Heaven can wait.

A TG story by Allie Elle

This story is structured around a song I consider to be one of my anthems. Meatloaf’s ballad Heaven can wait. The song holds meaning different things for many people but this story covers what it means to me.

Part one: Decisions
Jacob sat cowering in his room as his father was ranting yet again over some imagined slight from someone in the neighbourhood. He heard a thump as his mother was pushed around yet again. He sat, his knees pulled up to his chest to make himself appear as small as possible. He wished he could make himself invisible, but he didn' know of a way to do it.

As usual, his father’s rantings were fuelled by drink and other problems. His father was a senior executive in a chemical plant and not really liked. He tried to throw his weight around and people resented it. Then he took it out on his family. The school system had tried to intervene a couple of times when Jacob had attended school with bruises.

The ten-year-old boy was a quiet child and appeared effeminate. On top of that, he was not encouraged to have friends. The only life he knew was the one inside this house and the abuse. His mother tried her best, but she lived in fear of her husband. Suddenly, after an almighty crash a scream from his mother, the noise from downstairs stopped. He heard his father storming out of the house, followed by the slamming his car door.

No much later his bedroom door opened slowly and his mother peered around the doorframe. Her face was red, and the first signs of bruising appearing were already on her cheek, plus there was a small cut over her left eye. As Jacob stared at the small drop of blood that was forming his body started to shake. He felt a strange feeling well through him as her looked at his mother and took in her injuries.

He slowly got off his bed and straightened up, his whole body shaking. He felt like shouting or hurting something. He had never felt this way before and it worried him, as it was almost as if there was something else in control of him he walked over to his mother and wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her.
“He will never hurt us again, momma!” When his mother looked down she was shocked to see the way his face was set. She worried that he was going to do something out of character for him. She gently stroked his hair and tried to calm him down, but his body was too rigid.

They held each other for a while before the front door slammed open and his father entered the house again bellowing for them. “Marcie get yourself and that sissy you jokingly call a son down here!”

Jacob’s mother started to shake and cry and tried to drag him downstairs. It was like trying to move a huge lead weight. She gave up after a few seconds as her husband shouted upstairs again.

After his mother had hurried downstairs Jacob felt his body getting tighter and tighter. There seemed to be a red mist forming over his eyes and he was finding it hard to breathe. He stormed downstairs to see his father sitting on the recliner expecting to be waited on hand and foot, and his mother was doing so.

The fury took him over as he stood there, and slowly he started snarling. His father looked over and laughed, as his sissy son looked at him, thinking maybe the little sissy was going to call him out. If he did, it would be the first manly thing the squirt had ever done.

“Dad you will stop trying to hurt mom!” Jacob said, his voice firm.

His father looked at him and started to laugh and slowly got up from the recliner. Jacob could smell the beer on his breath and he hated the smell. “And what are you going to do to stop me, sissy?”
“Whatever I can,” the boy replied in a firm voice.
“Well maybe I oughta give you my gun and let you shoot me then. You little sissy, you could not hurt me. You’re too weak. Always runnin’ to your mama.”

The mist got stronger, and without thinking he swung a small fist straight at the man. His father laughed as he brushed the fist away. Putting his huge body behind the blow, he knocked Jacob across the room. As Jacob’s head hit the far wall he saw his Aunt Jackie enter the house. She was a tall woman and very self-assured. She hardly ever visited and only came over when mom called to tell her that she needed help.

Jackie Richards saw the blow that rocked the small body across the room and heard the sickening thud that meant the boy’s head had struck the wall. Jackie stood stricken with a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach as the boy’s head rebounded. For a short while the boy did not move, and she worried that the boy was seriously hurt. Then Jacob started to move and his mother and Jackie slowly picked him up. His mother looked at his father, a hard gleam was seen in her eyes.

“Jacob was right! That is the last time you will hurt us!” she growled at him. She raised her hand as if to lash out at her husband but something stopped her and she just turned on her heel and walked out of the house following her sister, who was carrying the small boy in her arms and gently trying to wake him. Jacob was slow in responding as Marcie helped open the door of the large SUV that Jackie drove and her sister laid the boy on the back seat.

“Sis, we need to get Jacob looked at. I’m a bit worried what his head might be like, I’m gonna call Zack.” Zack was Jackie’s husband and a neurologist at the local hospital where she had met him over four years ago. She was a trained nurse and loved her job but she would also love a child of her own but had never been able to get pregnant.

Jackie used her cell phone to call Zack and get him to meet them back at their house so he could check Jacob over to make sure the boy was okay. They drove quickly across town, worried as Jacob seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness and was mumbling things in his stupor-like state.

The drive across town was uneventful and the two women with the young boy arrived at Jackie’s house to see a huge bear of a man leaning against a car in the drive way. Jackie smiled, looking at her husband as he pulled himself away from his sports car and walked over to them. His size and his attitude gave him the nickname in the area as the Gentle Bear. Like Jackie, he loved kids and always had treats for the youngsters around him and their front yard had play equipment in for them.

Jackie was the first one out of the car. As she hugged her husband, she explained what had happened. Without a word, Zack opened the back door and gently lifted Jacob’s small frame out of the vehicle. He carried him into their house as Jackie showed Marcie around the home and where she and Jacob could sleep.

Zack carried Jacob upstairs to a room that Jackie had decorated in a fairly juvenile manner, hoping someday to turn it into a nursery. Marcie’s room was next door through a shared guest bathroom. He laid the boy on the bed and gently started to probe the head wound with his fingers. He tutted to himself at what he found. As he pulled his hand away, he saw a slight trace of blood, so calling to the two women to keep an eye on the boy her went down to his car to retrieve his medical bag. When he returned he saw that Jackie was cradling the boy in her arms. He had her continue to hold Bacob as he shaved an area of the scalp around a wound that needed stitching.

As Zack worked he wondered how a parent could treat a child in this way, and how a husband could beat his wife to the point they felt they had to escape. Finally the stitches were in place. With a bandage applied to the boys head, Zack took off his gloves.

“Well sister in law, what the fuck happened?” Zack asked, his voice a low gentle rumble. His question brought out the whole sad tale and Zack found himself getting angry. Spo did Jackie, as they both wondered why she had not come to them before now. They could see the fear in Marcie’s eyes as she talked about her husband and what happened and they talked for a good while as they sat in the room watching over Jacob.

Suddenly without warning, Jacob cried out and thrashed around on the bed. As Zack gently restrained him, he looked at his wife, worried. Without a word, Jackie reached the side of the bed and with a slight grunt and a bit of effort, raised a side rail and Zack felt able to let go of the boy.

As Jackie did this, suddenly Jacob shouted out in his sleep. “Why do I have to be a boy?”

The adults looked at each other, then Marcie looked at the floor as she remembered the conversation she’d had with Jacob when he was 8. There had always been something about Jacob’s size and mannerisms that were like a girl’s and Marcie knew that was one of the reasons her husband hated the boy. Marcie looked at her son and tears streamed down her face.

Continued in Part two, where Jacob learns some things about himself and who he really should be.