Pictures of Egypt – Part 2

"With who we are today
could never make amends for what we've done
tainted blood
His eyes are full of love
forgive them
release them. "

From "In The Water" by Anadel

I'll spare you the details — no, that's a lie. I'll spare myself. To this day, I can't say too much about that night. The pain just cuts too deep. I still dream about what happened that night. My mind plays tricks on me, and I can see it all so clearly. Darius and Prim's faces illuminated by the oncoming headlights. Sometimes, I even hear their screams echoing over the shattering glass and twisting metal. But I know none of that is "real." I didn't see it happen... only what came after. Katniss jumping out of my truck, struggling to get down to where they were covering Prim's lifeless body with a sheet. The sound of the helicopter as it landed to whisk Darius away. The EMT's loading the young man who had hit them into the back of the ambulance. All around me there was nothing but pain, chaos, and death.

The irony of it all has never managed to escape me. Darius and Prim hadn't had so much as a drop of liquor, but that hadn't saved them. They were struck by an old football teammate of mine on his way to the party. He had already been cut off by the bartender at the local dive and decided that the party sounded like a good way to finish the evening off. In my gut, I realized even from the start that it was all my fault for throwing the party and telling Katniss to bring Prim. I hadn't been driving, but I had done it.

Prim was killed on impact. In a way, it is a mercy to know that she probably never even felt a thing. She didn't have to suffer the way that Darius did. My chest still tightens up every time I think of the long list of injuries that he had. Even worse, I hadn't known until afterward that Darius had been sick. He'd been going through dialysis for kidney failure for nearly a year before the accident, and I hadn't had a clue. He was taken by helicopter to Pittsburgh's UPMC for treatment and put on life support. Lavinia and his parents rallied by his side day and night. I suppose even from the start, we all knew he didn't have a chance.

I left town on the same morning they buried Prim, because running like the coward that I was seemed like the only option. I didn't have it in me to stand by her grave knowing that I was largely responsible for putting her there, so I packed up my things and left before my family even made it home from the service. I remember watching the town of Panem fading in my rearview and knew in my gut that I'd never come back again. I've always marveled at the cosmic unfairness of the fact that I never paid for what I did. The party at the Hob had ended, the teens scattering before the cops ever got there, so I wasn't charged for any of that. To top it all off, I hadn't supplied any alcohol to the guys who caused the accident. As far as the law was concerned, there wasn't anything I could be charged with that would hold up in court. In the eyes of everyone else in town and my own heart, though, I was guilty as sin and no better than a cold-blooded murderer. Maybe the law couldn't punish me for what I had done, but I was punishing myself. I had murdered two people and even I knew that exile wasn't nearly enough to pay for what I had done.

The frat house was empty when I came "home." A wave of stale beer scented air hit me as I opened the door, and I didn't even bother to unpack before I headed to the communal liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle of cheap whiskey. It was one of the last sober memories I have of that place. I started drinking that day and didn't stop until they kicked me out of the frat three months later. In the time between, I did some really awful shit the guys I had the nerve to call my brothers. I made a drunken pass at one of my best friends' girlfriends and then called her a cunt for turning me down. I backed another guy's car into a retaining wall thinking I was all right enough to drive to the store for more booze. Hell, I started so many fights that I can't even remember them all. Even though I never told them what I had done, I wanted them to hate me for it. They needed to hate me as much as I hated myself. I pushed and pulled until none of them gave a shit about me anymore. It wasn't a surprise when they asked for my keys, but it was a surprise when they told me to come back after I got the help I needed.

I didn't want help.

I stopped going to classes and got an apartment that made a roach motel look like a mansion and a job on the cook line at a chain restaurant. No one cared if I showed up to work drunk or if I puked on the bathroom floor instead of the toilet bowl. My days and nights bled one in to the other without much effort on my part. Each day it seemed like there was less to care about. I didn't have friends anymore, and I doubted my family knew anything about where I was or what I was doing. Somewhere along the line my mom stopped leaving messages on my phone. Her number appeared a little less under my missed calls as time passed without me calling her back.

Things could have stayed like this for the rest of my life. I've known "functioning" drunks like that. They manage to subsist on the very minimum of giving a damn for years without falling hard. I couldn't do it. It took a year, but I finally missed enough shifts at my job that I got fired. After the job went the apartment. Then the prepaid cellphone I had ran out of minutes. Any money I had didn't go to the basic things like food or shelter, not even for the gas to keep the truck I was living in running. I spent the final twenty dollars I had from my last paycheck on a couple of the cheapest bottles I could find. I had finally reached absolute rock bottom, and I didn't have the will to push myself back up. If I'd had a gun, I probably would have ended it. Instead, I shambled down Carson Street that night, blending in with the drunken college kids as they wove in and out of bars. And then I something hit me... literally.

