Restless and Relaxation

           It was Friday night, and Bobby just finished a twelve-hour shift after a very hectic week of work.

           Creedence Clearwater Revival’s, “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” played on the stereo as he cracked open a chilled bottle of Michelob Ultra, sat in his wingback chair, and stretched his feet out across the wicker ottoman. This was the first time in weeks that Bobby was going to have the whole weekend to do nothing but relax.

           He turned on the television and scrolled through his options on Netflix deciding on a thriller called, “Honest Thief” with Liam Neeson, one of his favourite actors. The opening credits began to scroll across the screen when the phone rang.

           Bobby paused the film and answered his cell phone.

           “Dude, it’s Paul. Are you ready for tonight?”

           “Tonight? What’s happening tonight, Paul?” Bobby asked.

           “The poker game, man. It’s your night to host.”

           Bobby had forgotten that it was the night of their monthly game. Six of his friends would meet once a month for beer, music, stories about their sexual conquests, and of course, poker. Bobby was not in the mood for all of that, but he couldn’t let his buddies down.

           “Yeah, right Paul. I just need to get cleaned up and run to the store for some munchies. Tell the boys they can come by around 7:00 pm, alright?”

           “Cool. See you then, bud,” Paul replied before hanging up.

           Bobby looked around the house. It looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in over a month, which could have been the case since he was hardly ever home. He quickly ran around picking up a few odds and ends but didn’t go overboard knowing that it would be filthy again by the time the game ended.

           After a quick shower, he jumped back into his car and made a beer and snack run to the Walmart store before rushing back in time for his boys to arrive. As suspected, his friend, Drew was already at the door when he arrived home.

           “Hey Drew, didn’t Paul tell you 7:00 pm?”

           “Yes, he told me, but you know me, I like to beat the rush,” Drew replied.

           “No problem. Come on in.”

           Bobby barely had the nacho chips out of the bag before Drew began grabbing them out of the bowl. This was the real reason why Drew always arrived early for games and parties. He wanted to make sure he got his share of the snacks.

           They heard two quick knocks before the door swung open. The rest of his friends began to arrive. Paul was first through the door, followed by Matt, Tom, and Ron. Ron was nicknamed, “Trance”, because when they played cards, Ron’s face was completely emotionless. He had no tells at all, therefore giving him a huge advantage over the rest of the rest of the guys.

           Drew was the easiest to read. Besides his need to rub his earlobe when he had a poor hand, he also had a bad habit of holding his cards so low that anyone sitting near him could see his hand.

           Matt was a decent player and had a knack for predicting what other players had in their hands. Then there was Tom, the ladies man. The best stories always came from Tom. Some of his tales sounded like they were straight out of the pages of Penthouse Forum. Bobby had a hard time believing him most times, however, since he spent most of his time hanging out with the boys. There was little time left to make his sexual adventures a possibility.

           Bobby did not have any interest in dating. His schedule was already too full, and after his monthly poker game, his wallet was usually empty too.

           Paul was the only one of the crew in a serious relationship. He and his girlfriend, Rebecca had been dating for just over six months and all seemed to be going well. They had an agreement that on his poker night, Rebecca would go out with her friends for some fun.

           Bobby removed the melted cheese from the microwave and set it on the serving table next to the nachos and the boys dug in instantly. Drops of orange goo splattered across the card table and the fingers of the players making the cards difficult to hold.

           Thirty minutes into the game, it was obvious that Ron was going to be the big winner once again. Bobby wondered why they even bothered playing sometimes. They might as well just hand their money over to Ron at the beginning of the game and call it a night, which was exactly how he felt now. His eyes were getting heavy, and he hoped the game would end soon.

           The game ended forty-five minutes later, and Bobby thought that he would finally be able to get to bed, but no such luck. His friends decided to stick around when Matt turned on the television and started watching the last quarter of the football game. Instead of joining them, Bobby began to tidy up the mess from the poker game.

