by Amy Harmon
Tag was silent, staring at me, his face a study in compassion. Love lined his face and leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“I love you, Mo. You know that, don’t you?” he said gently. And I knew he did. I had no doubt whatsoever. But he had a hell of a way of showing it.
“Fuck you, Tag!” I hissed. “I know what you want from me. I know you want me to tell you I support your decision. But I’m not that selfless. I’m not that friend. I don’t want you to suffer. I really don’t. I would share that burden if I could. I’d spell you on the worst days if I could, because I know you’d do that for me in a heartbeat. But I’d rather see you suffer than say goodbye. Sorry. If that makes me an asshole, then I’ll change my name. Just put it on a nametag, and I’ll wear it. I don’t give a shit. When did you start being afraid of a little pain?”
“That’s not it, Mo.”
“Bull-shit!” I roared. “You owe it to the people who love you to battle. You owe us!”
“It’s not my pain I’m worried about, man,” he said it so softly I barely heard him.
“Where is your rage? Where is the green-eyed monster who wanted to kill me just for breathing his sister’s name? Where’s the guy that grabbed the bull by the horns in Spain just to see if he could? Where’s the guy who shot a man to protect me, who threw himself in the line of fire? Let me get this straight, Tag. You would die to save my life, but you won’t even fight to save your own?”
“Not if I have to put people through hell to do it.”
“Take off the cape, bro. Take it off! Or I’m going to beat the hell out of you, put you in a strait-jacket, and start pumping you full of chemo myself. You watch me.”
“I love you, Mo.”
“Stop saying that, Tag!”
“I love you, Mo.”
I felt a splintering sensation inside my chest, and I knew I had to get out before I lost it. I rarely cried, but I had a tendency to store up the grief, tucking it away in hidden compartments, boxing it up, building partitions. I hoarded my grief. But now I was bursting at the seams, unable to escape the towering feelings that had been threatening to bury me since Millie called and told me Tag was gone. I was falling apart. And I had to go.
IT TOOK ME several days to make the tapes. It had started out as a way to say goodbye, a way to express my feelings, my love for Millie in my own words. And as I told our story, I realized what a miracle it was. Moses was right. I got a miracle. And with every word, every tape, I became more convinced of it. The problem was, I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t want the tapes to end. I couldn’t say goodbye.
When I got the call about the fight, I put the tapes I’d completed, along with the tape recorder I’d borrowed from Henry, in the filing cabinet in the office at the gym, and left the key in an envelope for Millie. But I still had so much to say. I would remember something else, something I’d missed, something I wanted to tell her, and I would want to call her and talk to her. Then I’d remind myself of what the doctor said—stage four glioblastoma—and I would consider all the terrible things I’d read and researched about my diagnosis. I’d think about the pictures I’d seen, recite the survival rates. I’d think about the way I would die, the way I would suffer, the way those closest to me would suffer. And I wouldn’t let myself call her. Instead, I went searching for a tape recorder of my own so I could make more tapes.
I ended up spending the next day, when I should have been on the road to Vegas, going from pawn shop to pawn shop looking for one. I hit pay dirt at the fifth shop I tried when an old woman sold me a dusty hand-held tape recorder from her back room, along with an unopened package of empty cassettes, all for a hundred bucks. She’d told me, straight-faced, that I was getting a deal. She was probably right. I would have paid two hundred.
The results of my biopsy had come back fairly quickly. I was only in the hospital for two days after my craniotomy. Not very long, considering they drilled into my head and took a big chunk of tissue off my brain. They were able to remove ninety-five percent of the tumor, which was great news. They also got the biopsy results back much sooner than they anticipated. They thought it would take six days post-op to get results. I got lucky. It only took them four. Lucky, lucky me.
When I went in for the craniotomy, I made a deal with myself. If the results came back negative, no cancer, I would call Moses and I would call Millie, and I would tell them about the little scare I’d had. I’d tell them I hadn’t wanted to worry them, and hey, no big deal. I was fine. I would let Millie get mad at me and huff, and then I would kiss it all away, and I would make her marry me. Why wait? What had I said? When you love something you give it your name. I’d done that with my bar, I was going to do it with my girl. Hell, if Henry wanted my name, I’d adopt him too. I didn’t see why it couldn’t be done. We’d all be Taggerts. That’s the deal I’d made with myself.
