filled the room. He sagged back against the pillow. It had been a dream. It was too real; like he was back in the interrogation room. Mark ran a shaky hand through his hair, then scrubbed his eyes. His shoulder still ached and he rotated it. He must have been lying on it wrong.
His dad stood beside the bed, his eyes lit with worry. “What’s going on? You were yelling.”
Mark shook his head. “Nothing. Just a bad dream.” He didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
“It’s nothing, Dad.” He winced at the hard tone in his voice as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. Taking a moment, he rested his elbows on his thighs, hands dangling, as he tried to get his body to stop shaking. “What time is it?” He dared to look up, hoping that he didn’t appear as rattled as he felt.
His dad gave him a long look before answering, “About seven-thirty. Your mom is making some breakfast. It should be ready in about fifteen minutes.”
Mark wasn’t sure he could eat with his stomach twisted up like a pretzel, but he pasted on a smile. “Sounds good. I’ll be down soon.” Standing, he stretched, wincing as pain lanced through his shoulder.
“You okay?” His dad nodded towards Mark’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“I must have slept on it funny, that’s all.” That was true enough even though he didn’t think his shoulders would ever be the same as they had been. The joints just weren’t designed to hold all of a man’s weight, especially when pulled at unnatural angles.
His dad gave him a doubtful look, but finally left.
Mark sighed and gathered his clothes. He didn’t need another shower, but took one anyway just because he could. This time, he shaved afterwards.
For a year, he had avoided looking at his face in the mirror. The blank look in his eyes had scared the hell out of him, and so he had stopped looking. When he shaved in prison, he had focused only on the patch of skin he was shaving. Nothing more.
Seeing his face now was like looking at the face of an acquaintance. His skin was dead white from months without sunlight, the dark bristles of his beard a marked contrast. As he scraped the razor over his jaw, he held his skin taut with his free hand. He noted how sharp his cheekbones appeared. They were more defined with hollows beneath them. The changes in his face shocked him. He scarcely recognized it. Ducking his head, he rinsed the razor.
A plate stacked high with steaming pancakes greeted him when he entered the kitchen. A bowl of sausage sat beside a pitcher of warmed syrup. Mark didn’t know which was watering more, his mouth or his eyes. He was home.
“Wow, Mom. This looks great. After I couldn’t eat for awhile, they tried to tempt me with pancakes, but-” He was going to say that they were tough and dry, but the look of horror on his mother’s face stopped him cold.
“Why couldn’t you eat?”
Mark opened his mouth but then realized that he couldn’t tell her about the things they had done to him. He shrugged and grabbed the syrup, pouring it on the pile. “I…uh…I got a stomach bug. You know how those things are.”
His dad entered the kitchen, the newspaper folded under his arm and interjected, “How what things are?” He pulled his chair out and set the paper beside his plate, giving Mark a questioning look.
“Mark said he was sick and couldn’t eat for awhile when he was…when he was gone.”
“When I was in prison, Mom. You can say it.” He cut into the pancakes and shoved a forkful in his mouth, catching a drop of syrup with his tongue before it dripped onto his shirt. They were cooked just the way he liked them, crispy around the edges and tender in the middle.
“What kind of illness?”
Mark wanted to smack himself for bringing up the subject. Now his dad would grill him about symptoms and try to diagnose him. “Nothing I want to talk about over breakfast.”
Hopefully they would think of the worst symptoms associated with stomach problems and drop the subject.
“Vomiting? Diarrhea?”
Stifling a groan, Mark shook his head. “It was nothing. Forget it.” He should have known his dad wouldn’t care that they were eating. How many times had he discussed some nasty symptom a patient had while they were eating dinner when he was a kid? His mom had become so used to medical talk that she never protested. He stood and poured a glass of milk. He lifted the gallon in invitation. “Anyone want some?”
Neither answered so he took his glass back to his seat. His mom looked at him with concern and his dad with speculation. “You never caught stomach bugs growing up.” There was a note of challenge in his dad’s voice.
Mark set his fork down and watched the syrup drip down the side of his remaining stack. Not only would telling them force him to remember the worst time in his life, but subjecting them to the details would force them to picture him being…questioned. Once that image was out there, it couldn’t be erased. Ever. It was better for them to remain ignorant. “It was a prison, Dad. Weren’t you always telling me that disease and illness run rampant in places where people are crowded together?”
“Son, what are you afraid to tell us? We realize you were in a prison, not on a luxury cruise. You don’t have to spare us the details.” His dad’s eyes locked on his, full of more sorrow and anguish than Mark had ever seen him show. “Our imaginations have probably conjured up the very worst.”
Overwhelmed, Mark broke the visual connection. “They never beat me.” He couldn’t bring himself to lie, but he didn’t want them to imagine things that never happened. “ Most of the time, I was treated okay.” The pancakes were soaking up the syrup. Soon they would be soggy and cold. He took another bite.
“Hon, we won’t think less of you no matter what happened in there, okay?” His mother smiled, her bottom lip trembling.
“I know. But you don’t have to worry. Mostly, I was just bored.” He shoved in the last forkful of pancakes.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“So, what are your plans?”
Mark looked over the top of the newspaper at his dad. “What do you mean? Today? I was gonna-”
His dad shook his head and cut him off. “No. I mean, for work. For getting on with your life.” He took the seat across the kitchen table. “It’s been a week. You have to start thinking about your future.”
Mark folded the paper and set it down beside his coffee cup. His father’s tone took him back to when he was twenty and had rebelled against returning to college. He had gone two years and done okay. School had been easy for him, but he found it boring. How many times had he tried to make his father see that it just wasn’t the path that he wanted to take? Especially not pre-med.
It had been drilled into him his whole life that he would be a doctor like his father. “I’ve been looking through the help wanted ads every day, Dad. I made a resume and sent that to a few employers.”
Mark put both elbows on the table and raked his hands through his hair and flashed a brief humorless smile. There hadn’t been a single ad seeking a newly-freed terrorist suspect. He took a deep breath and folded his arms on top of the paper. “I have an unexplainable gap in my employment history, and all my references are shot to hell. I’m not expecting much response.”
His dad rose and poured himself a cup of coffee. “If you would’ve finished college, you wouldn’t have this problem now.” He leaned against the counter, feet crossed as he sipped from his mug.
The muscles in the back of Mark’s neck tensed. “Yeah, well hindsight’s a bitch, isn’t it?” He tried to quell his anger and took a gulp of his coffee. What had he expected from his father? Support and warm fuzzies? The glimmer of warmth the first few days after Mark had returned had faded and now his dad was back to his classic ways.
“Are you still having your special dreams?”
The coffee sprayed across the paper as Mark choked at the question. When he could talk, he stammered,
