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Mickey Milkovich woke up with prickling eyes, a dry throat, a stinging pain in his back and a stiffness in all of his joints that felt like he would never be able to move again.
‘Motherfucker,’ he hissed to himself, spending the next five minutes trying to sit up straight in his bed. He looked around the room. He had no idea where he was. It looked like a cheap hotel room. There was a small flatscreen TV, a coffee table and a wooden closet and a hospital bed. Wait, what? What did a hospital bed do in a hotel room? Maybe that explained all the pain he felt in his body. But the room didn’t look like a hospital room.
There was also a bedside table. With pictures. He grabbed the glasses laying next to the picture frames and put them on, looking at the pictures closely.
Ah, Ian. And Yevgeny. Jesus, that kid had grown a lot since he’d last seen him. You couldn’t really call him a kid anymore, because next to him on the picture were a bunch of other kids Mickey didn’t recognize.
‘Jesus fucking Christ…’ Mickey scolded, trying to stand on his feet, finding support in the walker in front of him. Was he that old already?
It took him another five minutes to walk from the bed to the door. The stiffness in his joints had faded only a little. He opened the door and a strange woman passed his hotel room, walking very quickly.
‘Hey, you! Lady!’ Mickey yelled as hard a he could, shocked by his own low, raspy voice. Fuck, he needed nicotine.
The lady stopped immediately in her tracks and turned around, ‘oh, good morning Mr. Milkovich. Have you had breakfast yet?’
She must be the room service lady or something.
‘No, fuck, no I haven’t had fucking breakfast yet. Where the fuck is my boyfr…. Ian?’ Mickey wasn’t sure if he could be open in front of this lady he didn’t know. He could never be careful enough, who knows if she worked for Terry or something and was sent to kill him, especially now he felt so weak.
‘Oh, you mean your husband?’ the lady asked loudly.
Ian and him got married? When?!
Then he remembered. Ofcourse he was married, how could he have forgotten? Should he tell Ian that he almost forgot their fucking wedding? What was wrong with him?
‘Ian will come visit you in the afternoon. I’ll help you take a shower right away, let me just bring some breakfast to room 6,’ the lady rambled.
Now Mickey was getting really annoyed and started screaming at the lady. ‘The fucking afternoon?! Well how the fuck am I going to check if he takes his meds? Is he doing okay? Does he have therapy today? Is he even fucking stable?!’
‘Slow down, Mr. Milkovich, please. He’s doing fine. He’s taking really good care of himself, alright?’ she soothed and she tried to shush him back inside his room.
‘How the fuck do you know? Are you spying on him?’ Mickey hissed.
‘No, he called us. He says he took his meds this morning and that he’s going to visit you after going to therapy. I’ll help you wash up right away,’ the lady told him and Mickey finally believed her. Well, for that moment.
‘Is my son with his mother?’
Mickey was sitting in some sort of living room he didn’t recognize, a sandwich in front of him. There was cheese on it; he didn’t even like cheese.
‘Yes, he is,’ another strange woman told him. She seemed to be working here too; she was putting clean dishes in the cabinets in the kitchen.
‘How the fuck do you even know?’ Mickey asked.
‘His mother called us today; your son is at school today,’ the woman replied.
‘School? Jesus fucking Christ, did you make him go to school today? Because if he doesn’t want to, that’s fine, school sucks anyway,’ Mickey muttered, not recognizing where his low, raspy voice came from so suddenly. Fuck, he needed nicotine.
The woman smiled, ‘he’s doing really good in school. He never skips.’
‘Holy shit, that boy’s going somewhere. Maybe he’s going to be the first Milkovich to ever graduate High School.’ When Mickey was young, he’d never thought he’d admit that he was really proud of his son and that he loved him…
and now he’d forgotten how old Yevgeny actually was. He’ll ask Ian when he gets home.
The woman grinned at him, ‘really? No one in your family has graduated High School?’
Mickey shook his head, ‘nope. Maybe in the early generations but I don’t think so.’ He looked down at his plate. A sandwich for dinner? Weird. And he didn’t even like cheese.
Mickey decides to skip dinner and tried to get out of his chair. It was harder than he’d thought. He held on to his walker. Shit, when did he get so old?
