess which bands we had in common. With us being so close in age, we had a lot of the same tastes and mannerisms, and quickly developed a blossoming friendship. It was fun to talk about normal young adult things with a normal young adult, and to let the heavy pressure of concealing my likes lift from my shoulders for once.

Rachel did not press me for more information about home, but spent this time gaining my trust the way one does when they want to tame a stray cat. She would talk to me about remedial things while she folded laundry on the desk in my room, bring up snacks from the kitchen that she wanted to put on the menu, or go over her plans for the hotel’s future over some afternoon tea. We talked endlessly about Connecticut, mainly about Hamden and it’s surrounding areas, and all of the things she wanted to show me when I was able to move around again. Her calm and collected aura was hypnotizing, and much of my recovery came from the quiet days we shared together.

Emily always checked in after work, and brought a book with her so she could relax alongside Paige and me. She refused to leave any time before nine, even when the bags under her eyes consumed her face, but I wasn’t opposed to the company. She called Jesse every day to report how things were looking, and had me practice minor exercises to keep my hand moving while it healed. She was incredibly patient and kind, as most people I’d met at this point were, yet her spunky personality shown through to lighten the serious mood when need be.

I had yet to meet their mysterious son, who I only knew existed based on the opening and closing of the door on the opposite end of the hall. He would leave at six in the morning, come back around eleven at night, then repeat the same cycle each day. I only saw a streak of a black backpack whizz by the other morning, followed by a call that he was late for class and would see everyone later. His mothers were not pleased by how hard he was working, but assured me he had a day off soon and was very excited to properly meet me.

I couldn’t be mad; it’s not like he expected me to waltz into their lives, and if anything, his sister was keeping me plenty occupied. Paige needed a friend as much as I did, and we clicked together seamlessly. Her quirky personality mixed with the loving touch her mothers had instilled in her was the perfect sedative to the hell I’d endured, and I knew this was only the beginning of my long road to recovery. If anything, I was grateful to have most of the Cromwells at my side, and welcomed their kind nature with open arms.

╪

Paige knocked on my door three times, and in her arms, she had an assortment of board games and snacks bundled in a throw blanket. She was holding the edges of the blanket tightly so it acted like a basket, with a smile so bright I couldn’t help but return the gesture. “Good evening, Potato! I was thinking… we should play some board games tonight! I found these in the attic, and they could probably use a spin!”

“Sure, that sounds like fun,” I offered, chuckling as Paige threw her bundle onto my bed.

“Do you have a preference? I was thinking the Game of Life would be fun!” She handed me the box so I could start pulling pieces out; I popped the spinner into place and shuffled through the cards as best I could with my cast, frowning at how difficult the task actually was. Paige played something random on the tv for background noise, then sat crisscross on my right so she could pick a color for her car. “Sometimes, I like to play this game so I can imagine what my life could be like. Maybe I could have been a doctor, or a scientist…” she flicked the spinner, and chose the college path, “Then again, with how stressed Garrett is, do I really want to be a doctor?”

“You’d make good money,” I flicked the spinner as well, but when it came time to choose Career or College, I frowned at the options. “I’ve always wanted to go to college. Liam didn’t even entertain the idea, and we definitely didn’t have the money, but I wanted to make something of myself.” I explained morosely as I chose the College path, and moved the spaces I had spun.

Paige looked up at me over her glass soda bottle, something she loved to collect and reuse for numerous drinks, “So, why don’t you? I mean, you’re not with Liam anymore, so what’s stopping you? I know my moms would help you iron out the details.”

I blinked at her wildly before turning back to the Career cards I was shuffling. “I, well, I guess I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I mean, it would be really cool and all, but…”

“But what? Everyone around here’s trying to get on track with school, so you should just join us.” Paige chose a girl as her romantic partner, and smiled lovingly at the two pink pegs in her car, “I think we’re all trying to figure ourselves out right now, and college might help ground you a bit. Besides, like moms said, you can stay as long as you’d like, so maybe you should take advantage of this calm and do something for yourself?”

“I’ll… think about it.” I offered as I stuck a second blue peg into my own car. Paige watched me stare at the car for a full thirty seconds before I snapped out of my own thoughts, “You know, even doing things like that have always been forbidden for me. I did it so casually, choosing a male peg, but I would have never done that at home.” I began to bite the hard part of my sweatshirt string as I spoke, “It feels so… weird. It’s like my subconscious realizes I’m safe, but my conscious is still having a hard time catching up.”

