Chapter 38
After the hospital fiasco, Jo-Elle was willing to take the first night-watch over Mom as we settled back in the house since I couldn't stand being with her in the same room right now, all the words I had said to Izuku still playing over and over inside my head. Horrible things had poured out of me like a poisonous miasma, spitting my venom at him until there was nothing left, leaving me with nothing but to choke on the fumes leftover. Now I just felt hollow, exhausted, and devoid of everything but the basic needs to move, eat, and sleep.
Jo-Elle was curled up at the foot of the bed, sleeping on the ottoman couch while I crawled into the left side of the bed. Mom didn't normally like people sleeping in her bed, too anxious and too much of a light sleeper to take another person sleeping next to her when one of her arms was numb and they could roll onto it in the middle of the night, but I wasn't there to sleep.
"Hey Momma... How you feelin'?"
Her chest rose weakly before deflating like an old balloon that was losing its helium, not even having the energy to roll over and open her eyes. "Tired..."
"I'll bet," I smiled wanly. "You want some water?" She slowly nodded her head. Taking one of the pint sized Disney World mugs, I grabbed a faded Finding Nemo and filled it with water and a lid before I curled up next to her, watching as she sipped through the straw. "You hungry?" She shook her head. The plastic basin we used to wash dishes was her puke bucket, which thankfully was empty so there was nothing to clean up. I snatched the TV remote from between the folds of her duvet to put something on for both of us to watch and distract us from the long morning ahead.
"Both Jo-Elle and I called off from work today, so we'll be here if you need anything," I announced hoarsely. As much as I wanted to be out of the house, I was somewhat relieved that I wouldn't have to get up at four am for work when I felt so drained. It had been an exhausting twenty four hours.
Might-T had long since been over, a glowing reminder at the top of the recording list: Episode 1 'All Might: Origins.' My chest tightened just looking at it. I wanted to delete it and watch it, feeling both resentment and remorse as I scrolled through the playlist. As much as I was a sucker for a good origin story, I couldn't do it. It somehow felt wrong to watch it without Izuku. So I ignored it, burying it at the bottom of the list under the many NCIS and anime recordings I had on the playlist.
"We never finished watching The Ten Commandments this year for Easter. Want to watch it now?"
"That sounds good..." my mother sighed, having no qualms about falling asleep to it, having seen it almost every Easter weekend since she was a child. When it came to biblical retelling of Moses and the story of Exodus, I much preferred The Prince of Egypt over the 1956 classic with its killer soundtrack and striking animation, but the second one had its charm. While Val Kilmer was charming and Charlton Heston had a commanding memorable presence, both had fantastic interpretations of where Moses found out who he really was and where he had come from, why he was different from the rest of his family and household. I wondered if Moses felt betrayed when people had told him that he was a Hebrew instead of a royal. I watched the screen as Nefertiti killed Memnet for telling her the truth about Moses's origin while I ran my old sensory brush over my mother's right arm.
"...Thank you, Alyssa," I heard my mother whisper, eyes still closed as she rested on the bed. I felt an affectionate tug on my heartstrings and gave her a wan smile before lightly scratching the side of her head. I told myself I would just stay until Moses was banished from Egypt. I ended up staying until around the end of the plagues where the Angel of Death came down in a green mist to kill all of the firstborns of Egypt, something that had visually struck a chord with me as a small child, being the eldest. I could only take being a nursemaid for so long before it started to burn me out, plus it was boring to watch constantly over a patient when they were sleeping. Now, I was the one who was curled up in bed watching TV.
Rather than watch Ross and Rachel have their will they, won't they moments on Friends, something I wasn't in the mood to watch at the moment, I spent Saturday morning catching up on all the cartoons I would have missed while I had gone into work, something I hadn't done for ages now. When had I last taken a Saturday off from work? The only faint memory I had of a free Saturday was when I watched the Saturday morning cartoon block on local access television at my dad's house, catching up on the latest episode of Pokémon and watching reruns of Tween Titans and The Night Owl; I still had old recorded VHS tapes of the former. Now it was Anpan-man and Doraemon and a slew of other Japanese shows I had never heard of that were mainly for kids not old enough to be in school. Pokémon was still on, but it was in a different art-style and was part of the newer generation I had yet to catch up with.
I had a sudden craving for cinnamon rolls in that moment, reminded of the half-assed, Pillsbury cinnamon rolls my dad would wake up and make for Jo-Elle and I before going back to bed. He worked really unusual hours, so it wasn't uncommon to see him or Marissa passed out on the couch or in their bedroom sleeping, so despite the living room having the best collection of movies and surround sound, Jo-Elle and I spent most of our time in our rooms, playing video-games or watching the large stack of cheap or free movies we had rented from Family Video that weekend.
