There is a low and gradual draw of breath assisted by machines that compliment the beeping of the heart rate monitors along side the bed as Smith lay unconscious. It has been twelve minutes since he was put inside this room, fifteen minutes since Lisa was alerted of him being put in the hospital by her mom's friend, a RN at this hospital, twenty five minutes since the ambulance was called by a neighbor dialing 911, and thirty one minutes since his father, the man he has tried eagerly to win the affection and love of, did this to him. For what? Doing what some botanist would deem an impossible task of bringing an extremely rare plant to life? Taking the lifeless seeds because he remembered them outside the house when his mother brought him home for the first time all those years ago.
This was the first time Smith had experienced the nothingness of blank thoughts without dreaming. He begins to twitch and fidget as he tries to bring his mind back to his body. He can hear the beeps and deep gurgling sound of someone breathing heavily and then he hears a door open and can tell by the panicked yet gingerly taken steps that Lisa has made her way to his side. She is sobbing and muffling her cries with her sleeve on her right hand. He is unable to muster the strength to open his eyes, even though he tries to will it with all his might, and glimpse her beautiful image and set her mind to ease that he will undoubtedly be OK.
"Oh my god, Smith! What did he do to you?" She pleads and collapses onto the foam enveloped wooden chair that is accompanied with the bed much like she is to him. She holds his hand soft as not to hurt him but firmly enough to let him know in his unconsciousness that she was there, that she would always be there. Her other hand slowly strokes the forearm and wrist. Her audible sobbing has subsided but the stream of tears continue to streak down the path along her cheekbones towards the floor. It is this stasis of thought and sadness that she is caught in for a few very long moments, moments that turn into hours. As nurses come and go checking on vitals from a clipboard and exchanging bags of IV fluids, some are young enough to remember their first love and have a sliver of sympathy for her.
"These damn medics rush their assessment of my patients as much as they rush them to get here." An old doctor proclaims, not to Lisa but to a young lackey shadowing the dinosaur of a man jotting down his every syllable. "They described broken bones in the face along with scarring on the bridge of the nose and heavy jaw displacement along with several broken ribs. Looking at our X rays, the patient has a few cracked ribs and some bumps and bruises. " Without so much as a glance at the grieving loved one he quickly and whisk-fully flees the room on to the next assessment and next cold in-human diagnoses of a living person as if they were test subjects in a lab. Lisa is caught off guard by the ramblings and is too tired to interject or ask questions and just stays in her chair next to Smith. After the doctor leaves she mentally shrugs and shifts her gaze back to the man she loves lying in the hospital bed, the man she thought was more broken and beaten the half a day earlier when she got there, but she is tired and the emotions and the days hours are taking the last toll, she falls asleep still holding his hand.
Sunlight beams into her eyes like a flood gate as soon as they open and she is momentarily blinded by the bright white walls and decor of the room she sits in. Slung over the backside of the small chair she has a hard ache in her side and neck as she tries to sit up. After sitting up she quickly realizes Smith is no longer in the bed next to her and she is instantly alarmed and panicked as much as she was the day before on her drive over to this hospital when she got a call that filled her with anger and sadness. Her head turns towards the room's bathroom door as she hears the toilet flush and the water turn on, instantly her mind is put to ease as another scan around shows Smith's clothes her mom brought by for him still laid out and waiting to cling to his skin. The door opens slowly, too slowly for her liking, and Smith hobbles out of the restroom moving the wheeled IV stand that is still connected to him. Lisa doesn't know whether to jump on him or yell at him. She starts to talk but is soon lost embracing him and quietly begging for him to be OK. Smith takes her shoulders in his hands and gently pushes her back a step in order to bend down slightly and be in direct eye contact with each other.
"I am OK Lisa. It wasn't that bad at all."
"What?" She says in disbelief. "What are you talking about? They said you had broken ribs and severe head trauma."
"I am fine, I don't think it was as bad as they thought initially. Look at me."
She was very uneasy accepting the version of what happened that he seemed to believe. But as she peered at him expecting to find a wound or injury she could point at in her conclusion, there was none. If anything Smith seemed to have grown a few inches taller and was even more broad across his shoulders then she remembered. Now all of her notions of what was right in the world were being thrown out the window, he practiced speech about how he needs to leave his father and never speak to him again. Leading up to he finale, getting him to move in with her and go wherever she gets stationed.
"Smith, you can't go back to that man, he almost killed you. What if he does kill you next time, how could you put me through that."
"It's not about you Lisa. I don't expect you to understand. He is all I have left."
"All you have left? What about me, what about the two of us?"
"I didn't mean it like that. I am just saying you have two parents that love you and you don't know what I am going through. It's not his fault."
"I can't believe what you're saying. I won't stand by and watch you get beaten like this. I can't do it."
"What does that mean? Are you making me choose from my father or my High School Girlfriend?"
"High School Girlfriend? Well it looks like you already made your choice. Goodbye Smith."
Smith tries reach out to her hand that trails behind her body as she quickly exits the room. He knows if he really wanted to he could take a few big strides and swiftly catch up to her. He wants to deep down, he wants to yell for her to stay, but he can't. He feels powerless when it comes to his father, only he knows how destroyed his mother's death has made him feel. Smith is logical enough to know that even the heartbreak and loss for his mother is no excuse for what his father had done to him. He will confront his father, but not the way Lisa wants. He wants to do it on his own terms, his own way.
