Survivor Stories

by J P Barnaby

  “What?” Jude’s homosexuality at work bordered on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He wouldn’t deny it if someone asked, but he never brought anyone to corporate functions or talked about his personal life. It wasn’t part of the job. He just wanted to get his shit done and go home.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Dennis said that you’d been out because your boyfriend was in the hospital. I….” she trailed off. The department busybody, Carrie was a nice woman but didn’t really understand the concept of personal space.

  “Ben is my roommate, not my boyfriend,” Jude explained. The funny part was, it actually sounded like a cover. Oh, he’s not my boyfriend, we just live together. He would have fucking shouted it from the rooftops if he and Ben actually were together. The irony was not lost on him, but he didn’t want to get into it with this woman. What he really wanted was to go to the hospital, crawl in bed with Ben, and rest his head on that strong, solid chest. He wanted Ben to stroke his hair. He wanted to hear how much he meant to Ben.

  Shaking his head, he shoved the bag into the refrigerator and slammed the door. He hoped his anger would discourage any more questions from Ms. Nosy and stalked past her. Without a backward glance, he turned and headed down the main aisle to his cube. After powering on his computer, he stared at the monitor, barely taking in the boot-up screens. Even when the log-in box came up, it took him a minute to process. Blinking a few times, he tried to force his eyes to focus on the little prompt and raised his hands to the keyboard.

  Access denied, please contact your system administrator for assistance with your password.

  With a sigh, he typed the password again.

  Access denied, please contact your system administrator for assistance with your password.

  A sinking feeling grew in pit of his stomach. He sat up in the chair and checked his username. JArcher. He had typed that in correctly. The numlock was on, the capslock wasn’t. Slowly, carefully, he typed the password again.

  Access denied, please contact your system administrator for assistance with your password.

  Jude knew that was his password. It was the password he used for everything. His mind flashed back six months to Doug. A nice guy, but not very proficient with keeping his trial balances balanced, he showed up for work on Monday morning to find that his password didn’t work. Minutes later, he was called into Andy’s office. A few minutes after that, he packed up his desk and was never heard from again. Three days out of the office, and he went from being on the fast track for promotion to out on his ass. It was fucking ridiculous.

  Jude’s office phone rang, and he looked up automatically at the display.

  Andy.

  Here it comes.

  With deadened legs, he stood up without answering the phone and walked the ten steps to his boss’s office. With each step, he made a new plan. His resume sat mostly updated on his laptop at home; he could have it up within an hour. There were a few vendors the company did business with that he could feel out for an accounting position. Even with their current economy, qualified, experienced accountants were in demand. Weren’t they?

  Jude stood in his boss’s doorway and watched as Andy held the phone between his shoulder and ear while he answered an e-mail on his computer at the same time. He knocked softly on the doorframe and Andy looked up. He ran a hand through his thinning brown hair, and Jude noticed that his brown eyes, usually full of fun and laughter, seemed almost dim.

  “Oh, Jude,” he said as he let the phone fall to his hand and then hung it back on the cradle. “How are you doing? How’s your friend?” He clicked his mouse and sent the e-mail into cyberspace then pushed his square glasses back up higher on his nose. The huge L-shaped cherry desk was covered in paper, as were the surrounding countertops, almost as if one of the HP printers had exploded and littered paper-based casualties all around his office. A huge coffee cup sat half empty on a coaster near the left-hand monitor.

  “I’m tired and stressed. He seems to be better. His parents came in and are staying with him now,” Jude murmured and dropped into one of the two ugly patterned office chairs in front of the desk. Not wanting to slouch through his firing, he sat up tall and crossed his ankle over his knee to wait.

  “I’m glad.” The tense, awkward tone in his voice grated on Jude’s nerves. Just fucking get it over with so I can go home. A long sigh escaped as Andy got up to close the door. Without any conscious thought from him, Jude’s hands wrapped themselves around the arms of the chair. He held on as if he were going to receive a physical blow. In that moment, he found he couldn’t look up at Andy. He didn’t want to watch the blow coming. He just wanted it to be over so he could go back to the hospital with Ben.