And if the news wasn’t positive? If I had a terminal diagnosis? If the news wasn’t positive, I wouldn’t be calling anyone.
And that’s what I did. I called a cab to come and get me after the craniotomy. The nurse had insisted on calling someone, and I’d insisted right back that I could take care of myself. I felt fine. My head ached, which made sense. But other than that, I felt fine. I kept saying that because it was true. My body felt fine. It was my heart that hurt. My heart felt like shit. But I felt fine. I went home and slept for two days, waking up to drink water, go to the bathroom, and go back to sleep. Then I got the word that the results were in, and I drove myself to the hospital to find out I had anywhere from six months to a year to live.
I drove myself back home again.
I still didn’t call Moses, and I didn’t call Millie. I didn’t call Axel or bother Mikey. Instead, I let everyone believe I had gone to Dallas to see my family, and I called my lawyer. Then I started putting things in motion. During that time, I ignored my phone calls. I didn’t read my texts. I couldn’t. I couldn’t and remain strong. But I was in the middle of making Millie a tape when the phone started ringing, interrupting my flow, and I’d grabbed at it to silence it, only to see Cliff Cordova’s name lighting up the display. I’d answered it on instinct.
He had a fight for me. Saturday night in Vegas—six days away—against Terry Shaw. Fifty thousand dollars if I won, ten thousand just for showing up. I told him I’d only do it for fifty thousand, regardless if I won or not, but I promised him I would win. He agreed and told me if I won, Tag Team would get another twenty-thousand dollars, and he told me to be in Vegas in forty-eight hours.
It would mess up my plan. My team would find out. They would be hurt that I’d fought alone. Word would wind itself to Millie. She would be hurt too. Moses would find me in the afterlife and kick my ass. But what a hell of a way to go out.
I thought I would be strong. I thought I would take one for the team. I thought I was going to go out in a blaze of glory. Fight and die. Strong. But they found me first. And when I’d seen Millie, standing there in the crowd, Henry at her side, Moses holding her hand and looking at me like he wanted to strangle me, my resolve shook and my legs got weak.
And it had pissed me off.
I wasn’t going to dissolve in a puddle for Terry Shaw to wipe up in one round. I was not going to have all my sacrifice and all my plans shot to hell because my girl was in the audience and my best friend was pissed. I was not going to let the dull throb in my head that hadn’t gone away since I’d woken up with twenty staples in my skull make me sloppy and slow. I was not going to let cancer win. Not this round, at least.
I fought harder than I’ve ever fought before. Everything hurt, my energy was spotty, my two weeks out of the gym more of a factor than the surgery. I’d jogged three miles the day Cordova called. I ran five the next. The day before the fight I’d hit a Vegas Gold’s gym and worked up a good sweat punching and kicking the hell out a bag, smelling the last of the anesthesia on my skin, feeling pretty damn strong, reminding myself I had nothing to lose. I wasn’t even nervous. It was bizarre.
/> That feeling had continued until I’d seen Millie. Then the nerves had hit me like a fire hose and I’d been terrified that I would let her down, worse that I would get my trash kicked and she would have to stand there and witness it happening. I’d seen her face after that first round. She was miserable. And I’d called out to her. I couldn’t help myself. I had to reassure her. I’d done it again after the next round. And again. And then I’d won. Her face had worn the most beautiful smile, and Henry was screaming my name. Moses still looked pissed.
