“And that plane that made an emergency landing?” Dad exclaimed. “They’re saying you saved lives!”
“I-I was just trying to save Ferocious,” I stammered.
“Ferocious? The ferret?” Dad asked. “What were you doing with—”
“They had a sleepover,” Mom interrupted, patting his arm.
“Oh. Well, you’ve had one heck of a week, Newt. Why haven’t you said anything?”
“You guys were kind of . . . busy,” I said meekly.
Outside my curtain voices suddenly started shouting:
“Yo, Reggie! How ’bout a photo?”
“Reggie, what did you think about as you faced death?”
“Hey, Reggie! You gonna visit Chris Newman while you’re here?”
We all looked up to find Reggie Ratner standing at the foot of my bed. Through the open curtain behind him, I could see a crush of reporters clustered outside the sliding glass doors of the recovery room, all wagging microphones and pointing cameras in Reggie’s direction. They were held back by a line of security guards who had locked arms.
“Hey,” he mumbled, and closed the curtain behind himself.
“Hey, Reggie,” I waved weakly. “Did you meet my parents?”
He raised a hand in greeting, and they nodded curtly. I figured that maybe they were still sore about Reggie’s role in the Big Tackle.
“Oh, just so you know,” I said, “Reggie didn’t knock out Chris.”
Dad’s eyes flew open. “Excuse me?”
“I was there. I saw it. It was Darryl Peeps.”
“Darryl Peeps?” Dad sounded confused.
“I swear. It just took me a while to remember. So don’t blame Reggie for what happened to Chris, okay?”
“Even so,” Mom said sourly, “he did land on you.”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted, “there’s that.”
“Could I, uh, talk to you?” Reggie asked me.
“We’ll get some coffee,” Mom said. As she and Dad passed Reggie, I heard Dad whisper, “You might want to start with ‘I’m sorry.’”
When they exited the recovery room, the glass doors slid open again and the questions and shouts from the reporters built to a frenzy. But once the doors closed, the uproar subsided.
Reggie moved up to the head of my bed.
“How you doin’?” he said.
“I don’t really know,” I shrugged. “They gave me a pain shot.”
“Oh.” He looked to the ceiling for a moment, before drawing a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the deal: I’m sorry. Seriously. I never meant for anybody else to get involved, y’know? But I totally appreciate how you helped me out. So, thanks. Okay?”
I shrugged. “I just untied your shoe.”
“Yeah, about two hundred feet in the air.” He leaned close and whispered, “One more thing: You won’t tell anybody about the spray paint, right?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, all this fuss? All because of a senior prank?” he scoffed. “It’d make me look like such a loser.”
“So you’d rather let everybody assume you were up there to jump?”
“To think,” he corrected me. “I’m telling people I went up there cuz I needed to think. Since I’ve been, y’know . . . upset.”
“Oh, right,” I said slowly. “You’ve been upset.”
He held up a fist for me to punch as a show of agreement. “Our secret?”
I studied his face, so massive and muscled. And so afraid. I guess I’m not the only one who gets scared, I thought.
I raised my arm, bristling with tubes and needles, made a fist, and bopped his. “Our secret.”
Reggie sighed with gratitude.
By the time my plaster cast was dry, the mob of gawkers and reporters had grown to the size of a small suburb. As the nurses wheeled me out of the emergency room, they went bonkers, shouting questions and holding up cameras and cell phones to snap photos. Mom and Dad shielded me as I was rolled past them into the elevator.
On Chris’s floor, the doctors and nurses who were crowded around the door to his room parted to allow us through.
And there he was.
My brother was still hooked up to all the wires and beeping machines I remembered seeing in the ten-second video on Dad’s cell phone. He hadn’t been shaved in nearly a week, so his beard was now scruffier than I’d ever seen it, and with his tousled hair drooping over his closed eyes, he looked more like a rock star than a football hero. A feeding tube connected him to an IV bag, but even so, I could tell Chris had lost weight.