           There were pistachio nut shells and crumbs from the nachos scattered all over the laminate floor in his dining room. The ashtray stunk of stale cigarette smoke which made Bobby’s nose cringe in disgust. He was the only non-smoker in the group. Drew smoked Cuban cigars that he ordered out of San Diego, California. He thought that they made him look distinguished. What he did not realize, was that it turned more people off than it turned on.

           It was after midnight before Bobby’s buddies left, and it took all his remaining energy to drag his tired body up the stairs and fall onto his bed. He didn’t even bother to undress or cover up.

           The morning sunshine began poking through the edges of the blinds in Bobby’s bedroom, piercing his closed eyelids like intense lasers. He tried shading his eyes, then covering his head with his pillow, trying to catch a few more hours of sleep before getting up to start his day.

           Moments after he dozed back off into dreamland, he heard the familiar ringtone from his cell phone. He considered ignoring it, but then he didn’t want to miss it if it was an important call. When Bobby’s eyes were able to focus enough to read the call display, he saw that it was his mother calling.

           By the time he hit the answer button, however, the call had already gone to voicemail. Bobby decided to check it later and went back to sleep only to be awakened again thirty minutes later when the doorbell rang.

           He dragged himself from the bed, practically fell down the stairs, and answered the door. It was his parents.

           “Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?”

           “Didn’t you get my message, dear? I told you that we just got back into town, and we were stopping by with bagels and coffee for breakfast.”

           His mother’s nose scrunched up as she hugged her son.

           “Perhaps you should go get showered up before we eat, Bobby,” she suggested with the smell of cigarette smoke and his body odor overpowering the scent from the coffee.

           “Sure, thanks. I’ll be right down,” Bobby replied.

           Bobby’s parents walked toward the kitchen and shook their heads in disappointment at the condition of the house following the poker night.

           By the time Bobby cleaned up and rejoined his parents, his mother had already cleaned up all the dishes that were stacked up in the sink from the night before. Bobby thanked her and apologized for the mess.

           Over breakfast, Bobby’s parents told him that they were planning to go visit Bobby’s sister, Liz, and they wanted him to join them, but Bobby wanted no part of it. He and Liz had a falling out years prior, and because both have a stubborn streak, neither would admit they were wrong or apologize to the other.

           Bobby insisted that he had “far too much to do” over the weekend and could not afford to spend a day out of town. He felt bad for lying to his parents, but his sister knew how to get on his nerves, and he couldn’t deal with her this weekend.

           His parents tried to convince him once more before leaving but saw that their efforts were futile and gave up.

           Bobby spent the next hour tidying up and sat back down to continue watching the Liam Neeson film that he started when there was a knock on the door. Bobby grudgingly got up and went to answer it. When he opened the door, he was greeted by two policemen.

           “Are you Bobby Mitchell?” one of the officers asked.

           “Yes, that’s me,” Bobby replied with a quiver in his voice. “What is this all about? Am I being arrested, or something?”

           “No sir, nothing like that. Mister Mitchell, there was an accident out on Highway Four. Are your parents, Joseph and Gladys Mitchell?”

           “Yes, that’s correct. What happened? Are they okay?”

           Sir, your parents’ car collided with a tanker truck. It appears that the truck driver lost control and side-swiped your parent’s car, sending them over the median and into oncoming traffic where they collided head-on with another vehicle. I am told that they were airlifted to Springfield General Hospital and are in critical condition.”

           Bobby stood there stunned, unable to fathom the information that was just given to him.

           “Mister Mitchell, if you wish, we can drive you to the hospital.”

           “No, that won’t be necessary,” he began. “I will drive myself. Thank you.”

           The officers left and Bobby grabbed his keys and ran to the car, not even stopping to lock his house. He drove recklessly until he spotted a police car in the distance. It then dawned on him that he won’t be much help to his parents if he ends up in an accident as well.

