Welcome Home
August 24, 2007
Finally.
It feels like I’ve been in this hospital for half my life. It’s funny, because I’ve actually been here for longer than I can even remember. I’ve only been conscious of two weeks in here, which isn’t much at all compared to the previous two months spent in this bed. At least for the last two weeks I’ve been awake.
But somehow, being awake doesn’t actually make a hospital stay any more enjoyable. Go figure.
Needless to say, I couldn’t be more excited to finally be getting out of here. Kate decided to stay home and clean – she claims the house is a mess, but I doubt it – so I guess they drew straws for who got to come pick me up, and Taylor drew the short one. I’ve been advised to take it easy and not drive myself around for a while, and I can guarantee that’s going to get annoying fast.
In fact, the list of things I can and can’t do is so long that I have a feeling it isn’t really going to feel like I’ve left the hospital at all. I’m sure I’ll have my family watching over my shoulder at every turn to make sure I’m abiding by the doctor’s orders. That will just make it extra fun.
My last meal at the hospital is a breakfast that actually almost tastes like real food – biscuits, gravy and sausage with a big glass of orange juice. I asked Betsy if she could see about slipping me some vodka to liven that orange juice up a bit, and she didn’t seem to find it very funny. Oh well.
I’m just finishing up my breakfast when Taylor shuffles into the room, barely pausing to knock on the door on his way in. Why do they keep doing that? The door is open nearly all the time; I promise I can see anyone standing on the other side of it. I guess it’s some courtesy thing, but it still baffles me.
“Ready to get out of here?”
“You have no fucking idea,” I reply, pushing back the food tray and sitting up in the bed.
Taylor tosses his shoulder bag – which he likes to remind everyone is not a purse, even though it totally is – into the chair by my bed and begins to dig through it. “I’ve got all your stuff here. The clothes you had on in the wreck were pretty much ruined, but I’ve got your wallet and cell phone. And a change of clothes since I figure you’re probably getting sick of those scrubs.”
“Once again, you’ve read my mind.”
He hands me the clothes and shuts the door to give me some privacy. Then he takes it a step further and actually turns his back to me as though he hasn’t seen me without my clothes a million times before. I guess things really are over between us if he can’t even look at me while I change clothes. As hurt as I am, I don’t have the energy to call him out on it.
“Alright. Let’s go.” I grab my wallet and cell phone and tuck them into my pockets. It feels good to wear normal clothes again, that’s for sure.
Taylor grabs his bag and follows me out of the room, keeping a safe distance behind me as I make my way to the nurses’ station.
“Hey, Betsy,” I say, leaning over the counter. “Did you hear? They’re letting me out today.”
“I did hear something about that. We’re all gonna miss your… charming sense of humor.”
Taylor snorts out a little laugh that he tries to cover up with a cough, and I’m tempted to turn around and kick him. Instead, I just give him a dirty look.
“Well, just sign these papers and we’ll let you go. You’ve already checked in with Dr. Ramos and Dr. Johnston?”
“Yup,” I say with a nod, taking the clipboard from her and scanning over its contents. It’s just a bunch of legal stuff, insurance bullshit and all that good stuff. I sign my name to the line on each page. “They said I’m as normal as I’m gonna get, so they can’t keep me around any longer. Or something like that.”
As we walk away from the nurses’ station, Taylor leans in close to me. “You’ve really made friends here, huh?”
“I make friends everywhere,” I reply with a grin. “Betsy’s just sad I’m not single.”
As soon as I say it, I regret it. Every time Taylor and I talk about my marriage, or his, it causes an argument. Even if it’s just a casual conversation, it always devolves into this awkward… thing. We just can’t talk about it. If we could get away with pretending neither marriage had ever happened, I think we would. At least, I think I would. I don’t know what Taylor wants anymore, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.
Just as I expect, the ride to my house is full of awkward silence. Even the noise of the radio doesn’t fill up the silence sufficiently. It’s just this tangible thing between us, this awkward distance that started before the accident, and has only gotten worse afterward.
