“Pardon me, Doc. Kylie is not my wife. She’s just a friend.” I bit my tongue in response to his thorough explanations on what had happened. A pang of guilt pierced my heart, boring a deep, huge hole in my hollow chest. I felt so dumb speaking to her poorly out in the hallway the day before. And seeing her cry? My chest ached.
“Oh, is that so?” The doctor turned his attention on Vince. Vince looked away, his cheeks turning red. “Your son seemed to like her a lot. I must say, he wishes for her to be his mom.” The doctor was smiling at him, but Vince was avoiding our eyes altogether. “Well, enough of the chit-chat. Just keep in mind everything I have advised you to do for Vince. We better not delay if things turned for the worse. But right now, your son is doing great, and you can check him out of here in just a few minutes.”
The doctor waved his hand at Vince, but my son was still avoiding his stare. I watched him leave the room together with the nurses, giving me and my son privacy to talk about a few things.
“How are you feeling now, buddy?” I asked him, although his eyes were still slanted downward. He looked mortified and ashamed. As if his deepest, darkest secret had been revealed in front of a crowd of people who would gossip about it for ages. He was exposed, and he was timid to talk more about it, even with me. I hated it.
“Yeah, Daddy. Sorry for telling the doctor that Kylie’s my mom.” He raised the topic himself.
My heart contracted painfully as if his words struck my most vulnerable area. I pursed my lips and nodded, truly uncertain of what to say at that point. I sat on the side of his bed as I stroked his hair away from his face.
“You know that lying is a bad thing to do. You shouldn’t do it again, buddy. But, I understand why you did it.” I was disappointed in myself as well. I had been blinding myself over my own feelings. I was lying about what my heart was really telling me to do. I wasn’t a good example for Vince to follow.
I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching in the slightest form. He was telling people that Kylie was his mother, and I was pretending she wasn’t my lover or anything of importance to me. We were both lying. She meant everything to me.
Sickness filled my stomach as the scene in the hallway played in my mind’s eye. She would never forgive me.
“Sorry, Dad. I won’t do it again. I don’t want you and Kylie to be mad at me.” I watched as his eyes sparkled, tears collating at the sides.
I held his hand tight and offered him a loving smile. “It’s okay, buddy. Just don’t do that again.”
He grasped my hand in return. A trickle of a tear flowed down his cheek which I wiped away. “But first, tell me why you told the doctor that Kylie was your mom?”
“I want her to be my mom, Daddy. Kylie’s the best; I like her and Nana a lot. They love us so much, and I love them too. I’ve always wanted a mom. Everyone has one, but me.” His lip quivered as another set of tears flowed from his cheeks.
Fuck me for messing things up with Kylie. Vince’s happiness meant the world to me, and I’d found the perfect woman to complete us both, and I’d already messed it up.
Guilt raged inside of me. And I hated myself at the moment.
“Don’t think about all of that right now, buddy. It’s okay.” I clutched his hand tightly. Vince was the only constant I had in my life. I could not afford to lose him too. He yielded a forced smile, looking silly. I laughed at his expression and pulled him in for a hug.
After we had squeezed the stuffing out of each other, he moved back and glanced up at me. “Daddy, what are you thinking?” He reached up and massaged the space between my eyebrows, his little fingers cold, his eyes filled with far more wisdom than he should have had at five.
I let out a heavy sigh and smiled. “Nothing. I’m good. How about you?”
“Nothing really. I just don’t want to feel that pain again. It scared me a lot. Kylie made me feel like it was going to be okay. I just wished that she was here with us.” His lip protruded as his eyes filled with tears again.
I held his hand as I smiled at him. “Don’t you worry about anything right now, buddy. It’s all going to be great. We’ll figure it out like we always do. Together.” I kissed his forehead and smiled at him. “
“Thank you, Daddy. I have the best dad in the world. I’m too lucky to have you and Kylie.”
“I have the best son in the world too. The best superhero that ever lived.”
He held my hand tighter before and gave me an innocent look, which I was coming to understand wasn’t so innocent. “So, Kylie’s at work at the store with her mom today?”
I fidgeted with my fingers in his tiny hand. “Yeah, she needed to be at the convenience store. Mrs. Tomms called, and they needed to do a lot of work there lately. She will probably be very busy in the upcoming days. She might not come around at the house much from now on.”
He looked worried, but still, his face was cheerful and glad. “We should visit them sometime then. I bet they would love to have me work at the store.”
“Sounds great.” I got up and offered him my hands. “Let’s see if we can get out of here, hm?”
Vince smiled. “We’ll bust out like superheroes do.”
“I think that’s a great idea, little man.”
Sadly enough, he was the only hero in the room. Overnight, I found myself feeling far more like a villain.
We walked down the hall and found the doctor had approved our request for checking out. I settled the bill and signed all the paperwork as the doctor spoke for the last time to Vince.