Page 6 of On The Run

He’d had mostly good days lately, but one look at the house and I knew today wasn’t one of those. Shit. I wished he’d just call me when he was feeling shitty. But he kept insisting he was fine and that I couldn’t live my life if it revolved around him—which I said was bullshit. He’d literally sacrificed everything for me, so the least I could do was care for him when he was sick.

Telltale sign that today was a crappy day for him: his medication was lying on the coffee table. The clear plastic container I got to help him keep track of all his pills was still open, and I saw at least two of his morning pills hadn’t been taken. “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath as I closed the pill case.

I was able to hear movement and music coming from his room, so I took a little time to clean up before checking on him. If he was resting, I didn’t want to disturb him. I shut off the TV, which was still on, another thing Pops never did. He was neat to a fucking fault and double-checked everything. He didn’t forget to shut the TV off. He didn’t forget to fold the blanket and put it back on the stand against the wall or to take all his pills. He didn’t leave half-drunk glasses of water on the table. He just didn’t.

My stomach rolled as I quickly cleaned everything up. If Pops started to feel better later, I knew it would bother him that he left a mess, and I didn’t want him to have to worry about it. Once things were to rights, I made my way down the small hallway to the back bedroom where Pops’s room was. The house wasn’t huge, but it was our first home together, and the two of us had really worked to make it ours. It was the first place we really had been able to settle and attempt to have normal lives. After all of those years of living in shelters and cheap motels and moving to ten different states before I was nineteen, this house was fucking luxury. I could give zero fucks that it only had two bedrooms and a small office space for Pops. Sure, having a second bathroom would be nice, but it was better than sharing with twenty other people, that was for sure.

I even had my own room—my own space where I could study for school without being interrupted. Hell, I could actually go to school. The room wasn’t big, but I sure as hell squeezed a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in there and bought every used and damaged book at the book sale at the library to fill it. I still had only gotten to read half of them, but I was determined. It probably didn’t help my TBR that I checked out new books every day I volunteered at the library, so sue me. There were worse hobbies.

When I approached Pops’s bedroom, I heard Dean Martin playing. Fuck. Pops listened to two types of music: underground punk rock and Dean Martin. 90% of the time, it was punk rock. Pops was the one who introduced me to the underground punk scene, and I quickly became obsessed. Some of my best memories with Pops were us listening to the music as he educated me on the message behind the song. The only time he listened to Dean Martin was when he was feeling really lousy or sad. It reminded him of his home, of growing up in Little Italy in New York and his parents. Personally, I put his parents in the same category as my sperm donor. Who the fuck kicked out their kid because they were gay? Pieces of shit, that was who. But I knew emotions didn’t always work that way, and I knew Pops missed them sometimes.

I knocked lightly before pushing open the door, bracing myself for whatever I’d see on the other side.

Manny Sewell was the strongest man I knew. What he’d done, what he’d endured, he deserved sainthood if you asked me. Seeing him like this broke my heart.

Pops was lying in his bed, facing the window, with his back to me. His navy-blue blanket was tangled around his legs, leaving his torso exposed. He was still wearing the gray long-sleeve pajama shirt he had on to go to bed last night, and it was glued to his back from sweat. Shit, not good.

Pops’s room was pretty basic. While we tried to make the main spaces comfy and ours, Pops never bothered with his bedroom. There was no art on the walls, no knickknacks on his secondhand dresser. The only truly personal item in the room was the picture of the two of us sitting on the beach when we were in New Jersey on his nightstand. Other than that, it was just a queen-sized bed with good quality but plain navy-blue bedding, the dresser and nightstand, and a navy-blue chair in the corner. I didn’t blame him though. It was hard to personalize a space you knew you may have to leave at any second.

I swallowed down bile as I made my way around the bed to get a better look at Pops. My fingers were crossed that he didn’t have a fever, but it didn’t look good. I was surprised to see that Pops’s chestnut-brown eyes were open, but though they were normally so full of life, despite everything, they were glazed over, and I wasn’t sure if he even noticed I was here. Fuck.

I reached out a very tentative hand to touch his head, dreading what I would feel. Pops’s normal rich olive coloring was pale and sickly. My hand barely grazed his forehead before I felt the heat radiating from his body. He was fine last night, more than fine actually. What happened in the few hours I’d been at work?

Guilt churned in my stomach. While I was working and crushing on my customer, Pops had been suffering. Why wouldn’t he call me?