I woke up in a hospital bed feeling like I had hit by a truck which it turns out wasn't far from the truth. Staring up at the plain white ceilings, I tried to piece together how I had gotten there but came up blank. My mouth felt like I had been chewing on sandpaper and I sat up expecting to see a nurse around. Instead, I was greeted by the sight of a straggly looking man sitting in the chair beside me. He looked like he wasn't far from a hospital bed of his own, but there was something about the way his gray eyes locked on me that was familiar.

"Can I have some water?" I managed to croak. He poured me a cup from a little plastic pitcher on the bedside table and handed it to me without any comment. Nothing had ever tasted as good as that water did. I gulped down the cup and held it out for more.

"You're gonna puke up your guts if you drink too much," he said gruffly, but still poured.

"Why should you give a fuck?" I demanded.

"Do you know who I am, boy?" he asked sharply.

I shook my head. "Someone sent by the hospital to sober me up?"

"Nah," he said with a dark chuckle. "No one here really cares that much. You're just some homeless bum that walked in front of a cab to them. They'll send a social worker down with a clean set of clothes and a list of shelters for you and send you on your way."

My head pounded and I was too sore to play games. "So then just tell me who the fuck you are so you can get the hell out of here."

"I'm your Uncle Haymitch," he grumbled. "I woulda thought the family resemblance would have given me away."

I remembered him then. He was my dad's half-brother. The last time I'd seen him was my fifth birthday party. He'd shown up so stinking drunk that he'd picked up a Barbie doll as a present because he actually thought I was a girl. Then to top it off, he'd puked his guts out in the back yard while everyone was singing happy birthday to me. I remembered him as a pathetic drunk, and just like that I saw the family resemblance he was talking about.

Sighing, I laid my head on the pillow and tried to will him away. "How did you know I was here?"

"The hospital called your Mom, who then called me. She seems to have hope that I can help you dry your ass out," he added in a voice that told me he didn't share her optimism.

I chuckled. "You? She's not afraid we'll just become drinking buddies?"

"I've been sober for six years and four months," he stated with something akin to pride in his eyes.

"The four months really make a difference," I scoffed.

"You're damn fucking right they do, kid. If you're lucky enough maybe you'll have some days and months under your belt too someday, but I don't think you're ready for that yet." With those words, he picked up his jacket and left the room. I felt numb as I watched him go. He'd been right when he said I wasn't ready.

A few minutes later, the social worker Haymitch had predicted would come did with a file folder in hand and set of dollar store sweats. My mild concussion wasn't reason enough for them to keep me. The bed I was occupying would be go to a person who actually needed it and could pay the bill at the end of their stay. It was just like he said: I was just some bum to these people.

On the way out of the hospital, a tall brunette nurse waved me over to the front desk. "You're Gale, right?" she asked.

I nodded. "Look if this about where to send the bills, I told the lady I really don't have an address right now."

"Nope, it's not that. Haymitch left something for you," she riffled through a few papers on her desk before grabbing a large manila envelope.

I stared down at my own name written in chicken scratch on the front. "Thanks."

"Look," she drawled with a heavy sigh, "I know Haymitch well enough by now to know that even when he says he's giving up on someone he's not. He may be an asshole, but he's probably the only one who gives a flying crap about what happens to you right now. Don't mess that up."

"What the hell do you know about?" I grumbled.

"You're not the only one with problems," she said coldly. "Now, get the fuck out of here." She stared me down with hard brown eyes that actually sent me taking a step back. I did as she told me too, but before I did I dropped my gaze to her name badge. It read J. Mason, R.N. I made a note right then and there that if our paths ever crossed again, I would not piss her off.

