Dave held his forefinger just underneath the kid’s nostrils. The kid was definitely breathing. He could feel a slight tremble blowing from the kid’s nose. He stood up, moved behind him, and stuck his hands underneath his armpits. He dragged him like a corpse away from the splintered doorframe, across the floor, over to his bed. When he got him beside the bed, he set him down gently, like an infant, holding his hand underneath the kid’s head. Just as he set him down, the kid’s eyes came open and a pained groan rumbled from deep inside his chest.
“Monty?” Dave said, as he bent over him, his face hovering just above the kid’s lips. “Are you alright? Do you need help? Should I go get help?”
The kid coughed and lurched forward, shaking his head and clutching his chest. “No, don’t get anyone, I’m alright, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Dave sighed and helped the kid upward, one hand on his back, the other behind his head. “You don’t look fine. Can you walk?”
The kid nodded, although the pain in his face said he probably couldn’t—his eyes were shut and his jaw was tensed.
“Alright, here, let’s get you over to the bathroom.”
Dave took the kid’s arm and draped it over his shoulder, then straightened his legs and guided him to his feet. The kid wobbled, as if made of rubber, most of his weight falling on Dave’s bad leg. They took small steps through the doorway and out into the hall. When they got to the bathroom, Dave flipped on the light switch, and carefully eased Monty down onto the top of the porcelain bowl. He took a step back and surveyed the damage, looking at the bloody mess running down the kid’s forehead. “Jesus, it looks pretty bad. Are you sure you don’t want me to get the nurse?”
The kid shook his head adamantly. “No, please…it’s not that bad…it’s just a little blood. I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Alright, well let’s at least get you cleaned up, okay?”
Dave crouched down and grabbed a washcloth from underneath the sink then turned on the faucet and waited for the water to get warm. When it was warm enough, he ran the cloth underneath the water then brought it over to Monty and sat on the edge of the tub. As he raised the cloth, the water trickled down his forearms, dripping softly against the linoleum floor. He dabbed away carefully at the loose skin torn in the middle of the kid’s forehead and wiped away the blood that was dried to his jaw. The kid flinched and let out a whimper each time the cloth took away a piece of his skin. Dave apologized but kept dabbing, assuring the kid that it would only be a few more minutes. He took the cloth and stuck it back under the faucet and, as he wrung it out, the sink turned a shade of pink. When he sat back down, he noticed that the kid’s knuckles were also bleeding, the flesh hanging off the bone like dead leaves on a tree. Jesus Christ—what the hell happened? Did the kid beat his head and fists against the fucking wall?
He looked up at Monty. A cold chill ran through him, as he began to realize the disturbing severity of it all. What could have happened to make the kid so angry that he’d knock himself senselessly against a load-bearing wall? It wasn’t because of what he’d said to him earlier, was it?
Dave bit his lower lip as he lowered the washcloth then finished wiping away the last of the dried blood. “Alright kid,” he said, patting his hand against the kid’s knee, “I think I got most of it. You wanna go lay down?”
The kid nodded, without lifting his head upward, as if his chin was super-glued to the base of his neck.
“Alright, come on.”
Dave took the kid’s arm and draped it again over his shoulder then carefully helped him off of the toilet seat. They walked in parallel down the hallway, like a pair of soldiers returning from a hellish war. The kid had all his weight leaned against Dave’s shoulder and he let out a soft groan each time they took a step that was too wide apart.
When they got back into the bedroom, Dave eased Monty onto the edge of the mattress then helped him with his shoes and pulled his feet up onto the bed.
“Can I get you anything?” Dave asked, standing over him, not really too sure what to do or say next. “You want like some water or something?”
The kid didn’t respond and just rolled over, pulling the sheets up over his head.
Dave sighed then straightened his bad leg out in front of him and gently eased himself down onto the edge of the bed. He sat there for a moment, staring down at the carpet, his palms clamming up with heat and sweat. How did this work? What was he supposed to say to him? What in God’s name was he supposed to do next?
He cleared his throat and turned towards Monty. The silence was suffocating and unbearably thick. “I’m sorry about what happened earlier,” he said in more of a stutter, his mouth dry and his vocal chords ripped. “I shouldn’t have tried to spit on you. I was just pissed off and—”
“I’m not mad about that,” Monty said from underneath the covers.
“You’re not?”
“No. It’s your life. You can do whatever you want with it.”
“Oh.” Dave let out a sigh of relief. Thank God. The kid wasn’t mad at him. But then what would possess him to drive his head against a wall? “So, what are you so upset about? Did something else happen?”
The kid didn’t respond and just lay underneath the covers, his shoulders rising and falling with each shallow breath.
