Coast (Kick Push Book 2) (The Road 3) (15 page)

He looks down at my hand, ignores it, and then motions toward Chaz’s car. “Let’s go.”

*     *     *

I get in
my car, my thoughts running in circles as I drive the familiar streets to the hospital. I try to think back to all the encounters I’ve had with Becca’s dad, every word I’ve spoken, and I try to justify why he’s acting the way he is toward me. I understand, to a degree, but he wasn’t this bad when he was here for Chaz’s birthday and I’ve had zero contact with him since. I push aside the concern—for now, but not forever—and instead, I focus on Chaz.

Chaz is awake
when I enter the room, her nose scrunched in disgust as she prods her breakfast with her fork. She forces a smile when she looks at me, “Oh, Joshua, thank the Lord you’re here. Go get me a chocolate bar, will you?”

With a sigh, I take the seat next to her bed. “Chocolate for breakfast, Ma’am? Who are you? Tommy?”

She laughs quietly—the exact reaction I was hoping for.

“How are you feeling?”

After pushing away the tray, she says, “I’m good. I just want to get out of here.”

“I know. But a specialist is coming in soon, so hopefully we can find out more and get you back home as soon as possible.”

Her smile reaches her eyes—eyes dark and aged and wrinkled, just like the rest of her. Her skin’s dry, cracked from the hours upon hours she spends out in her garden doing the work I used to do before my skating took priority. Heaviness builds in my chest and I look down at my lap.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

She shifts in her spot, moving the pillows to get more comfortable. “You know better than to lie to me, Joshua.”

“I just wish I’d spent more time with you. That’s all.”

“Oh, hush!” She crosses her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowed at me. “I’m not dead. Not even dying. Now stop talking as if I am. It may be unfortunate for you, but I have plenty of years left. Now, let’s talk about that girlfriend of yours. Where is she?”

I rub the three days of growth on my jaw with my knuckles and choose my words carefully, knowing it’s important not to push her. “You know you’ve met Becca before…”

“I have?”

“Yeah. Your last birthday. She was there.”

Chaz sighs, her shoulders dropping. “The nurse said I might have problems remembering things…”

“It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s not important.”

Becca enters the room, her father following behind her. I turn to them, the same time Chaz gasps. “Dan, what are you doing here?”

*     *     *

I find out
from Becca that Dan is her birth grandfather—information provided by her dad who’s made an effort to openly ignore my presence. I sit with Chaz, he stands on the other side of the room, and Becca seems lost—floating between us.

We sit in silence, and we wait.

Dr. Richards arrives, introducing himself first to Chaz and then to the rest of us. She gets taken to a different room—a room only family members can access. And considering Chaz doesn’t realize she actually
has
family here, she goes it alone, something I try to fight. But she calms me quickly, tells me to stop acting like she’s on her deathbed. And so I sit in the room, the silence deafening, the walls closing in on me and I wait some more. Seconds. Minutes. Hours tick by.

Martin gets a phone call.

I get eight.

Becca’s now refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

Mom shows up, papers in hand, asking me to sign contracts to things I can’t even think about. She senses my mood, and now she’s part of the silence.

Part of the wait.

Tommy calls.

Becca smiles.

I don’t.

Because she’s too far away and I want her next to me. I want her in my arms and I want to go back to this morning when touching her didn’t seem like a crime.

Mom says, “Maybe just look at the contracts, Josh. Get your mind off things.”

“Stop.” It comes out harsh, but I don’t apologize. Right now, I don’t need her here as my manager, I need her here as my mom.

Dr. Richards returns, no Chaz in sight. “We need to talk.”

—Becca—

T
here’s a ringing
in my ears so loud it almost drowns out Dr. Richards’s words. After what Josh had said, I was expecting the diagnosis. I guess I just hadn’t prepared myself for it. And definitely not to this extent.

Frontal Lobe Dementia.

The three words replay in my head, over and over, while the ringing gets louder and louder.

Apparently, the CT scans they’d done showed signs of multiple strokes, ones that went undetected, most likely taking course in Grams’s sleep. It could’ve been happening for months, but no one was around to see her decline. Dr. Richards continues to go through the results of the tests, speaking words that I’ve only read about since Josh mentioned
dementia.
My eyes sting, tears threatening to fall and I look over at my dad, a person who’s been there through my ups and downs over the past two years. I search for comfort, for relief, but what I see is
nothing
. Not a damn thing.

“So cure it!” Josh yells, fist thumping on Grams’s food tray.

I flinch at the sound, shocked at his response.

“Josh,” his mom reprimands.

“There’s currently no cure for dementia,” the doctor says, grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and sitting opposite me.

Josh’s fists ball, his jaw tense, and I close my eyes, preparing myself for a repeat of the anger I’d once witnessed. “So
find
one.”

A sob escapes in an unfamiliar sound.
Sound.
I made a
sound
.

I choke on a gasp, my eyes snapping open to see everyone watching me, their bodies frozen, their eyes as wide as mine. Josh is the first to move, first to alter the still image my eyes alone had captured. He stands quickly, pulling me into his embrace. “It’s okay,” he whispers, his hands stroking my hair. “It’s okay.” He repeats the same words, the occasional apology thrown in, while I stifle my cries into his chest. His heart pounds against my cheek, his body trembling. Then he pulls back, holding my face in his hands while wiping my tears with his thumbs. “Look at me, Becs,” he asks. So I do. Because right now, he’s all I know. All I have. “We’re going to get through this. You and me. Together, okay?”

