Everyone Has To

He rested his head on her lap.  It was nice and cushy, just the way Derek liked his women.  Yellow curtains billowed out, surrounding them both, enrapturing them in lemon, bleach, and ammonia.

            “Here, let me close that,” said the nurse, bustling over.  Her clean pressed sleeve rustled above his head, drawing his gaze to the light stain and damp hair of her underarm.

            A throat cleared to his left.  “That won’t be necessary, thank you.”  Holly stood on the opposite side of the bed, crossing her arms and looking for all the world as though she didn’t want to be there. She had mascara clumps on the tissue on her hand, the only thing that she’d accepted from the staff. 

Her face was younger and prettier without all the makeup on it.  It was only aged by the tightness across her forehead and at the corners of her mouth, a mark of composure which secretaries at the county court offices mastered quickly– but who had been the first sibling to cry when they got the call?  Who bolted out of bed in the middle of the night , ran to the liquor store, and called their few friends, went out to get drunk and crash their car and … no, wait, the car was just him.

Derek winked the swollen purple eye which had felt purple and blotchy almost as soon as Holly’s curvy friend from work had shoved him off and kicked open the car door.  Hazy night air rushed into the musky interior.  The engine smashed against a stubborn oak sprouted steam, slightly obscuring the woman swaying on the side of the highway.  Red high heels, modest and mud-splattered, displayed her soft, womanly form, a series of curves Derek longed to run his hand over.

“Don’t go,” he said.  His fingers still held the warmth of the woman being picked up by a passing motorist.

He slouched in his seat, waiting for her to come back for what seemed like days.  His head throbbed.  “You have to come with me, son,” the man was saying. 

“She said she would be back, soon,” Derek replied.

“Derek,” Holly mumbled, drumming her fingers across his back, tune-like.  She wanted him to go with her.

His bottom lip quivered as he placed his hand in the palm of the man with the suit and flat grey tie. 

Holly rapped on the window.  “Derek, I’m going to get you out of there.  You have to promise not to move, okay?”

“But she’s coming back, I have to wait for her,” he replied, his hand slipping from the handle as he tried to grab it, but his palm was wet.  Warmth oozed from his hand, and he was reminded of the years he had waited before she had returned, almost out of nowhere, out of the cool, cloudy night.  “Mom – where’s Mom?”

“We’re going there right now, just relax.” Holly stayed just outside the car.  “Hey, do you remember our secret handshake?”  He tapped his left fingers against the steering wheel, like tiny marching tin men.  She smiled, and her face smoothed out.  “That’s right.  Now I want you to keep doing that until we can go.”

He did just what she said until some people in uniforms arrived. He got to ride in the big van with the lights.  It was a dizzy ride; Derek threw up a lot.

            Derek curled himself into more of a ball on the grey sheets.  Cool air stirred the yellow curtains overhead, bathing him in warm sunshine cleanliness.  “I wuv you, Mommy,” he murmured.  Her thighs were warm and youthful and he was the little boy grasping onto them that he was in third grade.

            A thick hand smelling of peppermint lotion touched his shoulder, but he wasn’t going to let her leave him yet.  “Stay with me.  I don’t want to go.”  The tight strips around his arm were loosened, and then some scratchy ones were put on.  Derek ducked his head into her chest like he did when Mr. Roberts called his name on rollcall.  She didn’t push him away, now.

            “That’s fine,” said Holly above his head.  “Can you leave us alone for a few moments with her?”  The hand left his shoulder.  Padded shoes made muffled puffs of air as they left the room. 

            Derek snuggled closer.    He wouldn’t have to leave too soon, and he was perfectly content to stay here knowing that she wasn’t going to leave him, either.  His lips turned up at the corners, pulled a little more on the left where a cold sore burned its way through layers of skin.  It scratched his beard as he pressed his mouth to her soft upper forearm.  She smelled clean, he thought as he inhaled deeply.

            Not enough time passed for Holly to suddenly tap his shoulder.  He knew what she wanted him to do – nothing was going to move him from this bed, no teachers or nurses or secret sibling handshakes kept since before they split them up.  “Derek,” Holly bent down, her hand still grasping the tissue.  “You know she has to leave, right?”

            “No,” Derek twisted his head away.  “No, she can’t.”

            His sister’s heels clacked quickly around the bed.  “She has to leave.  That’s what she’s told us.”  She tugged his arm.  “Come on, Derek, you remember how she leaves.  This is just a bit longer than other times.  We’ll be okay.”

            Her lips drew tight when he stared fully into her face and saw the white reflection of the bed in her pupils.  It looked like his old bed with thin, mismatched sheets.  His face appeared sunken in and blotchy.  Nothing else was there except a few naked eyelashes on red rimmed eyelids that refused to close. 

            Holly took a breath, without blinking said, “It’s only for a little bit.  You and I will get to leave, too, someday.”

            “Do you promise?”  Derek grasped his mother’s leg tighter.  He felt a pulse run through both of their bodies and return.

            “Yes, let’s go.  You can stay at my place.” He floated up, down the hall, and out the doors as Holly softly tugged him along.