Total pages in book: 211
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1008(@200wpm)___ 806(@250wpm)___ 672(@300wpm)
I start down the road that leads to our trailer, and just that easily, I’m already done with Jennie. I don’t need anyone in my life right now but my mother anyway. I don’t know why I tried. My mother is what matters. My mother who can’t die. We have to find another treatment. There has to be a way to pay for it. I’ll volunteer as a guinea pig. I’ll let them study my brain. I know my mom doesn’t want that, but she’ll have to understand.
I turn the corner to our street and the sight of ambulances and fire trucks slams into me. My heart explodes in my chest. My stomach knots. Numbers begin to pound at my mind. “Mom. Mom!” I charge forward, blood pumping through my veins and in my ears. “Mom!” I run and run and I don’t stop until I’m right on the edge of the yard and only then because a monster of a police officer catches my arms.
“Son,” he orders. “You need to stay right here.”
“I live here. I live here! This is my home. You can’t stop me from going into my own home.”
“Are you Eric Mitchell?”
“Yes.” Tears start streaming down my cheeks. “I need to see my mother. She’s sick. She’s got cancer. She needs me. I’m her son!”
The officer hits a button on his arm and says, “Get that social worker here now.”
“Social worker?! I don’t need a social worker. I know she has cancer. What’s wrong? Is it a reaction to the chemo? What’s wrong?!”
“Son,” he says, his voice vibrating with an undercurrent that touches his eyes. With something he doesn’t want to say. “Son, your mother—”
“She’s dead. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
He doesn’t have to reply. I see it in his face and the numbers attack my mind, diving at it like sharp blades.
My knees go weak and I fall down, grabbing my head and in a tunnel of pain, I hear, “Get me an EMT tech! Now!”
I black out.
No. I don’t black out. There are numbers.
11111
77777
88888
99999
11111
They won’t stop. God, make them stop. I sit up, ramrod stiff and find myself in the back of an ambulance. “Easy, son,” a male voice says, and I bring him into focus, sitting next to me. “I gave you something to calm you down.”
“I don’t want to calm down.” I sit up. “I want to see my mother.”
A woman with long brown hair in her mid-fifties appears at the end of the truck. “Eric, she’s gone. I’m sorry.”
My throat goes dry, the cotton sensation all but choking me, and I try to find the numbers again, the ones I control but I can’t find them. “No. No, that isn’t right.”
“I’m afraid it is. Your mother’s gone, son.”
My mind tunnels through empty space and for the first time in my life, I need to count, I need numbers and math, and there is nothing but white noise. “How?” I hear myself say, but my voice is distant, the world is distant. “How did she die? She was getting treatment.”
“She was in a lot of pain. I’m sad to report that she took her own life. “
“No. No, she was fighting. She was fighting!”
“She was tired. She wanted more for you, too. She left a letter. I called your father and—”
“I don’t have a father. I don’t fucking have a father!” I try to get up, but the EMT holds me down, my head spinning with the damn drug he gave me.
“I want to see the letter,” I whisper.
“At my office,” the woman says.
“Who are you?”
“Evelyn Minor. Your social worker.” She holds out a hand. “Come with me.”
Two hours later, I sit in her dingy office with a scuffed desk and yellow chair, the letter in hand, but no numbers in my head. That drug the EMT gave me makes me dizzy again as I start reading:
My dearest Eric—
I had to do this. I had to do it because I love you with all my heart and soul. I did this for you. It was time for you to get on with your life. It was time for your father to claim you. Make him. Accept him. He can help you make the most of your gifts. He can get you the help you need to control it. Don’t fight him. Don’t lash out at him. Do this for me. Do this so that I know I left you behind better than I brought you into this world. Please, son. I beg of you. I need you to do this. For me. Do this for me.
Before I can read on, the door to the office opens and in walks a man in a blue suit, his brown hair slicked back. I know him. I don’t want to know him. Jeff Kingston, the man my mother claims is my father, ignores the social worker and steps in front of me, towering above me. “Looks like your mother got her way,” he bites out. “You’re with me now. Let’s go.”