Egomaniac

I stared at the cross on my son’s wall. It had inspired me to pray exactly a year ago. The crib I’d hung it over was gone, upgraded to a plastic toddler bed in the shape of a racecar. But I’d rehung the cross after God dropped me an early hint that I was shit out of luck wishing for my dad’s health. He died three days ago.

After the service this morning, a few people had come back to our place for lunch. I was grateful they were all gone now—I needed the silence. I also wanted to have a few drinks in peace. I swirled amber liquid around in my glass.

The door creaked open, but I didn’t bother to turn around. Arms wrapped around my waist from behind and hands clasped together, covering my belt buckle in the front.

“What are you doing in here? Beck is at Play Place with the sitter. He won’t be back for another hour or two.”

“Nothing.”

“Come out to the living room. Let me rub your shoulders.”

The last year between Alexa and me had been tough. It’s not that we argued that much, but the novelty had long since worn off of our relationship. We had three things in common: We both liked sex. Money—I earned it; she spent it. And our son. But when you’re working ten hours a day, and then nights and weekends you’re taking care of your father who is literally dying before your eyes, even sex takes a back seat.

Before my father started to decline so fast, I’d tried to take an interest in my wife’s new hobbies, give us something more in common. But other than attending a play one of her classes was putting on, it wasn’t easy. I ran lines with her, but she told me I didn’t put enough heart into my acting. That was probably because I wasn’t a damn actor. I went to watch her play practices, and she told me my presence made her think too much about her performance. Eventually, I gave up trying. Though the last few days, she’d been absolutely incredible.

I turned around and held my wife, kissing the top of her head. “Yeah. Let’s go. My shoulders are knotted. I’d like that.”

After about fifteen minutes, I’d started to relax—until Alexa brought the tension back into my neck.

“We should go to Sage’s party tonight.”

“I buried my father two hours ago. The only parent I had, considering my mother took off with her boyfriend when I was only a little older than our son. I’m not really in the mood for a party.”

“But it’s our anniversary. And it’s New Year’s Eve.”

“Alexa, I’m not going to a fucking party tonight. Alright?”

She stopped rubbing. “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

I sat up. “A jerk? You expect me to go to a party on the day of my father’s funeral? I don’t think I’m the one acting like a jerk.”

My wife huffed. Our five-year age difference felt more like twenty sometimes. “I need a party. The last few months have been depressing.”

It wasn’t like she’d helped me with my father or anything. Every weekend while I was taking care of him, she was out with her friends, usually shopping or having lunch God knows where. Her selfishness had finally gotten to me.

“Which part of the last few months was depressing? Living on Park Avenue and spending thousands on shopping every week? Or maybe it was the nanny who watched our son so you could take acting classes and go out to lunch? How about the three week-long trips you took back to Atlanta to visit your immature friends—the ones where you flew first-class and stayed at the St. Regis downtown instead of your brother’s double wide in the sticks? That must have been depressing.”

“My friends are not immature.”

I scoffed and went to reply, but decided I’d rather have another drink than continue this conversation. Out of everything I’d said, what hurt her feelings was that her friends were immature? She had a warped fucking sense of priority. I walked to the kitchen, which was open to the living room where she still sat, and poured myself another drink.

“Go to the party by yourself, Alexa.”

The sun was setting by the time I opened my eyes. Alexa had taken Beck to the mall to shop for yet another new dress, and I’d passed out on the couch after finishing my drink and the argument with her. Sitting up, I ran my fingers through my hair. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Alexa had planned to go to a party tonight. God forbid she miss a party, especially New Year’s Eve. I’d given her more credit than she deserved in the selflessness department, apparently.

My stomach growled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually eaten. Yesterday, maybe? Dinner at that Italian place in between the morning and afternoon wake sessions at the funeral parlor, I think. Rummaging through the refrigerator, I took out the platter we’d ordered for this morning and picked at the antipasto with my fingers. As I was stuffing my face, my cell phone started to ring, and at first, I ignored it. But after it immediately began ringing again, I reached over to check the caller ID. It was a local number—one that was very familiar. By the third ring, my brain had searched my internal phonebook and finally recalled why I knew it.

I’d dialed it off and on for the last few months, each time my father’s health took a turn for the worse. Lenox Hill Hospital was calling.

