Holding out my arms, Eddie places him on my chest, and the little guy wraps his arms around my neck, holding on tight. I feel his heart beat next to mine, and whatever tension my body had as I came through the door, slowly bleeds out of me. No matter how much I hate everything that’s happened to me, no matter what happens in the future... I need to make it better for Matty.
Whatever happens now, is all for him.
First things first, I need to tell Aly.
Yeah, that’s gonna go over well.
Chapter 3
Aly’s gone, and left the door unlocked, too. Her perfume still lingers in my room, in the hall and by the front door. I’ve been dismissed like the lowlife I am, and that’s good. I don’t have to face her and endure whatever shit she’s going to throw my way when I tell her I won’t be the recipient of her blow jobs anymore.
The place is a mess. At least the kid’s room is a contained disaster, sheets on the floor from the day before, toys and kiddie books covering every inch of floor space. If I walk in there, I’m bound to slip and kill myself.
Aly’s left the kitchen, right across Matty’s room, full of shit. She ate something on a plate, stuffed in the sink with half her breakfast. The coffee pot is shoved into its place in the coffeemaker, sputtering because the fucking thing is still dripping. I bet the babe next door wouldn’t leave shit lying around like this.
“Matty,” I say, rubbing his back so he wakes up. Only when I get eye contact do I continue, gently placing him on the couch. “I want you to clean your room, all right?”
He nods sleepily. “Daddy, I’m tired.”
Fuck. Shit, fuck, fuck!
Shame presses down on me like a living thing, burning through me as I settle Jules’ kid on the ground. I locate his pouch on the counter, hidden behind some bananas that I know I didn’t put there and pull out his glucometer.
Heart in my mouth, and dread settling into the pit of my stomach, I crouch and put Matty up on the kitchen counter, watch as his shoulders slump forward and he squints around, trying to see. My hands shake, like I haven’t done this a million times before, as I jab in a test strip, and ready the mini-piston by pulling back on it. I always give Matty the choice of which finger he wants to use for blood.
He gives me his middle finger of his left hand, holding out all five fingers and staring at me like I’m the one who caused all this. Fuck, maybe I am.
Swallowing, I stab his finger with the mini-piston and watch his finger bead with a perfect red dot, ready to be sucked up by the test strip already in his glucometer. When the blood’s in the test strip and the five second countdown starts on the glowing surface of his machine do I let myself breathe normally. My part’s done, now I have to see what the result is.
I might as well be crucified with the way the number of his blood sugar levels hit me. Twenty-fucking-five. He should be at a five – a normal level. Jesus, what the hell did Eddie feed him – sugar-rolled donuts? There’s no time to get pissed right now. I need to get him his insulin.
Opening the fridge door, I go for the drawer bit under the glass-cased butter, open it and pick up the refrigerated pen that contains his fast-acting insulin.
Turns out once your pancreas gives up on you, you need two kinds of insulin to take care of the food you eat – slow-acting that acts as a baseline so your body constantly has some sort of circulating levels of insulin, and the fast-acting kind – the one you need right after meals to deal with whatever shit you ate.
Matty lifts up his shirt once I’ve put a needle on top of the pen and squirt out any excess in case of air bubbles. I ended up bruising his skin last time I injected him with his insulin, probably hit some capillaries on my way in. I pinch his little boy fat and insert the needle in, watching his face the whole time.
His blue eyes so much like my sister’s stare at me, then through me, like he’s gone somewhere else. He doesn’t utter a sound, and his face doesn’t crumple like it does right before he starts crying. He takes it like a champ while hot bile rises up my throat.
Jules’ son shouldn’t be sick like I am. He did nothing to deserve this. Me? I knew something bad was coming. I deserve to be sick. Not Jules’ kid, not him, not when he hasn’t done anything wrong.
“It’s okay, Daddy,” he says, patting my arm when I’m done discarding the needle in a special box we get from the pharmacy, and putting his insulin away. “Can I go to sleep now?”
I grunt, because I can’t talk. I lift him off the counter and settle him in his room, not giving him any shit on the state of it. I’ll clean it up later, when he’s out cold. I help him into his Iron Man pajamas, and tuck him in with the blankets that I take up off the floor. Matty’s eyes stare at me and he gives me a small smile like I’ve done a good job.