Lisa's friend came into the room where Smith was now shirtless as he picked up the last piece of clothing that Lisa's parents had brought for him. He wraps his body with the attire and snugly pulls down the shirt so his head pops through the appropriate hole. He is focused on the pain he feels now that Lisa isn't by his side. The talking of the nurse and the newly entered doctor are just gray noise to him now. He is accessing his memory when his father struck him repeatedly and after analyzing he understands that there was ample opportunities to not only defend himself, but to launch very high probability of counterattacks as well as attacks that could have completely disarmed and defeated the assailant. But how could he do that to his own father, he understands his dad's pain and trauma after losing his wife. Smith, himself, can still remember her face and voice and the way she laughed and smiled. He does know there is more than that going on. When he thinks really hard he can see her face full of fear and pain, that is the earliest he is able to remember.
The staff at the hospital began spreading the rumor of an incredible healing and recovery after so much trauma and injury. A lot of it is just rumors since Smith had healed already quite a bit before they did any official scans, but the paramedics and nurses that had seen him within the first few hours at the hospital thought it would take surgery and a long road to recovery. Instead it is just under thirty one hours since he was wheeled in that Smith found himself walking out the front door and calculating a route to make it back home some eleven miles away. He had to tell the police force officers that came by that he wasn't going to press charges and with the condition they saw him in they all but obliged.
His thoughts were full of all the memories and time spent with Lisa. He was starting to feel some tinges of sadness and regret and he knew that there had to be a logical conclusion after the discussion he is going to attempt to have with his father. He doesn't know if that is going to end with him leaving his fathers house or not and deep down there is a lot of truth in what Lisa said earlier and she was probably right this whole time. Smith can acknowledge these facts and still not feel regret for living the way he has thus far. He doesn't think he owes it to himself or to his father but to his mother for trying to bring his father back from the brink of despair. There was a silver lining to all these recent years and that was the glimmer of hope he felt for his father and the recovery that was beginning to happen.
Eleven miles and forty nine minutes later there is a tall well built young man that finishes his high speed jog a block from his destination. By the time he finishes the sixty two steps to the edge of his house as it meets the street he can see his father sitting on the front steps with his hands hanging lazily over his knees, his head is sunken below the line of his shoulders. There is dried up blood and one of the flowers that Smith had planted is along the side of the path and withered. As he approaches his father's motionless body, he begins to talk in a slow and monotone voice.
"I think you should move out of the house." Charles said.
"Dad, I don't want to move out, but we need to have a talk."
"There isn't anything to talk about. I have become what I always feared in my father and now I have done the worst thing a man can do."
"Look at me dad. I am fine, but we need to talk about what is really bothering you. What has really been bothering you."
Charles looks up, expecting to see a bandaged and broken teenager that he put his hands on a day and a half ago. Tears have dried along the path that they had once streaked down his face as the thought of becoming a monster was starting to sneak into his consciousness. It was at this moment that he felt truly dumbfounded. The young and smaller teenager he had pictured that he beat almost to death was standing in front of him beaming with an incredible energy. He looked taller and instead of looking like he spent a stretch in the hospital he looked like he spent months weight training.
"I don't understand. How can this be? Who are you?" Charles managed to utter as he stared helplessly at the man in front of him.
The last part of his stuttering statement had really caught Smith by surprise and then the flood of memories that he could access from the start of his life began to ask hundreds of questions and there was a constant theme to the answers he was able to discern himself, "I am not this man's son".
"Where am I from dad?" Smith said.
"I am sorry Smith, I am not your father." He said after clambering to his feet and could see now that he was a few inches taller than he himself was.
"You are my dad, I have probably always known that biologically we are not related. We have different facial features and body compositions, in fact I am pretty sure that your wife and my mom was not related to me biologically either. So dad, where am I from?"
Charles starts the long and needed conversation with Smith about how his wife of many decades began to work in the EUS and sent back money to help him keep their house and was trying to find employment that could pay enough so she could come back home. It was around this time all those years ago that there was a position within the State Department became available and Charles had an interview for that was scheduled two days after his wife came home in the middle of the night. Charles explained how he knew something had to have gone horribly wrong if she was back and without her contacting him first so he could meet her at the border. She looked afraid and tired. But she still managed one of her beautiful smiles that he remembers first seeing in high school. It was at that moment that she told him she had some bad news for him. She went back to the car and retrieved a small bundle, inside that bundle of jackets and scarfs was a young toddler, maybe eighteen months old. Charles explained how she got deathly sick soon after arriving and even though he was incredibly angry with her he stayed by her side until her last breath holding her hand and telling her he loved her. It was her last words to take care of the baby that Charles finished his story with.
"OK, but you do understand that she wasn't my biological mother. But she was still my mom just as you are my dad." Smith says.
"How can you say that after what I have done, after how I have treated you all these years. I am ashamed of the man I have become."
"Dad, look at me. You are my dad, you have taken care of me and battle within yourself the anger and resentment. You could have dumped me in a local orphanage or neglected me to the point of endangering my health, but look at me I am a healthy strong young man thanks to you. And mom brought me here to rescue me from who knows what in the EUS. I have read many stories of torture and experiments and it seems like she saved my life, just as you have."
"How can you be so forgiving? How could I have been so stupid, I knew my Mary would never do anything to come between out marriage and she wasn't able to have kids. Why didn't I put this together sooner."
"It's OK dad, lets go inside you look like you need some rest and I have to take care of stuff with Lisa."
"OK son. You go take care of your business and I know I never told you but I love you son."
Those are the words he has been waiting a lifetime to hear and honestly he would wait several lifetimes for the joy and happiness that he feels. But he doesn't have time to sit and enjoy this moment, he has to get to the Air Force base before Lisa gets shipped off. The base is twenty eight miles away, but he knows if he really pushes himself he should be able to make it.
"Please be there Lisa" he says to himself as he begins an all out run away from his house, passing bikes and sometimes cars. There is nothing that is going to stand in his way.