On the one hand, I was so thrilled to see him that I had to fight the urge to yell, “Hey, Chris!” At the same time, I was shocked to see my big brother looking so pale and . . . small.
I caught my breath when a terrifying question popped into my head.
What if he never wakes up?
I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t slip and ask it out loud. A lump the size of a baseball formed in my throat. I finally understood how frightened and worried my parents must have been all week.
My bed was wheeled to a spot against the window. Dozens of flower arrangements and balloon bouquets covered every available surface, but they were beginning to droop, as if they were losing hope. Hundreds of unopened cards and letters were piled up on Chris’s bedside table. Nurses’ shoes squeaked softly on the tile floor, while Chris’s monitors beeped faintly. Everybody whispered here, so when the bedside phone rang, we all jumped a little.
“It’s for you,” Mom said, handing me the receiver. “It’s JJ.”
“Hey, JJ,” I said dreamily into the mouthpiece.
“Omigosh, you’re so famous!” JJ screamed. In the background I could hear Cecil making drum and trumpet noises like a one-man band.
“How are you?” JJ asked, but before I could respond, she barreled ahead. “What am I saying? I know how you are! It’s all over the news! You’ve got multiple fractures of the right ankle, two broken ribs and a mild concussion.”
The concussion was news to me.
“Anyway,” JJ went on, “we just wanted you to know that we’re handling the press. The stories of Captain Nobody’s bravery are filling the airwaves . . .”
“. . . and don’t forget about the newspapers!” I heard Cecil shout.
“Oh, right . . . we’re everywhere.”
“Wow” was all I could say. There was a rustling sound on the other end, and the next thing I heard was Cecil’s voice: “Hey, man! When can we come see you?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I mumbled. “But I’m getting real sleepy, so can I call you guys later?”
“Solid,” Cecil said, “but be sure you ask your nurses for tomorrow morning’s papers, because I gave those reporters a lot of good quotes.”
“And look for our pictures!” JJ chimed in from the background. “They took a ton of pictures.”
Mom hung up the phone for me. Dad arrived, carrying a tray of food.
“You hungry, Newt? They’ve got meat loaf and potatoes and Jell-O.”
I was actually starving, but, as drowsy as I was, I couldn’t imagine being able to lift a fork.
“Later,” I slurred. “But, wait . . . Is Chris any better?”
Mom looked to Dad, who simply said, “Let’s talk about that when you’ve had a little rest.”
Before I could object, my eyelids dropped like stones, and I slept.
The growling of my stomach woke me up. I didn’t know what time it was, but, except for a faint glow from Chris’s machines, the room was dark. I had no idea where Mom and Dad were, but my food tray was gone. My ribs ached and my foot throbbed. I thought about calling a nurse to get another pain shot or something to eat, but I didn’t want to cause a fuss.
Because, to tell the truth, I was feeling pretty dumb. All week I had made such a big deal about getting to the hospital. The whole time I had imagined that if I could just show up at Chris’s bedside, I could somehow make a difference. I could tell him about Captain Nobody and the robbery and the plane on
the highway. I could tell him silly things, too—like how JJ and Cecil cut up his old clothes to make my costume, or how I came up with the name Captain Nobody by using the initials C.N. on his T-shirt sleeve.
He would have loved all of that.
But here I was, three feet away from him, and what was I doing? Staring at the ceiling, counting the beeps from his machines. And starving. After all my adventures of the last few days—after all the people I had managed to help in so many ways—I still wasn’t able to help my brother.
“Useless,” I whispered.
The more that word bounced around in my brain, the more frustrated I got, until I wasn’t just upset—I was steamed! And the last time I could remember being that steamed was the morning of the Big Game, when I’d whipped up that big, healthy breakfast, and my brother had snored right through it. The last time I’d shouted at him, “Hit the showers!”
Yeah, that’s right.
“HIT THE SHOWERS!”
Oh, my gosh. Did I just yell?
Did I really shout in my brother’s hospital room?