“Man, trust me when I say I get it. I still have old habits from my Dad, and my parents divorced when I was six, so it’s not stuff you bounce back from easily,” Paige howled in defeat when she had to pay a hundred thousand in remodeling fees, “Like, when I was little, I would hide in the laundry room when my parents fought, and put towels over my head so Dad couldn’t find me. Now, when I get scared, I always gravitate towards the laundry room; I like to sit in between stacks of folded towels and calm down.” I turned to watch as her usually bright expression soften to a slighted frown. She scoffed a breathy laugh and shook her head, “I get so mad at myself when I do that. I’m eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake, and I still do dumb shit like that.”

“I mean, that was how you knew to keep yourself safe, Paige. I don’t think you’re wrong for having a familiar coping mechanism?” I ruffled her pale pink hair to try and cheer her up, “Can you tell me more about your life? About you and your Mom?”

Paige curved her hand so she could shovel some candies into her palm to snack on, “Mom and I jumped ship when my Dad was on a business trip, and washed up at a resource center that she ended up working for in the long run. She knew the moment she started to help around there that she wanted her own organization one day. She worked the corporate side mainly, helping with the funding and fundraising, but she volunteered on the weekends to be more hands on with cases.”

“How did she find out about the center?” I asked as I popped the top on my own soda.

“Some lady at church gave her the card. Everyone knew my Dad was a piece of shit, even though Mom did her best to not make people worry. She’s always put people first; she was a huge organizer in church affairs, local bake sales, retirement homes, yada, yada. Rachel Cromwell is the queen of sticking her nose in people’s business, but it’s in helpful ways at least.”

I giggled at Paige’s joke, “Well, she’s definitely charismatic enough to win anyone over.”

Paige rolled her eyes, “I guess. I love my mom, but man, she can be overbearing. She wants to fix the world, fix everyone before they become broken, but she forgets that she’s broken, too. She’s really a lot better than before, but she’s never given herself time to bounce back. She threw herself into work the moment she was able to, and hasn’t stopped since. That’s why Garrett and I try to alleviate the stress from our parents; they don’t think about themselves ever, and sometimes, we worry about them.” She balanced a candy on her nose and laughed when it fell onto the gameboard, “But, they know when to take a break, so I tend to just leave them to it.”

“That’s gotta be a lot on you guys too, though. I mean, you have a lot going on all the time, running a hotel while also trying to get renovations for the center going, and taking cases whenever you can. That’s a lot on a small family?” I said with a slight shrug.

“Maybe, but we like to do it. Our moms got together because they both wanted to help people, and Garrett and I aren’t far behind them. Our family likes the pressure, and we work well under it. The only person we worry about is Garrett, but that’s a losing battle at this point.”

“What do you mean?” I pressed curiously as I set down my cards.

Paige’s eyes narrowed, and she slid her legs up so she could rest her chin on her knees. She flicked the spinner over and over to distract herself, and frowned heavily as she spoke. “Garrett is… complicated. On the outside, he’s flawless, literally. His grades are immaculate, he’s handsome as can be, as caring as a saint… but behind closed doors, there have been many nights where I’ve heard him crying himself to sleep. He doesn’t handle stress well, so when something is bothering him, he chooses to busy himself over dealing with it. It’s so unhealthy, but he’s never home, so we don’t have the chance to confront him.”

I gave her a lopsided smile to try and ease her visible worrying, “He has to know you guys care about him, and that might just be all you can do right now. It would surely make me feel a thousand times better.”

“I guess,” Paige tossed me a piece of popcorn, and screamed triumphantly when I caught it in between my teeth, “It’s been really cool, having you around. I feel like we mesh well together. I get pretty lonely, chasing after Mom all day. She lets me do what I want, sure, but you run out of things to do on your own after a while…” She scratched her arm nervously, “I’m not, like, annoying you, am I? I know you’re here to get help, and I’m being really selfish…?”

I tilted my head at her with a chuckle, “Paige, you’ve been the biggest help to me. I really enjoy your company. You’re the best friend I’ve been waiting for, seriously. I like how normal you treat me, my situation; I don’t feel like a ‘case’ when we’re together, and that is helping me transition a lot easier. You are doing everything but annoying me.”

Paige whimpered in happiness before scooching over to smoosh her cheek into my shoulder, “I’m really glad. I just want you to feel better as soon as you can…” She cast her eyes away shyly, and her cheeks flushed a light cherry, “I also, kind of, want to be real friends. I’m not supposed to get really close with our cases, but you’re different. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel like it’s ok for us to be friends. Is it, ok?” She asked hopefully.

I nodded cheerfully, “Very ok. We’re going to get into a lot of trouble together, I promise!”