  “Jude, I know that we need to be there for our friends, but your prolonged absence really hurt the department. Your month end financial reports had to be picked up by someone else and a lot of reports went out late.” Andy paused. Jude thought about arguing, but decided against it. It wouldn’t make a difference. They’d already processed the paperwork and terminated his network account. No argument would be effective against the combined forces of the HR and IT departments. The battle was lost before he ever entered the battlefield.

  “Anyway, I need to be sure that the person we put into the senior accounting position has the company’s best interest at heart. When you’re not here, you still need to be thinking about what’s best for the company. Calling off for three days in a row because someone else was injured hurts the department and the company. I’m not saying that it was wrong, but I just need to know that you’re dedicated to growing into a new position. I love working with you, you know that, and I want you in the supervisor position, but I just had to have the conversation. You know?” Andy finished in a rush, and Jude sat back in the chair, confused. His boss just brought up his promotion, so clearly he hadn’t been fired. It took a minute for his brain to catch up to the conversation.

  “I understand. They weren’t sure he was going to make it, Andy. I didn’t want him to be alone if the worst happened, and his parents had to travel in. It was an extraordinary circumstance that won’t happen again. I am dedicated to the company, you know that I am. I’d planned to stay late this week and catch up on anything that fell behind because of my absence. If the hospital’d had wireless, I’d have worked from there, but it didn’t.” Jude cut himself off so he didn’t babble, as he had a tendency to do under stress. The more he overexplained, the less likely his explanation would seem. It always worked that way with him. So, instead of talking himself out of the promotion, he shut up.

  “That’s really good to hear. I know that upper management is going to make that decision next week and I really want it to be you.” Andy sat back in his chair and propped his feet on the open file drawer of his desk. “Oh, Carrie needed access to your backup for the Adriatic Lumber account, so we had to change your password. I don’t remember what they changed it to. You can ask Carrie or just call the IT help desk and have them change it again. Sorry about that, I didn’t want to bug you just for that while you were out.”

  “Did anything else come up?” Jude asked as all of the tension moved from his shoulders to his head, which throbbed with a slow, dull ache.

  “Nah, nothing we couldn’t handle. You might want to recheck your monthlies to make sure Carrie closed everything out. She’s competent, but unfamiliar with the accounts.”

  Jude nodded and stood up. His back cracked loudly from sleeping in the incredibly uncomfortable recliner at the hospital. One night back in his own bed didn’t make up for the damage caused by sleeping partially sitting up for days at a time.

  “Want this open?” he asked when he opened the door to leave.

  “Yeah, thanks, Jude.”

  THE NEXT week passed in a whirlwind of blurry numbers, long nights, and quick stops at the hospital to see Ben. He always made sure to leave the office by six thirty so he could grab food and have dinner with his friend. Most nights, Ben’s parents left as he came in. He didn’t know if they were
just being courteous and leaving them alone to talk, or if they weren’t overly fond of him. By the following Tuesday, he was too tired to care, but was surprised when Mr. and Mrs. Martin stuck around after he came in.

  “The doctor is coming to talk to me. I think he’s finally going to let me out of this damn place,” Ben said with a smile, but cringed a little at his mother’s frown for his language. He looked better. His color had come back, probably from the daily feeding of real food Jude and his sister smuggled in. His head and arm were still bandaged, his arm still covered in a cast, and his leg still in a brace, but finally, he’d started to look like Ben again.

  “Aunt Rachel is getting the spare room ready for you. It will be a difficult car ride because of your knee, but we should be able to manage if we stop often and get a hotel room each night,” Mrs. Martin said as she cleaned up the garbage from the pizza Jude had brought for them.

  A fork clattered onto the table and Jude looked up. Ben stared at his mother. All of the blood had drained from his face, leaving it almost gray. Jude was on his feet in an instant and hurried to stand next to the bed. He didn’t touch Ben, but his hand rested just inches from Ben’s uninjured arm.

  “Honey, what is it?” Mrs. Martin asked as she left the cleaning for the moment and moved to stand on the other side of the bed from Jude. Her hand rested lightly on his bicep. The touch brought Ben out of his stupor.