I nod, choosing to believe his words—even if his words are lies.

He takes my hand and leads me to the chair he’d just vacated and squats next to me, his hands on mine hiding their trembles.

“I spoke with your grandmother, Becca,” Dr. Richards says. “I needed to have the conversation with her while she was still coherent. Because of her mental state, we had to discuss a power of attorney. Do you know what that means?”

I nod at the same time Josh says, “It’s someone to speak on her behalf and make decisions for her when she can’t.” He looks over my shoulder at his mother sitting in a chair next to me. “Like you were with Dad, right?”

Suddenly, his reaction, his anger, all of it makes sense. I see the fear in his eyes the moment they meet mine. A flashback of the past—of a scared, broken boy who thought he had to take on the world alone. But he didn’t have to. Not then.
Not now
.

Dr. Richards speaks, forcing us to break our stare. “We’re going to start Chazarae on some medication. It’ll be ongoing. I’ll need to keep seeing her on a routine basis, and because of how severe the dementia is, it’ll be a good idea to look at alternative living arrangements for her.”

“Like a home?” Dad asks, finding his voice for the first time since we left the house.

“She
has
a home,” Josh says. “She’s not going anywhere.” I can hear the frustration in his tone, feel the anger simmering deep within him.

“We need to stay calm,” says his mother. I know she’s trying to help, but going by the tick in Josh’s jaw, she’s doing the opposite.

“Look.” Dr. Richards sets Grams’s chart aside and clasps his hands on his lap. “I know this is tough for you all. I often see family members of patients whose reactions are the same as yours. But there are a lot of facilities around, nice ones, that will look after her better than she can look after herself. She needs constant care and supervision.”

Josh shakes his head. “I’ll quit skating.”

“You will not,” his mom snaps.

My fingers work fast on my phone, my panic rising. “
I’ll quit college
.”

“No, you won’t,” Dad and Josh say in unison.
Great, at least they agree on something.

I type again. “
You can’t quit, Josh. You’ve worked too hard to give up skating.
”

His eyes narrow at me. “Yeah, well you’ve
survived
too much to give up college!” The loudness of his voice makes me flinch. He takes a breath, trying to find a calm. “Becca, I’ve made enough money to support her. I’ll do it.” Josh turns back to the doctor. “What do I need to do? My dad—we had to do things around the house so his wheelchair…” His voice fades, his throat bobbing with his swallow. “Do I need to fix—”

“Josh…” Ella’s hand lands on his arm. “You can’t just stop everything you have going at the moment to look after Chaz. I know you want to—”

“Shut up!” he blurts. “You weren’t there, okay? She was.
She
saved me! When you and dad turned your backs on me,
she
saved me! She practically raised Tommy, and
me
, because I had nothing. I
was
nothing. Nothing but a scared shitless little kid and she saved me. And now I need to do the same! Why don’t you get that?!”

Dad stomps toward us, but I raise my hand to stop him. Then I hold up my finger at Dr. Richards, asking him to wait. He nods once, and that’s when I stand quickly and grab Josh’s arm, forcing him to his feet. I place my hands on his back and push him to the door. The second we’re out of the room, he inhales deeply, his gaze on the ceiling and his fists in his hair. His eyes drop to mine, his lips trembling as he holds one hand over his heart, the other reaching for me. As soon as I’m in his arms, he breaks. “There’s this build up in my chest, Becs. This ache so strong it’s blurring my vision.” He sniffs once. “Or maybe it’s the guilt. Or the anger. I have no idea.”

“It’s okay,” I try to whisper, but nothing comes out.
Nothing
. Not that it matters. I doubt he would’ve heard it over the heaviness of his breaths. His chest rises and falls as he struggles with the news, and once he’s calm and his eyes are dry, he takes one more inhale through his nose. “Let’s go,” he says, taking my hand. Josh clears his throat a foot inside the room. “Just tell me what I need to do.
Please
.”

—Joshua—

Dr. Richards makes
an appointment for us at his office the next day, saying it’s a lot more “tranquil” than the hospital. I know he directed the comment at me. I don’t care. I don’t need tranquil, I need solutions. Answers. He tells us Chaz is undergoing more tests, more prods, more pokes, and that she won’t be back in the room until later that night.

The others leave. I don’t.

I wait until she’s returned and spend the entire night watching her sleep, and while I do, I wonder how it’s possible that God can do this to a woman who’s spent the majority of her life worshipping the words of the Bible.

With reluctance, I leave her mid-morning, my body aching from fatigue, and go home with just enough time to shower and change before the meeting at Dr. Richards’s office.

Becca stands from her seated position on the porch steps when I pull into the driveway. Chaz’s car is gone, meaning her dad probably is, too. And I try my hardest not to let his actions be the cause of my anger, because there’s so much more happening right now that deserves my hurt than
him.

“
Did you spend all night with Grams?”
Becca’s phone asks as she falls into step beside me.

I head for my apartment and try not to look at her. “Yep.”

“
Did you sleep?
”

“Nope.”

She pulls on my arm, forcing me to face her, then looks down at her phone and types away. “
Are you mad at me?
”

“I don’t know, Becs,” I say through a heavy exhale. I glance at her eyes—a mixture of sad and hope. “I don’t know what I am right now.” I shake my head. “Why does your dad hate me so much?”