Made of Earth - Chapter Five [part 2]
Chapter Five [part 2]
~
At two months old, Ben was colicky and restless, at all hours of the day and night. Dean left for work and he was crying, Lisa haplessly pacing the living room with him, at night he was crying and Lisa had locked herself in the bathroom to soak in the tub while Cas sat on the couch painting, Ben wailing away in the pack-and-play by the TV. A sketchbook sat on Cas’ knees, a pencil stuck behind his ear.
“Jesus,” Dean said, dropping the keys in the bowl on the counter by the door. Swiftly he moved across the room to pick up Ben. He swayed in the spot, rubbed Ben’s back. “Where is she?”
“In the tub,” Cas answered. He twirled his hair. “She hasn’t been back there long.”
“Why didn’t you give him anything or tell her to wait?”
“I’m not the maid, Dean.” He started drawing.
Dean rolled his eyes and walked with Ben down the hall to the closed bathroom door. He knocked. “Lis, come on.”
“Go away,” she growled. The water splashed with her movements.
“You know you can’t just leave him alone with-”
“I just need five fucking minutes Dean,” she yelled.
He was going to say more, but Ben screeched and just under it he heard Lisa crying. Little squeaks and hiccups. That broke his heart even more than not knowing what to do for his son. He walked away from the bathroom and made Ben a bottle, then rocked with him in the chair over by the window, so he could watch the sunset.
“She’s trying really hard,” Cas said. In the new silence of the room as Ben gulped his dinner, Dean heard the etching of Cas’ pencil.
“I know.” He gazed down at his son’s face. His sleepy gray eyes, his red cheeks and the waft of dark hair on top of his head. Dean knew that Lisa was at her wits end, that she had been unraveling like yarn. She couldn’t write anymore, and the stress had caused her to stop breast feeding two weeks ago. She hated her body, she always looked sad. She cried when Ben cried.
That night, they hit a break. Ben went down easy. The pacifier helped. He sucked on it like it was his mother. Dean wrapped him in a blue blanket, thin and airy. Ben kicked out a bit as Dean leaned up. He made sure the curtains on the window were closed, the nightlight on in the corner of the room.
In his own room, he closed the door. Lisa was already in bed, wearing a long, yellow nightgown, bunched at her knees, her hair sloppily pulled up. She lay there curled on her side, clutching at her pillow. Dean shed his shirt and crawled into bed, rolled to face her. “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching to touch her hair, pushing it behind her ears. Tears still stained her face, her eyes pink and eyelashes clumped together.
“I’m just so tired,” she said. “He just won’t stop and I can’t…I just can’t do anything right.” She shook her head and let out a bitter, unamused laugh. “I wanted him so bad.” Her eyes squinted as she played back her memory. “I couldn’t wait for him to get here and now that he is…” she shook her head again and held in a shaky breath.
Dean moved closer, bringing her body to his. She fought him for a split second, but then melted into his touch. She was still soft, pliable. A small swell of fat still around her belly, the C-section scar pink and shiny. She cried into the crook of his shoulder, harder and louder than he ever heard, she was a different person.
He held her and kept his eyes on the picture of his own mother on the wall that Lisa had framed and hung.
Eventually, Lisa cried herself out, cried herself to sleep. She slumped into the pillow and he arranged her on the mattress the way that she liked. He covered her with the sheet and kissed her lovingly on the forehead, the cheek.
~
The colic stopped, but Lisa was stayed the same. She sat with jerky movements, like a nervous cat. Instead of cooing at Ben, at call him her little angel, she stared at him with annoyance and discontent. She didn’t hold him if she didn’t need to, didn’t do anything she didn’t have to. When Ben napped and Dean was home, she would lay on the couch, resting her feet on a pillow, or on Cas’ lap.
Then Dean received a call from a Uniform during work. He informed Dean that Lisa had been taken to the hospital, Ben too. He didn’t even tell Bobby he was leaving. Fear crawled up his throat and tried his best to keep down lunch while speeding from the salvage yard to the hospital. Everything flashed through his mind; a fire, a wreck. Someone attacked them. There hadn’t been any riots or uprisings in a few years, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t happen.
The secretary at the hospital directed him to the seventh floor, the Mental Ward.