  “I’m not going to Tampa, Mom. My life is here in Chicago. I have a job and… and friends. I can’t just leave.” Ben’s voice went up an octave as he pushed himself higher in the bed. The fear in his face startled Jude. Ben wasn’t one to panic or overreact. Something about going with his parents, even for a short time, scared Ben, but Jude couldn’t figure out what it could be. Ben’s mom looked from her son to her husband.

  “Benjamin, you can’t work like this,” his father said with a wave of his hand to indicate Ben’s injuries. “How are you going to support yourself until you’re back on your feet?”

  “I have savings,” Ben muttered. “I’m not going to leave Jude with half the rent on our apartment. That’s not fair to him.” Ben looked to Jude, possibly for help, but Jude stayed quiet. He wasn’t going to get into the middle of their argument, no matter how much it killed him inside to think of the apartment without Ben. He didn’t want to come between Ben and his family.

  “What happens when you’re released? Who’s going to care for you? I have to get back home to my job, and I won’t leave your mother up here with no support. You can’t walk. You can’t shower by yourself. You’re having problems eating because you have to hold your fork in the wrong hand. How are you going to recover from this alone?” Mr. Martin stood up and wrapped an arm around his trembling wife. “Now, stop this foolishness. You’re upsetting your mother.”

  “Dad, I don’t know how I’ll manage, but I will. You told me when I left home to grow up and be a man. How am I supposed to do that if I have to run to mommy and daddy for help when things get tough?” Ben asked, his eyes skirting wildly around the room like he was looking for an escape, or desperately searching for a way to counter his father’s logic. The slow, steady beep of the machine behind Ben started to climb.

  With a sideways glance at Jude, Ben’s father continued his side of the debate. “You know what this family has been through, Benjamin. Don’t make your mother worry about you. Don’t you put her through that after… just don’t.” Jude watched the sadness wash through him, the way his eyes lost some of their spark, the slump in his shoulders, and how he seemed to collapse under the weight of his daughter’s violent death. A quiet sniff from Ben’s mother caught Jude’s attention, and he looked over to see her try to hide the quick wipe across her eyes.

  The machines behind Ben beeped faster, and the number slowly climbed until it started to flash.

  “Ben, you need to calm down,” Jude said softly as he put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He lacked the medical background to know what the machines were or what the numbers meant, but flashing generally implied warning. His own heart seemed to beat faster too. He couldn’t stand Ben’s fear—the way his hands clenched on top of the blankets, the way his voice caught as he tried to keep his father from forcing his hand, and the hopeless, terrified expression on his gentle face.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  Mr. Martin’s face flushed with anger. He was obviously unaccustomed to being disobeyed by his son. The older man reached back and took his wife’s hand when it tangled in his sweater. Wide eyed with a doe-like innocence, she deferred to her husband as he took aim again at Ben.

  “It’s not just about you, Benjamin. Fine, you can survive here on your own, but what about your mother? Hasn’t she been through enough? You didn’t see her when the call came in from the police about her surviving child in intensive care. Look at her, son. Look her in the face and tell her you’re going to stay here and make her worry about you every minute of every day.” Ben’s father pulled his mother forward, and Jude noticed that Ben had a problem meeting her eyes. He couldn’t understand why staying in Chicago was so damned important to Ben that he couldn’t just appease his mother and go to Florida to recover. Not that Jude wanted Ben to leave—ever—but the woman looked like her nerves couldn’t take much more. Her hands seemed to be shaking as she clasped them together and her husband rubbed her back.

  “Gerald,” she said, no louder than a whisper, “let’s go—” She was interrupted as the hospital door opened and a man in blue scrubs stalked into the room. An older man of Asian descent, his black hair was just long enough to touch the top of black-framed glasses, and he looked down at bound papers in his hands. Flipping the page, he continued to read silently for a moment before acknowledging that there were other people in the room. Finally, he turned his gaze to Ben, completely ignorant of the family quarrel he’d just interrupted.

  “Mr. Martin, how are you feeling? Any pain? Dizziness?”

