Alex McGregor has known one world. He’s lived in the same house for all of his 13 years; he’s never flown. School has been the farthest he’s gone into the rest of the world, besides the Internet. If Alex had been born in 1976 instead of 1996, his atrocious handwriting would have rendered the book of his life illegible. He has some extra weight to him, and appears bright. He’s a hazel haired, light blue-eyed spec on the face of the earth. His soul is far beyond his years. A tint mars his gaze, a blemish his smile does not show, and his heart refuses to nurture.
Alex sits in his living room, watching the characters bounce across the screen of his television. His father, Michael, has a great-paying job in sales. His mother, Lauren, has devoted her life to raising him. His parents often speak of their luck, but those are simply words to Alex. Alex and his generation know the sensation of owning, but lack the knowledge of earning.
When he was 11 months old, Alex had been playing on a chair in the living room. Lauren had been in the kitchen, talking on the phone to her brother, who she loved enough to see only on holidays. Alex had padded across the carpeted floor with innocent speed. The entire house had seemed expansive, with its modest red tiling gracing the outside and wooden walls covered with a white, pink-splashed paint inside. He had been racing towards a chair he wanted to climb, and with as much might as he could muster, his tiny hands had gripped the seat, and he’d stood.
Laruen checked on her son whilst she talked on the phone. Her green eyes captured the color and the vibrancy of the trees outside her home on her morning walk. She had a glow about her at that time, a resonating soul. The spiritual call it an aura. Lauren’s hair, shoulder length and curly brown, had seemed to thrive on energy in its fibers; the phone pressed to her ear, her slender frame standing underneath the outline of the kitchen doorway, she watched Alex. Her heart caught every noise, and absorbed every glance.
Even in happiness, people make mistakes. Heaven may be real, but the closest Lauren McGregor has ever felt to perfection were those minutes on that day. In her conversing with her brother, her eyes had indeed strayed from Alex, a night watchman dozing.
Jim, her brother, had sent the family a gift; it sat only a few feet away from the chair Alex climbed. It had been a set of subtle wooden blocks, meant for teaching children with their hands.
Upon his triumph of climbing the chair, Alex let his grip on the wooden seat release. As Alex fell from his standing position, he arched backwards. Alex hit the floor, whiplashing his still-developing head. The corner of a block found the child behind the right ear, its point sharply piercing the soft skin.
Lauren heard her son cry out, and had walked across the wooden floor of the kitchen. She passed the table, only slightly worried at Alex’s outburst disrupting her conversation. Children cry all of the time, for they do not know the value of their tears.
Reaching the living room, Lauren’s motherly inspecting of her little bundle of joy commenced:
No blood? Check.
No vomit? Check.
Tears? Yes.
Chair in close proximity? Check.
Child sitting on the floor? Yes.
Conclusion: Alex had tried climbing the chair, fallen backwards, and hit the floor unexpectedly.
Lauren comforted Alex, and his crying soon subsided. She went back to talking to Jim. Alex did not try to climb that chair again. The formerly constant babbling stopped. He still trundled around, but with a different gait. The tint in his gaze was born on that day. He doesn’t remember it. Lauren and Michael have never forgotten it. The road of life can turn from a Route 309 existence into a Cornerstone Road existence in seconds. For the McGregors, Alex’s fall would be an angular shift as unforgiving as a sinkhole in the middle of the German Autobahn’s passing lane.
A couple hours later, Lauren noticed that Alex had become extremely quiet. She walked back in the living room, past the open area of the house, which holds Michael’s home office, and evaluated her son once more. She saw something in her child’s eyes that day, in the paleness of his skin. It was a feeling she’d felt in her own past, dancing around the edges of her existence. Then, in front of her eyes, Alex vomited.
Lauren called Michael at work. She told him of the vomiting, of the feeling gnawing at her stomach. When Death is close, he does not recognize hunches or whispers. Death has no master among people, for he can only be controlled by Father Time. Life cannot exist without an end. Michael told Lauren, from his desk, swamped with papers, that Alex probably had a slight cold. Lauren asked if she should take him to a hospital. Michael relented, deciding to trust his wife instead of fight.
The first hospital’s CAT scan machine was broken. An ambulance took Lauren and Alex to Philadelphia. Alex grew paler. The radiance was dying, along with her son. No matter how fast that ambulance went, across the fading miles, it seemed as if Death sat alongside her and the medical technicians. As Alex sat there, inches away, he seemed to be drifting further and further inward. Michael was driving in to meet them from work as the ambulance galloped across both the countryside and the developments. Lauren was in shock, and still no tears came to her eyes, but her heart was fit to burst. For the rest of her life, the stretch marks on her soul from the weight of such a day have remained.
A stroke. More specifically, a subdural hematoma.
The corner of the block had punctured a vessel in Alex’s brain. The blood had hungrily escaped the vein, the pressure from the fluid internally squeezing the child’s precious mind. Death cackled as fate flooded the situation in red waves: Lauren had been on the phone with the sender of the blocks; Alex’s vitality was killing him slowly. After the procedure, during which surgeons removed a portion of Alex’s skull, drained the blood, and repaired the vessel, saving his life, Lauren and Michael were informed: if another hour had passed without intervention, Alex would have died.
Michael only saw his son post-operation. Alex’s head had been bandaged, his breathing adjusted with machinery. If he made it through a couple days, he could come home, good as new, except with a scar on his head as a reminder, a roadmap for the next 13 years of his life. Michael never forgot standing in the hospital room, the lights slanted, illuminating a tragedy which grazed a family.
Michael, his striking blue eyes looking down upon his son, had whispered a promise:
“As long as you’re alive, I’m going to take care of you.”
In that moment, an infant of 11 months made a man of a 35-year-old child.
Alex watches the flat screen television as his grandparents pull into the driveway, the sun blinking off the polished crimson of their car’s hood.
3
Michael McGregor stands on the wooden deck looking out over his front lawn, leaning against the railing, the sun beating on his head. A lit cigarette is sandwiched between his right index finger and middle finger. The smoke drifts up over his head and trails off into the sky to go and choke some member of the avian population. Michael has been smoking since the age of nine, meaning it will be 38 years come September. Michael brushes his teeth exceptionally hard, but they still yellow. He’s smoked a lot recently. He smells the lovely, fresh air of the day as he takes another drag.
He stands atop everything he’s ever desired. He’s cast in the shadow of a house, a Palace with 13 rooms. He has a wife for whom his love is boundless, and a son who he will die to raise. The three possess loving family on all sides. They take vacations together. Gossip about the family stands nonexistent in the local community, and in all the pictures, everyone always smiles.
Michael does not consider the depth of his happiness. Not today. It’s already been a week since Lauren moved back in. Thus, the beauty of his foundation shines once more, like how the cigarette casts a little light as Michael lifts it to his mouth.
Lauren. He recalls the first time they met. The two had worked in the marketing section of