Mom wouldn't have let us do that. She would have complained the second I'd woken up past ten about me being a lazy bones and I do something productive with my morning like everyone else, like go outside or clean my room. I half expected my mother to walk into the room and complain about me still being in bed, not to mention having food upstairs, but it never happened. Then again, how was she going to stop me when she was in bed too? I hovered over a plain bowl of oatmeal and shoveled it into my mouth, buried under every blanket I had, including my Kingdom Hearts fleece throws and the crocheted blankets my Aunt Anna had made me as a child.
I had never had this much uninterrupted time to myself before. This would have been a great way to recharge during the week. Why had it been so quiet? I realized with a start that I hadn't touched my phone all morning, not willing to look at the dozens of apology texts Izuku had no doubt sent me over the night. This was good for me. My boss had been getting on my case for being on my phone during work anyways, even if it was to work on my Patre0n and social media presence.
After watching local Japanese television for four hours, binge-watching through a strange mix up marathon of Doraemon and Pokémon, I recalled with sudden clarity that it was a tournament weekend May 4th. So that's why they were showing "Doraemon: Nobita's Little Star Wars"... I thought to myself. Right now, I had no motivation to get the crap kicked out of me, especially since tomorrow was no doubt going to be mother's second-wind day, where she would try and catch up to all the things she had missed by being out of commission today. Plus, what if he was there? Oh well, might as well upload the Star Wars Day photos onto the TLLA Facebook page...
I woke my computer up from hibernation and began going over the dozens of files I had scanned to my computer the night before: watercolor paintings, my Vigilante Knights comics, even my lightsaber academy drawings. I rarely renamed them, since the printer liked to scan files in code rather than individually name the files. They all blurred together, my computer too old and rundown by music and viruses to show me previews simply by scrolling. I double clicked over one of the files under the folder "TLLA" and the found a file of of the last person I wanted to see as a Jedi Padawan, little braid and all. Unable to turn off my artist brain for even a moment, I scrutinized over the finer details. I could never get his hair right, his green hair always coming out like an ugly bush or an unkempt shrub.
You love his hair though... spoke a tiny voice. I shook my head and went over the different Jedi pictures, each person with an unique outfit on.
Then I made the mistake of looking at my phone. Dozens if not hundreds of messages from Patre0n blew up on my phone, asking me where this week's pages were. I paled. In all of the chaos of yesterday, I had completely forgot to upload them. In a blind panic, I searched for the Vigilante Knights pages, stuff that always seem to wander into my other folders if I wasn't careful. This week was an elaborate two page spread of a dynamic dual strike from both Hareraiser and Arisa as they took down a particularly nasty villain. I was almost there when I was assaulted by the detailed sketch of Izuku and I standing on the beach kissing, the file with the most recent timestamp. I couldn't tell you how long I spent staring at that one drawing, but water could be heard rushing in our shared bathroom, Jo-Elle now awake to face the day.
"Morning..." Jo-Elle mumbled, hair look particularly wild this morning.
"Morning."
"You okay..?" Jo-Elle asked, now awake. I clicked away from the photo and offered her a wan shrug.
"I'm fine. Just a little tired."
"You and Izuku hash things out?"
I bit my lip. "...I don't want to talk about it." I stared at my window sill, noticing that some of parsley in my planters was starting to wither. Probably should get around to watering it...
"Fine. I won't push you," she held up her hands in mock surrender. "I'm going to go make something for Momma. You want anything?"
"No. Actually, I already made her a bowl of oatmeal for her downstairs, so you don't have to."
"She says doesn't want it. She says she wants something hot."
I frowned at her. "You can just put it back in the microwave."
"She's sick of oatmeal."
"What the hell? She ate it last week," I said exasperated. "Why does she have to be so picky?"
"She has cancer, Alyssa. She can be picky if she wants to be."
I rolled my eyes. How old had that excuse gone on? "Well, what does she want?"
"She says she wants something fresh."
I sighed. Of course she did. "Fine, just... give me whatever eggs you have leftover and I'll eat 'em, since you don't like my portion sizes anyways. I don't care."
Jo-Elle frowned at my blase attitude. "...You sure you're okay?"
I nodded. I wasn't, but I wasn't going to admit that to her. Why state the obvious? Nothing would change the fact that Izuku had lied to me and that I had been too angry and embarrassed to accept his explanation and apology. I saw a few new messages from him on my phone but chose to ignore them. Once Jo-Elle left, I found the files I needed and went over towards my Patre0n and quickly uploaded the files before switching back to the private Tokyo Ludosport Lightsaber Academy enclave page and hit Ctrl + A and published the entire folder. Then I turned on TV Asahi channel and continued my Pokémon marathon, not giving my phone a second glance.
