"I want you to go home and get some rest, Son. I told Audrey the same thing."
Steve sat at Nicholas' bedside in the recovery bay connected to the CCU, the area sectioned off by a curtain that gave them a little bit of privacy. "But what if something happens or-"
Nicholas interrupted Steve, neither the weakness in his body nor the drowsiness left behind by the anesthesia able to stop him from reaching for his son's hand, each exhausted gaze meeting the other. "Then your phone will ring. I'll be sleeping, and that's what you need too."
"But this isn't about me, Dad. It's about you."
"Well, of course it is, and that's why you should do what I want."
Seeing the small smile on Nicholas' face, Steve's eyes began to water as he laid his head on his dad's shoulder, the position giving him a view of the bandage covering the incision that ran down the center of his chest. "Okay. I'll go home and try to sleep. But I need you to do something for me too."
Nicholas put his hand on the back of Steve's head as he tried to offer a little comfort to his son, knowing he was struggling. "Anything, Steve. As long as it doesn't involve me getting up out of this bed. Pretty sure I'm not up for that just yet."
Steve ignored the joke as he focused on the warmth that came from Nicholas' body, the presence of the oxygen mask, IV tubes, and heart monitor serving as proof that he remained very much alive. "I want us to just be quiet, Dad. So I can feel you and listen to you breathe. I need to have that."
Nicholas only nodded, immediately honoring Steve's wish for silence as he moved his head so that it touched his son's, his eyes closing at the same time.
Steve willed the moment to sweep him up into itself as he concentrated on the life he could hear and feel, seeing this as the memory he would take home with him.
Soda pushed open the door of the hospital chapel, not surprised to see Steve in a pew near the front. Slipping inside, he joined his best friend, both men now sitting in the mostly dark sanctuary lit up only by a set of electric candles. "I thought I might find you here. Audrey went home. Mallory and Samuel too. I convinced Liv to let me be the one to come check on you. Not that it took a whole lot of effort, honestly."
Steve felt Soda's arm draw him near, resting his head on his friend's chest. "I can't stop being scared, Soda. It feels like that'll never go away."
"It will, Stevie. I bet gettin' some sleep will help a lot too."
"I wish I could go back to worrying about my wedding night. That seems so much easier now."
"Yeah, I'm sure it does. Definitely a shift in perspective."
Steve leaned a little more heavily against Soda as he thought back to the conversation he'd had with Samuel earlier, recalling the words that had so readily flowed from his lips. "If I tell you something about what's happening in my head, do you promise not to get upset with me over it?"
"Of course. How could I get upset with you?"
"I don't know. I just- I think my mind is slipping back into an old pattern."
"What old pattern?"
"The one where I blame myself for things. Where life feels out of control, so I use guilt to cope."
Soda took a few moments to reply as he grappled with both empathy and sudden fear, the words from his friend making him want to keep him talking as much as he possibly could. "Okay. So that means you feel guilty about somethin' to do with everything tonight then?"
"Yeah. I sort of said it to Samuel right after my dad got out of surgery, and that's when I realized I'm doing what I did before."
"Which means what exactly? What are you blamin' yourself for?"
"Not knowing. Not seeing that my dad wasn't okay. For being so focused on the wedding that I missed what was happening right in front of me."
"Buddy, you couldn't have known he was going to have a heart attack. There was no way-"
"But there had to be something, Soda. I know my dad better than anybody else does, and there had to be signs of what was coming."
"Maybe there were, but only he could know that. And it's not like he's had heart problems before, so neither of you would've had a reason to suspect this. Things were out of your control, Stevie, and it's okay to accept that as it is."
"But how can I? How can I accept it when I was with my dad all day and..."
Soda was gentle as he guided Steve's head away from his chest so that the two could make eye contact. "And what? What's makin' you feel like you've gotta be responsible somehow?"
"I just am. I know I am." Steve bowed his head, as if in prayer, his hands then moving up to cover his face. "Listen to me. I'm a counselor, yet I'm doing what I'd tell anybody not to. I'm over here sabotaging myself just because I think my dad's symptoms must've started at the wedding. He was lying there telling me we should still go on our honeymoon right before they took him to surgery. He tried so hard to make me believe he was okay. He was in pain and denying how bad off he felt. Like I could ever fall for that. Like I'd walk out of the CCU and leave town when he's sick."
Soda noticed the edge in Steve's voice, recognition dawning on him as he touched his friend's arm. "I think I see what's going on now."
"You do?"
"Yeah. You're angry at your dad, and it's less painful to blame yourself than it is to face that. You could've lost him tonight, so the last thing you want is to be mad at him. I'm sure it ain't somethin' you want him to know right now either."