I remember when Taylor was gone, though. I know it was just a dream, but it feels so real. Even though he’s still alive now, he feels just as gone from my life as he did in that dream. I could reach out and touch him right now, and I’d feel him beneath my hand, but I wouldn’t really feel him. There would be no closeness between us.
I would almost rather be dead.
I’m not going to kill myself, though. The hope that brought me through that dream, that made me wake up and come back into this world, is still with me. The hope that somehow, some way, this can be fixed. I woke up so that I could get my life back. My life has three important things in it – music, Taylor and Kate, in some variation of that order. One of those is missing right now, but I know in time I’ll get him back. I have to keep that hope.
It takes me by surprise when I realize that Taylor hasn’t taken the right turn to go to my house. Instead, he’s heading toward our parents’ home. I wonder if he just did it by accident – he lives just a few streets away from them, so maybe instinct took over and he didn’t think about where he was going.
“Tay? That’s not the way to my house.”
He barely glances over at me. “I know. I told mom I would stop by and pick up the pie she baked for you.”
I roll my eyes. Figures. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t keep us there for a full lunch, then send us both home with our arms piled down with pies of every flavor imaginable. It’s just a few minutes drive to the house our parents’ live in, just barely outside the nearest suburb, set back from the road and surrounded by what passes for a forest here in Oklahoma.
Taylor pulls his brand new car – I guess I totaled the old one – up to the gate slowly and punches in the security code. The gate swings open and I’m surprised to see the driveway full of cars. Taylor made it sound like we were just making a short stop here, but it looks like the entire family has done the same.
And then I see it. A big flashy banner over the front door, spelling out “WELCOME HOME, ZAC” in huge sparkly letters.
They’re throwing me a damn welcome home party.
“You can’t actually make me go in there,” I say, crossing my arms and pouting like a child.
“What’s the big deal?” Taylor asks, unbuckling himself and grabbing his bag from the back seat. “Did you expect them not to make a fuss about you getting to come home?”
“I guess you’re right, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Taylor gives me a sympathetic look and for a second, I think he’s going to reach for my hand, but then he seems to think better of it. “I know. If you want to fake sick so I have to take you home early, I’ll understand.”
Reluctantly, I step out of the car and follow Taylor up the driveway. I can’t help the urge to step behind him and hide while he rings the doorbell. The door flies open to reveal Mom, a smile on her face and a streak of flour on her cheek that suggests she has spent the entire day baking.
“Taylor, you were supposed to call when you left the hospital with him!” She scolds him, but still stands on her tiptoes to hug him.
Before I can figure out a way to make my retreat, she’s shoving Taylor aside to get to me. There’s really no use fighting it, so I just hug her back and try to make the appropriate noises in response to all her questions and comments about how I’m doing, how much they’ve all missed me, and so on. Under the best of circumstances, there’s no getting a word in with her, and this is definitely a unique sort of circumstance.
Finally, mom backs away from me and gives me a firm look. “Don’t you ever scare us like that again, Zachary. Now, let’s go on inside. Everyone’s here waiting to see you.”
Just as she said, everyone is indeed waiting for me inside the house. It’s a large house, and it still seems filled to the brim with people. I guess that’s just because we’ve got such a huge family. Once you add in our wives, Taylor’s three kids and Isaac’s new baby, and a handful of other relatives, there’s really not much room to breathe or even think, no matter how big the house may be.
Kate rushes to my side as soon as I walk into the living room, but I can see how she still hesitates before wrapping her arms around me. “You’re not mad, are you? We wanted it to be a surprise… that’s why I told you I was staying home to clean.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not mad. Just surprised. So I guess you succeeded.”
There really isn’t much time for meaningful conversation after that. Mom has, not surprisingly, prepared a huge meal that can only be likened to the kind of feast she usually lays out for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess my return home is a pretty big deal. I don’t know why that seems odd to me, but somehow it does. Anyway, we’re all sort of spread out around the house, stuffing our faces, so there’s really not much conversation happening, aside from a lot of meaningless chit chat. I’m mostly spared from answering any awful questions, aside from a lot of repetitive stuff about how I’m healing and how bad the hospital food was.
