Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89183 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“Okay, I’m listening.”
“Right. Good.” Now he stalled, but she waited, letting the silence build. Finally, he said, “I have to go back from that year. My father—he was a driver on the Tube. A really cool job for your father to have when you’re a little boy. I was a hero at school. But there are parts of the job that are hard. People who hurt themselves by accident, or deliberately, on the tracks. No one really thinks about what the driver sees. No one thinks about what he goes through when he’s unable to save someone. Or worse, thinking back to whether he could’ve stopped in time if he had done something differently.” He swallowed. “He saw and experienced things that traumatized him.”
She’d never thought about the dark side of being a Tube driver. “How did your father deal with all that?”
“He volunteers to help with PTSD over at the Transport for London offices now. But back then, when I was seventeen, he was in the thick of it. Still driving. And one day, a child fell on the tracks.” He closed his eyes, going silent for a moment. “He couldn’t save her. I was the first person to find out what happened. I found him at home, with a bottle of whiskey, sobbing. I can still hear him crying out, asking why. Begging for forgiveness.
“He saw me there, in the doorway. It was terrifying. I’d never seen my father be anything but strong and infallible. I put my arms around him, and he cried. And I knew that his passion, driving these trains, trains that he had loved since he was a boy—I knew it would never be the same for him. That he could never find that joy again. Other people had died on his watch, but never a child. He was almost incoherent, but I could make out him saying, what if it had been one of us when we were children? What if they had had to call him and my mother and say that we were gone?”
He picked up his cup of tea and took a drink. She said, “If this is too hard, you don’t have to talk about it.” She wanted to reach out, put a hand over his, but they didn’t know each other well, and she didn’t want to overstep.
“No, it’s something I need to say. I’ve never talked to anybody about this before, but you deserve to know the full truth behind why I was such an arsehole to you. As I said, it won’t excuse what I did, but hopefully the story will make you realize my behavior had nothing to do with you.”
He collected his thoughts for a moment before continuing. “I applied for the exchange program not long after that. I didn’t know how to process what my father had been through, his grief, or what lingered beyond. Because he was diagnosed with PTSD after that, and I felt so helpless, like I hadn’t done enough to help him that afternoon, and I still didn’t know how to help him. I’d always wanted to go to America, and this was my chance to escape. Escape the pain and the darkness that seemed to hover over our house during that period. Over our family. All that year, I was running, running from feeling anything. That’s why I hooked up with the group that I did. The parties, the alcohol—it all helped to numb my feelings and give me something to focus on. I don’t think any of us were actually friends, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to think about my dad, not being able to help, being useless to him when he’d done so much for me and the rest of us. And so that night, at the prom, I’d been drinking, as usual. But more even than before, because I knew I was headed back to the UK soon. And I was afraid of the state that I’d find my father in, if he’d recovered at all. My mother said he was doing a lot better, but she hadn’t been there in those first moments. She hadn’t heard him crying out, lost and on his knees, begging for forgiveness.” He glanced over at her. “I know he wouldn’t mind me telling you this now, because I’ve heard him tell this story many, many times to try to help people who have been in the same situation, to let them know they’re not alone.”
He lifted his teacup to take a sip, but it was empty. “Hell, I need something stronger for this. I’ll be right back.”
He headed down the stairs, and she put a hand over her heart. His poor father. And poor Malcolm too. He’d been a teenager who had wanted so badly to take his father’s pain away, but he hadn’t known how. No one could have done that for his father. Likely only therapy and time would’ve done it. For some reason, her mind flicked back to Emily Soames and the books she’d recommended for grief. Emily’s grief was deep and painful, but it was also straightforward. What Malcolm’s father had been through was complicated. Trauma, shock, grief, and self-blame. What an awful combination.