“You know,” Dave said, contemplating his knuckles, looking down at his dry, cold-cracked skin. “Sometimes it’s good to talk about stuff…get whatever you got bottled up inside there off your chest. I know I felt a whole lot better when I told you all of my shit—about Larry and Cheryl, Angie and Sarah, the cops, the bus, the pod, the crack.” Dave shook his head in disgust. “Actually, I’m probably not gonna be getting out of here as soon as I expected. In fact, I might be stuck here for the three whole fucking months. Remember that chick’s daughter I was telling you about, Sarah? Well, for whatever reason, she’s not gonna help me out. I don’t know if my wife got to her or if she’s just being skittish. Either way, it looks like I’m stuck here for a few more months. You should feel lucky, kid. Whatever shit you’re going through, it can’t be half as bad as the shit I’m dealing with.”
“You think I’m lucky?” Monty said from underneath the covers.
Dave was caught off guard. He didn’t think the kid was actually listening. He turned away and shook his head. “Well no, I didn’t mean that…I mean, I know you got problems, but, shit, so do I. Hell, I mean, look at me. I’m fucked. I’m probably never gonna get out of here. I bet I’ll be stuck here as long as you, maybe even longer. But I guess that’s why we gotta stick together, you know? Because, honestly, I don’t think I can get through three months of this shit on my own. You know what I mean?”
For a moment there was nothing but an awful silence, a silence so thick it seemed to throb inside Dave’s brain.
After a few seconds, the kid sat up and pulled off the covers. His face was as pale and lifeless as a mannequin. “You got problems, Dave? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Well yeah. I mean, I’m in here, aren’t I?”
The kid nodded and looked towards the windows, a pained expression on his bruised and bloodied face. His eyes were glazed over with a cold, simmering anger, but also weighted down with a much deeper pain. It looked like he wanted to say something, but was afraid to say it, like the words were flies buzzing inside his mouth.
“What is it?” Dave said, sitting perfectly rigid, afraid that any movement at all would scare the kid off. “You look like you got something you wanna say. It’s alright, you can tell me. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll understand.”
“I doubt it.”
“Try me.”
The kid turned away and looked over towards the windows. The lines from the blinds threw shadows on his face.
“Come on Monty, what is it? You can tell me.”
“I killed her,” Mo
nty said in a flat, low whisper, the flies finally spitting out from his mouth.
It took a few seconds for the words to register. Dave waited for Monty to say a little bit more. But when the kid didn’t say anything, Dave edged closer to him on the mattress, his eyes wide open, his feet tapping nervously on the floor. “What? What are you talking about? Who? Who’d you kill?”
“Vicky. My fiancé.”
“What?”
“I watched her drown as the water poured in through the windows. I listened to her scream as she died in my arms.” Monty took a deep breath and slumped forward, burying his head into his arms. “It happened on the night of my one year sober anniversary. We were on our way up to the mountains for some time alone. I had just proposed to her at our Sunday night speaker meeting and I wanted to do something special, you know, like a romantic, little honeymoon.” The kid smiled weakly for only a brief second, then turned and buried his head back into his arms. “We were driving just north of Boulder when it all happened, up around that big reservoir near Nederland. You know where that is?”
Dave nodded. He knew exactly the spot where the kid was talking about. He’d driven up and down that road at least a million times. Most of the time to get away from Cheryl and her constant bickering, to just drive and think and smoke in his car.
The kid continued, his voice barely audible, like something had been stolen from inside his lungs: “I swear to God, I thought I saw headlights, but maybe it was nothing, you know, maybe it was just something I saw. It all happened so fucking sudden. One minute she was smiling, holding my hand, looking out the window…the next minute she was screaming, the blood from her head all over the car. I tried to get her out, but I just couldn’t pull hard enough, the dashboard was too twisted and I just wasn’t strong enough. I lost her,” he said, looking upward, the tears from his eyes dripping onto the sheets. “I watched her take her last breath of oxygen. I watched her die. I watched her drown.”
A cold, dense chill descended into Dave’s body, like a dead, petrified hand reaching into his soul. He sat there frozen, his legs glued to the mattress, unable to blink, unable to move. Something wasn’t right…something was missing…something about the kid’s story seemed to be off. Nederland…the canyon…the frozen reservoir…something about it all seemed to be horribly wrong. Wasn’t that the same spot he’d dreamt about in his nightmares? The spot where he fell out of the car and lost his legs in the water? It was, wasn’t it? But it wasn’t real…it was just a nightmare…a horrible, terrible, God-awful dream.
Then, all of a sudden, the nightmare came back to him, like the pieces of a puzzle assembling in his brain—Larry’s chubby face, blown up like a blowfish, his lips moving along to that same god damn song—Magic Bus, the kid’s absolute favorite, a song he played on the way to every god damn volleyball game. The lyrics were like a scalpel scraping the inside of Dave’s eardrums, the same horrible words repeating over and over and over again: Too much, the Magic Bus…Too much, the Magic Bus…Too much, the Magic Bus.
He slumped forward and stuck his head in between his kneecaps, sucking for breath like he was sucking his own dick. He felt cold and vacant, like something had been taken out of him, like all the air had been sucked from his chest. As he looked up at the wall, his mind flashed to images of the blue Volkswagen and big gouge of metal just above the right headlamp. But when was that? When did that happen? Wasn’t that the night before he got arrested on the bus? He stood up from the bed and looked down at Monty, the lyrics of that damn song still ringing in his head: Too much, the Magic Bus…Too much, the Magic Bus…Too much, the Magic Bus.