Steve stared at the electric candles at the front of the chapel, hands folded underneath his chin as he watched their artificial flames dance within the darkness. "No. It's not. I'm not sure if turning the anger on myself is less painful. Just easier. Simpler. Safer."
"I get how you could say that. But it seems more dangerous to me. The guilt can do a lot more damage. Especially since you didn't do anything wrong. You don't even know for sure if your dad had symptoms at the wedding. Maybe he didn't. Or maybe they were so subtle he didn't pay any attention to them himself. Either way, it ain't possible for what happened to be your fault. I hope you can let go of that before it gets a chance to eat you up inside. You've fought so hard to have peace, and I don't want to see you lose it."
Steve's gaze shifted away from the candles, landing on Soda just as he felt the other man's hand close around his own. "I know. I don't want to lose it either. But it's like this guilt is part of me. In my nature. And I don't know if that's something I can ever undo."
"Maybe not completely. 'Cause we both know where it comes from. But you know how to manage those feelings too. You're sittin' here and tellin' me about them, and you can see how they fit into your old pattern. So I think that means you still have what you need to get through them."
Steve grinned a little bit at the same time his eyes filled with tears. "I've really got you spinning in circles here, huh?"
"Why do you say that?"
Steve looped his arm around Soda, then laid his head on his shoulder. "Because you're talking like you have so much confidence, but just a minute ago, you almost sounded disappointed in me. I'm sorry if you are."
"Of course I'm not disappointed in you, Stevie. There ain't even a reason for me to be." Soda leaned his head on top of Steve's as he held on to his friend, wanting more than anything to give him the serenity that had so often eluded him in life. "It's just like before, you know."
"What is?"
"Us. Gettin' each other through stuff. Bein' honest. Transparent. We know how much it helps. I am confident that you'll be okay too. I didn't say what I did about the guilt bein' dangerous 'cause I'm disappointed or anything like that. I said it 'cause I don't want you to see it as a safe place to go in your head, even though it's familiar. And I was speakin' from my heart as somebody who knows how much your dad loves you."
"Present tense."
"Huh?"
"You said 'loves.' My dad is still with me. He's alive. He didn't die."
"That's right, buddy. He's gotta recover, but he ain't going anywhere." Soda felt a slight tremble come from Steve, the movement leading him to soothe his friend further. "Everything's going to be okay. Just remember that and listen to my voice. Breathe in what's around you."
Steve pressed his face into Soda's shoulder, his spirit finally able to absorb the truth of what he'd witnessed. "I saw him. He made it through. The heart attack didn't kill him."
"And, when you're ready and he's healed up some, you can talk to him about this stuff. I'm sure he'd like the chance to tell you nothin' was your fault." Soda's eyes moved up, staring at the ceiling of the chapel as he rubbed circles on Steve's back. "Then you'll have lots of comfort from him too, and both of you will get to be grateful together."
The bright red numbers on the digital clock stared back at Steve as his eyes opened to see the 6:08 that told him he'd been asleep for roughly three and a half hours. He and Olivia had gotten home from the hospital just after 2:30 a.m., the couple falling in bed beside each other with only sleep on their minds.
Steve turned over to his other side, where his wife lay with her back to him, her dark hair tied in a loose braid. He nuzzled closer to her, his arm wrapping around her underneath the covers as she slept. Closing his own eyes once again, Steve tried to shut out the thoughts that reminded him of every fear which had transpired in the past several hours. He remembered how, as a teen, he had recognized his dad's mortality at the same time he'd been grieving the suicide of his abuser. He remembered how his greatest distress had come about when he'd seen Nicholas weak with emotion and panic.
Finding that he couldn't stop the flood of memories that had been triggered by the recent trauma, Steve sat up and rubbed his eyes, more awake than he wished to be at such an early hour. He stared at Olivia, the woman who'd chosen to share her life with him despite everything she knew about his past, leaning down to kiss her before he slid out of the bed in search of relief for the restlessness that he wasn't sure how to cure.
Soda left the bed he'd shared with Mallory for the night, hearing another series of knocks as he put on a t-shirt and shorts, then padded toward the door of his apartment. "I'm comin'. I'm comin'." He opened the door to find Steve there, his best friend pacing near the stairs railing. "Stevie? Why ain't you at home sleepin'? It's barely even 8:00."
Steve stopped pacing just long enough to speak, his body shaking with nervous energy. "I know. I couldn't sleep anymore. So I had some coffee then came here. Liv's still asleep, and we got home so late that I didn't want to wake her up. So I left her a note. But I didn't know what else to do or where to go and-"
Soda reached for Steve's shoulder as he interrupted the spiel. "You're always welcome here. Just come in and sit with me a while."
