The slap sent his senses careening. He almost fell to the floor, but stumbled backward a step. 
His mother looked him dead in the eyes when he raised his head. 
“You are almost an adult. What is wrong with you?” 
The look in her chocolate eyes projected everything she didn’t say. Hate, disgust, disappointment. Unable to meet her eyes anymore, he focused on her sneer as she said bitingly, “Act. Like. One.” 
Tears collected in his eyes, but he held them until she walked into the kitchen. As soon as she slammed the door behind her, almost ripping it off the hinges, he crumpled, letting himself and his tears fall on the worn shag carpet. 
Silently, he shook, holding himself, leaning against the couch for support. After a few minutes, he felt hollow again, the feeling, or lack thereof, that he had grown familiar with, comfortable with. The nothing. 
He felt the dampness of steam coming from the kitchen, and he begged some higher power for her to allow him to eat in his room tonight. He could never stand sitting with her after a fight. Sitting in her furious silence, drowning in it. 
But that wasn’t the worst part. It was when the echo left, and she pretended nothing had happened. He remembered her words, almost identical every time. “You know I love you right?” 
Her hand reaching toward his stationary one, him not daring to pull away. When she gripped his hand, it was warm and comforting, and he wanted it to stay that way forever, but in her hold he felt the resounding message. I forgive you. 
She forgave him for what he had done, the awful son that he was, she forgave him, and all that he had done wrong. She was the merciful one, the better of the pair. 
“Jonas,” her lilting voice called, still ringing with softened anger. He slowly picked himself up, unsteadily lifting himself towards the kitchen door. He pushed on it gently, letting his head droop. As he dragged himself in, she turned around. 
Her face melted into a kind, warm look, and she held out her arms to embrace him. He hesitantly walked into it, her arms closing around him.
“I forgive you Jonas.”
A moment of quiet.
“Now, let’s eat,” she said with mild enthusiasm, breaking off the hug.
They sat down noiselessly, and began eating. Every ignored glance she gave him, made him wince. Every second, her efforts to get his attention were more obvious, scraping her fork along her plate loudly, saying ‘mmmmm’ as she took a bite, drumming her fingers on the table.
He pretended he didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t know. 
The rest of the night finished itself painfully, slowly, but eventually.

The morning afterward, Jonas woke up from a spasmodic sleep. Ruffling his hair and removing the crusted sleep from his eyelashes, he swung his feet over onto the ground. Going through his morning routine without disturbance from his mother, that gave him more rest than the entire night did.
He felt for the small bruise on his cheek as he walked out the door, heading for school. Maybe he could make it up to her by bringing her dessert after school, and he considered as he made his way to temporary escape.
Upon entering, he found Andie leaning against a pillar. She saw him and smiled, and they gave each other a quick peck before heading down the hallway together. 
“How’s Stella?” she asked.
“Still the same.” He let his head droop, falling almost to his chest, somehow trying to hide the bruise from her. This made her immediately reach her hand up to his cheek, and turn his head to see the wound, and he flinched.
“She hit you again.”
Jonas’ urge to say ‘still the same’ again was strong, but he let out a loud sigh instead.
“Babe, you should stay at my house for a while. She doesn’t come to my house, she doesn’t even know where it is.”
“Yeah, but she’d find out and call the cops.” Another sigh. “Besides, it’s not that bad,” he lied, mostly to himself.
She adjusted her beanie in silence, and they kept walking.
After a while, she hesitated, but said, “That’s not love, you know.”
He whipped around to face her.
“She’s my own mother. Of course she loves me. She’s not perfect, but neither am I.”
He started to walk again, exhaling deeply. “That’s why she was mad actually, I failed the midterm, and my GPA dropped.”
 This time, she stopped him. She grabbed his shoulders, with a serious pressure.
“So she hit you?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s my fault. I slacked off during class, I didn’t study, I skipped the retake. I deserve it.”
Her face took on the saddest look he had ever seen on her, and she seemed on the verge of crying. She released his shoulders defeatedly, and turned away.
“I don’t know what to say, when you won’t listen to me.” Her shoulders shook softly as she hid her face from him.
He pulled her to his chest.
“I’m listening, it’s just- it’s complicated.” He sighed resignedly.
