Cowboy Villain Damsel Duel

by Ginger Scott

  She’s the reason I passed that semester. She didn’t only single-handedly get me through algebra, but she also forced me to write better essays and maybe study a few times for bio exams. It wasn’t like I was suddenly an A student, but I was pulling down solid Cs, and even a B or two. She made me believe I could do more, and I made sure nobody made her feel small for being driven and smart.

  Girls like her can get overlooked and buried by judgement in high school. Preference gets doled out to cheerleaders and girls who scream at parties and disobey their parents for sport. Nice girls who work hard are boring. Dom isn’t wild at all, and she is far from boring. In fact, she overcorrects to a fault, demanding a sick level of perfection for herself that put her in the hospital with a nervous breakdown.

  That’s when things between us shifted. It was the start of our junior year, and here she was already prepping her body to hold up the sky she always thought was falling. I used my charm to buy her time with the teachers, and I spent every night watching sports highlights and explaining football to her in her hospital room. She made me believe I had something more to offer. I guess I got her to think that maybe perfection wasn’t necessary.

  We fell hard.

  We fell fast.

  Her family never liked me.

  I understood. She couldn’t.

  And then my mom overdosed on the same opiates I deal to half my team as a way to buy a car and pay for an apartment and college so I can go wherever she does. My mom survived, and it was an ugly scene that stretched on for weeks and was all anyone talked about.

  That’s when Alejandro Salaya forbade his daughter from ever seeing me again.

  Running away was her idea. I should have said no, but when it came to her, I was only always yes.

  The rest of our classmates were all taking photos in formal dresses and rented tuxes, waiting for stretch limos to drive them from our suburban homes into the city for a homecoming dance Dom had planned herself. I picked her up a block from her home in a car I bought that morning with the five hundred bucks I managed to keep hidden from my thieving stepfather. She wore a red dress, one that would never be seen at the homecoming dance. She was beautiful.

  We made it over the Illinois border and into Iowa. She was sleeping so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake her. I couldn’t ruin her life, though. I couldn’t let her sacrifice everything she was for a loser like me. If I turned around, if I drove fast enough, I’d have her back home by morning. Her father would probably see us, and he’d probably knock my teeth from my mouth, but his daughter would be home and back on her path to greatness.

  He would never thank me, but he would be thankful.

  It was the right thing to do.

  But the ice, it was black. And the truck sliding into our lane was coming at us so fast. We flipped over so many times, and I tried to hold her. I never should have let her unbuckle the seat belt to sleep. I never should have had her here, had her, in the first place.

  The car flipped two more times after she flew through the windshield. The red tint of blood on glass was all I could see.

  And then it all went black.

  The light is coming back now, though; it’s been growing brighter every second. She’s fast asleep here under the strung-up lights of some diner that doesn’t really exist. I don’t know whether the mural is from her imagination or mine. I don’t know that it matters, but if I ever master the talent, I’ll recreate it for real and name it after her.

  Her hair is splayed out over my legs where she rests, her lips parted just enough to take in tiny breaths. She’s not getting a lot of air. I want to stay here, to help her breathe, to make her heart beat. But I’m going.

  I turn my arm just enough to spot the small D tatted on the inside of my wrist. I have one tattoo, and it’s personal. I kept her initial with me.

  I run my hand through the soft length of her hair once . . . twice . . .

  I hate that she’s now alone.

  32

  Cowboy

  (Kellen)

  The nurse is happy about my two trips to the doorway and back. I get a sticker for it. Not gonna lie, I put it dead center on my blue paper-thin gown. It reads I TOOK A BIG STEP TODAY. Those steps hurt like hell, and my feet never really felt solid on the floor. I said they did, though. I want her to leave the walker with me so I can try again, go farther. Nope, she takes that shit somewhere and I’m left here with this rolling tower of IV bags and beeping equipment.