Oops.
I could still hear my voice echoing off the walls when a pair of nurses burst through the door and raced to my bedside.
“What’s wrong?” the first one whispered.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered back. “I didn’t mean to be loud. I’m never loud, I swear.”
“You’re in a hospital!” hissed the second.
“I know, I know. Maybe it’s because I’m hungry,” I tried to explain, “or because my foot hurts, but I promise I won’t ever do it—”
Whump!
A pillow hit my head.
The nurses and I exchanged confused looks. Where did that come from?
And then, from the bed next to mine, came a hoarse groan.
“I’m up. I’m up.”
23
IN WHICH I WAKE UP IN THE NEWS
Imagine Christmas morning, New Year’s Eve and the Big Game touchdown all happening at the same, exact moment. Our room was suddenly swarming with doctors and nurses and more doctors, all chattering loudly. Mom and Dad pushed their way through the crowd. They hugged and kissed Chris and hugged and kissed me and then hugged Chris again. Doctors shook my hand and ruffled my hair, and the nurses kept hugging us both. And everybody was crying and laughing.
Above the other noise, I heard Chris, in a raspy voice, ask, “How long have I been out?” while doctors kept asking him questions like, “How many fingers am I holding up?” and saying things like, “Amazing!” and, “His vital signs are excellent!”
I tried to raise myself up to get a glimpse of my brother, but my ribs screamed out, so I flopped back against the pillows. Once I was able to get Mom’s attention, though, I said, “Not right now, but when you have a chance . . . can I get a hamburger? And maybe some aspirin?”
“Of course!” She clapped her hands and shouted above the noise in the room, “Everybody!”
They all quieted and turned to her. “Newt is hungry!” she announced. “Can we get him a hamburger, please? Lettuce, no tomato. Lots of mustard. And he’s hurting, so, please, give my son—my other son—his shot.”
Everybody laughed and scattered in many directions. Five minutes later, an official-looking, bleary-eyed woman in a rumpled suit raced in and announced, “The press wants a statement!”
Dad and about six doctors followed her out of the room. As the mob at my brother’s bedside thinned, I caught sight of him through the few bodies that still lingered. I wanted to say, “Hey, Chris!” but I figured I shouldn’t interrupt all the important medical stuff that was going on. So I lay quietly until a nurse came with my hamburger and another one arrived to administer my pain shot.
Right about then, from the parking lot outside, a loud, long cheer rose up. “Must be the press conference,” one of the nurses commented. “Sounds like they just told them the good news.”
In the five minutes that it took for me to eat, the pain medication began to work its magic. I didn’t really want to sleep any more, but apparently I wasn’t going to have a choice in the matter. As my head began to droop, I turned my face in Chris’s direction, hoping I’d catch a peek before I dropped off.
Chris was looking back at me. After being asleep for a week, he still seemed a little dazed, but he smiled and extended an open palm across the space between us. I stretched out my hand to high-five his, and I was thiiiiis close to connecting when the tubes and wires in my arm pulled taut. I opened my mouth to speak, to say, “How’re you doin’?” but my tongue wouldn’t cooperate. Then an orderly with a thermometer stepped between us. In the next instant, I dropped into a deep sleep.
When I finally opened my eyes, the morning sun was streaming in. I looked down the length of the bed, past the enormous white mound of my foot’s plaster cast, and was amazed to see my own desk and my own closet.
“Welcome home,” came JJ’s voice from my bedside. “Sleep enough?”
I turned to find her and Cecil munching on a couple of waffles and shuffling through stacks of newspapers.
“What happened?” I asked in a froggy voice. “How’d I get here?”
“Well, there were so many people crammed around the hospital,” JJ explained, “that the police decided to take you out the back way in an ambulance.”
“I came home in an ambulance?”
“We all did!” Cecil hooted.
“Your dad invited us to ride along,” said JJ, “so we raced down there first thing this morning.”
“It was so cool!” Cecil gushed. “There were all these motorcycle cops stopping traffic, so we went screaming through every red light!”