“Okay, but you’re not hearing.” The bell rang, and she dashed away to class, rubbing her eyes, before he could say anything, even a goodbye.
He didn’t see her the rest of the day.

At home, he set his bag on the ground near his shoes.
“Hey mom,” he called out, wondering if she was actually home.
“Jonas,” she said, slipping into view from the hallway. She had a dangerous look on her face.
“We need to talk.”
He sat down on the couch, and his hands wanted to shake, but he restrained them. 
“My phone says you’ve been searching some things up.” She glared at him as she scrolled stiffly on her phone. She stopped.
“Here it is, ‘abuse hotlines’, ‘how to establish boundaries’, ‘advice for minors in abusive homes’...” Her eyes snapped to his face, and his heart jumped.
“I- I-” he tried to explain, but she cut him off.
“What do you think I’ve been doing all your life? I’ve taken care of you. I’ve taught you what’s right and wrong, I gave you everything I had, and I gave you consequences when you chose the wrong. I have fed you every day for seventeen years. And all on my own, because your father left me, left us. What more do you want from me?”
“Mom, I-”
“Enough!” She threw her hand through the air, colliding with his head, and he was smacked into the corner of the coffee table on the left.

When he awoke, he was wearing foreign clothes, in a foreign room. His mother sat in a chair on the right, very primly, very reserved, but she glared at him with a poison that made his stomach turn.
The speech faded in and out of his ears, and he realized someone was talking to him. A light shined in his eyes, and he tried to block it with his arm. 
“Jonas? Jonas, are ya here buddy?” A doctor came into view, and he blinked him into focus. 
A middle-aged man with dark skin and greying hair was analyzing him, looking at him for fault or damage.
“Jonas, buddy! How about you tell us what happened, huh?” His mother shot daggers at him with her fiery brown eyes, and he felt the impact from the sharp projectiles, real or not. 
“I was, um.” His mother continued to stare him down.
“Mom here says she found you on the floor, blood on your head, and the coffee table.”
“Oh. Oh!” He pretended to remember the event. “R-right! I was trying to fix the blinds, and I was standing on top of the chair, a-and I slipped, and I guess I must have hit my head,” he laughed sheepishly.
“Well that was quite a fall! You have a pretty bad concussion, so we’ll be monitoring you for a while,” he gave a fatherly pat on Jonas’ shoulder. He cringed at the contact.
“Alright, buddy, I’ll leave you to rest. Mom, you just make sure he doesn’t sleep, kay? Press the help button if he starts acting strangely.”
She nodded rigidly.
The doctor left, and the following minutes of silence plagued him. He avoided her deadly gaze, though she didn’t look away. The setting sun hit his eyes at a painful angle through the venetian blinds, and he squinted. 
“I’m sorry mom, I had to lie, I couldn’t-” his voice caught in his throat. 
“Lying is wrong, Jonas. But I’ll forgive you this one time,” she hissed, standing up and leaving for the waiting room.
He stayed awake for a while, which wasn’t hard, and once a nurse checked on him, he was allowed to sleep.

He woke up, unable to breath, and his wide eyes searched around for the something attacking him, feeling at his throat. 
He felt a cord strangling him, and he clawed at it to get it off. He felt small fingers clutching the tube, and he dug his fingernails into the unknown hands. 
Someone hissed, but pulled at the cord harder, and it split open, leaking the painkillers that were supposed to go in his bloodstream. 
He felt the pressure build in his face, his lungs, as he inhaled but failed to get any oxygen.
Finally, it occurred to him that with his last moments of consciousness, he could reach for the help button. Using one hand to keep the cord away from his neck as much as he could, and the other to reach for the remote, he faintly remembered pressing it as his eyes fluttered shut and he couldn’t remember any more.

His mind slowly faded into life, and he opened his eyes. He immediately regretted that, blinded by the bright fluorescents, and he squeezed them shut again. He felt a mask around his face, and he breathed in the oxygen gratefully. Doctors hovered over him, but he didn’t really notice or care. He ignored their muffled speech, and he felt a sharp pain in his throat as he inhaled deeply for the first time. Jonas reached for it weakly, and groaned.
