Broken (4 page)

She turned her head and looked at me with weak
feverish eyes. "But you were fine when I got home. You were fine in
bed!"

I chuckled. "Yeah I know. Maybe it’s just one of
those short viruses that are gone after a few hours. Get some sleep. I’m sure
you'll be fine when we get back from the golf course."

Heather closed her eyes and nodded. "Sure. I just
need some rest."

Heather was feeling a
little better when we got back. Well at least she was up. She was sitting in
the living room watching TV with a blanket wrapped tightly around her. She
looked pale. William ran to her immediately.

"Mom, Mom. Guess what?"

She sighed and closed her eyes like hearing his
high-pitched excited voice was too much for her. "Not now William,"
she said. "Mommy is not feeling well. I need some rest."

Seeing his young face change expression drastically I
quickly grabbed the disappointed William in my arms pretending to be a
child-eating monster and took him to the kitchen and fixed him a sandwich.

"What's wrong with mother?" he asked as he
ate at the breakfast counter. He sometimes sounded so grown up it made me
smile.

"Just a little flu," I said. "Nothing
to worry about."

William sighed deeply and I felt a pit in my stomach.
Sick or not I resented Heather for acting like this. The least she could do was
to let the boy tell his story.

"I really wanted to tell her about what I did
today. I wanted to tell her about the hole-in-one I made. My first one
ever," he said.

I grabbed a glass of water and leaned at the counter
in front of him. "It really was something, huh?" I said trying to
divert his thoughts. "I bet you could be a pro one day."

"You really think so?" His blond curls that
he inherited from me framed his face in the cutest way. It made him look so
much like me. I still had all of them, much to the envy of the other men in our
social circles. I loved that we looked so alike, William and I. The blue eyes,
the skin that tanned easily and the blond curls. He didn't have much from
Heather except the nose. Her perfect, aristocratic nose.

I smiled at him. "You can be anything you want to
in life," I said before drinking my water. It had been inhumanly hot out
on the course that day. Ninety-four degrees and humid. Still I had played my
best game ever and I could easily have done eighteen more holes.

"Really? Even a firefighter?" William asked,
a bright light in his blue eyes.

I laughed. How I enjoyed these moments with my son.
They were so precious.
 
"Yes.
Even that. Anything you set your mind to."

William became thoughtful for a few seconds while
eating. "And I don't have to become a doctor like you?"

"Definitely not."

William took another bite of his peanut butter and
jelly sandwich that he enjoyed just as much as I used to do when I first
arrived in Florida. "It's just that ... Mom always tells me that I will
one day grow up to be a doctor like my father and take over the clinic that
granddad built."

I sighed. "Look me in the eyes."

He lifted his blue eyes and stared into mine. It was
like staring at my younger self.

"You don't have to be anything you don't want to,
do you hear me? This is your life and you decide what you want to do with it.
Okay?"

William nodded eagerly while chewing. Then he went
quiet and thoughtful again. "Then firefighter it is," he said.

"Firefighter it is," I repeated, tousling
his unruly curls with my hand.

Heather got worse at
night and threw up again. The next day she began coughing. A deep dry cough
that wouldn't go away. She complained about a sore throat and said she had
small blisters in her mouth which hurt when she drank or ate. She was still
running a fever so I took care of William and drove him to school. Then I went
off to the clinic and my office sanctuary. Julie the secretary had my usual
coffee steaming hot on the desk for me. I drank it while leaning back in the
chair and preparing for a new day and a new week.

Sarah our housekeeper and nanny would take care of
William after school as she usually did so I didn't have to miss any of my
appointments on that account. Sitting at the desk and looking at my packed
calendar made me wish I could have used Heather's illness as an excuse for
once. The September sun was so bright outside and I had a huge urge to take my
son to the beach and teach him how to surf. I didn't want to be wasting all of
William's childhood years in this place. There was so much I wanted to do with
him. So much I wanted to show him, so many places to go and see.

But there was no excuse. Heather didn't do much anyway
so her being sick didn't change much in my life. She always spent most of the
day in bed hung over and popping pills.

I closed my eyes for a second and dozed off hoping to
once again meet
Aiyana's
light brown eyes in my
dream, to retrieve the soothing sight of her face. Once again I hadn't slept
during the night because of my restlessness that I thought was caused by
stress, and as usual in the morning I was overcome with exhaustion and had to
take a nap in the office. It had become a bad habit, but I couldn't survive
without it. Half an hour to an hour was enough, once or twice during the day.
Powernap I had heard some people call it.

But this particular morning I couldn't fall asleep. I
was suddenly uncomfortable sitting in my chair. Thoughts were racing through my
mind mixed with loud voices and loads of images. I was used to having voices
whispering in my mind ever since the accident in the swamps ten years ago but
this morning they were unusually loud. I tried to ignore them and keep them
quiet by emptying my head of any distractions or concerns, but I couldn't keep
them away. The feeling of urgency was overwhelming and intense. It was a
feeling I hadn't felt in ten years. Not since I saw
Aiyana
in the swamps lying lifeless in the mud.

Since it didn't help to ignore them I little by little
gave up and decided to try and decipher them instead. I tried to separate the
pictures and voices to determine if anything made sense. I concentrated on a
few of the pictures and on stopping them from flickering. I managed to slow
them down somehow so I could study them closer. The first one I saw was Heather
at home sick in bed. She was sweating and moaning in her sleep. Then there was
a bright light and I saw William's beautiful eyes looking at me. I wanted to
freeze that picture and make it stay there for longer but no matter how hard I
tried I couldn't hold on to it.
 