“Mr. Winchester,” a doctor said, looking over his chart. “We’ve had Mrs. Winchester up here for a few hours-”
“Where’s my son? What’s wrong with her?”
“Your son is fine, he’s in pediatrics right now.”
“What happened?” he demanded. He glanced around the hall for Lisa, but all he found were nurses pushing wheelchairs. A janitor at the end of the hall with a mop and bucket.
The doctor stopped. “I’m afraid it’s quite serious.”
Lisa had taken Ben for a walk and just left him in the stroller in the middle of the park. On the sidewalk, like he was nothing. She didn’t make it far; a Uniform stopped her (she’d been crying) and she admitted the whole thing.
“Your wife is suffering from postpartum psychosis. It’s a very serious mental condition.”
Dean tasted pennies and bile after that. They were going to give her a procedure, he had to sign for it, and she would be home in three days. Everything would be ship-shape, nothing else to worry about. The doctor smiled from ear to ear, stretched like a goddamn clown. He shoved the clipboard into Dean’s hand and waited for the quick sign off.
Dean licked his lips. “Can I see her first?”
“I suppose. But it’s best if these things are treated as quickly as possible.”
“Ten minutes ain’t gonna change anything.”
The doctor let him into the room. Dean closed the door behind him.
He found Lisa on the bed, one wrist cuffed to the rail, her body curled into a tight ball. She was crying, her body shaking. He felt sick again and wanted to duck out to puke real quick, but he couldn’t leave her. Not like that.
“Lis?”
“Go away,” she sobbed.
He walked to the other side of the bed so he could see her face. Her eyes were red, her lips dry and open. Her free hand clutched a tissue to her chest. “I didn’t mean to,” she said, her voice a broken husk of a whisper. “I just…I thought he would be okay. I love him so much.”
Dean touched her hair. “I know.” She was sick. He couldn’t be mad at her. He should have gone to Sam when she didn’t improve as Ben improved. “Look, they’re, uh, they’re gonna make you feel better,” he explained. “Make you good as new.”
“I don’t want to hurt our baby.”
“No, no of course not.” He smiled for her. “You’re not going to. But, you’ll be okay after this.”
She swallowed. “I want to come home.”
He couldn’t help but cry too, a tear down his left cheek, down his right. He leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead and he held her hand while she cried a bit more.
On the way to the elevator to take her to the OR, Dean followed the gurney and the doctors and nurses who kept trying to push him away, but he held onto the rail, just touching her fingers. “You’ll be okay,” he promised again.
She didn’t answer.
“I love you,” he said, quietly.
She tipped her head up. “Tell me again when I’m done with this.”
And they whisked her away into the elevator. He watched her until the doors closed. He felt like throwing up again.
~
Three days later, as promised by hospital staff, Lisa was back at home, a tiny scar on her temple, but otherwise, she looked completely unharmed. When she walked in through the front door, Dean took her coat (tan and snug) and she glanced around the room. Castiel sat in the rocking chair.
“Hello, Castiel,” she said.
“Hello,” he said back.
“Wanna lie down for a bit?” Dean tried to usher her to the bedroom.
She shook her head. “No. I think…I think I’ll go sit on the balcony for a while. Where’s the baby?”
“Don’t worry,” Dean said. “Sam’s got him. He’ll be here tomorrow.”
She smiled. “Good.”
After she was on the balcony, Castiel approached him. “Dean,” he started.
“Don’t.”
“She’s-”
“She’s fine.” He snapped. “Lots of people get that thing done and they’re fine.”
“Don’t be naïve,” Cas admonished, going back to his drawing. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Cas turned out to be right.
Lisa moved through the motions. She took care of Ben and Dean, even Cas sometimes, though they didn’t sit and talk like the used to. One night she even questioned why they let him stay all the time. Why couldn’t he just go with Sam or his own family?
There were no more tender touches, her fingers along his spine and stroking the shape of his nose. No more rosy smiles, no little quips about his caveman ways. She accepted everything and preformed just as she was expected to.
One night when Dean was in bed, she stood at the window staring at the sky. “I can’t write anymore,” she said, more like an afterthought than a statement.
“What?”
“When I sit down to work, I can’t. I don’t feel it, nothing comes to my mind. I don’t feel anything.” She hugged herself. Dean got out of bed and stood behind her. He kissed her temple and put his arms around her.