“You’ve got a fractured hyoid bone, kid,” said a doctor who Jonas hadn’t met before.
“Now how’d you do that?” asked another new professional.
Foggily, his brain focused. He remembered the attack, and was about to report it, but recalled the small, familiar fingers along his neck. He nudged the mask off.
“You know,” he started, chuckling embarrassedly, which hurt his esophagus. “I remember turning over in my sleep, over that way,” he pointed in the opposite direction of the stand that held the pouch of painkillers. “I was nearly falling off the bed, but I felt the cord wrapped around my neck, so I must’ve gotten tangled in it while I was asleep. I think I thought it was a dream, and I think I pressed the help button, and I- well, that’s all I remember.” He smiled meekly.
The doctors looked at him skeptically.
He looked at each of them in turn, the blonde woman with rectangular glasses, the dark-skinned one with a Santa-like belly, and grey-haired one with a squatty face, and set the mask back on to feign innocence. He took a big breath, not daring to focus on anything else other than the air.
They shook their heads, and one of them gestured towards the hall. They shuffled out, single file, and he could hear them muttering in the hall, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
His heartbeat thumped a little faster, and Jonas relied on the oxygen mask for a minute, closing his eyes and setting his head back.
Jonas’ eyes snapped open, when he recognized his mother’s voice in the hall. He could hear her shouting at the doctors to let her pass, to see him, but he couldn’t understand more than that.
His heart rate increased again, and the monitor started to shout at him too. Hearing the alarm, the doctors ran in again, and his mother squeezed past them.
She ran to his side before they could stop her, and she gave him a bear hug. 
“They told me I couldn’t see you, and I got worried,” she said into his neck. Behind his back, she gave him a sharp pinch, which the doctors couldn’t see.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said firmly.
Once the doctors were satisfied the spike in his heart beat wasn’t dangerous, they tried to nudge Stella Ashton out the door, but being Stella Ashton, she stayed put stubbornly, hugging her son.
After a bit, she relented, and stomped out the door, huffing. 
“I love you, Jonas,” she said loudly from the hall.
He exhaled heavily, and the doctors turned their gazes to him.
“Jonas,” the fatherly one started, but didn’t seem to want to go on.
The blonde one took the baton, and said, “Jonas, we may have to put you in temporary foster care. Do you have any relatives who could take you for now?”
His heart skipped a beat, and he wasn’t sure if it was from disappointment or excitement.
“My only relatives are my grandparents, and they’re in a rest home.” He paused.
“Could I- could I live with my gi- my friend, Andie?”
They seemed to consider it for a moment, out of pity almost, but they shook their heads. 
“No cousins? Aunts? Anything?” the dark middle-aged one said.
Jonas shook his head. 
He stalled before saying, “My dad…”
“Your dad? Perfect, but does he have custody over you at all?”
“I- I’ve never met him.”
“Oh.” The man said, and Jonas saw his nametag said Dr. Strauss. After a moment, Dr. Strauss said cautiously, “I could have him interviewed, to see if he’s interested, and if he’s fit for a parental role.” A small hint of new determination seemed to fill the doctor's eyes.
“I’d like to do that,” Jonas rushed. 
His mother burst into the room again.
“Unacceptable! Why would you choose the man who left you as a baby, instead of your loving mother who has cared for you your whole life, whereas he didn’t even give two-” she broke out into her familiar crocodile tears.
His heart went out to her, but he knew what she was doing, this time, he stayed silent. With others present, it didn’t matter what she said, what she did. In public, if she hit him, or shoved him into something painful, or used her pocket knife to make nicks in his skin, she would go to jail. He didn’t have to listen to her in public. Though he did have to pay for it when he got home. It had always been that way.
She blubbered, and Dr. Niels, the grey-haired one, patted her shoulder, and tried to guide her out of the room again. She sniped a look at Jonas on the way out.
Once the doctor had led her down the hall and the door was shut, the skeptical female doctor, who Jonas finally noticed was named Dr. Anderson, began.
“We can have someone contact him, and get everything in order, but if you get out of the hospital before that has time to happen, we’ll have to send you to a temporary foster family. Are you gonna be okay with this?” She raised her eyebrows, punctuating the sentence. 
“Yeah,” he said passively. He looked up hopefully. “Can I have visitors?”
