Flashback to Now



Chapter 8



Sully shivered as he sat up in bed. He pulled the covers tighter around him as he remembered sitting out on the RMP with Davis' father. How he had convinced him to leave well enough alone, that Pete would be a great foster father regardless of his job. And it had worked out. For two years Liz had stayed with him. Pete had bought her a guitar and continuously sent her to visit Sully and have more lessons. Sully smiled as he remembered what a natural she was. He wondered if she still played with that half smile on her face.

Liz for one was not smiling. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She had slept restlessly for an hour until she awoke. She still hadn't fallen back to sleep. She was thinking, thinking of her two years with Pete. The two wonderful years where she had felt the most freedom from pain she had ever known. But she couldn't smile at it because of its abrupt end when her father left rehab and came home with the new wife and son. A son that wasn't his. She closed her eyes as she leaned against the back of the couch. The tears escaped her eyelids still as she began remembering everything that had happened.



Colin was the greatest thing to happen to her since she returned home with her father. Candy, his wife, didn't care much about her. She wasn't Candy's kid, why should Candy anyhow? Her dad worked, Candy worked. Liz went to school and took care of Colin, her precious baby brother. But Colin was sick, deathly ill. Colin had cystic fibrosis, and hour after hour Liz spent pounding on his back loosening up the mucus in his lungs. But Colin's beautiful brown eyes never reflecting any sadness, just endless happiness and devotion to his sister.

And yet as Liz knew then, at eight years old, all good things must come to an end. Colin began having respitory failure after failure. Liz was always the only one home. So she'd call the ambulance, crying her eyes out, and ride in the ambulance to the hospital with him. Candy would come running, yelling tearfully at Liz. "How could you take such terrible care of my baby?" Liz would sit quietly, taking the abuse. She knew it wasn't her fault. She wished Candy were smart enough to know. Candy didn't even care about Colin that much, or else she'd be the one who took care of him, bathed him, cooked for him, did his therapies. And the day came when Liz was twelve. She and Colin were lying on the fire escape again, looking at the clouds. Colin was giggling. "I see a cloud that looks like your funny head!" He'd squeal. Liz would smile. "Well that one there looks like your brain!" She'd say back lovingly. Colin would squeal in delight. But that day, his squeal turned into the ragged breathing she was so accustomed to before an attack. The breathing soon stopped however. The hospital wasn't able to revive him, either. Candy soon left. She had no one there who she cared about.

Somehow her father had stayed sober for another three months. But one day he came home with the familiar smell on him. "It's all your fault!" He raged. "First, you're born and your mother leaves us! Now Candy. You were supposed to take care of him! But you let...him...die!" The words stung more than a slap or punch would have, always in the back of her mind she had told herself she could've done something different to revive her beloved brother. Somehow, the continued verbal abuse from her father over the next year hurt her more than his hitting her ever did. She sank deeper and deeper within herself, the friends she had made while free from his grip soon began not speaking to her again. Or maybe it was the other way around. By now, Sully had moved to another apartment. The last time she had seen him Colin was still alive, when she was ten and attended Ty's funeral. It was there where she met his son, also named Ty. He was tall for a twelve year old, she remembered thinking. He seemed ok for his dad being dead. He was goofing off, teasing her about her white dress. It was apparently too pretty for his neighborhood. It was during one of his teasing tirades he tripped over his gangly limbs into the mud. When she had tried to help him up, he pulled her in, ruining her dress. She stalked off in tears.

It was one of these nights, where she wondered what good she was doing alive, when her father crept into her room. "Jen?" He whispered. He climbed into bed with her. Liz gasped and jumped out. In her panic she tripped and hit her head on the corner of the bedstand. Dizzy, she crawled to her knees, trying to get away from her drunken father. As he followed, a realization suddenly dawned in his eyes. "You're not your mother!" He yelled, almost accusingly. In his anger, he grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. Shaking her, he screamed in her face with his foul breath "Why? Why were you born? You're mother never wanted to have a kid, why did you come and ruin my marraige?" His shaking did nothing for the throbbing in her head where she had hit it. He threw her to the floor, and lifted a lamp. He brought it down on her midsection, screaming words she didn't understand. Finally, after slapping her and kicking her in the ribs, he grabbed her and hauled her up again. Seeming to change his mind of what he was going to do, he shoved he away again and turned to head back to his room. But he didn't notice her stumble backwards, and fall through the window. He never saw her. She laid on the cold concrete, unconscious.