  My dad went to a hotel. I had to push him to do it. The man has spent what I now realize is nearly a month in nothing but hospital beds, uncomfortable chairs, and this place on the second floor they call the family rooms that I assume is filled with more hospital beds and uncomfortable chairs. That’s a lot of sterile living for a man who is used to burning wood for heat and waking up at three to feed pigs.

  We’re at some place in Des Moines that specializes in traumatic brain injuries. My dad would probably be more comfortable heading to the outskirts of town and asking one of the landowners if he could squat in their barn for a while. But he wants to be close. Near me. Near the damn Target.

  I’ve pieced together a little more on my own, and it’s put some of my dad’s behavior into perspective. I took a college tour. Southern Illinois, my mom’s alma mater. Dad insisted, and I only went because it seemed so important to him. It was the plan before it became just me and him running the family business. He thinks this accident is his fault. I made the trip a turnaround, though, and I didn’t have to. I could have easily spent one night in a hotel like he told me to. We have the money for that. What we don’t have, though, is the money for Southern Illinois. Hell, we don’t have the money for Clown College USA. And that’s fine because I like my place. I like working the land. I should have spent the night in the hotel, though. Maybe I was too tired to navigate the road conditions. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  It’s late and the hallway lights have been dimmed. The evening staff is busy making rounds, checking vitals and doling out meds. They’ll be in my room soon, looking for me.

  Mr. FALL RISK.

  It takes me nearly ten minutes to find my center of balance and rearrange the various tubes and cords on my stand. I don’t know how long I can leave this thing unplugged from the wall before it beeps, but I’m not going to make it back in time if this is my pace. I guess it’s not like they can arrest me, though. I laugh silently at my inner joke. I’m funny on morphine.

  The wheels slide forward easily, but it’s getting my feet to follow that proves tricky. As I get closer to my open doorway, cold air blows the ties hanging loose against my bare ass. I can’t tie my own gown with a broken arm, so I guess I’m going streaking. Only from the back, though, thank God!

  Every push of the cart requires a pull that reduces half of the distance I gained. I’m less walking and more dragging my feet along for the ride inchworm-style. My right arm is going to be jacked by the time I get out of this place from all the work it’s doing to keep me mobile.

  I’m glad I rehearsed the various lies I’d need at my disposal before I started this venture. There’s a nurse sitting at the center station literally staring right at me the moment I push-slide myself out the door. She stands and picks up the phone in one movement.

  “Three times tonight. Doc said to make it as far as I can.” I grin through gritted teeth as if I’m not sure if I can do it. I’ve found nurses like to make you beat expectations. My plan works because I get the nod to keep walking. What I also get, unfortunately, is company.

  “You should have hit your call button,” she says. She’s got half her hair shaved on one side and a piercing in her nose. I’d say she’s maybe twenty-five, but she looks tough as nails with forearms that beat mine, and I pull on steer and horses all day. Or I did, before I ended up here.

  “Stubborn. Ya know, male ego and all.” I chuckle, waiting for her to laugh along with me.

  “Uh huh,” she says, fixing my poor job at wrapping tubes on my stand. She doesn’t think I’
m funny at all.

  “All right, you do the work. I’m only here if you start to feel you can’t.” She has an ear pod in one ear, probably listening to some playlist that amps her up to stay awake all night. It’s pretty quiet in this place, and I notice only three of the rooms in our pod have patients. One for me, and two for . . . them.

  “How long you work with Dr. Esher?” I ask, scouting out details on my slow-ass jaunt. I scan the area while we navigate the nurses’ station in a counter-clockwise motion. She never answers my question, probably because she can’t hear me through her music, which is fine. I don’t want to talk anyhow. I want to snoop.

  The first two rooms we pass are empty, beds inside perfectly made like soldier’s barracks waiting for inspection with sheets tucked tight and folded at an angle for quick entry. I don’t think anyone in this place ever hops into bed. I can barely hop over the pattern on the floor.

