wasn’t there. He went for the only other room in the apartment. He opened the bathroom door and clammy thighs slapped his face. The smell hit him too. Her bleeding knees dangled at chin level, her toes sparkled with orange nail polish she must have put on at Déjà Vu earlier in the night. The sliding shower door, thrashed by her convulsing knees, sprinkled the tiled floor with shards of broken glass. A leather belt looped around the ceiling fan and her neck. Her body spun around. The lips that had kissed him a moment earlier were smattered with blood. Her teeth were ground shut by the unconscious pressure she had applied in her final moment. A bitten-off piece of her tongue, like discarded chewing gum, sat in the pile of glass on the floor. Colton turned to one side and wept.
two years and one hundred ninety one days till defiance day (12
It had been months since his hospital discharge, yet Sylvya missed Colton more than she dared imagine. She looked up his Mountain View passport records and was paralyzed to discover he had left Las Vegas. It took calling his former casino employer and role-playing as his personal physician to find out he had moved to Seattle. Seattle made no sense – it was cold and distant and, most of all, flooded. And where did this leave her? Was she going to let him walk? And if she did, how long would it take for her dream to come back to life with another patient? Assuming it could come back, at all. Then her decision formed: all cities needed nurses, most of all the coastal ones. She would peruse the Seattle job boards, get hired by a hospital there and move to the upper-left corner of the continent… for the sake of the dream he had rekindled in her.
Virginia Mason offered her a nursing position after a single phone interview. She flew with the kids from Las Vegas to SeaTac, the last functional northwest airport handling traffic from Boise in the east to San Francisco in the south and every other town in between. Sadie and Dallas were sleeping next to her. It was fortunate that Dallas was asleep on both beverage runs. His new gig was to fill his cheeks with soda and squeal at the bite of the bubbles against the inside of his mouth. The cheeks would stretch, with saliva and pop drooling from his puckered lips, until everything from the inside squirted out.
She caressed their small heads. What mother would relocate her children to the other side of the continent with weeks to go until Defiance Day? A batch of turbulence shook the cabin and Sylvya let out an unconscious cry drowned by the roar of the engines. She tried to imagine Colton’s reaction to seeing her in Seattle for the first time. Would he lift her off the ground and plant a hot and dry kiss on her lips? Would his unshaven stubble grind her lips into a mush? Would he kiss her forehead and hug her, but not too long, before squatting down to embrace Sadie and Dallas, and with a big smile melt their discomfort that a stranger had kissed their mom in public.
Another turbulence bump. Sylvya rubbed her bloodshot eyes, squishing a contact lens under her lid, upper or lower – she couldn’t tell. The world became a fuzzy mess on the right but she didn’t care. She was headed to him and that was all that mattered. The thought of him set fire through her veins as powerful as the maternal love for her children. He made her feel the way cancer cells felt about chemotherapy. Bones with cancer lit up the scanners in bright yellow and red; the brighter the colors, the further along the tumors. But several Zometa treatments later, the red would turn into hollow black, filled with dead cells. He was her Zometa. Without him, the desire, unfettered and red, to take care of someone would chew through her until she either died or lost sanity.
The plane’s wheels thudded on the SeaTac tarmac. Dallas and Sadie woke and started playing slapsies. Sylvya gathered their toys from the faded seats, nostalgic for her own childhood. She would love to play
two years and one hundred ninety one days till defiance day (12
It had been months since his hospital discharge, yet Sylvya missed Colton more than she dared imagine. She looked up his Mountain View passport records and was paralyzed to discover he had left Las Vegas. It took calling his former casino employer and role-playing as his personal physician to find out he had moved to Seattle. Seattle made no sense – it was cold and distant and, most of all, flooded. And where did this leave her? Was she going to let him walk? And if she did, how long would it take for her dream to come back to life with another patient? Assuming it could come back, at all. Then her decision formed: all cities needed nurses, most of all the coastal ones. She would peruse the Seattle job boards, get hired by a hospital there and move to the upper-left corner of the continent… for the sake of the dream he had rekindled in her.
Virginia Mason offered her a nursing position after a single phone interview. She flew with the kids from Las Vegas to SeaTac, the last functional northwest airport handling traffic from Boise in the east to San Francisco in the south and every other town in between. Sadie and Dallas were sleeping next to her. It was fortunate that Dallas was asleep on both beverage runs. His new gig was to fill his cheeks with soda and squeal at the bite of the bubbles against the inside of his mouth. The cheeks would stretch, with saliva and pop drooling from his puckered lips, until everything from the inside squirted out.
She caressed their small heads. What mother would relocate her children to the other side of the continent with weeks to go until Defiance Day? A batch of turbulence shook the cabin and Sylvya let out an unconscious cry drowned by the roar of the engines. She tried to imagine Colton’s reaction to seeing her in Seattle for the first time. Would he lift her off the ground and plant a hot and dry kiss on her lips? Would his unshaven stubble grind her lips into a mush? Would he kiss her forehead and hug her, but not too long, before squatting down to embrace Sadie and Dallas, and with a big smile melt their discomfort that a stranger had kissed their mom in public.
Another turbulence bump. Sylvya rubbed her bloodshot eyes, squishing a contact lens under her lid, upper or lower – she couldn’t tell. The world became a fuzzy mess on the right but she didn’t care. She was headed to him and that was all that mattered. The thought of him set fire through her veins as powerful as the maternal love for her children. He made her feel the way cancer cells felt about chemotherapy. Bones with cancer lit up the scanners in bright yellow and red; the brighter the colors, the further along the tumors. But several Zometa treatments later, the red would turn into hollow black, filled with dead cells. He was her Zometa. Without him, the desire, unfettered and red, to take care of someone would chew through her until she either died or lost sanity.
The plane’s wheels thudded on the SeaTac tarmac. Dallas and Sadie woke and started playing slapsies. Sylvya gathered their toys from the faded seats, nostalgic for her own childhood. She would love to play
Similar Books