“They used the siren?”
“You didn’t hear the siren?” he asked. “Man, you were out!”
“And check this out,” JJ said, holding up a fistful of morning papers. “While you were asleep, we all became stars!”
Every front page carried aerial photographs of me and Reggie Ratner on the roof of the water tower. There were pictures of me falling into the blue inflatable rescue mattress and shots of JJ and Cecil waving at the camera. Thick black headlines screamed: “He Went Up a Nobody, but He Came Down a Hero!” and “Reggie Ratner Rescued by Human Fly.”
“And here’s a direct quote from me,” JJ proudly announced: “‘Captain Nobody is now a somebody!’”
They told me about appearing on TV, and how they had been interviewed by twenty reporters at one time. Cecil even got to perform his drum sounds on a radio show and to demonstrate the Cecil Seesaw on the evening news.
“I decided I’m a natural in front of the camera,” he announced.
“But, omigosh, those mobs of photographers . . . the paparazzi?” JJ sighed. “Honestly, Newt, they can be such a pain.”
“What about Chris?” I asked. “Did he come home in the ambulance, too?”
“Chris?” laughed JJ. “He left the hospital in a limousine.”
“To go where?”
“Where do you think?” Cecil asked as he switched on my small desk TV. Good Morning, Appleton! was just starting, and there was Chris being interviewed. He had shaved and showered, and, even though he was a little thinner than usual, he still looked awesome.
“So, Chris Newman,” the hostess of Good Morning, Appleton! was saying, “after six days in a coma, how are you feeling?”
“Well, my legs are a little wobbly,” Chris said in his new raspy voice, “and I’m so hungry that I could eat for a week. But I’m really happy to be back.”
He and the hostess laughed. “I think all of Appleton feels the same way,” she said. Chris bobbed his head and quietly said, “Thank you.”
“And what’s this I hear?” said the hostess. “You have a younger brother? Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true, you ninny!” Cecil barked back at the screen.
“Oh, yeah, I have a great brother,” Chris smiled on-screen. “Newton. We call him Newt.”
“Also known as ‘Captain Nobody,’” JJ reminded the TV.
“Newt has become quite the hero, it seems,” the hostess continued, holding up the same newspapers that JJ and Cecil had shown me.
“It sure looks that way,” Chris answered.
How weird, I thought. I’d spent so much time watching my brother talk about himself on TV, and now there he was, talking about me.
“Now, just before coming on the air with us, Chris, I’m told that you met with the mayor?” the hostess asked.
“I sure did.” Chris nodded. “He asked me if I was ready to ride in this year’s victory parade.”
“And what did you tell the mayor?” the hostess asked.
Chris paused before he answered. “I told him no.”
“What?” Cecil, JJ and I all shouted at the screen.
“What?” I could hear my parents yell from downstairs.
“What?” gasped the startled hostess on TV.
“I told the mayor that parades should be led by heroes,” Chris continued, “and I told him that there’s only one real hero in Appleton today.”
Then he looked directly into the camera so that it felt like he was right there, inside my television set, looking out at me.
“So, what do you say, Newt? Can I ride in your parade?”
The rest of the afternoon was a blur of phones ringing, doorbells gonging and cars honking as they drove past our house. JJ and Cecil eventually left because now that they were going to be riding in the Appleton parade (that was my only request), they had more interviews to do.
I had some dinner, but because I didn’t want to fall asleep and miss seeing Chris again, I refused any more pain medication.
“I’m feeling much, much better,” I lied to Dad.
Hours slipped by, and the room grew dark. I tried to watch TV, but every channel kept showing the footage of me falling into the inflatable blue cushion with Reggie dropping on top of me. Finally I switched off the set just as someone behind me cleared his throat.
I turned my head. Chris was standing at my bedside.
“Hey, Captain,” he said and smiled.
“Chris,” I exhaled sleepily. “Are you home for good?”
Captain Nobody Page 12