Then the room spun. One screaming face blurred into another, as if I was on a carousel. The octagon was revolving. I didn’t know that was possible. Must be a new feature. Then I realized it was me. I was the one spinning. And then I was falling, and my body bounced off the floor, my head connecting half a beat later, the dot on the ‘i’, the point on the exclamation mark. And the crowd roared. I didn’t lift my hands to catch myself or cover my face. The fight was over, wasn’t it? The bell had rung. Instead my eyes focused blearily on Moses, his smeared face further obscured by the criss-crossing web of the cage. Moses didn’t look angry anymore. He looked stunned, and I saw him run toward me. Up over the side of the octagon, he came. I felt like I was in a fog and I couldn’t control my right arm. My muscles were suddenly twitching, jerking, trying to jump out of my skin. And then the roaring began. It sounded like a big rig bearing down on me. Like I stood on the side of the road. Like I stood beneath the overpass not far from where they found my sister’s body.
“Tag, can you hear me? Damn it. I think he’s having a seizure!
It was Moses talking to me, but he sounded odd, far off. Like his voice came from far across the field where Molly was buried. Across the field and past the truck stop that paid a negligent vigil on a dead girl. The roaring of the trucks continued, one after the other, a typhoon of semis flying past me.
“He’s biting the shit out of his tongue! Put the mouth guard back in his mouth! Tag! Tag, come on, baby!”
The pain in my head was suddenly so enormous there was no way I could open my eyes. Maybe I was the one with a bullet in my brain. Maybe my sister’s killer had killed me too. No. That wasn’t right. Molly’s killer was dead. I killed him. I found him and killed him. And the dogs found Molly.
“Mr. Taggert, if you can hear me, can you try to open your eyes?”
I tried. I tried to open my eyes. The pain ricocheted in my head again, the sound of a gunshot reverberating from my memory into my present. Nah. That wasn’t it. There wasn’t a bullet in my brain. There was another problem with my brain.
Once, my sister Molly had dared me to eat two handfuls of sand. She’d said I couldn’t do it. So of course I had. It hadn’t even been wet sand. It had been gritty and sharp, and so dry that it got stuck in my throat and I’d coughed sand for three days afterward. My mouth felt like that again. I couldn’t swallow and my tongue was fat and foreign behind my cracked lips. My throat was on fire.
Maybe I was back on the beach with Molly, the sky a never-ending blue, interrupted only by a low-flying plane pulling a streamer about car insurance behind it. But the buzzing and the light didn’t come from the bright sky above a long stretch of beach, and my throat wasn’t filled with sand. Bright lights circled my head instead of bi-planes, and the buzzing morphed into beeping machines and worried voices.
“Mr. Taggert?”
“Call me Tag,” I rasped.
“Tag, do you know where you are?”
“Montlake Psychiatric Hospital,” I whispered. I could even smell the bleach.
“Mr. Taggert?” Moses didn’t call me Mr. Taggert. No one at Montlake called me Mr. Taggert. Not even Dr. Andelin. Maybe I wasn’t at Montlake. But I was in a hospital. I was sure of it.
“You were in a fight, Mr. Taggert. Do you remember the fight?”
“Did I win?” I whispered, trying to lift my hands to see my knuckles. If I was in the hospital because of a fight, then I probably hadn’t won. My dad would be so disappointed. I shut my eyes against the light and the voices, trying to remember how I lost.
“I’m proud of you, David.” My father hadn’t ever said that to me. Eleven years old, and he’d never said he was proud. But he was proud now.
“You are?” My voice cracked in amazement.
“Yeah. Sometimes we have to get mean in life to get some respect. There’s nothing wrong with defending yourself. It’s not a popular thing in this day and age. People think it’s enlightened to be weak. It isn’t. There’s a time for words and a time for action.”
I nodded. I liked words. But action had felt amazing.
“Words work much better if the person you’re talking to knows you got something to back it up if words fail. How long you been tryin’ to be friends with that kid?” My dad looked over at me and then back at the road.
“A long time.”
“I thought so.”
“I think I broke his nose.” I tried not to sound as pleased as I felt.
“Yeah. You probably did. But now that he knows you can, he won’t be quite as quick to start a fight, now will he?”
“Nope.” I was silent for several minutes, until I forced myself to confess. “Dad?”
“Yeah, son?”
“I liked it. I like fighting. I want to do it again.”
“I want a rematch. I thought I won. I thought I had that guy beat. The bell rang.” I tried to form the words but they were slurred and sloppy and I wasn’t sure anyone would understand. It was the sand in my mouth. The sand and my sore tongue. Damn my mouth hurt.
