Polly Olly Oxen Free: Chapter Two - Monroe Ace’s (DRAFT 1)
In which Tibbs is moody AF and Pol is having none of it.
I distinctly remember the scent of sitting in that hospital; my feet wrapped around the metal legs of the chair that the nurses had brought in for me with a cringe; the undrinkable wax paper cup of hot cocoa the night aid had brought me when the shift changed; and that smell—sterile air and floor cleaner with a ghost of baby powder that felt like a joke.
It’s the absence of this scent from the scene that plays out in front of me that first screams, “dream.” Not the seven-year-old hands that have replaced my own, or the sight of the small baby in the ventilator next to me marked with a white filing label that reads “MONROE, ? BABY BOY 1” in hastily scratched sharpie.
The absence of rage would have been what clued me in next if I hadn’t already noticed the smell. I watched as my seven-year-old self clenched her fists, and as she did a delayed but very much real anger rose in my body, tripled in scale, and screamed into my brain.
“HIS NAME IS THIBADO!”
The words in my throat come out only as a sob but from outside myself I hear my name.
“Pollyanna!”
I know the voice and the there is no delay in the rush of pain and relief that surged through me then as I turn to my Uncle in time to have him catch me up in his arms.
“Oh, thank God.” He says, as I bury my cries into his suitcoat. “Thank God, you are still here.”
Why he said it didn’t matter, but in that moment it was exactly what I needed to hear.
“Pol! Yo!”
This voice, was not a dream. And neither were the shakes at my shoulders.
“Dude! Snap out of it!” Tibbs whined in the best stacatto-ed performance of the phrase humanly possible. “It’s so creepy when you cry in your sleep!”
I open my eyes with a glare.
“Oh.” He says, pulling away. He drops his hands from my shoulders and plops down at the foot of my bed. After a moment of rainbow hair tugging and avoiding my glare, Tibbs nuzzles my hanging foot in mock apology. “I’m sorry Telly almost killed Mom and then Dad abandoned you in the NICU and told you to watch me when I was like two seconds old and you sat there for like ten hours until Uncle Ali showed up and had a nervous breakdown in front of you.“
He stopped his foot nuzzling to look at me, his head still pressed against my leg, with a pout, he did a tiny nuzzle and purred, “pddddd, but at least now you have meee! Pddddd, pddddd, pddddd.” With each purr, his nuzzle got more animated and ridiculous until a snort finally broke through my disapproving glower.
We busted out laughing.
“See?” Tibbs said in triumph. “I am totally worth all of that mental anguish and childhood adverse event scorey point things.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved him off his perched at the edge of my bed. “ACES, Adverse Childhood Events.”
“Exxxactly.” Tibbs said. “How could I forget that our wonderful medical establishment decided to name their traumatized kids metric ‘ACES.’”
“Probably because you are too ACES.” I laughed, allowing him to pull me into our running joke.
“Pshaw! No one can be too ACES my dear! Everyone in America should have allllll the ACES!” Tibbs gestured with a flourish and stood near the window, absently adjust the soccer net as he checked the apple.
Still stuck. Because why the hell wouldn’t it be at this point.
“Why’d you wake me up Tibbs?” I asked. “I couldn’t have been crying that loud.”
“You weren’t.” He said, now looking out the window. “Mom and Dad took Telly to the doctor this morning for their heart appointment.”
Ah. I forgot about the heart appointment. Tibbs hated waiting for the three of them to come back anytime Telly had to go under for a check or any kind. He always ended up in my room. Usually he’s come in and pick a fight. Which is probably why he was so angry about the crying. I had foiled his emotional regulation plans.
“You know,” Tibbs said, a small spark of devil in his tone. “I was thinking of reinforcing the net given that whole attempted sabotage of yours yesterday.”
And there it was.
People had a tendency to misinterpret Tibbs. Most people thought he was excessive, dramatic, erratic, or just “a lot.” Which, in all fairness isn’t an inaccurate way to describe him, but all of those things are just him. I can’t explain much better than that. It’s like complaining that the ocean is too full of unpredictable waves. Yeah. No shit. It’s the freakin ocean people. And once people understood that and accepted that we weren’t going to change it we figured out how to navigate the ocean just fine.
Same applies to Tibbs.
