Chapter Thirty-Seven

Mikel

Mikel rolls his head over to the side, trying to recall what he was just doing a moment ago. It seems he lost his train of thought and when his vision clears, he finds himself staring at a few empty bottles of whiskey a few inches in front of his face. He is laying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, and it feels like his entire house is being hurled through the air with him inside of it.

His mouth and mustache feel all wet. When he wipes his face off with his forearm, it smells of vomit. When he tries to roll over to hurl again, he crunches over a few empty cans and hits his head on the coffee table. It makes him flinch and then remembers what happened. Two gunshots are all he heard, and then there were the bodies.

He’s just wanting to black out and forget everyone and everything that happened. The sight of his mangled friends won’t leave him, and that’s why he’s been drinking like this. Never had he imagined such a thing could happen. He knows he can be a son of a bitch sometimes, but he didn’t have any of this coming. He didn’t deserve this. The booze is either going to make it go away, or it’s going to make him go away, and he doesn’t care which.

As soon as he manages to steady himself up on his hands and knees, he spots a half-full fifth of bourbon right there on the table. He grabs hold of it and waves it about in front of himself, waiting to gain enough balance to drain it.

“If I can still see your fuckin’ face Ray, I ain’t done drinkin’.”

He raises the bottle out in a toast to his life-long friend, closes his eyes and tips it up. He snaps his eyes open again when he feels the bottle come out of his hands. He turns his eyebrows down and finds that it’s gone.

“What the hell…”

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Instead of there being a bottle in front of him, it’s Valerie, the last person on earth he wants to see. With a very sad chuckle, he figures that of course he’d be punished even more. He should’ve known that feeling sorry for himself wasn’t going to be nearly enough penance.

Instead of the barrage of kicks that he was expecting, he finds himself being picked up and sat back down in the chair he had tipped over in. Valerie stands up another chair and sits right in front of him. When he tries to look away, she holds his head up in both her hands.

“Mikel, you’re a real piece of shit for what you pulled, you know that, but I don’t have the luxury of hating you this time, alright. We’re all going to pull through this, together. Clarice needs you now more than ever, and I need you to be there for her too.”

He starts bawling like a child, wishing he could just be dead already. “How can I, after what I’ve done? I’ve got nobody, they’re all dead ‘cause o’ me.”

“You’ve got Clarice, Mikel, she loves you, and you’ve got your own family now.”

“I don’t have a family! Clarice doesn’t even love me anymore.” He finally stops sniffling when his breathing calms down.

“Yeah, she does Mikel, and you’re gonna have a family. Clarice is…” when the weight of his head gets a lot heavier in her hands, and he starts drooling, her eyes go wide. He’s in trouble.

When Mikel wakes up, he can barely open his eyes. The light in the room is so bright, it hurts like hell to try. While his eyes adjust, he recognizes Clarice and Valerie’s voices in the background, but not the third woman’s. From what she is telling them, he had come close to finishing himself off. If Valerie hadn’t come by when she did, he wouldn’t have made it much longer.

Upon noticing he’s awake, Clarice sits on the edge of the hospital bed at his side. Valerie puts her hand on her shoulder and leans in to speak to her. She steps out of the room along with the nurse, giving them some privacy.

“I don’t think he’s gonna remember anything, so you should tell him again yourself. He could probably use a little encouragement right now.”

Clarice takes his other hand that doesn’t have a bunch of tubes in it and holds it in hers. “Mikel, we don’t hate you, none of us do, ok. Everything’ll be alright, we're going to be a family. You’re going to be a father.”

He exhales deeply with the magnitude of what she’s told him and swallows hard, trying to not cry. His eyes water up real good, but he holds it together. “I’ll never let you down again. I promise, none of you, never again.”