           When he arrived at the hospital, he checked with the Admitting Department and found out that his father was already moved to a room, but his mother was still in surgery. Her face had been lacerated by shards of broken glass from the shattered windshield. One piece had punctured her left eye causing irreversible damage to her cornea.

           Bobby waited with his father for word on his mother. The nurse arranged for both of his parents to be sharing a room once she finished in recovery.

           Moments later, a woman in her early thirties walked through the door. Bobby was faced with his sister, Liz. They just stared at each other without saying a word and she walked past Bobby to join her father.

           “Have you heard anything about mom’s condition?” Liz asked her father.

           “The nurses said she is in recovery now, but she lost sight in one of her eyes. They will be moving her up here when she wakes up.”

           Liz glanced up at Bobby.

           “Mom said that she was stopping past your house before coming to see me, Bobby. I half-expected you to be in the car with them, but then again, I knew you didn’t want to see me either.”

           Bobby sat silently for a moment, thinking of the words to say.

           “Liz let’s not argue right now. It isn’t the time or place for it.”

           Liz nodded her head in agreement to their truce.

           Less than an hour later, the orderly wheeled a gurney into the room with their mother upon it. She smiled as she passed by and saw both of her children in the same room for the first time in years. After the nursing staff helped transfer her to the other bed, she spoke up.

           “If I would have known that all it took for me to get you two together was to end up in the hospital, I would have gotten into an accident years ago,” their mother said with a smile.

           Bobby looked at his sister and smiled, then the two of them walked over to stand at their mother’s bedside. They each held onto one of their mother’s hands. Their mother then pulled their two hands toward one another until they overlapped, intertwined with her own.

           Bobby tried to resist, but when he saw that Liz was accepting the gesture, he left it where it was. When he looked up at Liz’s face, she had a half-smile on her face with a tear running down her face. Bobby’s heart began to soften. He realized that his ongoing feud with Liz was senseless and was ready to bury the hatchet with her.

           “Listen, Liz,” Bobby started saying, but Liz interrupted.

           “No, please, let me start. I honestly cannot for the life of me remember what this fight was about in the first place. Can you?”

           Bobby thought for a minute.

           “Now that you bring it up, I don’t remember either. If we can’t remember, then maybe it wasn’t worth arguing about in the first place.”

           Bobby squeezed his sister’s hand and smiled at her, then he turned to his mother. She stared aimlessly ahead with her one remaining eye.

           “Mom,” Bobby said. “Are you okay mom?”

           Silence…

           Both Bobby and Liz began trying to revive their mother. Their father rang for the nurse and Bobby began yelling for help.

           Nurses rushed into the room and asked Bobby and Liz to stand back. One of the nurses called for a doctor and a crash cart. The nurse began CPR until the doctor arrived. They spent a good fifteen minutes, attempting to restart her heart, but eventually gave up. The doctor turned to Bobby and his family and just said that he was sorry and that there was nothing more he could do.

           Bobby’s father asked if it was the accident that caused trauma to her heart, but the doctor insisted that there was no sign of damage to anything but her face because of the accident. It was just her time to go.

           Bobby, Liz, and their father embraced one another and began to cry, then pray. The nurses gave them some time alone to grieve over their loss.

           “I’m just glad mom was alive to see us make up. I know that it bothered her very much,” Liz said to Bobby.

           “Me too, Liz.”

           The following weekend, after the funeral, Bobby invited everyone back to his house. Friends and family sat around sharing stories and memories. Bobby spotted Liz standing out on the back porch and went out to join her. He wrapped one of his arms across her shoulder and pulled her close.

           “Let’s not allow stupid arguments come between us ever again, Liz, okay? It should not have taken a traumatic event to make us realize how short life really is. We need to embrace every moment and remind ourselves daily that some things are more important in life than debating about who is right or wrong.”

           Liz rested her head upon Bobby’s shoulder and squeezed him tightly.