Pops moaned, and his eyes came into focus just a little bit.

“Shh, it’s just me. You rest.”

“Austin?” The worry I’d been feeling from the moment I entered our house just multiplied tenfold. Pops only ever called me by my birth name when it was really bad. I just smiled and rubbed his bald head. That was another thing I hated seeing: all those thick, gorgeous curls were just gone. I hoped they grew back after the chemo was done, but I knew it may never be exactly the same.

“Yeah, Pops, it’s me.”

“I don’t feel so good today. I-I think I may have left a mess in the living room. I’m sorry.”

I blinked back tears. This man. “Don’t worry about it, Pops. I took care of it. I’m gonna get you some water—you didn’t finish your pills—then I’m going to call your doctor. You have a fever.”

Pops groaned. “I’m fine, Aiden.” Ok, good. That was a good sign. He was calling me by the right name again.

“Pops,” I chastised gently. “You know what Dr. Adams said, how dangerous fevers and infections can be for you. I have to call.” I squeezed his hand. “We have insurance now, remember? And some extra money saved. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Pops grunted, which was as close to consent as I’d get. Not that I needed it to call his doctor when he was sick. I got him a room-temperature water bottle, since he couldn’t tolerate cold ones, and helped him swallow down the rest of his pills. Then, after fixing his blankets and settling him more comfortably in the bed, I called his doctor. I knew what he was going to say—take him to the hospital—but I was still hoping I was wrong.

I wasn’t. Dr. Adams stayed on the line with me as I officially took Pops’s temperature, and once I confirmed 102 degrees, he told me I needed to take him to the hospital immediately and that he’d meet me there. My hands were shaking as I hung up. It was never good when the doctor dropped everything to meet you, and I was mentally preparing for the worst.

Pops was notoriously anti-hospital, not that I blamed him in the slightest. We didn’t exactly have the best experience with them. He didn’t make it easy for me as I struggled to get him out of his sweat-soaked pajamas and into new sweats and a long-sleeved Yankee T-shirt. Pops’s love for the Yankees was one of the few things he’d clung onto even in our new life. When we ran, he had managed to pack his Yankee T-shirt. He wore that thing constantly for over ten years. One of the first things I did when I was old enough to get a job was buy him a new one. He cried. So even though he was kind of out of it now, I hoped wearing a piece of his old life, before everything went to shit, would comfort him.

It took us way longer than I’d like to get out and into the old Camry the two of us shared, but I managed. Pops fell back to sleep as soon as I settled him in the front seat. My adrenaline was pumping, and the cars were way too fucking slow. Hospital trips were stressful enough. I didn’t need to deal with traffic as well.

As I drove, I had plenty of time to think. And like what usually happened when I got lost in my thoughts, I started to think about my bio-dad. Pops always said allowing your anger to build up was unhealthy and resentment wasn’t worth it. But resentment and hatred were the only things I could feel for the bastard.

It was his fault that we were in this situation to begin with. And yeah, ok, he probably didn’t cause Pops’s cancer, but it would have been discovered sooner, before it spread all over his fucking body, if we weren’t always on the run. If Pops were able to get a regular job that actually had benefits, maybe he’d have gone to the doctor sooner. Maybe he’d be in remission by now.

Pops would tell me there was no point in wallowing in the past. That it wouldn’t change anything and we had to focus on the present. But Pops was passed out in the front seat right now, and I didn’t have anything left in me to fight the negative thoughts. All the happiness I felt from my morning at work, and finally learning Maxwell’s name, was completely lost. In fact, as I pulled into the parking garage of the hospital, I didn’t feel much of anything at all.

Dr. Adams met us shortly after Pops had been admitted. He had called in ahead and we didn’t have to wait in the lobby. Thank fuck. Pops had his N95 mask and wore gloves and his hat to avoid touching anything unnecessarily, but I was still worried about infection. Or, making his infection worse. With his weak immune system, a simple cold could end up killing him. It was another reason why we were militant with keeping the house clean: to try to prevent what was happening now.

It was probably because Pops went into the office earlier this week rather than working from home. His boss said he could work strictly remotely, but sometimes Pops liked stopping in the office. I didn’t really blame him. So much of his life had been spent in hiding, I got not wanting to do it now. Plus, this job as an admin assistant was the first real position he’d had, and I knew he wanted to prove to his boss that he was worth taking a chance on. But he was always a little rundown after his office days. Not this bad, but maybe something was going around.

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