by Amy Lane
Leo looked at him with grim relief.“Point oh-eight on the button, Xander. Chris was under the influence, but not intoxicated. No one else was involved—when he comes to, hell have a court appearance, and probably a fine, but thats about all.”
Xanders knees had never felt so weak.
“Good to know,” he said from a throat dusted with silicate. Oh God… it could have been worse. So much worse. So goddamned worse. With an effort, he looked at the troopers at Leos back.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked quietly. One of them took off his glasses, and the other one followed suit. The first guy was Jeds age, and the younger one was in his thirties, and to Xanders intense sense of dislocation, they both started to look uncomfortable.
“Im… Im sorry to ask, Mr. Karcek. We were just wondering. Edwards… he got Denver to the playoffs, right? We were just wondering… is he going to be back on the court for them?”
Xander let out a hideous bark, a parody of laughter, the sound of a sick seal being gutshot with a rusty musket.“Guys,” he said, looking at Leo as he said it. Leo looked away and wiped his face with the back of his hand.“Guys, you can tell the press this, if it will get them off our backs, but odds are really good that Christian Edwards will never play basketball again.”
They stared at him in dismay, and just that suddenly, he had to be somewhere else.
“Bathroom?” he asked, looking at his shoes.
Leo looked up.“Sorry?”
“For Christs sake, Leo, I need the fucking bathroom. Im gonna be—”
Leo grabbed his hand and hauled him to the waiting-room bathroom, and Xander looked at it in despair. He was too big. He was too tall for the tiny cubicle.He had to… he had to—
He lifted the seat up with a clatter and leaned over, puking up stomach acid because thats all he had left. When he was done, he was still shaking from head to foot, and he threw himself back against the door of the cubicle, propped his feet against the base of the toilet, and tried to pull himself together.
Christian Edwards will never play basketball again.
Oh God.Chris and basketball, wasnt that what he said? Chris just had basketball taken away, and Xander was going to have to pray that hed be enough. He didnt know if the shaking, the tremors, the spots dancing in front of his eyes would ever stop.
He wasnt sure how long it was, but it wasnt Leo who came to get him, it was Penny.
“Xander, everyones worried about you. Come fall apart with the rest of us, okay?” Her voice was shaking, and she sounded like a little girl.
“Penny, you sound young,” Xander whispered. “You never sound young.You didnt even sound young when you were young.”
“I grew up, you know,” Penny said quietly. “I grew up that morning when I saw the love of my life kissing my big brother. You ever wonder why I dont date a lot, Xan?”
Penny might have been the second person in the world to ever call him Xan.
“Yes,” Xander said quietly, because he had. Hed worried about her, all career and no love. He and Chris had each other. Who did Penny have?
“I dont date a lot because if I couldnt have what you and Chris have, I dont want it.”
“Basketball, Penny,” he said, because she might understand. “He loves this sport.”
“He hated playing it without you,” she told him. “He did it, but he hated it. You being there for him—hell count his lucky stars hes alive. As long as he has you, Xander, losing the game wont be any loss at all.”
Xander sucked in a sob.“God, Penny. Just… just… Christ. Go away a sec, kay?Ill be there. I swear.”
“Ill come get you,” Penny said, her voice as hard as she could make it.“I swear, Xander, you dont get to do this alone in a toilet, okay?You never have to be alone.”
Xander nodded, and then spoke because she couldnt see. “I have this image in my head,” he said softly. “Hes magic, and golden, and shooting the ball.Hes young and he… you remember. He looks like hed snap in two if someone grabbed him hard, but… he got plowed over on the court in high school. He had bruises all over his arms and his ribs in our senior year, because his skins so pale, and they started playing rough. And he just kept going back out on the court because I wasnt going to keep him off, and no one else was going to try.
“And thats how I remember him. I know theres this young, golden, magic shadow in his heart, and its going to be playing forever—” And now Xanders voice broke, truly broke, but he had to keep talking.“But hes never going to be able to move like that again. Its only going to be his heart, and… God, Penny. What if Im not enough to make his heart okay?”
