Chapter 99 I Want Adriana
ELIJAH
I woke up very early the next day and got ready. I needed to see Leo today at the hospital.
Without even thinking about breakfast, I got into my car with a single destination in mind.
He had never had a surgery there and I wanted to ask the doctor how soon his throat could heal because I didn’t want to believe that my son would never speak again.
They’d told me that some years ago and he had proved them wrong by speaking to me that day, so this time around, I knew he was going to prove them wrong again and he was going to speak.
I just didn’t know when.
I didn’t know his room number so I stopped at the reception to ask.
“Good morning, Alpha. What may I help you with?”
“My son’s room number. Tell me where he is.”
She looked through a computer and raised her head up.
“He’s in the children’s section. Two floors up, room 32B.”
I made my way upstairs, holding his toy train in my hand and also a picture of his mother. As much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t deny the fact that she kept Leo going.
He’d told me some months ago that his mom left because he wasn’t able to call her back. He wants to speak so that when he goes to search for her, he’ll call out her name and she’ll come back to him.
I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that his mother didn’t leave because of his speech defect. She left because she didn’t want a child anymore. She left because she didn’t love him anymore and she wanted nothing to do with him.
I just let Leo keep pushing himself so he could finally speak and I was sure that when he grew older, he would finally figure out what was going on.
But for now, he wasn’t old enough to understand it.
I finally got to the room and I paused for a moment before entering the room.
He was sleeping and an IV was hooked to his hand. There was a brace around his neck and I was so glad that he wasn’t intubated.
He was awake and he smiled when he saw me, stretching out his hands to hug me.
I quickly dropped what I was holding and ran to him, my boy. If anything happened to Leo, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror.
This boy is my whole life and I’ve dedicated my life to making sure that he becomes the best. He’s going to take after me when I die and I’ll teach him everything my father taught me when he was still here.
“Relax. How are you, do you feel any pain?”
He shook his head.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. If I was, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Truthfully, I did blame myself because if I was there and I had checked the cake before it was given to him, then I would have seen that it had chocolate.
“Here” I picked up the train and the picture “I brought you these.”
He first collected the train from me and hugged it close to his chest and then he glanced at the picture for a couple of seconds before pushing it away.
I was dumbfounded.
“Leo, look at the picture. Don’t you want it?”
He looked at it again and this time around, his expression was different. He had a small frown and then he looked back to his toy train.
He slept with this picture under his pillow every night so it scared me now that he had a very indifferent reaction to it.
“Buddy, is everything okay? This is your mom, don’t you want it anymore?”
He shook his head again.
“No, I don’t want it. Throw it away.”
“But Leo—”
He dragged the picture from me and tore it and before I could stop him, it was already in twenty pieces.
Then he picked up his train again like nothing happened.
I just stayed there, frozen at what I had just seen. What in the world did he just do?
I didn’t want to upset him anymore because I could clearly see that he wanted nothing to do with her. That was what I was hoping for for years but now that it happened, I didn’t know how to feel about it.
It meant one thing, he was outgrowing her.
I picked up the pieces and took them to the bin but I stopped for a moment. As much as I wanted to throw these out and hate her too, I couldn’t because she was still his birth mother.
Even though she had screwed up royally, she was still his mother and sooner or later, he was going to have a lot of questions and I needed this picture to show him who she was.
She had taken every bit of her property with her when she left so this was the only thing left of her in that house.
I put it back in my pocket and walked back to the bed.
“Are you hungry? Should I get you anything? I didn’t get you anything for your birthday yesterday. Don’t worry, when you get out, we’ll go out together just the two of us.”
He gave me attention for the first time.
“What about Adriana?”
Adriana.
“She’s busy so she won’t be able to come.”
She was the cause of all this. I had been so angry yesterday that I said a bit too much to her and now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn’t have.
But I couldn’t take it back. I didn’t mean for her to leave, I didn’t want her to leave at all.
I’ll speak to her some time when I get home but for now, I still don’t think I can speak to her without being angry. I need a moment to stop being so enraged.