  “My head hurts some, but nothing unmanageable. My arm aches but the pain shots are helping. I don’t really feel dizzy, though.” Ben propped himself up a little taller on the pillows. To anyone else, it would look like he was merely trying to get comfortable, but Jude knew he wanted the doctor to see how well he was doing so he could get out. Jude couldn’t blame him; he’d want out too.

  “Any tightness in your leg?”

  “A little.”

  “Okay, we’re going to run a few more tests, but it looks like your intracranial pressure is stable. We’re going to keep you on the phenytoin for a while to prevent any seizure activity as a result of the damage to your brain. You’re going to go home on a morphine pump, much like you have here in the hospital. I’ll refer you to a neurologist, and you should keep in close contact with your primary care physician,” the doctor rattled off, never looking up from the chart. Jude rolled his eyes. Ben was just another stop on his cash machine assembly line.

  “What kind of home care is he going to need?” Ben’s mother asked as she stepped forward and out of her husband’s embrace. Her voice trembled almost imperceptibly, as if she were trying to keep her emotions in check for the doctor’s benefit. Wrinkled fingers wrapped around the bed railing, and the look, the one that appeared as if her entire world were spinning out of control, abated. She didn’t even glance at her son, but kept all of her focus on the hospital ID hanging from the Mercy lanyard around the doctor’s neck.

  “Mobility assistance, dressing changes, things like that,” the doctor listed. “He will need help bathing, making meals, getting around, and his caregiver will need to watch his behavior for changes that could indicate another bleed in his brain. While Mr. Martin isn’t an invalid, he should not go home alone.”

  Without a trace of gloating or self-satisfaction, his mother put a hand on Ben’s uninjured leg. More than just a matter of winning a battle, she now looked afraid for her son. If he refused her help and tried to do everything on his own, he could die. The realization overflowed from her eyes, and even Jude ached to see it. So,
it was no great surprise for Jude to hear himself offer to help.

  “I will help you. The apartment is on the first floor, it’s not like there are any stairs. Come home with me. Between Susan, Ronnie, and me, we’ll figure it out.”

  Ben’s eyes met Jude’s, and for the tiniest flicker of an instant, Jude saw something beyond gratitude, beyond friendship. He grabbed onto that little bit of hope with both hands and held tight. He hadn’t made the offer in order to get Ben to fall in love with him, but if that happened during the course of his recovery, he wouldn’t turn Ben away—at all, ever.

  Jude’s heart clenched as Ben reached for him and took his hand. Please don’t let my hands shake…. Please….

  “Sweetheart, we… we’ll be back tomorrow. We can talk about it then,” his mother stammered and grabbed at her husband’s sleeve as she turned to leave. Ben’s father stared with a look of disappointment so heavy even Jude could feel its weight. The hand holding his clenched and Jude slid his thumb up and down Ben’s grip in a subtle offer of comfort.

  As the door clanged to a close behind his parents, Ben nuzzled his head into Jude’s arm. With one of the most inappropriate leaps of joy he’d ever felt, Jude held the broken and bruised man in his arms and silently thanked whatever God was responsible for pushing Ben there. He didn’t know how long it would last, so he sucked up every drop of affection like water on desert sand.

  Please, just give me one more chance with him?

  Seven

  “OKAY, JUST a few more steps, hold on to me,” Jude told Ben, his voice strained under the Ben’s weight on the walk to their apartment. Ben tried to help as much as he could but ended up leaning heavily on Jude. Everything hurt. The crutches they’d picked up on the way out of the hospital slid across the wet leaves of yet another rainy day in Chicago, so Jude had thrown them unceremoniously to the ground and hoisted Ben’s casted arm over his shoulder, half carrying him to the doorway. They labored under the leaning branches just in front of the door to their courtyard. Kids ran from door to door dressed as elves and vampires and cartoon characters even as Jude propped Ben like a bundle of broken sticks against the wall and fished keys from his pocket. Ben hadn’t noticed that they’d be bringing him home on Halloween. Thankfully, because it was an apartment complex, they never got many trick-or-treaters. Opening the door with practiced efficiency, Jude tossed his keys onto the hall table where they always left them and hoisted Ben back over his shoulder. They hadn’t taken two steps over the threshold before the clattering of tiny paws caused Jude to stop dead.