  We’re approaching the room I’m most curious about, so I slow my progress. “Breather,” I say, panting for effect. At first, she keeps pushing forward, but when she meets my resistance she turns to look me in the eye, blinking once.

  “You done?” She could not possibly have a more sour expression right now.

  “Just a short break. Give me a minute?”

  She rolls her eyes and shrugs, pulling a package of snack cakes out of her coat pocket. They look delicious, and I salivate a little for them. So far, my diet has consisted mostly of items that slightly resemble food—veggie loaf, Jell-O loaf, egg loaf. Lots of loafs. For a fraction of a second, I contemplate fighting her for that snack cake. That urge goes away as soon as I glimpse the girl half-hidden behind a curtain, tubes down her throat while she rests in a room guarded by someone sitting inside the door .

  I nod toward her room, getting my snack cake nurse’s attention.

  “What’s she in here for?” As if I don’t know.

  “We can’t talk about other patients.” She flashes the same blank expression, then pops a full cake in her mouth and tilts her head to the side to keep going.

  “Yeah,” I agree, hoping the cake is dry and she chokes on it. I note as much as I can as we pass Dominica’s room. I’m relieved she seems to be stable, but the fact she’s under watch doesn’t ease the heaviness in my chest.

  The next room is empty, the same perfectly made bed and sparseness. The one after it, though, is occupied, and not just with the patient, but also a visitor.

  “Your mom said since you’re eighteen and all now, these bills ain’t her problem.” The man’s voice is a little too loud for the space, but the fact he’s talking means someone else in there is awake. He’s awake—like me. I’m not sure how we interact, though, because we barely did, except for that time he convinced Dominica to shoot me. I’m not sure how much of that was his id coming out, but even if a fraction of the aggressive side of his psyche can nonchalantly order someone shot, I’ve got some pause about crossing his open door. I still want to talk to him, though.

  “Figures. Can you spot me? I’ll pay you back.” I recognize his voice.

  “Dude, this shit’s gonna cost like a million dollars. And I don’t have insurance or nothing I can give you,” his friend says.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t work like that anyhow. I’ll figure it out.” I can tell by his tone that paying for this hospital stay isn’t his biggest concern. I have a feeling we’re both more worried about the same thing—the girl two doors down.

  My window of opportunity fades with every slide-step I take, and quite honestly, my body is only a heartbeat or two from rebelling. If I want to talk to him before I have to lie to get another round of walks in, if I can even make my body move, then I need to think fast.

  I decide to go big and bold.

  “Hey, wait! I know him. Yeah, I do!” I’m grinning ear-to-ear, pushing my vocal cords to their max so my voice carries enough to gain the attention of at least his visitor. Nurse Sunshine stops long enough to raise a brow that says she doesn’t give a shit. His visitor is already walking out of the room, moving toward me with his own puzzled look.

  “Yeah, I thought that was you guys!” I’m selling it hard. This guy is maybe fifteen years older than me, so I’m gonna have to make some things up on the fly, and fast.

  “It’s me, Kellen. Lakeland High? Go Matadors?” I shout that part, using key words that manage to hook the patient inside.

  “Kellen? That you, buddy?”

  My heart patters like a smitten junior high girl when he plays along. I wish I had a name to call him, but I don’t. He went by V a few times, but that’s it.

  “Yo!” I keep it generic, lifting my casted arm as high as I can to give a fake hug to this stranger who’s visiting him. “I need to get in there to talk to him,” I whisper as loudly as I can at the guy’s ear without risking Nurse Sunshine hearing me.

  “Kellen, yeah,” he says, patting my back with too much force. I buckle from the roughness, and the nurse swoops in to hold up my weight.

  “He has a broken rib, you dumbass.” She scolds this guy like a drill sergeant.

  “I’m okay,” I insist, though there’s a chance I’m bleeding internally. Things hurt the way they did the first time I woke up. This walk is killing me.

  “Maybe . . . I can take a short breather, finish this walk after I catch up with my friend? We went to high school together our freshman year. He’s still there, and I’d love to catch up.”