Dr. Anderson shook her head.
“With last night’s incident, it wouldn’t be rational. The only possible exception is in the near future where either your father or your foster family will meet you, although it will be under strict supervision.”
“I see.”
“We’ll leave you to yourself now,” Dr. Strauss said, with a wink. “Feel better kid.”

Andrew’s hands shook. He kept them under the table to hide the reaction. The social worker stared at him blankly for a minute, and Andrew felt his face grow hot under the pressure. 
Finally, the man looked down and straightened his papers against the table.
“You’re all good. We’ll have your son’s hospital information sent to you so a visit can be made. Have a nice day, sir.” He shook Andrew’s hand, and he hoped he wouldn’t notice the slick layer of anxiety coating his hand. The man seemed unfazed, so he released a captured fear.
Getting in his car to drive to the hospital, he drummed his fingers on the wheel. He let out a breath, and started to relax. He was just meeting the son, his son, that he had only seen once. Thousands of worried thoughts crowded his head and he felt nauseous again. 
It’ll be okay, the medication said, and he remembered the bliss of being able to afford his Prozac dosage. He had run out a few days before, and wouldn’t have any for a while, but the thought of the calm soothed him. For the time being, he would have to make do.
He drove silently to his destination, aside from the intermittent tapping of his fingers, which stopped quickly once he reminded himself to stop again.
When he arrived, he took a deep breath, and made his way out of the car. Through the entrance, past the visitor check-in center, and walked slowly upstairs to the room that contained his son.
Hesitating at the door, he tried to form some spit in his dry sandpaper mouth, but couldn’t. He knocked, and a young man’s voice granted him entrance. Andrew was surprised how much the voice sounded like his. He sort of assumed it hadn’t gone deeper yet, since he was, no, he was seventeen now. He was practically a man.
He entered, and saw a reflection of himself. No, his son.
Sleek brown hair falling carelessly over his eyebrows, attentive grey eyes, small mouth. Even the slender build of his body lying in the bed reminded him of his younger self in every way. 
He choked down a bit of awkwardness, and said shakily, “Hey, J-Jonas.” Apparently he hadn’t gotten all of the awkwardness down.
The boy- no, the man waved back at him, his eyes soaking in all of Andrew’s features, and he gave a slight smile.
“I guess you’ll be s-staying with me for a while,” Andrew said uncomfortably.
“Yeah,” Jonas replied quietly, a bit of excitement hidden in his voice.
“So,” he tried to start a conversation, but fell flat at that point. What could he say? It was his fault he abandoned him, he has no reason to want to be with his estranged father, other than he doesn’t have to go into foster care. No reason he should be looking at him curiously right now, like a young child looking at an airplane.
Why would he choose him? The social worker hadn’t told him much about the situation, other than his mother was not safe to be with currently, but when hadn’t that been true? Even so, why was he a better option to him?
Suddenly feeling like he should apologize, he began again with, “I’m-I’m sorry Jonas. I made a mistake lea-” Jonas cut him off.
“No, no, no!” he said quickly, stopping Andrew in his tracks. He seemed embarrassed after that small outburst. “No, I’m just glad you decided to come back.”
A small increment of silence passed by, like a caterpillar inching across a leaf.
“Mom is- mom is in custody right now, actually,” Jonas commented, almost delicately, like he would offend someone if he said it too loudly. Andrew thought to himself that he was probably not trying to offend Stella, even miles away. So nothing had changed.
“Can I-I ask what happened?” Andrew said, dreading the answer.
Jonas looked at him, and said, “Her story, or mine?”
With some surprise, Andrew said, “Yours.”
“She hit my head into a coffee table, and I got a concussion. Then, the other night she tried to strangle me. At least, I think it was her, I don’t know.” He didn’t sound very unsure, but sounded conflicted, like revealing this would get him in trouble with someone.
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said solemnly. Then the idea came to him, to say the words he always wanted to hear, back when he was with Stella.
“It’s not your fault. Will you forgive me?”
Jonas started to tear up, and he swiped them away with his wrist.
“Th-thank you,” he said, shaking softly. It seemed some form of catharsis was happening in front of Andrew’s eyes.
“Thank you, Dad.”