“You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.”
Andy grimaces. “Thanks, mate.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
A shiver runs through him, and he shakes his head. “I was hoping to make it through my classes, but I almost passed out during the second one.”
“You really don’t look good. I’ve got an hour before my next lecture. I think I should drive you home.”
His response is another agonised groan.
“Or maybe the hospital?” I question with a raised brow.
He shakes his head. “I just need to sleep itoff.”
“Do you have any more classes today?”
“I cancelled it.”
“Tomorrow?”
“One lecture at ten, and two creative writing tutorials at two and four.”
I rub the back of my neck, mentally working out my schedule. “I have a tutorial at eight and a lecture at twelve. I can cover you.”
“Cheers.” Andy gives me a weak smile. “Uh, is now the right time to tell you I still have a few assignments to mark by tomorrow?”
I roll my eyes.
“You owe me.”
He tries to laugh but ends up in a wheezing cough.
“Alright,” I say, gripping his hand and hoisting him to his feet. “Let’s get you home to rest.”
After dropping Andy home,I manage to get through my afternoon lecture with no more distractions of the red-haired devil type, and I spend the rest of the afternoon finishing my marking. I decide to take Andy’s marking home with me, since it’s only three assignments.
I grab a beer from the fridge as I cook myself a steak. While I eat, I shoot Dylan a message to check in with him, and he texts back with a simple thumbs up emoji, which tells me nothing and doesn’t exactly alleviate my unease that there’s more going on with him.
With a sigh, I type out a message to Vanessa, voicing my concerns about our son, but I’m not surprised when shedoesn’t respond. She’ll be pissed at me for not returning her phone call from the other day. I only hope she doesn’t let her vendetta against me impact her showing up for Dylan. We might not work as a couple, and barely function as co-parents, but if there’s one thing she’s always been good at, it’s reading our son’s moods.
Guilt weighs heavy on my chest yet again as I realise just how much I’ve failed Dylan. I should have pushed harder for him to apply to Beckford U, to foster that bond with my son, instead of just assuming he wanted to set his own path. Now, there’s a chasm between us I don’t know how to bridge.
I’m clearly terrible at relationships. I couldn’t make my marriage work, and now I feel like my son is slipping away. Hell, I don’t even know how to do a fling right without hurting someone. How the heck did I become this emotionally stunted man whose life has completely fallen apart?
Needing to get out of my head, I dump the dishes in the sink for later and head to my office to mark the last of Andy’s assignments. Last time I filled in for him when he was sick, I had to read through a handful of poems, and while half of them were contrived, unfiltered emotional diatribes from twenty-year-olds who’d just discovered catharsis through metaphors, a couple had hit deep in ways I wasn’t expecting.
One girl wrote about her brother’s drug overdose in their family bathroom. Another guy described the car accident that killed his girlfriend in such a haunting way, it brought tears to my eyes.
This time the assignment is one thousand words abouta moment that changed them. It’s a thought-provoking question, and certainly apt for everything I’ve been going through this past couple of years.
Settling into my desk chair, I pull out the first assignment and begin to read.
It’s clear from the first paragraph that this student has led a sheltered life. They write about their grandfather’s passing and how he’d introduced them to reading. When he passed, they decided they wanted to pursue a career in publishing. While the emotion is there, it lacks the rawness that comes from the messy, unfiltered grief of a massive upheaval in life. Still, I can’t fault the student for their lack of life experience. I jot some notes about voice and emotional pacing and move to the next assignment.
This student escaped a war-torn country, fleeing for her life when she was eight with her mother and younger sister. Their story is terrifying and reads like something you would see in a movie. In only one thousand words, she portrays the crushing weight of displacement, the sharp clarity of survival, and the ache of remembering a home that no longer exists. The writing is restrained and factual, and I envision this student making it as an investigative journalist. She captures the heart of the story without dramatics or begging for sympathy. It’s powerful, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking at the same time. By the time I’ve finished reading through it three times with minimal notes, I need to take a break.
I lean back in my chair and run my hands through my hair, taking stock of my own life thus far. It all pales in comparison to what that courageous young woman has been through. It definitely puts things intoperspective.
