“You’re overcooking it! Why can’t you do anything right?”
Pete had been drinking again. He’d quit the stuff for a couple of months to comply with the terms of whatever court-order-du-jour required him to get dry, and then, when his sponsor was either momentarily satisfied or lost interest – or fell off the sobriety wagon themselves – he’d start back up again and become his old self: loud, belligerent, abusive. Samantha never caught him in the act – they used to call him “Sneaky Pete” back in college – but she could always tell when it happened. The smell of scotch on his breath usually meant the fists and the insults were about to fly a little more freely.
Without the benefit of booze, Pete was usually sullen, quiet, kind of travelling through life in a constant, dull, low-level irritability. Boring old Pete. But with his magical elixir of hooch, Pete was a different animal – either the life of the party . . . or a mean, drunken asshole, depending on the roll of the dice. And this Christmas Eve, it looked like maybe Samantha had crapped out.
Samantha had hoped she’d have a little more time before the switch got flipped this year, before dull Dr. Jekyll gave way to mean Mr. Hyde. Her parents were coming over. His parents were coming over. Hell, her brother was up from Florida with his two rotten-as-fuck kids. She wanted this to be a special Christmas, one they would remember for a long time . . . but for all the right reasons for a change.
Pete swatted at her ass but drunkenly missed as she hurried past him to prepare dinner.
“You’re fucking it up! No one is going to want to eat that piece of rubber shit you call prime rib!”
“Just stop it, Pete. It’s Christmas.”
So many Christmases past had been ruined by Pete sneaking a little too much eggnog and acting like a complete prick. One year, he openly hit on her sister-in-law Kathleen and threatened to turn her brother Matt into a “fucking cuck.” Another year, in a drunken stupor, he told their nephews that there was no Santa Claus. They were 5 and 3 years old. Another year still, he pissed in the potatoes au gratin.
And every year, there was Samantha, the long-suffering wife, trying to smooth it over with the family, trying to keep the peace and always defuse, defuse, defuse.
This year, though, Samantha had thought the timing had finally worked in her favour. He’d started his latest sober stretch the week before, so she honestly thought he’d behave. It was too soon to unleash the beast. And she had a big family announcement to make – one that she hoped her husband would be sober enough to hear.
“You’re not making that fucking cauliflower thing again, are you?!” he whined. “Nobody likes it.”
Samantha knew why Pete drank. He was depressed. He wasn’t a bad guy, per se – he was just self-medicating, because he was missing something in his heart. Something crucial to his identity as a man. Something Samantha had been unable to give him . . . until now.
“Here!” he said as he slapped the digital meat thermometer on the kitchen counter. “Would you take the fucking temperature of the meat already?”
They had tried, and tried, and tried. Different positions, different times of the month. They tried fertility treatments, painful shots, natural remedies that tasted like shit. But no matter how much they tried, it never seemed to take.
That is, until last month.
She suspected it when she was late, but she dared not say anything to Pete for fear of being wrong. But the doctor had confirmed it earlier this week.
She was finally pregnant. It was a Christmas miracle. They were going to be a family.
“You are fucking useless, you know that?”
Pete reached for the oven door.
“Don’t touch that meat,” Samantha warned, sternly. “Why don’t you go sober up a little before company gets here?”
She knew it was a mistake to challenge him before the words even left her mouth. It was never a good idea to antagonize Pete when he got this way.
“Why don’t I go sober up?” he slurred. “You fucking judgmental bitch! All I’m doin’ is getting in the holly jolly God-damned mood, maybe spreadin’ a little holiday cheer, and you want to tell me how to live? How to live MY fucking life?”
He swung a vicious backhand that cracked hard against her cheek, knocking Samantha back into the refrigerator. Her hand came up to her already swelling eye.
“You son of a bitch, Pete! One fucking Christmas . . . all I wanted was one fucking Christmas!”
Samantha slapped Pete for the first time in her life. It felt righteous, and long overdue . . . and an even bigger mistake than mouthing off had been.
The surprise that had registered on his face quickly became an intense anger, like she had never seen before. He was an entirely different person, eyes filled with hate, mouth foaming, teeth grinding, spittle flying like some unhinged animal. He lunged, his hands wrapping around her throat in a steely grip.
Samantha’s eyes bulged, and she futilely clawed at his hands to pry them loose. He responded by tightening his grip further. There was no negotiating with this monster; there was no kindness or sympathy in his heart, no love for his wife, only a massive, wounded ego and so much rage. She could see blackness creeping in at the corners of her vision. She couldn’t let him do this to her . . . to their unborn child. He would never be able to live with himself if he knew . . . if he only knew . . .
If she could just get a breath, maybe she could snap him out of it.
Her hands searched for something – anything – that she could use to stop her drunken, raging husband. Her fingertips brushed the handle of the meat thermometer. She fumbled for it and swung in desperation.
Pete’s hands immediately went slack and released. His eyes glazed over, and his face went blank. He stumbled back a few steps and slumped into a kitchen chair.
But Christmas, as they say, is a time for miracles.