  For whatever reason, I put a drawl into my words, even though I’m from North Dakota. Maybe that cowboy charm will work with the ice queen. I’m not sure if that’s what ultimately does it or she’s just sick of me and needs a break of her own, but she assists me into the room and plugs in my machine with orders that she’ll be back in ten minutes to get me back to my room. I know she has another snack cake in her pocket, so she probably just wants to enjoy it in peace.

  “Thank you,” I say after she settles me into a chair. She merely groans something about “being right back” as she pushes the door wide open and heads back to her center desk.

  “She’s a real peach,” my friend says. I laugh, then instantly wince.

  “Broken rib is real, huh?” he adds.

  I shift in my seat enough to look him in the eye and nod. He looks just as awful, and he also looks the same—mostly. He’s a little more built than I thought, and his long hair isn’t quite as stringy and greasy as it always seemed in my dreams.

  “Dude, you really go to high school together?” His visitor drags an extra chair from the hallway into the room, moving it to the foot of the bed but facing me. Whoever this guy is, he’s somewhat protective over my dream friend. I guess I’m glad he has someone.

  “No,” he says. “But I feel like I know him.”

  “Kellen,” I say, repeating my name.

  He holds my gaze, skeptically boring into my stare with his heavy brow, still not sure who to trust.

  “Justin.” He finally breaks. “Justin Hawthorne.”

  I nod, saying his name internally before finally letting it hit my tongue.

  “Nice to meet you, Justin Hawthorne. Kellen . . . McCoy.”

  He takes a deep breath, his body fighting off the heaviness of stress that anchors him to his bed. It’s gone for half of the breath before it creeps back into his every feature. I wonder how long he’s been awake.

  “It’s weird because I feel I know you, but we never really . . . interacted, ya know?” He glances to his friend who looks confused as hell. “It’s a long story, man. I’ll tell you about it later. Oh, this is Sal, by the way. He’s my—”

  “Friend,” Sal pipes in. I judge by the half-hearted smile on Justin’s face that “friend” might be overstepping their relationship. But he’s also the only person here with him, and I heard the bit about his mom writing him off now that he’s eighteen, so maybe he’s a cousin or something.

  “Nice to meet you, Sal,” I say, lifting my casted hand up toward him. He chuckles and taps it.

  I’m not sure how much of our
real story Justin or Sal know yet, but I’m guessing the hospitality wouldn’t be so warm if they knew the head-on collision that put us all in this hospital was with me.

  “Yeah, I don’t think we hung out much.” He lifts his eyes to meet mine in an almost guilty movement. I think he’s recalling the one time we did hang out, and the bullet I took.

  I shrug, because yeah, we didn’t, and don’t really know each other.

  “But we both knew her,” I say. Any ease he had with me drains in an instant. The polite smile falls flat; the eyes dim, and spear.

  “That was there. Here, only one of us knows her.” There’s a definite threat to his tone, which makes me wonder if they’re brother and sister. Or . . .

  “Ah, so she’s your girl, huh?” I chuckle a little because over there, they could not possibly be more opposite. Of course, judging by his friend Sal, and what I heard about his deadbeat parents, maybe he’s not so different from his dream self.

  “She’s my everything,” he says, interrupting my thoughts. There’s a fire to his eyes, a bit of warning that I respect. His flexed jaw is also unnecessary because I couldn’t run from him if I was powered by all the adrenaline in the world, let alone put up a fight. I won’t deny that Dominica is special. But my affection for her isn’t like his; it’s that of someone who survived alongside her. There will always be a link there from me to her, even if she doesn’t make it through this.

  What if she doesn’t survive?

  “She’s . . . struggling.” I don’t know more than what I saw, but it’s enough to understand she’s in much worse shape than he and I are.

  “I know,” he says. I tilt my head a little in question. He continues. “Cardiac arrest. It was happening when I was coming to. I saw a little of it here, before I had to leave her completely fucking alone over there.”