Conviction(30)

“Time’s up Reed. Get your arse out of bed and into that shower before I drag you out.” I open one eye, and the light shining into the room from the open curtains hit me like a laser beam.

“Fuck!” I complain. “Shut the f*cking curtains and get out,” I say loudly. I want to shout, but shouting will require effort and I simply don’t have the energy for anything that requires effort.

“Move your f*cking arse boy. I won’t warn you again.” I don’t need to open my eyes again to know who’s talking to me. It’s my dad and he sounds thoroughly pissed off.

My dad and I had done a lot of bridge building over the last ten years or so. Once I had the money, I’d gotten him into a rehab program, where it was discovered he was suffering from a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, otherwise known as PTSD.

I had been a baby when he had gone off to fight in the Falklands war. He was part of the Special Forces that landed at San Carlos, otherwise known as Bomb Ally. His squad had been key in securing the beachhead, allowing the safe landing of further troops to fight in the conflict. His unit had come under fire numerous times and he’d witnessed things a young man in his twenties should never have to. Added to this were operations in the Gazza Strip and Northern Ireland. The toll of which had been massive on his mental well-being.

He’d come home on leave, to his wife and four little boys and simply couldn’t handle the normality of it all. He turned to drink, which led him to become violent toward my mum. She eventually left him and went back to her old life, which my dad knew nothing about as a junkie. Whoring herself out to pay for her next fix. This ultimately led to her death, something else that severely affected my dad’s already less than healthy mental state. He spent the next fifteen or so years drinking himself into oblivion. As soon as the band signed their first deal, I gave my brothers the money to get him some help. Once he’d dried out and had seen a psychologist for well over a year, he finally started to get his shit together. He asked to see me and we sat down and had a long overdue heart to heart.

His problem with me. As I was growing up, it turned out, was simply that I looked like my mum. My brothers looked more like him, brownish hair, blue eyes but my hair was more of a dirty blond and I had the bluey, green coloured eyes that my mum had. And that trait is what had caused him to take a swing at me, every opportunity he got. We sorted out our shit and now he lives in a bungalow on the grounds of my house, with his new wife, Sandra. Sandra works as my housekeeper and cleaner, my dad as my groundsman and they take care of the place and my dogs while I’m away on tour or doing stuff with the band.

None of the shit my dad went through as a soldier gives him the excuse to behave the way he did, but once he was given the help that he needed, he admitted and accepted that he’d been in the wrong. He’d not had a drink in years and was once again playing a major part in the lives of myself and my brothers and their families. Our relationship would never be perfect but he was my dad, and I loved him. I’d lost too much in my life to hold grudges.

“Dad, draw the curtains and f*ck off.”

“He’s going nowhere. We’re going nowhere. You’re going to the shower.”

Who the f*ck’s voice was that? I opened one eye again and through the bleariness, could see what looked like about a half dozen people standing in my bedroom doorway.

What the actual f*ck?

I shut my eye again and huffed.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but I’m telling you all now, I’m not getting up. So you can all go get f*cked.”

I turned my head in the opposite direction, just to let them know I wasn’t moving.

“Oi… Reed, I’ve flown twelve thousand miles to come and see you. I’m not talking to you from your bedroom doorway and I’m not coming in because I’m scared of what I might catch. I’d rather take my chances with Ebola than step foot in there and face whatever’s causing that smell. It’s rank.”

For f*ck’s sake! They’re not gonna leave me alone are they?

I roll over onto my back and slowly sit. Opening my eyes, I take in the people standing in my bedroom door. There’s my dad, with a bucket in his hand, Lawson, looking thoroughly pissed off, Tyler, standing with his arms folded and trying hard but failing not to grin and the biggest surprise of all, Josh Gardner, my life-long best friend. I can’t help but smile as soon as our eyes meet and then it hits me. Everything I’ve held inside for the past few weeks, every thought, feeling and emotion that I’ve drunk myself into unconsciousness to forget, comes rushing to the surface. I rest my back against the headboard, bring up my knees, drop my head between them and cry, like a f*cking *… I cry.

My dad is the first one there. He stands at the edge of my bed, pulls my head into his chest and holds me and it feels so f*cking good. Something as simple as human contact, being held by someone that genuinely cares well, you can’t put a price on that. I wrap my arms around his waist, press the side of my face into his chest and hold on tight while I just let the tears come. My shoulders shake and my chest and throat hurt with the force that they leave my body. My dad just keeps holding me, gently rubbing the back of my head.

“Let it out, son, let it all out. You shoulda done this weeks ago.” I feel him take a deep breath in and then let it out slowly. “Take it from someone who knows, locking yourself away from the people that love ya and drowning your sorrows in a bottle, never helped anyone.”