My Only Son, Danee Riggs [readict .txt] 📗

Big Derek paced back and forth. His legs were growing numb. His wife Lynn came in the room several times over the last hour stealing glances at their son and begging him to “please sit down." He was a man that always used his hands when he was stressed but he didn’t want to, no he could not leave his son’s side. So, his feet just seemed to take over. He wished that he had something he could fix, put together, take apart (though he was much better at putting things together)- anything to keep from walking down the ghostly hall of memories.

After reaching the head of his son’s bed for what felt like the millionth time, Big Derek’s legs finally gave out just as he hit the old chair he'd brought in for Lynn a week ago. The pacing and the memories served to keep him from looking at his son but now that he was immobilized from the stiffness that seeped into his limbs, he looked over and truly saw his son for the first time since the hospital sent him home.

Derek Jr. was much thinner than Big Derek remembered. There were bags under his closed eyes, his skin was ashen and his chest rose and fell with each shallow breath. For some reason, though the house was deathly quiet now that Lynn had finally gone to bed, he listened more intently for DJ to take each breath. It was as if not listening meant that DJ would stop breathing. Seeing him this way made Big Derek do something that he hadn’t done since the night his son was born almost twenty years before- he put his face in his hands and wept.

The small, bespectacled doctor at the hospital told Big Derek and Lynn that their son contracted pneumonia as a result of a compromised immune system. He went on to say something about DJ’s immune system being compromised due to exposure to the Human Immunovirus. Both parents regarded the doctor as if he were speaking in another language. When it was finally explained that Derek Jr. had contracted HIV and that it quickly progressed to the AIDS virus, Big Derek was crippled with shock. His son was admitted for shortness of breath and a few bruises that they all assumed were basketball related. Now they were telling him that his son had AIDS? Lynn cried for four days straight after the news, and lived inside her own head, inconsolable for two weeks after that. Of course they had heard of the big disease with the little name. Who hadn’t? And even though several years earlier in ’82 or ‘83 there were reports of women who had contracted the disease, it was still considered by most to be a gay disease or a drug user’s disease. Big Derek knew for a fact that his son was not a drug user. A former All American and the starting power forward on the university’s Division 1 basketball team, DJ would never touch drugs of any kind. The doctor that questioned DJ when he was first admitted confirmed what Big Derek also knew for sure; that his son wasn’t gay or a homosexual or whatever they were called now. He remembered being pissed that the doctor had even asked DJ something so ridiculous.

Now as he sat with tears streaming down his face, Big Derek asked himself, what the hell did it matter? Either way, the son that he loved more than anything was dying. Except now he wished he had pressed DJ about using some form of protection every time he had sex. He and his son shared everything. Besides Lynn, DJ was his best friend so he knew about the three women his son had slept with in his young life. Three! DJ didn’t deserve this. The young guys out there today were trying to have sex with anything that had breasts and a pulse. The 80’s sexual revolution rivaled the hippie movement of his generation and promoted blatantly sexual images in music, the movies, and every video that played on The Music Television station. Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” was a church hymn compared to what these kids listened to. Even Nate, one of DJ’s best friends, seemed to be headed in the same direction of the bed-hoppers paradise. But DJ wasn’t a hyper-sexed kid. Three just didn’t seem like a number that warranted a fatal disease. He certainly didn’t encourage his son to sleep around and as his ball game got better, he warned him that women would be coming out of the woodworks with dollar signs in their eyes. “Some might even try to get pregnant ‘purposely by accident’ just to have a kid with a smile like yours and future NBA sponsored child support payments,” he said jokingly after DJ has scored his third triple double in as many games.”Don’t make me a grandpa before you finish school, get the contract and marry a good woman, like your mama.” DJ laughed “Uh pop, the idea of that is kinda weird, but I get what you’re saying.” Neither of them talked about diseases, especially ones for which there was no cure. 

“My only son, God,” Big Derek said aloud. “He’s my only son! Please don’t take his life for a mistake!” He tried to hold in his sobs so as not wake his wife and his body shuddered with the effort. It was all too much and his legs popped and snapped in protest as he rose up from the chair and began his pace anew.

