The Beginning
I was sitting in my room, reading, when I heard my dad call me. He rarely used my full name, actually I don’t think he ever called me before using my full name, in that tone of voice. I got up quickly and went downstairs.
“What do you need Dad?”
He picked up the phone and pointed down the hallway, “help your mother.”
I gave him a puzzled look and went around the corner. My mother was sitting on the floor in her underwear, her feet were in the bathroom but the rest of her was in the hall. As I approached I saw her ankle was wrapped in a towel.
“Get me my cigarettes,” she said desperately.
“What?” I asked. As I sized up the situation I looked into the bathroom, the tile in the shower was streaked with blood. It looked like an Alfred Hitchcock movie set, except in living color. I could feel the panic rising in my chest.
I think my mom could see the fear spreading across my face because she started telling me to calm down, “It’s fine, I’m OK. Just get me my cigarettes and some pants. Once the paramedics arrive they wont let me smoke.”
I was beyond being calmed down though, “What? How can you smoke at a time like this? Oh my God what happened?”
She was so calm, yet I could tell she was jonesing for a smoke. She got angry, “Just get me my cigarettes, PLEASE?” She said through clenched teeth.
Indignantly, I did as I was asked. I grabbed the shorts that were lying on a chair in the living room and handed them to her, Dad must have set them there when he ran for the phone. I then went to the kitchen table and grabbed her Vantage Light 100’s and her lighter.
“What happened?” I asked again as I handed her the smokes.
“One of the vericose veins popped. I’ll just get some stitches. It’s not a big deal,” she said and inhaled deeply on her cigarette.
The paramedics arrived, and as Mom predicted, they made her put out the cigarette. Dad followed in the car. He asked if I wanted to go with him, but I thought it would be smarter to stay and clean the bathroom walls before my sister got home and saw the carnage. I pulled the Comet out of the cabinet and began wiping my mother’s blood from the walls of the bathroom. It washed down the drain with little effort.