“Are you okay?” Monty said, looking at him quizzically, the tears from his eyes still dripping onto the bed.
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine, I’m just”—Dave looked around the room. It seemed to be getting smaller, the walls of the bedroom closing in on his head. His hands shook and his bad leg was throbbing, as if someone had just taken a hacksaw to his knee.
“What?” Monty said. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing, I was just”—His lips were dry, his tongue was twisted, and everything inside was being tied in one big knot—“I was just wondering when the accident happened.”
“Oh.” Monty looked away and back at the pillow, rubbing his eyes and rubbing his nose. “It was about, three weeks ago, on Sunday.”
Jesus…the volleyball game was on Monday…that meant the car must’ve been wrecked the night before…Sunday…the night of the kid’s accident…the night he was watching Larry…the night he was supposed to be in charge.
He turned away from the bed and took a step backward, across the room, towards the door. His hands were shaking, his legs were shaking, and he felt like his fucking heart was about to explode. He extended his hand and grabbed the doorknob, but just as he opened it, Monty stopped him and said, “Hey, Dave?”
Dave did an about-face, his hands pressed up behind him, like a prisoner about to face the execution squad. “Uh…yeah, kid?”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For listening.”
Dave’s heart split into two pieces, like a log on a stump being split by an axe. His hands became clammy and his stomach turned to liquid and all the blood from his brain seemed to drain down to his toes. Jesus Christ, he couldn’t fucking do this. He had to get out of here. He had to find what the fuck was really going on. He swallowed his spit and pushed the sickness downward—down his throat and back into his gut. Then, he lifted his head and nodded at Monty and forced a smile and said, “You’re welcome, kid.”
Chapter 31
The Call Home
DAVE cursed to himself as he stomped down the steps of the detox trailer, through the side yard, and around to the back gate. His heart was pounding, his skin was crawling, and his stomach felt like it was about to jump out of his fucking throat. But he had to hold it together…he couldn’t afford to lose it…not here, not now, not in front of all these people. This wasn’t real…it was just a coincidence…a stilly, stupid delusion he’d dreamt up in his head. There was no way in hell he could’ve been the one responsible. No way in hell he could’ve been the one who caused that girl’s death. Christ, he would’ve remembered something like that, wouldn’t he? Hitting a car, running ‘em off the road into a fucking reservoir? Jesus Christ. He’d sure as hell better remember something like that. That kind of shit doesn’t just happen every day. Well then where in God’s name was he? Why the fuck couldn’t he remember where he was that night? Come on, Dave, think, think, think. He had to be somewhere. But where? Was he at the store getting groceries? No. Was he at the park walking the dog? Hell no. Well what about the high school? Did they have practice that night in the gymnasium? No, of course not. Not on a Sunday. Not on the night before a god damn match. Then where? Where in God’s name was he? And why the fuck couldn’t he remember anything?
“God damnit!”
When he got to the patio, he went right for the payphones. But wait. There were a bunch of patients swarming around them, playing their stupid, god damn board game. He couldn’t talk there. Everyone would hear him. Everyone and their mother would be able to hear every single word he’d say. Well then where else could he go? Were there any other payphones? How could he find out what was going on if he couldn’t talk to Larry?
He swung his head around looking for anything that resembled a payphone, but quickly came to the realization that there weren’t gonna be anymore out here. The only other one was inside in the front room foyer next to all the counselors’ offices by the main staircase. But he wasn’t allowed up there in the front foyer, was he? No, only the counselors were allowed in that room. Fuck it. This was a god damn emergency. If anyone gave him shit about it he’d tell ‘em to just fuck off.
He took a deep breath and grabbed hold of the patio door handles, then slid them open and stepped into the meeting hall. He turned towards the kitchen and made his way up the staircase past the bathrooms and into the hall. When he got
to the front foyer, he stopped and peeked his head over the saloon-swinging doorway, making sure no counselors were there to give him any shit. There weren’t. Thank God. He pushed open the doors and staggered into the foyer, his eyes darting around looking for the phone. He saw it. It was sitting beside the couch on a glass coffee table underneath the shadow of an unlit lamp. He went to it quickly, planted himself on the sofa, picked up the receiver, and held it to his ear. As he punched in the numbers, he began to feel a sharp tingling, the pain from his leg piercing into his sciatic nerve.
The phone began ringing, but no one answered it. It rang once, twice, three times, four. Then, the machine picked up. “Shit!” He slammed it down into the cradle, then picked it up and dialed again. “Come on Cheryl…pick up the phone…pick up, pick up, pick up.”
This time she picked up almost immediately. “Hello?”
“Hello? Cheryl?”
There was a slight pause then she recognized who it was: “Dave? Dave is that you?”
Some Are Sicker Than Others Page 34