His guilt was carnivorous, making a meal of the part of his brain that knew he was to blame. He had one kid and his job was to protect him. He couldn’t look Lynn in the eye and he felt powerless to try and help her out of the dark place she’d been since the diagnosis. Their communication was a series of three to five word sentences between her bouts of crying and his pacing. He wanted to ask her if she blamed him, to tell her that he blamed himself but he was terrified of her response. He was nicknamed Big Derek' long before DJ was born, since way back high school. He was massive even back then. Now six foot, seven inches and two hundred and eighty pounds, he couldn’t remember being scared of much since about the eighth grade. Back then it was frogs. Something about the way they looked at him on that cold, stainless steel table in lab class, so accusing and damning. He figured that the frogs’ last line of protest was that dead-eyed stare. They were just as powerless over their circumstance as he was, being forced to cut through their slimy mucus membranes. Now, scared didn’t begin to sum up the way he felt. He was terrified and powerless; terrified of losing his son, powerless to be there for his wife in the way that she needed him to be.

Each day he wondered if anything in their life would ever be normal again. Then one morning, three weeks from the day DJ came home from the hospital, Lynn got up, kissed him and left their bedroom. It was the first time she kissed him in those three weeks. It was also the first time that both of them slept in their bedroom since DJ came home. At least one of them, sometimes both of them, slept in his room on the floor. Neither got much rest. The night before, Lynn actually fell asleep leaning against DJ’s doorpost. Big Derek had been lying on the floor with his hands behind his head looking up at the ceiling. He didn’t know if Lynn was looking at him or DJ and as soon as he got up the courage to look her in the eye he saw her lean forward as if about to fall. “Baby!” He jumped up and caught her in his arms. “I’m fine,” she said but was asleep before he got her back to their bed. He held her close to him and whispered, “I’m so sorry, babe. I’m so sorry,” over and over until the rhythm of it put him to sleep as well.

By the time Big Derek came downstairs that morning, about thirty minutes after Lynn, she had made breakfast enough for ten men; eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits, home fries and freshly squeezed orange juice. Tears filled Big Derek’s eyes just then but he didn’t let them fall. Lynn’s passion was creating a comfort zone of delicious foods for her family and all the friends that would stop by. There was never a shortage of people at the house, all fans of Lynn’s cooking. But that was before DJ’s illness was the talk of their suburban neighborhood. Most of them wouldn’t know anything about what was going on with DJ except that when he found out the real reason for his shortness of breath and lesions, he made the hard decision to call each of the three women he had slept with to confront them. At least that’s what Big Derek thought he was going to do when DJ, from his hospital bed, asked for some time alone. As he stood outside his son’s door he couldn’t hear what was being said, but his voice was calm as if discussing nothing more than plans for Saturday night. Big Derek however, was incensed. One of those little hussies had given his son a disease that was basically destroying his immune system. Still, he gave his son his privacy and refrained from barging in the room to scream at the top of his lungs about fast-ass girls and no-count parents. He paced the hall, stopping short as a thought occurred to him; if it was the first girl DJ slept with that had given him the disease then DJ could very well have infected the other two. Big Derek’s heart sank. Somehow he knew his super smart son thought of this first. Less than thirty six hours later, DJ slipped into a coma.

In the kitchen, he thought maybe Lynn was expecting company as she flitted about piling food on his plate. He thought better of it. Over the course of their 22-year marriage, they discussed pretty much everything- until recently. Still, it was silly to think that she would keep it from him if they were having company. He was unsure of the reason for the breakfast overkill, seeing as neither of them could get down more than some eggs and a few slices of toast in the days since… Well, it didn’t matter. He was happy that at least she had her thing back.

He was also grateful for the brief distraction of his visiting neighbor, Tania. She wasn’t ‘company’. She was DJ’s other best friend and at one time the absolute love of his life. She and DJ were born within minutes of each other and her parents had been like a second set to DJ and vice versa. Big Derek was angry that they hadn’t been by the house since learning of DJ’s illness. He was sure that Tania had defied her parents by continuing to visit but she had always been headstrong and very protective over DJ. There was an incident during a high school game that made Big Derek smile to this day. DJ was in a scoring zone and a kid on the opposing team got mad and threw a punch at him. A fight broke out. When Big Derek arrived to pick DJ up, outside of the principal’s office in a row sat the entire home team- and one cheerleader. It was Tania, hair mussed and clothes askew.