“Youre all he needs,” Penny told him. She was sobbing now, on the other side of the door.“Youre all he needs.”
Xander wiped his eyes, and wiped them again, and for a moment the only sound was of the two of them breathing. His voice, into that silence, was almost an obscene burst of sound.
“Penny, I look like shit, and I smell like puke. Go away, wouldja, and let me pull myself together?”
“Ill go see if Leo can get you something to wear,” she said quietly, and he heard her leave.
“Chris,” he murmured to the white-tiled wall, “youd better pull through this, you sonuvabitch. I fucking need you.Without you, Im not even living out of a garbage bag.Im in the garbage bag, and its cold and its dark, and the worlds pressing down on me, and I cant breathe. You pull through.Just fucking pull through, okay?”
And then, on a shuddering breath, he remembered that Chris was only human.
“God, if youre listening, give him a leg up. Sometimes he needs someone to feed him the important shots.Hes still a good player. He just cant always stand on his own.”
And then he wiped the back of his face with his hand and opened the door to the tiny john. He ran water over his wrists and over his face, and wiped his eyes on the upper sleeve of his sweatshirt.
With a hard sigh, the kind that was meant to fortify his muscles, bones, and sinews, he walked out of the bathroom and went to wait with his family.
Important Clocks
CHRIS was in his first surgery for sixteen hours. Cliff and Alicia, God bless them, took Andi and Jed home. Andi and Jed came back eight hours later, and tried to tell Xander to go home with Penny and Mandy, but Xander wouldnt.
“Hell need me,” he said groggily. He was stretched out on the couch with two chairs lined up in front of him to take the length of his legs. Leo had gotten him a franchise sweatshirt—Denver Nuggets, of all things—but he was still wearing his grody jeans.Hed been awake for nearly thirty-six hours, but no amount of begging would make him go back to sleep, to eat, to bathe.
“Hell need me.” It kept Xander in the hospital for four days. Sixteen hours for Chris to get out of surgery, eight hours for him to semi-recover, then another ten hours under the knife.
When that was over, it took him two days to wake up, and by then? Xander felt like a fixture there, like some sort of outsized ghost, who had been haunting the waiting room, marking the passage of other people, worried, terrified people, praying for their loved ones too. Most had happy endings, but two didnt, and Xander watched complete strangers, with whom he shared nothing but the waiting, disintegrate under the hard news of life without.
The first time, he was alone. They didnt leave him alone much, even when (especially when) he was sleeping. He dozed fitfully on occasion, in that stretched-out position on the couch with the two chairs, but more than once he came awake with a clatter, knocking furniture over and muffling screams in his arms.
There was always someone:Penny, Mandy, Jed, Leo, Andi… someonewatching over him to make sure he didnt take out some poor complete stranger with the violence of his hidden pain. The third time he did it, a nurse offered (none toopolitely) to give him a sedative, and hed looked at her with haunted eyes.
“Nothing works,” he whispered. “Nothing but Chris.” He wasnt aware then that hed jus t outed the two of them, but he did see the terrible comprehension in her eyes,
and not another word was spoken about drugs to keep him asleep.
But nobody was there when Xander saw the surgeon come out to give someone bad news the first time. He was not good at reading people, had no real people-imagination,actually, so he couldnt tell if it was a husband or a father or a brother who had died, but he remembered the faces of the family, as they tried to be strong at first and then crumpled, like steel girders rippling under too much weight, and an earthquake to boot.
They said “No no no no no no no—” a lot, and Xander wondered if maybe, if he asked pretty, and the surgeon came out to greet him with that look on her face, God would let Xanders heart stop before he realized that “Yes, it was true, and you will never see Chris smile again” actually registered.
So that was the first time Xander watched someone get bad news. The second time, Mandy was with him, and she watched his knees buckle as he sat down on the floor, hard, when the surgeon came in with that look on her face, and then went to talk to the other family in the room.