After my second piece of pie, eaten in a secluded corner of the living room, I wander back into the kitchen to toss my dish in the dishwasher and find something to drink. I know there’s no point in hoping for alcohol, but anything at all would be good right now. I don’t even notice until I round the corner that the room isn’t empty.
“I know, but how much longer can we delay this album? The fans are getting restless.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ike, but our drummer is recovering from a coma. Fuck the fans.”
“I think we’ve already done enough of that, haven’t we?”
“You know what? Fuck it. I don’t even care if we put the album out or not.”
I clear my throat to let them know I’m there, since neither of them seems to have noticed. “Glad to know you feel that way.”
“Zac, I didn’t –”
I don’t stick around to hear the rest of it. I slam my empty plate down on the table and storm out of the room. I’m not really sure where I’m planning to go, since there’s really nowhere in the house to hide. Despite the fact that I’m the guest of honor, no one actually seems to notice as I slip through the crowd and up the stairs. I figure if there’s one place to hide, it’s upstairs in the bedroom Taylor and I used to share.
The room looks almost exactly the same as it did when we lived here, thanks to Mom’s nostalgic streak and refusal to accept that her “little boys” have actually grown up. Even the beds are still made and the same Led Zeppelin poster still hangs over mine. Sure, there’s a little bit of dust over everything and the closet and drawers are probably empty, but otherwise the room almost looks lived in. It’s kind of eerie.
I imagined that everything was suspended in motion like this room, waiting for me to wake up again. But I guess the truth is that I was really just a burden. At least, it sure seems that Isaac and Taylor feel that way, even if they can’t agree about what to do with me. I’ve never felt more like a pawn, being picked up and moved around whichever way they want me to go. Yet, at the same time, I feel like they don’t even care at all and wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t on the game board at all.
I sit down on my old bed, and my mind is filled with memories of the years Taylor and I spent together in this room. Since Isaac was older, he managed to talk our parents into giving him his own room, while the two of us still had to share. But we didn’t mind. We were always closer, anyway, so it felt right to keep sharing a bedroom. When our innocent cuddling became less than innocent, we were very thankful for the privacy. I can’t help laying back on the bed and letting myself get lost in memories of the shameful things we did in this very bed.
A knock at the door pulls me from my pathetic, self-indulgent thoughts and causes me to quickly sit upright. “Zac? Can we talk?”
“Probably. That seems to be what we’re doing right now.”
I don’t have to look up to know that Taylor has rolled his eyes at that one. No one seems to like my sense of humor lately.
He sits down on the bed next to me, but keeps his distance. It takes every bit of my self control not to move in closer to him. “Look, what you heard me and Ike talking about… you know we’re not making any decisions about the band without you, right?”
“How would I know that? I’ve been in a fucking coma, Tay. For two months. And damn near another month of everyone treating me like I’m so fragile. So really, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you guys had all kinds of stuff planned without me.”
“You really think we would plot stuff behind your back? Are you that fucking insecure? That needy?”
I can feel my blood boiling. He might be right, but I still don’t like the accusations. “Yes, Taylor. That’s it. It couldn’t possibly be that I feel left out because I was. It’s hard to leave me in when I’m practically a vegetable. Not that you’re paying that much attention to me now, either.”
He smirks. “I knew it. It’s about me. You’re so hung up on this… this thing we had, that you can’t handle the thought that I’m not constantly glued to your side.”
“If that’s what you want to believe, then knock yourself out.”
“Well, it’s over between us, okay? It should have been over a long time before it really was. We both know that, but I’m the only one willing to admit it.” He stands up and starts to walk out of the room, then stops and takes one last look back at me. “I would have thought the fact that it almost killed you should have been the first hint that this needed to stop. But I guess you’re too stubborn. So I’m saying it for you. We’re over, Zac.”
He walks out of the room before I can even think of a reply, leaving me on my old bed, speechless. Once, a little over a year ago, I thought I wanted us to be over. Now I’m not so sure, but it seems I don’t even get the choice anymore.