A Lion's Tale_ Around the World in Spandex - Chris Jericho [28]
When I walked into the room I didn’t recognize the frightened person with the swollen face lying there and I thought I was in the wrong room. Then I realized that the face belonged to my mother. She gave me a faint pencil line of a smile and I completely fell apart. All of the hard work that I’d done, my dream of making it into the WWF instantly evaporated when I saw her in that bed. My number one priority was now my mother and I didn’t give a damn about anything else. I sincerely hope that none of you sharing this with me right now will ever experience the feeling of seeing one of your dearest loved ones lying motionless in a hospital bed, with a medical halo screwed into their head so tight that you can see the drops of plasma (not blood) creeping down their waxen forehead.
I rubbed my hand along her cheek since it was one of the only places that she still had feeling and she looked up at me with another wan smile. But it didn’t mask the sheer terror in her eyes.
I left the room after a few minutes, in order to compose myself and to decide how I was going to murder Danny. I wanted to kill him and his kids. I’m not exaggerating. A policeman waiting for me in the hallway saw death in my eyes and as I walked by, he stopped me. He was a big man with a thick mustache and I sensed that he wasn’t one to mess with. I also sensed that he wanted to help me.
He very deliberately said to me, “I’m sorry about your mother, but if you touch this guy, you’re going to jail. If you do what you’re thinking about doing, it’s going to be the end of three lives: his, yours, and your mom’s.”
I didn’t quite register what he was saying. He was talking like there was a choice. But there was no choice. I had to end him.
“The law will—”
I stopped him and said, “Fuck the law. I’m going to kill him.”
What he said next probably saved Danny’s life…and mine as well.
“If you do, you’ll go to jail and then your life will be over. Do you want to go to jail at nineteen? Think about it, it’s not worth it. Your life would be over before it even started and that would make your mom’s life even harder and unhappier than it is right now.”
In the back of my head a little worm of rational thought began to crawl through my brain. What the cop said made sense. As much as I wanted to call some of my Hell’s Angel friends and organize a little party, I started comprehending that it wouldn’t change a thing. My mom would still be severely injured and my life would end up in shambles. How could I help her if I had to spend the rest of my life in prison? I knew that wasn’t what God wanted out of my life either.
Over the next few days the reality of the situation hit me. I was scared that she was going to die but I began to think how hard her life would be if she didn’t. I held on to the hope that she would start to move her arms, her legs, a finger, anything. Every night when I went to sleep I prayed that something would improve and every morning when I woke up nothing had.
But every day when I went to see her, she was incredibly strong and never once broke down in front of me. Her attitude began to rub off on me, and I stopped breaking down in front of her. This was the situation; it wasn’t going to change and it was time to deal with it. I’d been having a pity party of my own, but that ended pretty quickly when I saw how mentally tough my mom was being.
I was a mental mess though. I’d just gotten confirmation that my first match had been booked in Alberta a few weeks later, yet there was no way I was going to leave my mom.
I had already begun to make plans to move back to Winnipeg.