It must be morning, I was waking up.
Oh, God, everything hurts when I move.
What is that beeping? What the hell are these wires?
Why is my son sleeping in that chair? Where the fuck am I?
I let out a yelp as I tried to sit up. My left side was killing me.
My son woke up.
"Dad, thank God you're awake. I was so worried about you."
"Where am I? What happened to me?"
"You don't know what happened?"
"Last I remember I was on my way to the airport to catch a seven am flight to Pittsburgh. I had to find out why they were having so many problems at the plant there. I was stopped for a red light and when the light turned green I started through the intersection.... then I woke up here. Where am I?"
"Community Hospital, Dad, you never made it through the intersection. An SUV never stopped for the light and he hit you right on the driver's side door. Totaled the car and the fire department had to use the 'Jaws of life' to get you out. When I saw your car, I didn't know how you survived."
"Why are you here? Where's your mother?
"I don't know where Mom is. I have the night shift this week and I made two arrests so I had a lot of paper work to clean up and just by chance I saw your name on the accident report as I was putting my paper work into the system."
"She's not home? She was asleep when I left. What time is it, maybe she went shopping?"
"It's a little after five, you have been out of it all day. By the time they got you out and got you in here it was almost ten. They called the house around noon as soon as you were stabilized and only got the answer machine. I got here at eleven, and called but no one was home so I tried Mom's cell and got her voice mail. She never got back to me."
"Did you leave a message?
"Just that she should call me. I didn't want to worry her and I didn't know how badly you were hurt."
That's when a doctor walked into the room, "Mr. Carlson," he said "I'm Dr. Kincaid. Welcome back to the conscious world. How are you feeling?"
"Like someone hit me on my left side with a baseball bat."
"It was bigger than that. I understand it was an Escalade. Crushed in the whole side of your car and drove the arm rest of your door into your kidney. Crushed it, we're going to have to take it out."
"Well that's the bad news Doc; you sure don't pull any of your punches. What's the good news?"
"There is no good news."
"What does that mean?"
"We did a cat scan when they brought you in to see how badly the kidney was damaged. When we saw how bad it was we checked the other one."
"So?"
"It's cancerous, fairly advanced, stage two. It has to go. Maybe that's the good news if we can find a replacement."
"He can have one of mine." my son piped up.
"Who are you? The doctor asked.
"I'm his son."
"Are you the cop who was in here last year with a bullet wound?"
"Yeah, I forgot to duck."
"Shit," the Doctor said, "What else can go wrong?"
"What does that mean?" my son asked.
"It means I checked the records, we have all your medical information. Blood type, DNA, everything. It means you are not a good match; you're close but not good enough. You are not his biological son. Are there any other children? Any siblings of yours or you father's?"
"No to both." was my answer.
"OK," said the Doc, "Let me check around and see if I can find anything available that could be a match." And he left.
Both my son and I looked at each other in shocked silence. Finally, Mark said, "You're my father; I don't care what he said." And he came over to the bed and he hugged me.
"And you're my son, no matter what the blood types say. But don't hug me so tight, you're killing my side."
He released me and went back to the chair where he sat silently and pensively.
I lay back in my bed and thought back to twenty five years ago when I first met Emilie. She was a pretty girl. One of the prettiest, but still just one of the many in the secretarial pool in the company headquarters where I still worked. We dated sporadically, there was no spark between us but she was nice arm candy for me to be with. She made me look like a smooth operator.
Then I got a promotion, a double raise in pay grade and six months later another jump to the highest hourly rate in the company. The next promotion was to be salaried; I was the fair haired boy in the company.
That was when I got laid, that was when Emilie opened up her legs for me. We had gone to a drive in movie. They still had few around in those days, and Emile suggested that we sit in the backseat. I had never gotten much more than a good night peck on her lips or a squeeze on her tit before this, but tonight, I got the whole enchilada. I got laid..... Bareback!
I continued getting lucky on every date with her for the next few months until the day when she told me she was pregnant and asked, "What are you going to do about it?"
I'm no dummy; I knew she had set her sights on me. I was making good money and my prospects were even better. She was pretty and I was getting all the pussy I wanted. I guess I thought I was in love. So I said, "Let's get married and make the baby legal."
Now it seems she must have been getting something on the side and the baby wasn't mine. Just as that thought hit me, my son's cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and said, "It's Mom."
I told him, "Don't tell her about me." I didn't want to talk to the bitch now. Maybe not ever, but I suddenly had my suspicions. "Tell her you want to come over to dinner."
He looked at me with raised eyebrows as he answered the phone with. "Hi Mom." I listened to his side of the conversation.
"No, nothings wrong. Just haven't seen you or Dad in a while and I thought I could come visit and have dinner with you two tonight."
"Oh, Dad's out of town."
"For two nights?"
"How about I take you out then?"
"You're busy? With friends? Both nights?"
"Next week? I don't know my schedule yet.
Yeah, I'll call as soon as I do. Talk to you soon. Bye."
I told my son, "Hey, you have to get some sleep. Go on home; you know I am out of danger for the moment. Get me my cell phone out my clothes and then go home. I'll see you tomorrow." I had to do a little phone investigating in private. He left grudgingly.