“You’re just a little down.”
“They did something to my head.” She touched her tiny scar. “I’m different and I don’t like it.” Her voice came out cold and unwavering.
He didn’t know what to say or do; he’d known the procedure was a bad idea, he shouldn’t have let them do it too her, but how could he have stopped them? “Come to bed,” he offered.
“I don’t…I know that I love you and Ben,” she said, finally turning and staring into his eyes. A harshness in her that he’d ever known. Because even when they would fight and she was full of fire, there was still a kindness about her. She tilted her head, scrutinizing his face, as if the answer was in his eyes. “But I don’t know why.”
~
Another phone call at work in the middle of the day. Dean was under the hood of a minivan, a fucking minivan of all things. His mother had one and after she died, John sold it and put the cash in the bank for Dean and Sam for college.
Bobby waved the phone in his hand from the office, a little grumpier than usual. Dean slammed the hood and wiped his hands on a dirty rag, tossed it into a plastic bin just outside of Bobby’s office. “Sorry,” Dean preemptively apologized, leaning on the door frame.
But Bobby’s face wasn’t grumpy, it was grave. “Uniform,” Bobby explained.
That sinking feeling returned, the bile rising in his esophagus, like taking a shot of Jack backwards. He stepped in and took the phone. “This is Dean.”
“Mr. Winchester, I’m sorry, but there’s been an accident.”
~
They found her in the river ten miles outside of the city. Dean had to identify her body at the hospital morgue. Her body lay out on the metal slab and she looked like a princess; flowers strung in her hair, twigs and sticks. Her face still, lips slightly parted. She was wearing a long, yellow dress and had bracelets made out of daisies.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Winchester,” the coroner said to him. It wasn’t a real apology, just a platitude, like everyone else in some sort of profession memorized. And no one had sympathy for suicides.
“Thanks,” Dean half mumbled while straightening her hair. When his fingers touched skin, he jerked back. She was cold as ice. He felt sick, the bile that had been rising and curdling in his stomach finally came up and he dropped to his knees to throw up on the concrete, blood stained floor.
“Are you okay, Mr. Winchester?”
“Yeah.” He spit.
“I just need you to sign some papers and then you can pick up the remains tomorrow.”
Dean stood to look at Lisa again, as if she was pulling a prank on him. Any second now she’d crack a smile and pop up, call him an idiot for making such a big deal. But she didn’t move and Dean felt like he was in some sort of dream.
The coroner tapped his pen against the clipboard. “Mr. Winchester, I need your signature. We like to get this done as soon as possible.”
Dean wanted to thrash the guy, shove him against the wall and pound his face into a bloody pulp. But he couldn’t move, not really. He couldn’t make a fist, he couldn’t yell or scream like he was doing in his head.
So he signed the papers and the coroner removed what little jewelry Lisa was wearing. The silver bracelet from her mother, a matching necklace with a purple stone pendant. Her wedding band. He stuffed them into his pockets.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, leaning over Lisa’s body. “I’m so sorry.” His jaw trembled and he kissed her cold forehead and icy lips.
He drove home in a daze, on auto-pilot. He didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything until he pulled into the parking lot at the complex. Up two flights of stairs (he only used the elevator with groceries or the stroller). At his door, he found Castiel sitting on the welcome mat.
They locked eyes for a moment and Dean tried to pretend that he didn’t see Cas’ hunched over body, leaning over him to unlock the door.
“Dean,” he said.
Dean kept fiddling. The key didn’t seem to fit, nothing worked.
“Dean,” Cas said again.
He couldn’t. Tears blurred his vision and he felt like puking again. Cas stood and put his arms around Dean’s waist, pressed his head in between his shoulder blades. Dean slumped forward on the door, Cas following with Dean’s motions.
He sobbed and his knees buckled, taking them both down.
“Did you know?” Dean choked on his words. “Did they tell you?” maybe the voices really were angels. Maybe they told Cas things that were to come.
“No,” Cas whispered. “No. They haven’t been talking to me lately.”
Of course not. Dean punched the door, but after that couldn’t move. He just slumped against the wood with Cas holding him by the waist.
---
Next
Master Post