That was when the universal decision was made to not only keep someone there when Xander was sleeping, but when he was awake too.
Xander told them all that he was fine. He made sure everybody went home and got rest, he went to fetch food and horrible coffee, and pillows for everyone. He even sent Leo out to get a computer and chargers and everything so they could distract themselves with smart phones and television and bad movies and anything, anything at all that made the waiting less than excruciating.
Leo apparently raided the Big & Tall section when he went to Walmart as well, because he came back with a couple of pairs of sweats, some generic sweatshirts and T-shirts, some socks, underwear, and some really cheap tennis shoes from a Famous Footwear nearby—as well as an attitude that fooled no one.
“And wasnt that fun for me. Uncle Leo,my ass… youd better win the fuckin playoffs, Xander, thats all Im saying. Fuck the thankyous;just make me look good, okay?”
“Thank you,” Xander muttered, before being sent off to a shower cubicle by the now-sympathetic nurse.
“Yeah, thank yourself. It was your goddamned piece of plastic, you big dumbass.”
But Xander didnt remember giving Leo his credit card. Months later, he figured out that he hadnt, and that it really had been all bluster on Leos part. Uncle Leo, indeed.
All that, and it was still three days before they even knew for sure if Chris would live.
During the eight-hour break between surgeries, Xander spent part of the time at the foot ofChriss bed and simply looked at him.Theyd had to shave his head again—or part of it—in order to stitch the head wound, and hed broken his nose and bruised the shit out of his face against the airbag.
But Xander, tired, hungry (no one could get him to eat—Leo had to threaten him with a sedative and an IV to get him to even pretend to eat), and practically delusional, could see it.
“Do you see it, Leo? That gold shimmer?Its still there. I can see it.Its still in him.”
Xander had been seated, leaning precariously over his knees in an effort to get closer to Chris, in spite of the breathing tube and the machines that made it difficult. Leo gave his head a little shove—just a little one, sideways—and Xander had rested his head on his outstretched arm and slept, really slept, for the first time in two days.
He woke up when they came to take Chris away for the next surgery, and the whole thing started again.
After four days, Xander was so exhausted, he was practically fugueing from one reality to another. He would blink and see Penny, from when she was a girl, shaking him awake on the Edwardss couch, telling him it was time for breakfast. He would pretend to eat and then want to sleep again, on the musty couch from that tiny, dark, freezing apartment, and he would be all alone. He would sit and watch a movie, and try to listen while Mandy mindlessly chatted over the dialogue (she was good at that) and he would be in college, when he was dreaming about him and Chris being knights in shining armor, or condottieri captains, fighting for a just cause, and he would wake up and theyd be watching an AustinPowers movie, and hed wonder why Chris wasnt there to laugh with him.
On the third day, Chris came out of surgery again, and they made Xander shower again and totter around the building while they prepped Chris for his room. He was on his second loop when Leo kicked off his dress shoes and forced Xander to keep up with him, running around the hospital campuslike kids running a race through someones back yard. When they pulled up after a couple of laps, Leo found his five-hundreddollar loafers and looked them over glumly.
“Jesus, I think Ill have to go to the mall and get me some of those spiff-tacular pieces of shit on your feet.Im not putting those shredded socks into these shoes—disgusting!”
Xander, feeling a little bit clearer than he had been, offered to go to the store for him, but Leo had shaken his head. His ruddy, animated face, still blotchy from the exertion, became as serious as Xander had ever seen it.
“I really do love you kids, you know it? Ive seen my share of athletes fuck themselves up, just like Chris, but I dont know if Ive ever seen anyone as fucked up as you are, standing by his side.”
Xander looked away, feeling helpless.“Without Chris, Im not anything,” he said, meaning it.
Leo breathed out, hard, the kind of breath that meant he was closer to something more painful.“You just keep telling yourself that, Xander. None of us here are buying.I mean, were all here for Chris, right? But being here for Chris is also being here for you. And like it or not, Cochise, youre going to have to make a serious decision in four days, you hear me?Because however hes doing by then, you will either have to leave his side or give some plausible explanation as to why you wont, and thats going to be all you.”