It
slipped and a new picture emerged. It was my dad. Alone in the big house in
Denmark quietly reading the paper. I was overwhelmed yet again as I felt his
loneliness before I was led somewhere else. I smiled. In a flash I saw
Aiyana
. How happy I was to finally see her again. How relaxed
it made me feel. She was looking straight at me. Her lips were moving. She was
talking. But what was she saying? It sounded like my name again. Was she
calling for me? Then the weirdest thing happened. I got an extreme headache. It
was so bad I had to bend over and lean on the edge of my desk. It was like my
head was about to explode from the inside. As if my brain was growing and there
was no more room to contain it. I groaned and held both my hands to my head
pleading it to stop. All the images disappeared and there was nothing but
darkness in my head. I didn't want the image of
Aiyana
to go away. I wanted them to stay at least for a little while, but I couldn't
get it back. Then I heard her voice. As clear as if she were standing next to
me and talking to me. It was loud and drowned everything else in my head, all
the other voices and whispers that were flickering in my head.

"Help me Christian," she said. "Please
help me."

Chapter 5

Heather
was still in
bed when I got back from work. Nine
patients and a lot of paperwork had kept me at the office until almost eight
thirty in the evening. William was already in bed but not yet sleeping, our
housekeeper Sarah mentioned just before she left. I went to his room to kiss
him goodnight. The sound of
Aiyana's
voice pleading
me to help her was still ringing in my head as it had been all day. Was it
real? Did she need my help or was it just a dreaming wish from my part? I
sighed and sat at the edge of William's bed. He looked like he had dozed off
but now he opened his eyes and smiled.

"Far!" he said. That was the Danish word for
dad. The only Danish word I had managed to teach him, the only word Heather
would allow for him to learn. "You'll only confuse him, he doesn't need
that," she said when I told her I wanted to teach him some Danish.
"No one speaks that language besides five million Danes. He doesn't need
to learn it."

I hated conflicts and always tried my utmost to avoid
it so as it usually happened I had given in to Heather except for the one word.
I loved when he called me "Far." I smiled and hugged him tight.

"Go back to sleep, buddy. I just wanted to say
goodnight. I'll see you in the morning."

He smiled again and put his head back on the pillow
with his eyes closed. "I love it when your eyes glow, Far," he said
just before the sleep overpowered him and pulled him into dreamland.

Startled I got up from the bed and rushed downstairs
to the guest bathroom. I closed the door behind me and without turning the
lights on, stared at my reflection in the mirror. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Literally. They were glowing. They almost lit up the entire room with a bluish
glow. The muscle-pain and the fever had returned. I was sweating like crazy.

The sight of my glowing eyes in the mirror scared me
enormously. I was a doctor. Eyes were my specialty. I had never heard of any
disease that would cause a person’s eyes to glow and their vision to improve in
the darkness. I could see all details of the room and of my own face in the
mirror. Again it felt like my muscles were growing under my sleeves and the
shirt became tighter. This time was even worse than the first time. I had to
take the shirt off. Sweat was running from my head dripping in the sink. What
was this? It was as if my eyesight was better in the dark than in daylight.
From where I was standing I could read what it said on the soap dispenser, even
the smallest letters. I was stunned, startled.

Never in my days as an eye-surgeon had I heard of such
a thing. And what was going on with my body? Muscles were growing and I was
sweating like a disgusting pig?

I went to my library and retrieved several medical
books from the shelves. Without turning on a single light I started reading,
studying them closely, hoping to find something that would help me. But there
was nothing. Not a single case that resembled mine in any way.

Later the restlessness also returned. The sensation
was slowly growing stronger every night. I wanted to walk, to walk fast and not
just inside the house. I wanted to walk outside in a park or a forest. I
pictured the swamps and felt an incredible urge to go there, to run through it.
Every muscle in my body wanted to move, to be used. And the energy? Oh boy, the
energy I felt. I found it harder and harder to contain it, to keep it locked up
inside of me. It wanted out or I was certain it was going to explode inside of
me. I groaned and paced in circles like a lion in a cage while pulling my hair.
I decided to go outside. I ran to the back porch and opened both French doors
to the Intracoastal waters where we had the pool and boat at the dock. Just
like Heather's parents used to have. This was what we had become, I thought.
Just like them. Marrying because it was the smart and sensible thing to do. Not
out of passionate love. It wasn't that I didn't love Heather. I really truly
did. I just wasn't
in
love with
her. And the life we had? Well I guess it just didn't mean that much to me
anymore. The money, the prestige, the cars, the house. Only one thing mattered.
William. And it tore me apart knowing that she hardly cared about him. He was
nothing to her but a trophy. Something to show off to guests. A toy that she
only used when it suited her. Just like me.

Over the years it became clear to me that Heather and
I wanted completely different things out of life. She wanted all this. She
wanted this life. I wanted a busload of children, I wanted chaos and mess. I
was sick with picture perfect.

A warm breeze swept over me. I breathed it in. How I
loved that hot and humid air. Even now when I was sweating like a beast and my
skin was burning I loved the feeling of the thick air embracing me. I heard
voices in the distance, cars moving, people fighting, dogs barking. I ran
through the yard and onto the dock where I stopped and inhaled the fresh air
coming from the waters smelling slightly of seaweed. I felt so incredibly
strong like I had taken something; cocaine, speed or an amphetamine. I could
begin running and keep going all night without getting the slightest bit tired
or worn out. The night was mine to roam.