Steve began to pace again, hands clutching at his hair. "I know I should be at home with my wife. Not here bothering you or expecting you to do more than you've done in the past eleven years. But I came anyway. I came because my mind won't stop. This is my first whole day of being married, and my head is stuck in the past, like I'm a messed up teenager all over again."
Soda heard the deep breaths that were coming from Steve as the other man stopped and leaned on the stair railing. He reached for his friend's shoulder once more, his grip firmer this time around. "Steve, you ain't a bother to me. Ever. Please come inside so we can figure this out. It's okay if you're struggling right now. You've just gotta take it one second at a time. Anything I do is the same as it's always been because I want to be there for you, buddy. You know that or you wouldn't be standin' at my door."
"Yeah. But damn, Soda. I just feel like I'm trying to swim in a bunch of feelings I never saw coming, and I can't tell one from the other anymore."
"Which sounds like a start." Soda nudged Steve toward then through the door. "So what's been happening since we all left the hospital last night?"
Steve sat down in the living room he'd shared with Soda for nearly seven years, the space one in which the pair had been more intimate than typical roommates. "I slept for a few hours, but I woke up with so many things going on in my head that I just couldn't relax enough to go back to sleep. If I dreamed at all, I don't remember it."
Soda went down the short hallway and closed his bedroom door before returning to the living room, where he sat beside Steve, legs crossed on the couch cushion. "Sorry. I'm listenin'. But Mallory's asleep in there. "
"You think she's going to be moving in?"
"Maybe. Once I put a ring on her finger. Anyway, what things are in your head? Do you mean you're thinkin' a lot about your dad?"
"Yeah. But it's more complicated than that. My past is mixed up in it." Steve grabbed one of the pillows from the couch, squeezing it as he did what he knew had always worked and put the connections he'd made into words. "Everything I'm feeling now, it's not all only because of my dad's heart attack. The guilt I told you about and even some of the fear is from a long time ago."
"You did say the guilt is from an old pattern."
"I did, but I think it's deeper than that. Before I know it, it'll have been twenty years since I was abused, and here I am still fighting the battles from it. What happened yesterday is hard enough, and this makes it so much worse. Like the pain is amplified one hundred times over."
"Okay. So take your old advice then. Give it a voice. What about your past is caught up in the stuff that's going on now? What's it makin' you remember?"
Steve rested his chin atop the pillow, his eyes closing in response to fatigue, as well as the emotional vulnerability that he'd so readily embraced. "How I was afraid that I would cause my dad to die somehow. My brain was so poisoned by the thought that I made Clara die that I was scared I'd lose him too if I didn't do everything exactly right. I think that's why blaming myself is so easy now. The foundation was already there and has been for years."
"Sounds like you've got quite a grasp on where things are comin' from then, Stevie. A real specific one."
"Yeah. I'm good at making the connections, but I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse."
"A blessing for sure. If you couldn't do that, you'd still have those feelings without bein' able to understand the whole reason. I think we both know how much tougher that is."
Steve felt Soda's hand as it brushed the back of his head, that small amount of contact helping him continue with the rest of what he wanted to say. "I was eighteen and realizing my dad was a human who could die. But the scariest thing I actually had to see was him struggling with what happened to me. I saw him cry. I saw him panic. I saw him weighted down with guilt and regret. At the time, that was the worst sight I could imagine."
"And yesterday, you saw him struggling with somethin' even scarier. Not just emotions, but a thing that could kill him."
"Yeah. Exactly. Death wasn't some abstract thing. It was concrete and real and staring me right in the face. I can't even believe now that I got married yesterday. It feels like another lifetime ago or even like it must've happened to somebody else. I looked at Olivia earlier and just couldn't comprehend her sleeping there next to me as my wife."
"I bet you're still in some shock here, buddy. So it's cloudin' how you see everything else."
"Or I'm getting so disconnected that my perception is just wrecked. For my mind to protect itself from what happened to my dad, it has to block out the entire day." Steve felt a quick surge of energy that led him to get to his feet, resuming the motions of pacing that he'd been caught up in before he came into the apartment. "But blocking it out won't help me. We both know that can't save me from feeling everything that's already surfacing."
Soda remained on the couch, watching Steve move back and forth, his best friend going so fast at times, it almost made him dizzy. "Stevie, I don't think-"
"Would you come to the hospital with me, Soda?"
"Well, sure, but it's pretty early for visiting hours, ain't it?"
"They start at nine. We can wait around for a little bit if we need to. But I want to be there with my dad as much as possible. It's the best I can do for him." Steve slowed down, his feet pausing next to one of the boxes he'd yet to move over to his new place with Olivia. Kneeling down, he opened the top to find some framed photographs, one of which was of him with Nicholas on the day he'd graduated college almost three years earlier. Steve picked it up as he studied their smiles, father and son both not only happy, but also triumphant. "And it's the most I can do for myself."