I opened the envelope outside on a park bench, hoping that inside was at least enough cash for something from a dollar menu and a bus ride back to the truck. I got my wish. There was a hundred dollars held together with a paper clip holding a card with his number and address, but once I saw what the rest of what was inside, I didn't care about the money anymore. My dad's face stared out at me from a photo. I'd left all the pictures I had of him back home. People said I looked like him, but I only saw the differences between us. He had been a good man and I was a loser. I forced myself to zero in on his face. He was so young looking—sixteen maybe—with his seventies style bowl cut and ratty KISS t-shirt. It took me a minute to notice that he wasn't the only one in the picture. To his left sat my mother with her jean jacket on and Farrah Fawcett hair, and to his right sat a person that I almost didn't recognize. Haymitch had at least a week's worth of stubble on his jaw and his hair pulled back into a ponytail. Unlike my Mom and Dad, he wasn't smiling. There was a dead look in his eyes, and he clutched a beer bottle in his hand. This was the picture of the beginning of his fall, I could see that much. I think it was the look I must have had in my eyes when I left Panem. Not liking what I saw, I flipped to the next picture.

I'd never seen the woman in the next picture before. A beautiful blonde with bright blue eyes and a million megawatt smile gazed at whoever was behind the camera in the way that every man hopes to be looked at some day. I studied her features and campy blue and yellow waitress uniform, trying to figure out why this photograph mattered. I squinted until I could make out "Maysilee" on her name tag. I kind of wonder if the picture got slipped into the stack, and flipped to the next. All the rest seemed to be of happier times. My Dad and Haymitch are in most of them together, somehow looking almost like twins despite their six year age gap. I'd never actually thought that they'd ever been close, and I guess this was Haymitch's way of showing me what he'd left behind.

Suddenly, I knew what to do with the money. I bought a prepaid phone card from the gas station and filled a gas can before going back to my truck. I tilted the driver's seat as far back as it would go and dialed a number that I hadn't called in months.

"Hello, this is Hawthorne residence," a voice sounding very much like my own answered. Rory had obviously hit a spurt since I had talked to him last, and I had to force myself not to hang up.

"Hey, little man," I managed to grind out.

The line went quiet for a minute and I almost thought he hung up on me. "Oh, it's just you," he said finally. "I was hoping you wouldn't call."

"Look, Rory..."

"Save it," he cut me off. "Mom wants to talk to you."

I let out a sigh of relief that she was home and gripped the phone a little tighter. "Mom?"

"Oh, thank God," she sobbed through the line, making my own eyes sting. "I've been so worried. And when the hospital called... I kept praying I wouldn't get a call."

I was sixteen when she got the call that my Dad had died. I could still see her in my mind's eye half-sitting, half-laying on the kitchen floor crying with the phone clutched in her hand like if she squeezed hard enough she could stop the news. The kids were in the other room watching a movie, and I was the only one who saw her break down. And years later there I was, being the one to cause her more pain. Part of me wished right then that the cab had killed me.

"I'm all right, Mom," I whispered.

"No, Gale. You're not all right. You haven't been for a very long time, and I don't know how to help you. My God, I don't think I can," she cried, sounding even worse than before. I'd never heard her sound so hopeless before. Not even when Dad died.

"I want to come back. I need to figure this out," I said with as much fake optimism as I could cram into my voice. "I can leave now and be home by tonight."

"Don't come home."

"What?" My heart sank in my chest, and I prayed that I hadn't heard that right. I must have missed part of it. Don't come home without picking up a gallon of milk. Don't come home and forget your laundry. I'd heard that kind of thing before. There absolutely had to be more to this. My Mom would never tell me not to come home.

"Lord Jesus, help me. Don't come home, Gale," she told me between ragged breaths.

"But, Mom, what else can I do?" I begged. The tears that had threatened to fall for the last few minute streamed unchecked down my face. "I don't have any place to go."

"Your Uncle Haymitch says you can stay with him if you get help," she answered with an audible gulp. "He can help you in ways that I can't right now. Could you give it a chance?"

Anger. Resentment. Bitterness. Self-hatred. Emotions raged through me so hard that I thought I was going to throw up whatever remaining hospital oatmeal still sat in my gut. I hung up the phone without answering and let it drop to the dirty floor mat at my feet. My fists pounded into the steering wheel until they bled. I swore and yelled until my throat was raw. I couldn't go home. My own mother didn't even want the monster that I had become. What else was there for me to do?

When I was done, I wiped my face on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and stared into the rearview mirror at my own reflection. My face had changed so much since that night at the Hob that I could barely believe it was me. I looked exactly like what Haymitch had called me back at the hospital: a bum. I was a stinking drunk lowlife with dirty hair and a patchy beard that didn't do much to cover my gaunt, haggard face. But what really hit me was my eyes. Just like his had been, mine were dead.

I had a choice to make: I could get help or I could die.