He is who he is and if you understand him, you can gauge with decent accuracy when the waves of excessive or dramatic are about to roll in. And when they do, it doesn’t make sense to describe him as acting “excessive” or “dramatic” because he isn’t acting or choosing. He’s just him.
But, as much as I love him, as much I understand him, I also have zero tolerance for him choosing to crash those waves all over me when he could go do it somewhere else.
“Nope. You’re moody.” I pointed to the door. “Outta my room. Go run laps or something.”
Tibbs spun around on his heels and collapsed on to the floor cross-legged with another pathetic whine “I caaa-aaaan’t!”
“Whhhyy-yyyyy?” I mimicked back, adjusting my leg harness from where his nuzzling had ruffled the straps.
“Why do you think, Pol?” Tibbs said, his voice no longer a whine—his actual anger finally starting to surface. “Once again, they tromp off together to go be with Telly while one of us is stuck looking after the other one.”
Oh. Oh, this was rich. This was fucking rich.
“One of us is stuck looking after the other one?”
“Yes!” Tibbs said, as if we were both in this on equal ground. “It’s absolutely inconsiderate and is borderline child neglect.”
“Tell me Tibbs,” I said, careful to hold back the full Calvary vying to erupt from my mouth, “how many times have Mom and Dad asked you to look after me?”
Tibbs shook his hair from his eyes and picked at the fuzz on his sock. “Pssh… you don’t even know. Like, ever since you’ve been all bedridden at home, which has been like what, almost three freaking weeks now? I’ve had to cover for Mom and Dad and let your PT into the house like five times. It’s ridiculous. I’m a teenager, I should not be in charge of my older sister’s hospice care.”
I shook my head to try and rid it from the stupidity of that statement.
“First of all, I am not on hospice. For the love of God do not going around telling people that or they will think I’m on my fucking death bed Tibbs.”
“Really?” Tibbs looked up, eyes wide and then quickly darted his glance to the floor. “That explains a few things.”
I bit back the urge to scream. Three breaths later, I continued “Second, I’ve been home for two and a half weeks and you’ve let Gena in three times.”
Tibbs shrugged, “Still shouldn’t have to do it. It’s not fair to place that kind of stuff on kids.”
That was the straw that broke the camels back and set the nuclear arsenal off in my brain.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. My voice coming out cold. Tibbs looked up, eyebrows quirked.
“That wasn’t rhetorical, Thibado.” I said. “I asked, are you, fucking, kidding me.”
Tibbs’ understandable look of curiosity at my unfamiliar tone of voice shifted into something that likely matched my own. Us Monroe’s were anything if not consistent in our ability to channel clear, calm, rage, after all.
“No, Pollyanna.” Tibbs said, his voice easily dropping another octave. “I am not. And before you go a G.I. Jane on me, it wasn’t fair for you to have to take care of me and Telly for the last thirteen years either.”
It was a good play, but it wasn’t going to work this time. I’d let that pacifying “we’re all in this together Pol,” business go on for far too long.
“I’m not talking about whether or not it was fair. I’m asking if you are fucking kidding me when you put your three excruciating door openings on the same level as my thirteen years of watching you two from 2:30 to 5:30 every goddamned night. Changing your diapers and helping with feedings. Hell, at seven years old I was up mixing formula for your bottles at 3:00am because Dad was sanitizing the bottles and Mom was cleaning Telly’s ports. You think that was fair Tibbs? No! It wasn’t! But I fucking did it because that is what family fucking does!”
“I’m not arguing that!” Tibbs stood up. “Jesus, Pol! Why the hell would you think that!”
“Then why are you complaining about it?!” I demanded.
“BECAUSE IT FUCKING SUCKS!”
“YOUR LIFE IS A FUCKING CAKE WALK IN COMPARISON TO MINE!”
And that is when the doorbell rang.
It took a solid-minute of glaring before Tibbs, in his brilliant angry Tibbs-logic ways, groaned and, without any hint of irony at all, said, “Fine. I guess I’ll go get it then.”
I could have kissed him for it. The last thing I need was to go into my PT session with Gena—the day after a fall—in full rage mode. Or at least, that is what I thought the last thing I needed was. The actual last thing I needed was walking swiftly through my door like they were here for a court case.
Priya and Rohan Bahtia. Saffi’s parents.