“You won the fight. It was over. But you had a seizure, Mr. Taggert. We need to find out why.”
And then my eyes closed and the world went dark, darker than the world had ever been. That was the last thing I remember. And now I was here. Now I was in a hospital, the one place I’d sworn I wouldn’t return to. And there would be no more running away. So what did I do now? Where did I go from here? I didn’t know.
Idon’tknowwhattodo Idon’tknowwhattodo Idon’tknowwhattodo—the old refrain was back in my head, an ear worm that refused to morph into a solution. So I was talking to the tape recorder. Again.
Someone on Cordova’s payroll had delivered my truck to the hospital, as well as all my things. I got a nurse to help me up—I was shaky and dizzy, but I could get around well enough—and I positioned the player by my head on the flattened out hospital bed, talking into it so I wouldn’t have to hold it up to my face. They wouldn’t keep me here much longer. We would be heading back to Utah in a day or two. Axel would be driving my truck home. When I said I could do it, Millie had cut me off immediately and the nurse had laughed.
I hadn’t been alone with Millie. Not once. She’d stayed close, her hand on my arm, always touching me, but we hadn’t had any time to ourselves. I didn’t want a repeat of the scene with Moses, and I had no idea what to say to her. The seizure had left me exhausted and sleep was a relief. When I was awake and she was nearby I could only stare at her, cling to her hand, and try to imagine what she was thinking. What she was feeling. I think I knew, and her agony only made me want to sleep again. I’d tried once to tell her how sorry I was, and she just nodded and said, “I know, big guy. I know.” But her eyes had filled up with tears, and she’d laid her forehead down on my chest to hide them from me. I’d smoothed her hair until sleep pulled me under.
The guys—Axel, Cory, Mikey, Paulo and Andy—were in and out. They refused to head back home without me. I got the feeling they were taking turns guarding me, like I would slip away again. None of us talked about why I was here. We tiptoed around that elephant like talking about it would make us all fall apart. So for now, we pretended it was the fight that landed me here. A fight I had won in fairly glorious fashion. It gave us something to talk about.
Moses hadn’t come back. Moses had never been capable of pretending. He delivered Millie and Henry and picked them up again when Henry got restless and needed to head back to the hotel. I could tell Millie wanted to stay. But duty calle
d, and she left without protest, a squeeze to my hand, her arm looped through Henry’s, and none of the things that needed to be said were discussed.
It was late. The guys had all finally left, heading back to their hotel for the night, after making a big show of tearing up the contracts my lawyer had sent them, saying the gym was mine and they weren’t going to sign anything. They were gone, but I was pretty sure someone had stayed behind to sit outside my hospital room door.
I was finally alone, talking to a tape recorder that was easily as old as I was, telling my story in hopes I would figure out an ending that wouldn’t devastate the people I love.
THE NEXT MORNING, Henry arrived at my hospital room first. I almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was gone, just like mine, and only a shadow of stubble remained.
“Henry! Is that you, man?”
“It’s me,” he whispered, nodding. He looked troubled. Obviously, Millie or Moses had explained a few things to him. I wished they hadn’t, but I guess there was no way around it. I had hoped they would let him believe I was only here because of the fight. I didn’t want him worrying about the rest of it.
“Where’s Millie?” I asked as the silence stretched between us.
“On the phone, in the hall.”
“And Moses?”
“He went to get some breakfast for us, in the cafeteria.”
I nodded, grateful. Moses was taking care of them. Good. Andy, Cory, Axel and Mikey had been looking out for them too, but they were on their way home now.
“What’d you do to your hair, Henry?” I asked when he refused to come closer than the foot of my bed.
Henry rubbed his smooth head with both hands, obviously aggravated. His face looked so different without all the hair, and for the first time I could see the resemblance between Millie and her brother. It was in the eyes. Millie’s eyes would look just like Henry’s if she could see. As it was, the shape, the pale color, the thick black lashes were the same, but Henry’s eyes were wide with questions.
