Mitigation by Sawyer Bennett
I vaguely note that Matt is wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes… an outfit that I’ve never seen him in before. It’s a far cry from the tailored business suits and silk ties he always wears.
No matter what he’s wearing, when I release my mom’s hand and turn to walk into his outstretched arms, I finally feel a small measure of comfort.
Matt wraps himself around me, and I lay my head on his chest. He smells like fresh soap, and I could care less how obvious I am when I turn my nose into his shirt and inhale him deeply. Unfortunately, it makes me painfully aware that I probably smell like a garbage dump since I haven’t showered in over a day and a half.
Pressing his lips to the top of my head, Matt just holds me until I’m ready to break free. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. This is the first time in our tortured game that he has held me just to comfort me, with no expectation of getting anything in return. It’s a side of Matt I’ve never seen, and I probably won’t see again after he leaves.
Which now makes me realize… why is he here? This is very anti-Matt. We eat dinner together… we have sex. That’s all there is.
But I can’t let that be one of my worries because I have enough on my plate. For now… I’ll just enjoy Matt’s strong embrace and worry about everything else later.
Unfortunately, my peaceful moment is disturbed when my stomach gives an incredibly loud and embarrassingly long rumble of hunger. It sounds like Chewbacca and a T-Rex having a mixed martial arts contest inside my stomach.
Matt pulls slightly back and looks down at me. “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“When I had dinner with you, I guess,” I answer, because I think that’s the last time I’d eaten. Wracking my brain, I couldn’t remember putting anything else in my stomach other than coffee, which is probably why it felt full of burning acid right now.
Grabbing my hand, Matt says, “Let’s rectify that.”
I pull back, glancing in worry at my mom laying in the bed… the respirator slowly whooshing in and out. “I can’t leave her.”
Matt’s eyes turn warm, but they are stern. “Mac… she’ll be fine if you leave for just a few minutes. The nurses’ station is right outside her door. We’ll come right back, but you need to eat to keep up your strength. Okay?”
He waits for me to decide, which again is very anti-Matt. The Matt I’ve come to know and ‘love to hate sometimes’ would have dragged me kicking and screaming down to the cafeteria and shoved food down my throat. Now, he’s presenting me with an option and leaving the choice up to me.
“If you don’t want to leave her,” he continues, “I’ll go down, get you something, and bring it back. But I think you should come with me… stretch those legs a bit.”
I glance back at my mom and feel tremendous guilt for leaving her side for even a minute. But then rationality comes back and I realize… she won’t even know I’m gone. She won’t know anything, ever again.
I nod at Matt and he takes me by the hand, linking his fingers with mine as we walk through the hospital. Following the signs pointing to the cafeteria, we walk in silence for a bit because I’m still stunned that he’s here. I can’t figure out why. It’s not something he should be doing as my employer. But he doesn’t seem to have any feelings for me outside of the bedroom, so that doesn’t make sense either.
Deciding to go ahead and put this worry to rest so I can concentrate on the more important things, I stop and turn to look at Matt. “Why are you here?”
“Because no one should go through something like this alone,” he says simply.
“Yeah… but I’m not your responsibility or concern.”