Xander tripped over the bench on the front lawn and literally went down hard on his knees and face-planted onto the lawn.
Leo, bless his black little heart, laughed so hard that he sat down, even as Xander picked himself up, not even hoping for dignity.
“Surprised you there, didnt I, chief?”
Xander nodded, rolling his eyes as he brushed himself off.“Ill play,” he said, not even sure he said it. “Ill come out this season—dont doubt it.But Chris… he cant play. Hell never play again. Hes going to live… Im going to trust that hell live because I cant think beyond it, right? But I can play. How dare I not do it, when Chris loves to watch me play?”
Leos smirk went slack and open, and his eyes went wide, and he shook his head.“Xander, its a good thing you werent some sort of Cossack general, back in the day. You get that tone of voice, that look on your face, and Im not kidding… even I would follow you into hell.”
Xander blinked at him, and then a real, full-fledged grin blossomed, even though it felt like seven shades of crazy.“What in the fuck have you been smoking?Jesus, Leo, the shit you say!”
He went back inside, and Leo followed him, finally deigning to put his loafers on without socks, and they went for the latest update.
When Chris woke up on the fourth day, Xander was asleep in his room. The nurses had brought him a little cot, with an extension, and Penny was asleep next to him, with her hand on his shoulder so he wouldnt start twitching in his sleep.
Xander woke up to Pennys rather hysterical giggle, and he bolted upright, terrified that hed missed something.
“Chris, you fucking dork,” Penny was saying, somewhat brokenly. “Fucking Jesus—”
“Wha?”
Chris blinked, his face swollen and the bandages on his head moving when he did.“Penny, ge your han off my man….”
Xander fell to his knees in front of the hospital bed and wept clean tears, while Chris fumbled numb fingers through his hair.
An hour later, Chris had fallen back to sleep, and then and only then did Xander go to Cliff and Alicias house. The first thing he did was take a real shower in one of Cliffs big, full-sized shower-baths instead of a half-one in a cubicle. Then he fell asleep on their guest bed—Chriss old room, he learned the next morning—and slept
for nine hours straight, and for once, no scary monsters intervened.
When he woke up, he dressed in sweats and begged Penny to take him back to the hospital, because Chris was awake now, pretty please, little sister, cantcha please go faster?
She made him eat breakfast first, and had Alicias housekeeper pack him extra food for the way there.
“Youve got a game in two days,” she said adamantly, and Xander frowned at her.
“How did you know that?”
“Because I heard Leo talking to Chris, and I think its the best idea Ive heard in a long time!”
Xander frowned.“Leo shouldnt be talking to Chris about it.Its my job.”
Penny turned to him, her movements sharp, and Xander glared at her and swallowed.For a moment, she was so completely her mothers child that he felt fourteen again, and hed been asked nicely to take his elbows off the table.
But he didnt back down.
“Youve done a real good job of being grown up,” Penny said softly, although her lips were tilted up in a sardonic smile.“I think Leo just wanted to make sure you followed through. He knew Chris would get you down the court, even if you didnt think you could make it.”
Aw… basketball analogies? Whod told her they were his secret weakness.
“I would have made it,” Xander said, slightly mollified. “I just wanted to talk to Chris myself. Now come on, Ive been ready for forever!”
Penny looked himup and down and said, “Yeah, thats only because you dont care that you look like shit. My brother looks forward to seeing you, even if you look like the walking dead crapped you out and put you on a reality show.Cmon, Xander,” she added sweetly, when she saw his eyes widen and he automatically started checking his hair, “youre the one who said we were running late!”
“I hate you,” he muttered, as he sat in the rented Acura, his knees up to his chin. He was trying to check his hair and his face in the mirror, and he realized that he probably could have shaved closer, his hair had grown out into his eyes, and he needed a good pore minimizer or something, because exhaustion and worry had left his face looking saggy and old.“I really, really hate you.”
