Free Alive by Holli Spaulding Page A

feel like I’m in a trance, and my body just doesn’t seem to be working properly. He frantically peels out of the bar and follows behind the ambulance.
    “After I dropped you off tonight and headed back home, I couldn’t shake this gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. I went home and grabbed my car and drove back as fast as I could. I wasn’t expecting to see you running out of the bar covered in blood.” He whispers softly. “Are you OK? I know it’s a dumb question, I’m sure you’re not OK, but I need to know what I can do to help you.”
    “If I’m being honest, your presence alone is helping me more that you could ever know. You’re able to calm me in a way no one has in a very long time. Thank you for being here with me Adam.” I sound like a robot, but I hope he knows I’m being serious. 
    He takes my hand and kisses my knuckles tenderly. “There isn’t anywhere else I would rather be, Peaches.”
    When we arrive at the hospital 15 minutes later, Adam drops me off up front and I dart to the nurses’ station and demand to know information about my mother. I learn that she is being rushed into surgery, and that her doctor will come out as soon as he can to let me know how everything went. I can’t believe that’s all the information I was given. Surely someone knows more than that. So all I am able to do now is to wait.
    Adam arrives a few minutes later and joins me in the waiting room. He has a somber look and his face is ashen. I want to do anything I can to make that look go away. He knows pain, he’s felt it before. I can tell by that one look on his face. It’s a look I know all too well. He’s lost someone close to him. Being here at the hospital is bringing up memories.
    I grab his hand, and give it a tight squeeze before asking him a question. “Who did you lose, Adam?” I whisper to him.
    He snaps his head in my direction and grips my hand tighter. He stares at me for a long time before speaking. “How do you know I’ve lost someone?” he softly says.
    “The look on your face is a look I know all too well. I know heartache and pain, Adam, and the look on your face right now is telling me you do too.”
    He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before speaking. “My father was shot and killed when I was 7. He was taken to this very hospital, where he was kept in the ICU. Three days later he died. He was my hero, my whole world. I looked up to my father and admired the hell out of him. Being here reminds me that he’s gone and is never coming back.”
    I am struggling to believe what I am hearing. Adam and I have a very big thing in common. Both of our fathers were shot and killed. A fearful thought of why he looks familiar pops uninvited into my mind, but I quickly push it away. No way, there is no way we are connected in the way I am thinking.
    I just stare up at him, unable to think of a single thing to say to him. So I say the only thing I wish people would have said to me when my dad died. I hated the sympathy I got after he passed away. The ‘I’m so sorry’ speech and ‘please let me know what I can do for you' comments. There is nothing anyone can do when you feel grief like this, and I wish there was a manual people read about how to properly talk to someone who lost a loved one.
    “Tell me about your dad, what was he like?”
    He lifts up the side of his mouth, and his eyes soften. “He was the best dad anyone could ever ask for. He taught me everything I know about music. He patiently sat through teaching me how to play the guitar, and even thought I sucked ass at first, he never once got frustrated or impatient with me. I remember his singing the most though. I used to sneak down the hallway and listen to him singing to my mom outside their bedroom door. I would peek inside and see them dancing and I remember thinking that I wanted to be just like him when I got older. I used to always walk around humming the song he always sang to her,” he