Second Down
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 20
The entire way home, I fantasized about getting my hands around Elijah’s throat and choking him out. Admittedly, that was taking things a little too far. Sure, he was an asshole, and he’d ruined my clothes, but I’m not sure going to prison for attempted murder would be the best way to deal with it.
Still, it did make me feel a little better fantasizing about it.
I was just so furious because he kept doing this shit and kept getting away with it. There were absolutely no consequences for him. I knew that because there had been no consequences for me when I’d been just like him, but now that I was trying to turn over a new leaf and be a better person, it was like I was constantly considering the consequences.
I was certain that if Elijah was pissed off enough at someone, he could put his hands on that person and choke them and would only get a slap on the wrist.
It sucked that bad people got to do whatever they wanted without caring about it, but if you were even a little good, you had to constantly moderate yourself.
I walked through the door, ready to go upstairs and be pissed off for a while longer, when I saw Mom sprawled on the couch, one arm draped over her eyes, the other hanging limply toward the floor.
“Mom?” I said, my voice a little higher than I meant it to be. She shouldn’t even be home. She had a shift at the hair salon that she was supposed to be at.
When she didn’t respond, I dropped my bag and rushed over to her. Her face, what I could see of it, was covered in sweat, and her skin was waxy and pale. So limp, her arm just kind of lying on her face. I couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.
I dropped to a knee next to her and started trying to figure out what I should do. I reached for her arm to check her pulse, but right before I grabbed her wrist, she moved her arm slightly, uncovering one eye and asking, “What do you need?”
The question was clear, not slurred or anything, but her voice still sounded really weak.
“Mom, you look terrible,” I said sympathetically. “Are you sick? Did you ... Did something happen at work?”
“I’m fine,” she said, obviously not fine. She tried to push herself up, but she slumped back against the cushions, clearly struggling. “Just have a headache, so I switched shifts with someone. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“You don’t look fine. You look like you’ve been hit by a truck. You’ve been having a lot of these headaches lately.”
“It’s nothing. Just ... stress. The regular Tylenol isn’t really cutting it anymore, so it just seems like it’s worse than it is.”
The fact that over-the-counter drugs weren’t helping told me that it was much worse than she was letting on.
This went well beyond headaches. I moved away in my dream when I was nineteen, partly for work and partly to get away from Mom, who had spiraled into some really out-there stuff while still doting on Josh. I knew that she’d ended up getting sick in my dream, and I had a vague memory of it being connected to the headaches.
I wanted to kick myself for not paying more attention back then. And wondered, going forward, what should I do?
Yes, I sometimes hated Mom for the way she always sided with her little psychopath, but she was still my mother, and I hated seeing her like this.
Besides, she wasn’t always mean. She could be nice sometimes, too.
What was clear, though, was that the headaches were more than just headaches. There was more to it than that, but I wasn’t sure what.
“Have you seen a doctor about these headaches?” I asked getting off my knees and sitting on the edge of the table. “If regular drugs stopped working, then it has to be getting worse, right?”
Mom’s hand fluttered dismissively. “Dr. Taylor wasn’t any help at all. Just said they were tension headaches and to take some aspirin. Doctors always think a woman’s pain is all in her head.”
“I thought I heard Dad say that the last time you saw Dr. Taylor was like two months ago. Maybe you should get a second opinion? These headaches don’t seem normal. What if it’s something serious?”
“Blake, honey, please.” Mom’s voice had that edge to it, the one that said I was pushing too hard. “I know my own body. I just need better pain medication.”
I didn’t want to push any harder. She was already hurting. The last thing I wanted was to annoy her on top of that.
“I could run to the pharmacy,” I offered. “Get whatever over the counter medication is strongest? I mean, they have to have something better than just Tylenol, right? Or I could get other stuff, like Ibuprofen or whatever; maybe it’ll work differently.”
Her face softened. “Would you? That would be wonderful. And stop worrying. I’ll probably be fine by the time you get back.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but I nodded anyway. “Want me to handle dinner when I get back? So you can keep resting?”
“That would be nice.” She reached out and patted my hand as she closed her eyes again. Her skin still felt clammy. “Such a good boy. I love you, sweetie.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said, hurrying out the door.
We lived close enough to Main Street that the pharmacy was only a few blocks away. The headaches did have a tendency to come and go, so I didn’t doubt it might go away, but I also knew they’d still come back.
Fixing this would be harder than fixing Dad’s thing, since it would require her to do something.
Maybe I’d talk to Dad about the headaches again.
Later that night, I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, my eyes tracing over its textured pattern, kind of like a form of meditation. Mom had been mostly right. By the time I’d gotten home, she was sitting up and looked much better.
She still opened the bottle and downed a few pills as soon as I handed her the bottle, suggesting the headache wasn’t gone, just better, but at least she didn’t look like death warmed over anymore.
I left her sitting there, leaning back with eyes closed, and made one of the only things I knew how to make: spaghetti. It was something I’d taught myself as an adult in the dream life, and Mom was actually surprised when she came into the kitchen later and saw what I was making.
Josh was thankfully quiet through dinner, and so Mom had no reason to stop being nice to me, making this one of my best evenings in a while, in spite of my ruined clothes.
I’d talked to Dad after dinner, trying to bring up her headaches and how worried I was about it. He’d kind of blown it off. Well, that wasn’t fair. He hadn’t blown it off exactly, and it was clear he took it seriously, but it was also clear he wasn’t going to talk to me about it.
I got where he was coming from, sort of. Back in my other life, the dream life, if some teenager had tried telling me how to handle something this serious, I probably would’ve dismissed them too. What did a kid know about these things?
Hell, even with that dream life still a solid memory in my head, I didn’t know about these things or what to suggest even if he had listened to me. Construction work and welding hadn’t exactly made me a medical expert.
But watching Mom suffer, knowing what might be coming, it was torture. I hadn’t been around in that other timeline, but I knew it got a lot worse, and I wanted to avoid that for her. Again, not that I could explain that to them.
What was the point of getting this second chance if I couldn’t actually change anything? Everyone just saw me as some kid who couldn’t possibly understand adult stuff. The coaches were the same way every time I made a suggestion.
It was frustrating.
The only thing I could really have an effect on was myself. Which left me with my other problem; how to achieve my goal. I still wanted, more than anything else, to make football my career, which ultimately meant getting to the NFL.
Coach was right about needing high-level training to make that happen. He was also right that I couldn’t afford it.
I’d left that problem working in the back of my mind all night as I dealt with more pressing matters, but it seemed that this was one area where my dream memories might actually be able to help.
I knew the dream was real. I was done second-guessing that. Enough stuff had played out either in the way I remembered it or at least affected by changes from the way I remembered it to tell me it wasn’t just my subconscious making patterns.
Mechanics of how that actually happened be damned, I knew what was going to happen, which seemed like the kind of thing I could turn into money.
My problem was, I hadn’t exactly been a Wall Street guy in that other life. I’d been a blue-collar guy, which didn’t really lend itself to investments.
Sure, I could piece together some stuff. I knew the technology that would go mainstream, I knew some companies that would be huge. What I didn’t know were any details. How those companies got huge, the sequence of when things would hit.
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