‘Where are you going, Mr. Milkovich?’ a strange woman, who was putting away the clean dishes in the cabinets, asked him.
‘I’m going to wake up my boyfriend.’
Mickey found himself on a strange couch in a strange living room on a late afternoon. He was watching some strange tv show on a very expensive looking TV. Fuck, he needed nicotine.
There were other people in the living room; strangers. Mostly old people, but there were also a few younger ladies who seemed to be working there. He’d never seen any of them before.
‘Alright, I’m going home,’ Mickey muttered more to himself than to the strangers.
‘Mr. Milkovich, please sit down. Your husband will be here in a minute,’ one of the younger ladies said.
Husband? Wait, when did he get married? Was Ian his husband?
An old man walked into the living room. He was smiling at Mickey. His hair was ginger with grey streaks from aging. Suddenly he recognized this man and his heart skipped a beat.
‘Good morning, Cinderella,’ Mickey greeted his boyfriend and grinned.
‘It’s 4 PM, Mickey, it isn’t really morning anymore,’ Ian said smirking. Wait, what happened to his morning? He couldn’t remember actually having one.
There was a strange man behind Ian, also smiling down at Mickey. They both sat down on either side of him and some lady brought all three of them coffee.
‘Don’t drink it,’ Mickey warned Ian and the stranger, ‘I think they’re trying to poison me. This morning they gave me poptarts with a flavour I didn’t recognize.’
‘Why would they want to poison us, dad?’ the strange man asked.
SHIT. The strange man was his fucking son, Yevgeny. How the fuck could he have forgotten? Now that Mickey looked him in the eyes he recognized him. Mickey tried to keep his tears back; what the fuck was happening to him? He needed a smoke, now.
‘Do you have any cigarettes, Ian?’ Mickey muttered.
‘Nah, you can’t smoke anymore, remember? You got diagnosed last year with chronic bronchitis, remember?’ Ian explained hesitantly.
Mickey’s world seemed to fall apart. Chronic bronchitis, what the fuck?! Must’ve been from smoking too much!
‘Why… why didn’t you tell me?’ Mickey muttered, ashamed of himself. How could he let it get this far? Ian grabbed his hand and Mickey almost wanted to pull away because they were in public, but then he realized that it probably didn’t matter because Ian would know when it was safe to show affection and when not. Ian didn’t answer his question.
Mickey just stared at both their hands and then it crossed his mind that he’d forgotten to check if Ian took his meds this morning. And didn’t he have a therapy session today? Fuck, everything seemed to be really foggy today. Maybe he just needed a smoke. He was pretty sure the people in this shithole they called a hotel had stolen his cigarettes. But that was not the most important part.
‘Did you take your meds today?’ he asked. Ian nodded. Mickey exhaled his bated breath in relieve and smirked at his boyfriend playfully.
Mickey was watching TV in some cheap hotel room. He checked his watch. It was 5:50 PM. Room service was late, they shouldn’t expect him to leave a fucking tip if they didn’t get here soon.
Finally, there it was. A lady knocked and came into his room, holding a tray with food and medication.
‘Where the fuck do I need the meds for?’ Mickey asked, looking down at the shitty food and pill bottle.
‘For your bronchitis,’ the woman said.
‘Bronch- what the… are you a fucking nurse or something?’ Mickey scolded incredulously.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
Mickey looked her in the eyes, trying to find a sign that she was lying. He shook his head, ‘I don’t fucking believe you.’
‘That’s alright,’ she said, smiling. Mickey raised his eyebrows as far as he could, still not believing this intruder who was probably trying to poison him with these pills. ‘But I need to make sure you’re going to take these meds.’
Mickey shook his head again, ‘not gonna happen, bitch.’
The nurse rolled her eyes and left the room, taking the pills with her, leaving the food with Mickey.
It was 6 PM and Mickey was stuffing his dinner into his mouth when a strange woman came into his room.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ he scolded.
‘I’ve got your meds, Mr. Milkovich,’ the woman replied casually. She handed Mickey the pill bottle and Mickey took all of the pills in his mouth and swallowed them at once. He knew these pills were for his chronic disease and that Ian wanted him to take these, even though he didn’t really trust the people here. He trusted Ian.