Pete’s parents got to the apartment before the EMTs arrived. Always fucking early, those two. Police were questioning Samantha in the living room. Her neck was bruised and her voice was nothing louder than a whisper. She had been crying.
Pete’s mom panicked and started shouting at Samantha. Pete’s dad and the police officers had to rush her out into the hallway, past the arriving medical professionals. Samantha cowered in a corner of the living room and sobbed uncontrollably and silently.
When the EMTs walked into the kitchen, they were shocked to see Pete sitting upright, the long, thin needle of a digital meat thermometer lodged deep into his left temple. A neat, thin bead of red traced down his face and soaked into the collar of his shirt.
The temperature on the thermometer read 98.6 degrees.
“Overcooked the prime rib,” he muttered, trancelike, as if from a thousand miles away. “I just wanted her to take the temperature . . .” He stared vacantly ahead, not acknowledging any of the chaos around him or the arrival of the paramedics.
“Holy shit, man, I ain’t never seen anything like this. Ernie, you ever seen anything like this?”
Ernie, the older, more grizzled of the two EMTs, picked at a piece of prime rib and popped it in his mouth. “Nah, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that. That’s a fucking Christmas miracle, s’what it is . . . prime rib’s pretty good too . . ..”
Pete was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital where he underwent emergency brain surgery. The needle from the meat thermometer had pierced his frontal lobe and had caused an acute subdural hematoma. Doctors had to drill a separate hole on the opposite side of his skull to relieve some of the intracranial pressure on the brain before they could begin to repair the damage to the blood vessels.
Sixteen hours after the surgery began, the lead surgeon, Dr. Ira Katz, emerged from the operating room, exhausted. He approached Pete’s parents in the designated family waiting room.
“I may not be the most qualified to judge, but . . . well, the fact that your boy is still alive at all is nothing short of a . . . well, I guess it’s a Christmas miracle,” he said. “It’s not going to be an easy road back, but it looks like we’re out of the woods for the moment.”
Pete’s mother nearly fainted. Fucking drama queen.
Months of exhaustive physical and occupational therapy followed. Pete had to relearn how to walk, how to read, how to speak. And as he healed and got stronger, and as his brain rewired itself and neurons redirected themselves, changes in his personality started to emerge.
For the first time in his life, Pete developed an interest in art, in literature. The chip on his shoulder evaporated. He became light, unencumbered by depression or addiction. He became forgiving and kind. A real Hyde and Jekyll transformation, a hospital bed conversion. He couldn’t remember much of his former life, and he definitely didn’t remember anything from the night of the “accident,” as it came to be euphemistically known in his family.
And he could no longer stand even the smell of a stiff drink. A whiff of whiskey triggered extreme nausea.
Medical journals wrote about the strange case of the angry young man who experienced a traumatic brain injury that transformed him into a sensitive, compassionate artiste. It was a Christmas miracle, they concluded. There was no other explanation, though the years of heavy drinking could have at least kept him from clotting and stroking out on the operating table. He did the talk show circuit. He appeared on Dr. Phil. He did The View. There was talk of a biopic starring Margot Robbie and the guy from This is Us.
He wrote a book – co-wrote a book – about his path to finding himself. It was titled The Temperature of the Soul and spent three weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list. It was dedicated to his loving wife, Samantha.
As for Samantha? She gave birth while in prison to a baby girl. She spent three years beyond that in a federal penitentiary for charges related to assault with a deadly weapon – never mind that meat thermometers are hardly in the same class as Berettas and Glocks. Pete’s family petitioned for a harsh sentence, but the judge, sympathetic as he was, stuck to the lighter side of the sentencing guidelines. Nevertheless, every week she was inside, she grew a little tougher, a little harder, a little colder. She got into fights. She beat the shit out of a self-styled cell warrior named Crackhead Connie, knocking the few remaining teeth that Connie had left down her C.O.-sucking throat.
Meek, timid Samantha had become the Queen of the Yard. A real Jekyll and Hyde transformation. She got a jailhouse tattoo. She drank prison pruno and developed a nice little habit of her own. She made other inmates her “bitch.”
But even as she slipped further and further away from who she was, Pete never strayed from the marriage. He took their daughter to visit every weekend, against his parents’ wishes. He wrote her letters and poems. He painted for her – badly, but he tried. He wrote songs to her. He made sure Samantha’s family continued to be an important part of their daughter’s life.
And then, with three years, nine months passed, they came back together, roles now reversed, family dynamic unchanged. Samantha even got to pee in the potatoes au gratin, which she found to be immensely gratifying. The only other difference was now they had their baby girl, Noelle. A reminder, along with the steel plate in Pete’s head, that miracles can happen, and sometimes do – especially around Christmas.
###
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAY BUTKOWSKI is a writer of fiction and an eater of tacos who lives in New Jersey. His short fiction has appeared in various online and print publications, including Shotgun Honey, Yellow Mama, All Due Respect and Vautrin. He’s a co-host of a series of Noir at the Bar readings at the Jersey Shore (Asbury Park, NJ) and serves as Managing Editor of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, a chronicle of bad decisions and desperate people.
Follow Jay: @jtbutkowski