The cab driver screamed at me as I bolted toward the emergency room entrance. Apparently, I’d gotten out in such a rush, I’d forgotten to close the car door.

“My wife and son were in a car accident. They were brought in by ambulance,” I yelled through a round hole to the woman behind thick Plexiglas.

“Last name?”

“Jagger.”

She looked up and perked one eyebrow. “Those lips, I have to ask. Any relation to Mick?”

“No.”

She made a face, but pointed at a door to my left. “Room 1A. I’ll buzz you back.”

Blunt abdominal trauma. That’s what the doctor had told us two hours ago. Alexa had needed a few stitches in her head, but Beck wasn’t as lucky. His car seat had felt the full impact of the collision when a floral delivery van lost its brakes and ran a red light into moving crosstown traffic. He’d swerved to try to avoid the crash, but ended up colliding with the back driver’s side of Alexa’s car. Exactly where Beck had been sitting.

The doctors had assured us his injuries didn’t appear to be life threatening, but an ultrasound showed there was damage to his left kidney—at least a small nick that needed to be repaired right away. I was now waiting for the nurses to bring me consent forms for surgery. Beck slept peacefully as I sat by his bedside. Alexa was getting another neurological exam in the room next to us.

After the doctor came in and told me the risks of the procedure, the nurse brought me in a stack of forms to fill out. Medical consent, privacy act, insurance authorizations, the last form was for directed blood transfusions.

The nurse explained that there wasn’t time before Beck’s surgery to collect blood from us, so in the off-chance he needed blood, he’d be given blood from the blood bank. However, we could donate our blood and store it for him for future use, if necessary. I filled out the form to get typed and cross-matched while we waited and asked the nurse to have Alexa sign everything next door. I didn’t want to leave Beck alone in case he woke up.

The next few hours were hell while my son was in surgery. It took two hours for the assistant surgeon to come out and speak with us. He pulled a paper mask down.

“Things aren’t quite as simple as we’d initially thought. The damage to your son’s kidney was more extensive than the CT showed. Right now we’re attempting to repair the laceration, but the tear is surrounding the vascular pedicle, which contains the arteries and veins that connect it to the aorta. I need you to understand that there’s a chance we won’t be able to make the repair well enough to safely leave the kidney inside your son’s body. If that’s the case, he’ll need to undergo a partial or full nephrectomy.”

He attempted to convince us that having one kidney was perfectly fine. I knew plenty of people only had one, but if we were born with two, I wanted my son to get the benefit of both, if at all possible.

Alexa and I had barely talked, other than my making sure she was okay. I was focused on Beck, and part of me blamed her for the accident. Not that it was her fault, but if she hadn’t been so concerned with buying another damn dress to go out tonight, none of this would have happened.

“I saw a machine down by the elevators. You want some coffee?”

Alexa nodded.

When I returned with two coffees, the nurse was already talking to Alexa. “Oh, Mr. Jagger. Here’s your blood card. It has your type on it if you should ever need it. We give it to everyone we run for blood donations.”

“Thank you. Am I a compatible donor with Beck?”

“Let me see his chart.” She walked to the foot of the bed where a metal chart was hanging. As she flipped through pages she said, “You’re type O negative, so that means you can give blood to anyone.” She stopped at a pink page. “You’re lucky. It’s not often a stepfather is a universal donor.”

“I’m his father, not his stepfather.”

The nurse hung Beck’s chart back on the bed’s foot rail and returned to the clipboard she’d brought in with her. A look of bewilderment crossed her face. “You’re type O. Beckett is AB. ” She frowned. “You’re saying Beckett is your biological son?”

“Yes.”

She looked to Alexa and then to me, shaking her head. “That’s not possible. An O can’t genetically make a child with type AB blood.”

I was exhausted from one hell of a day, between burying my father and my wife and child getting into an accident. I had to have misunderstood.

“The lab made a mistake then?”

The nurse shook her head. “They’re usually pretty good…” She looked back and forth between me and my wife again. “…but I’ll have them come up and draw a fresh sample.” After that, she practically ran out of the room.

I turned to look at my wife, whose head was hanging down. “This is a mistake in the lab, right, Alexa?”

I almost vomited when she looked up. She didn’t have to say a goddamn word for me to know.

There was no mistake.

No fucking mistake!

Beck wasn’t my son.